Handling grad student

[research_prof]

Dismal: He's still working in my lab.

I feel the reason for his disrespectful reaction was related to his job offer! He got an offer from an industry service company (he informed me last week) and will join the job shortly. Sometimes kids just want to get the degree and leave!

Thank you.

FYI: If you feel that the student is not ready to graduate, you can always not sign off on their graduation paperwork. The fact that the student has an industry job offer is not your problem or concern.

Depends where you are.  Students here can technically proceed to defend their thesis without consent from the advisor.  This is not normally done and would be a toxic situation, but it is the Student's thesis and they can theoretically do this. 

More often, in a situation where there are major issues between the student and advisor (or committee), the defense would proceed with another committee setup just for the defense. 

Regardless, the OP stated they have several outstanding papers published, so I would be surprised if there is much justification to prevent them from defending.  It seems the OP is taking the wisest course with this and just getting them finished up and out the door.   

A new committee with a new chair would require quite a bit of justification. Having the student say "I found a job, I need to graduate ASAP and my advisor will not let me, because they say I need to do more work" will not fly. For students to graduate, they typically have to make their advisor happy in terms of work. Without that, they will not be able to graduate (at least at the universities I have experience with).

[Kron3007]

Dismal: He's still working in my lab.

I feel the reason for his disrespectful reaction was related to his job offer! He got an offer from an industry service company (he informed me last week) and will join the job shortly. Sometimes kids just want to get the degree and leave!

Thank you.

FYI: If you feel that the student is not ready to graduate, you can always not sign off on their graduation paperwork. The fact that the student has an industry job offer is not your problem or concern.

Depends where you are.  Students here can technically proceed to defend their thesis without consent from the advisor.  This is not normally done and would be a toxic situation, but it is the Student's thesis and they can theoretically do this. 

More often, in a situation where there are major issues between the student and advisor (or committee), the defense would proceed with another committee setup just for the defense. 

Regardless, the OP stated they have several outstanding papers published, so I would be surprised if there is much justification to prevent them from defending.  It seems the OP is taking the wisest course with this and just getting them finished up and out the door.   

A new committee with a new chair would require quite a bit of justification. Having the student say "I found a job, I need to graduate ASAP and my advisor will not let me, because they say I need to do more work" will not fly. For students to graduate, they typically have to make their advisor happy in terms of work. Without that, they will not be able to graduate (at least at the universities I have experience with).

Of course, but that is not how the student would frame it.  They would more likely say that the advisor is adding unreasonable demands at the end of their program that are impacting their graduation and career prospects.  They could even state that the advisor had told them it was good to go as is, then abruptly added this requirement.  They would then add that it requires substantial revision, adds little to the thesis, and had a real and negative impact on their career prospects.  If they are truly manipulative, they would insinuate that there are underlying personal issues and motives at play. 

The advisor may deny these claims, but in the end it is he-said, she-said, and the grad coordinator needs to find a solution.  I suppose how this plays out depends on a lot of factors, but if the student is clever (most are) they would know how to play their cards. 

I have seen some pretty brazen students do far worse and come out pretty well.  Our system is pretty pro-student in the end.

[fizzycist]

As a grad program head I can tell you that "I got a job need to graduate" is not a winning argument for me, if a student wants to go around advisor to graduate.

In OP's case, the student has publications and what advisor claims is strong work. So the first course of remedy, if escalated to me, would be to mediate a finishing-up plan that involves the student meeting (reasonable) finishing-up expectations set by the advisor and rest of committee. I.e. I mostly keep my mouth shut other than to make sure there is a plan and that everyone agrees to it.

I'm sure there is more to the story, but you don't want to just dissolve a productive working advisor-advisee relationship over a a few nasty comments. If student is claiming abuse or something then we investigate and consider other options, but still it doesn't involve just letting the student graduate ASAP.

It's possible other grad program heads are more lenient on grad requirements though, I'm finding other units do things in ways I find absolutely crazy (eg one dept had a history of letting difficult students defend and then fail them to make a point!).

[research_prof]

As a grad program head I can tell you that "I got a job need to graduate" is not a winning argument for me, if a student wants to go around advisor to graduate.

In OP's case, the student has publications and what advisor claims is strong work. So the first course of remedy, if escalated to me, would be to mediate a finishing-up plan that involves the student meeting (reasonable) finishing-up expectations set by the advisor and rest of committee. I.e. I mostly keep my mouth shut other than to make sure there is a plan and that everyone agrees to it.

I'm sure there is more to the story, but you don't want to just dissolve a productive working advisor-advisee relationship over a a few nasty comments. If student is claiming abuse or something then we investigate and consider other options, but still it doesn't involve just letting the student graduate ASAP.

It's possible other grad program heads are more lenient on grad requirements though, I'm finding other units do things in ways I find absolutely crazy (eg one dept had a history of letting difficult students defend and then fail them to make a point!).

Grad program head here as well. I fully agree with what fizzycist said. The argument "have a job, need to graduate" will not fly with me either.

[Kron3007]

As a grad program head I can tell you that "I got a job need to graduate" is not a winning argument for me, if a student wants to go around advisor to graduate.

In OP's case, the student has publications and what advisor claims is strong work. So the first course of remedy, if escalated to me, would be to mediate a finishing-up plan that involves the student meeting (reasonable) finishing-up expectations set by the advisor and rest of committee. I.e. I mostly keep my mouth shut other than to make sure there is a plan and that everyone agrees to it.

I'm sure there is more to the story, but you don't want to just dissolve a productive working advisor-advisee relationship over a a few nasty comments. If student is claiming abuse or something then we investigate and consider other options, but still it doesn't involve just letting the student graduate ASAP.

It's possible other grad program heads are more lenient on grad requirements though, I'm finding other units do things in ways I find absolutely crazy (eg one dept had a history of letting difficult students defend and then fail them to make a point!).

Grad program head here as well. I fully agree with what fizzycist said. The argument "have a job, need to graduate" will not fly with me either.

Also a grad coordinator here.  I would not accept "have a job, need to graduate" to push them through either, but you are only hearing the advisor's side of the story here.  Usually the student's version is substantially different when there is conflict and as grad coordinator it is your jobs to hear both sides and act accordingly.

My first step would be to meet with each of them individually to hear their versions of the story.  Next I would meet with both together to see if we can find a reasonable plan that both sides agree with to finish the program (this is the best outcome 99% of the time, especially at this stage of the program).  Usually this will work, and the two would work to wrap things up in a manner that is acceptable for both sides.

It is when this process fails that things get ugly, and it is often one party's word against the other.  We recently had a situation where the student was making all sorts of wild accusations against their advisor.  Fortunately, the PI had kept a pretty solid paper trail that refuted many of the claims and kept them out of hot water (some pretty major accusations).  This ended up escalating above the department level and ultimately the student was permitted to defend with a new committee (I was on the original committee and was dropped). 

Perhaps it depends where you are, but here the students hold a lot of cards.  For this case, we don't have enough details to cast judgement, but I think it is naive to think we have a balanced account.

[Vid]

He is almost done with his thesis. There are a few comments that he needs to address and put their results in the thesis.

He has anger issues and lacks communication skills (...he thinks he is the only one who can develop algorithms!). I directed him to some resources at the univ that are freely available to students and helped him to navigate those help. But he did not contact them!

My lab is a safe learning environment with supportive relationships among the members. I do as much as I can to support my students.

You can't make people change, all you can do is let the toxic ones go!

Thank you, guys.

[research_prof]

He is almost done with his thesis. There are a few comments that he needs to address and put their results in the thesis.

He has anger issues and lacks communication skills (...he thinks he is the only one who can develop algorithms!). I directed him to some resources at the univ that are freely available to students and helped him to navigate those help. But he did not contact them!

My lab is a safe learning environment with supportive relationships among the members. I do as much as I can to support my students.

You can't make people change, all you can do is let the toxic ones go!

Thank you, guys.

If you ever need to submit a recommendation letter on his behalf, you can mention all these issues in a nice way. You should also mention to him that if he ever behaves like that in industry, he will most likely get fired right away.

The way I put it to my students when I sense they might feel they know better than me is to ask them to write up their dissertation and defend right away. I have said that to a first year PhD student when he continuously ignored my feedback. I said "it looks like you know better than me, so that being said you are ready to write up your thesis, defend, and graduate". The guy obviously realized who the authority is and his behavior has improved since this incident (his overall performance is still poor). This is a tougher card to play when a student is indeed almost ready to graduate.