Annual Progress Report For Graduate Students: Fill & Download for Free

In Australia, the main milestones usually include:A confirmation of candidature between 6 months and 1 year after starting. The format of this varies and at some universities might be fairly pro-forma, but at James Cook University, the student is required to submit a literature review and research proposal and to present and defend this proposal before an audience. The research proposal will have more detail than the proposal that the student submitted with their PhD application and will include a time-line, GANTT chart, titles and target journals for the papers that the student hopes to write during their PhD, and a plan for their professional development. There literature review is assessed by an independent expert outside the university as well as by the student’s advisory panel. The presentation and proposal are assessed by an independent academic staff member at the university, plus the student’s advisors.Annual progress reports, at which the student and their advisors summarise progress, note any obstacles, and indicate whether the PhD is on track.A mid-candidature review, which is similar to the annual progress reports, but in more detail. At JCU, students are required among other things to have made a presentation and to have completed a substantial piece of writing by the time of their mid candidature review.Submission of the PhD thesis, which is sent off to two or three independent external examiners.Submission of the final thesis after any revisions have been completed to the satisfaction of the examiners and/or school.Graduation.Many universities impose additional milestones along the way. For example, AIMS@JCU students are also required to:If they are international students (and optionally if they are domestic students), complete the SKIP program in their first year, which provides training in professional academic writing, critical thinking, research presentation and writing for journals.Complete a required number of hours of professional development training, which can be tailored to their needs. This may include, for example, coursework in statistical methods, training in laboratory methods for their field, training in scientific entrepreneurship, media training, scientific communication training and so on.Present at least one poster, two oral presentations, and one “speed talk” during their candidature.Present a formal final seminar just before they submit their PhD thesis. [This is a common requirement of many Australian PhD programs, and if the presentation is not approved, they may not be allowed to submit the thesis, though the formal part of the examination is the examination of the thesis itself].

From the Burning Glass study (May 2018):Forty percent drop out.Twenty-six percent graduate, but end up underemployed, i.e. in jobs that don’t require a college degree.Thirty-four percent graduate and become fully employed.There is a Drexel University study that shows those who drop out are stigmatized in the job market. This makes complete sense when you consider the ready availability of college graduates (1,900,000 annually).Of those who graduate with student loan debt, thirty percent are paying nothing towards their debt. (Center For American Progress report.)Parents (and students) just don’t seem to grasp the fact that “going to college” these days is a risky business.

In no particular order here are some of my thoughts as a PhD student.Pay us better. A non trivial amount of our stress is related to things like rent. In a lot of cities market rent can take up our entire stipend. Please be mindful of this. Also, stop charging us fees, it makes no sense when we already get a paycheck from the university. And give us annual cost of living adjustments so we don't have to bicker every few years about what is fair.Take our mental health seriously. Roughly half of graduate students are clinically depressed. We need the resources to handle this. Make sure any health insurance you offer covers mental health. And the more help you can provide on campus the better. If that means hiring a psychologist or psychiatrist just for the graduate students, do it.Make the terms of employment clearer. I realize we’re students, but at the same time we are expected to put in more work than a typical employee. As an undergrad student, I dictated my schedule and work environment, but as a graduate student I have far less flexibility and control. I’d really appreciate if there were some minimum standards that were explicitly laid out for the PIs to follow. Even just something like stating that graduate students are entitled to a minimum of x days of vacation each year would help. It makes it a lot easier to justify to a PI that we deserve time away from work.Blacklist bad PIs. We all know who they are, the people who should never be responsible for a trainee. The type who overwork students, give contradictory instructions, and can’t seem to ever graduate a student. And, in some not-rare-enough cases, institutions watch as students commit suicide[1] (don’t worry, the University of Wisconsin hasn’t fired the PI[2]). Institutions need to set up minimal standards of conduct, make reporting abuses possible (and anonymous to avoid retaliation), and actually enforce the policies. None of this ‘administrative leave’ bullshit. Also, look out for these patterns of behavior when hiring people so that your program doesn’t bring in known abusive professors[3]. Bar them from taking on students, kick them out of graduate programs, actually fire them. I know that tenure makes this hard, hard isn’t impossible. As graduate students we are not allowed to say something is hard as an excuse not to do it, universities should be held to a higher standard than their trainees.Provide training for non-academic careers. The vast majority of PhDs do not work in academia. They’re in industry, government, and non-profits. Stop basing the entirety of training on how to be a PI. Bring in non-academics to share their experiences. Hire professors with attitudes that break the culture that expects students to be either a PI or a failure. Maybe hire some people who have been outside of academia so we don’t get advice on how to get industry jobs from people who haven’t worked a day outside of a university.Celebrate our successes. Maybe this is from being in a college of medicine, but I constantly see events for the medical students going on. That’s not the case for us graduate students. We get orientation, years of classes and lonely research, a stressful defense, and finally a celebration. Going 5–7 years without feeling like you’re making progress is incredibly demoralizing. I see medical students getting their hard work acknowledged during a white coat ceremony and I can’t help but think graduate programs could do the same for something like when we pass our qualifying exams (at my institution we do it at a certain point in the program, but I realize this isn’t the case everywhere). But, regardless of how it is done, we work damn hard and bring a lot of value to the university, please show us that you realize we matter to the institution.Footnotes[1] Graduate student's death at UW Madison is a devastating cautionary tale[2] UW professor Akbar Sayeed to return to campus this spring[3] NSF unwittingly hired a professor guilty of bullying, highlighting the ‘pass the harasser’ problem