I am a third-year PhD student (in Germany), and I work with several Master’s and Bachelor’s students. I am usually responsible for supervising their theses, teaching them lab work and data analysis and I also provide feedback on their thesis drafts. Recently, I found myself feeling exhausted and asked some fellow PhD students about their experience with supervision. I was told that I put too much effort into teaching my students, and that I shouldn’t invest so much energy in it. That, there is no need to clear their basics, just give them minimum feedback on their thesis.
I disagree. I believe students are at one of their most vulnerable stages during their Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. Helping them and putting effort into teaching shouldn’t be seen as a waste of time. It’s one of the main pillars of academia, isn’t it?
Yet, none of the young scientists around me seem interested in teaching students. Why are we so lost in this rat race of publishing? Isn’t a core part of academia about spreading knowledge and helping students discover their passions? Isn’t science about being part of a community and helping each other? Or am I just delusional? I am sick of constantly being told that I have romanticized the idea of science or teaching.
I just feel, often we hear PhD students complain that their supervisors don’t give them time or simply don’t care. But if our generation of young scientists also stops caring, won’t the cycle of bad PhD advisors just continue?
Comments
Most people dont go into their PhD wanting to teach. Most of us go there for the science and the research. Theres honestly a reason that most of my professors at research universities have been Okay at best, its not what THEY are there for.
Some people love it and are passionate about it, but I would argue they are the minority.
Research assessed via top tier publications, citation count, and bringing in big funding grants are what academics are heavily evaluated on …. teaching (while very important and core to a university) is treated as a side bar
For reference, I did my BA in the US, grad school here in Germany, and have had a bit of academic experience in other EU nations.
Broadly speaking, university teaching is second-tier in Germany in a way that it isn’t in many other countries. Most German professors view themselves as researchers first and teachers last (not second). They’ll happily take leave during the semester to conduct fieldwork and simply force their PhD students to pick up the slack. They’ll reuse a syllabus from 10 years ago without updating a single source. They’ll assign grades on essays without offering a single word of feedback. Not to mention the fact that there’s little to no emphasis on pedagogical training during the German PhD and post-doc. It’s just… non-existent. You can theoretically land a professorship without ever having really taught.
It’s obviously an issue everywhere that there are people who love research and hate teaching. Not every professor is going to take joy in running a classroom. That’s normal to an extent. That said, I have found the problem to be especially pronounced in Germany. Teaching at the university level is just a secondary priority in every way imaginable. Those who prioritize their teaching are an extreme minority. And again, I’m not saying this is unique to Germany–putting teaching first often comes with professional consequences. But anecdotally, I feel that it’s very pronounced in Germany.
Edit: I will say part of this is the result of how university functions here. Class attendance is abysmal, especially in states where mandatory attendance is not allowed. And because effectively 100% of the grade for many courses is the Prüfungsleistung, you can’t actually assess students throughout the term and provide an incentive for active, meaningful, engaged participation. Studienleistungen are generally jokes and P/F. So you’re left with a situation in which a large number of students half ass it which ultimately demotivates professors.
One of my mentors is the type of professor who really gives a shit about her teaching. She is the only one in the entire department who views teaching as equal to research in terms of a professor’s responsibilities. But after a decade, she’s almost entirely given up. The system is set up in a way that disincentivizes students from meeting her half way, so her effort feels pointless. Why spend an extra 30 minutes writing detailed essay feedback for a student who can’t be bothered to come to class, won’t come to office hours, and doesn’t take the feedback to heart on the next assignment? And what are you to do when that’s a majority of the students? She’s at a bit of a loss and is trying out new ways of increasing engagement, but the German system just makes it hard. At our university, she can’t make anyone come to class and she can’t make anyone complete assignments that receive an actual grade. The only grade they get from her is a P/F for Studienleistungen and then an actual grade for the Prüfungsleistung (if they even choose to do one in her course since they only have to do so many per multi course Modul). The students thus have little buy-in.
If your career doesn’t progress from it, then you can’t afford to spend extra time on it, end of story. Do the minimum to meet your obligations and no more, or be uncompetitive. Those are your choices. Those folks are responsible for their own education.
If you really value teaching, then you can one day work at a slac or cc and focus on it. But now is not the time for that.
I see your point, and I share your enthusiasm for teaching and supervision. At the same time, I have seen a number of PhD students put so much energy and effort into teaching/supervision, at the expense of their own research projects, that it seriously hampered their own progress. I think what your peers may be trying to tell you is to find efficient ways to help out your students, without losing track of the tasks necessary for you to finish your PhD. But I can relate, I used to spend countless hours providing feedback to students I taught, until at some point I realized that 1) it really affected my scientific productivity and 2) sometimes more hands-off supervision is just as good if not better in supporting students’ development than supervision you spend hours on.
Been there too. I agree that it’s important to help younger students/interns and teach, but imo if you feel exhausted at some point, it stops being fun and it’s probably too much. I have been through some similar issues, and eventually I realised it was not really worth it and was slowing down my experiments. If you enjoy doing it and maybe even get a contract extension because of it, just go on with it
I agree with the advice you got
Not your job not your problem
Teaching them how to collect data is good already all
The rest not your responsibility.
Great you enjoy it though
Your primary responsibility for most PhD is your own work and research
also in germany, 4th year doctoral candidate, life sciences. most of us are under pressure from project time, money crunch and bosses being toxic af in terms of time management (get paid 50%+ of work time, work 120%, be expected to yield 200% results). on top of our research struggles, which we often have to learn mostly ourselves, we are expected to teach a minion. nobody teaches us how to teach. objectively, minions below master thesis level (half.ish year of lab work in my sector) are useless for you or even hindering. so tldr, system’s fault. baby scientists should be tutored properly and us young scientists should be rewarded for the effort and not actively punished
I’ll figure out how to be a better professor when I’m in a secure job and actually paid more than $3000/semester.
Teaching quality is generally given low (if any) weight in hiring and promotion decisions for research faculty positions. If putting time and energy into teaching and mentorship takes away from your publishing output and grant applications, then that’s a difficult career risk to justify on a practical level.
I share your conviction for teaching on a personal level, and have tried to take on extra mentorship and teaching duties to contribute during my PhD. I had to step back from that because it was an unsustainable amount of work to teach at the level I would like and also keep up my research productivity—it just wasn’t viable for me.
If you can figure out how to strike that balance, then I applaud you! But, a lot of people can’t or don’t care enough to try, and it is hard for me to fault them when it’s basically disincentivized.
Putting effort into teaching literally is a waste of time.
Don’t blame them, blame the incentive structures we built into academia.
To be fair, I think teaching allows a dialectic to take place which could possibly advance research, and would definitely reinforce the given teacher’s understanding of their own subject.
I’m not familiar with the German system, but I have 20 years of university teaching experience. My experience is that more is usually not more – the more time you spend on supervision doesn’t necessarily lead to better results for the students and it’s clearly affecting your work-life balance (and potentially your PhD).
It’s much fairer for you and for your students to establish clear boundaries: this is how many times you meet them and how much support they get, reasonable turnaround time, etc. Giving more feedback is also not necessarily better for students because it can be overwhelming for them.
In the UK, where I work, teaching experience is important for academic jobs, although research achievements are more important where I am. We wouldn’t hire someone with no or very little teaching experience because a new lecturer has to be able to teach from the very start, run their own modules, etc. But that doesn’t mean you should sacrifice your PhD for it.
It depends. Doing a decent job at teaching and mentoring is important and somewhat helpful to your career. But a lot of people overdo it, and a lot of people under do it.
It’s one of these things where the 80/20 rule applies. Should you put in the 20% of work it takes to perform above average? Absolutely! Should you spend hours making sure your slides are as pretty as possible, like when you’re giving a job talk? Probably not.
When talking about mentoring, it’s additionally important to strike a balance in being an active supervisor, but also letting the student figure things out themselves. We shouldn’t be involved so much as to write their theses for them. I had to learn that when I started supervising, and it seems like you need to learn that as well.
The wack priority of using the number of publications and amount of won funding as the primary metric for performance evaluations, is why I’m struggling to want to stay in academia after my PhD, even though I love research…
That said, if you wanna work at a university where the professors prioritize teaching as much as the research, you should come join my department! Your attitude in this post makes me think you would fit right in! We’re chronically overworked (but lesbehonest, who isn’t?), but we have fun and just about everyone really enjoys the teaching aspects 😁 (I should know, I did both my BSc and my MSc here, before I landed my PhD).
The brightest mind i have ever met was the wolds worst teacher imaginable. The dude wrote paper after paper disproving and reshaping our understanding of the field, building the most solid research foundation for future student. I will go as far as the fact that students for years to come will profit from what he accomplished.
But put him in front of a classroom and no one will pass the class for certain. People are different, having have different skills, some are teachers, some are not.
It depends on how you are looking at this problem. If you’re looking at it from the viewpoint of what is going to make these students better scientists and thus benefit them, the university and society, then no teaching is not a waste of time. Education is the whole purpose of university after all. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this viewpoint.
If you’re looking at it from the viewpoint of what is going to help you succeed in your career, that’s a different story. Unless you plan to be a teacher, which most people pursuing a PhD don’t, then the viewpoint that teaching is a waste of time becomes more logical. Want to be a professor leading a research group? Research is what will get you that job far more than your skills in teaching. You can be an awful teacher but you still get to list on your resume that you taught this class and mentored X number of students. Want to be a scientist in industry? They probably won’t care about your teaching skills either.
You get to decide where you invest your time, and if being a great teacher is important to you, good for you! We need more people who care about teaching. Just don’t be a great teacher at the detriment of your research, because at the end of the day that is what will determine whether you are awarded your PhD and the kind of job you get afterwards.
This is true for the undergrad students, and maybe moreso in grad school. You should never care more about their success than they do.
Meeting halfway and effort matching is fine. But you’ve got to look after you. Not overcommit to saving people who don’t want to save themselves.
To do so is like planning experiments you know will fail and will waste everyone’s time.
I’m also a PhD student in Germany and have one piece of advice for you that works quite well for me: Only agree to supervise good students and on topics that directly benefit your research (while not being on the critical path). Then you can invest time and it’s not just time wasted on teaching.
With good students, we now manage to do small publications, e.g., at workshops quite regularly. From what I’m told having guided a Master’s / Bachlor’s student in a project resulting in a joint publication (even if it’s small) doesn’t look too bad on a CV either.
Wait until you get a proper academic job
Oh, I highly valued teaching during my PhD.
But, at least at my university in the US, teaching contributed nothing towards the completion of your degree. For most of us, it was seen as a means to survive and receive a stipend.
Currently working as a research assistant and teaching assistant, hoping to start a PhD in the near future.
I really care about my teaching and supervisions. I try to be the teacher that I would have wanted as a student. I respond quickly to emails, I give thorough feedback on their written work, and I take the time to explain things with examples etc, and it is very well received by the students.
After supervising a group project for the first time, one student told me that I was the best supervisor she’s had for 5 years at the university, and it made me both very happy and very sad.
Caring about students and putting effort into teaching is a core aspect of academia, and should be treated as such.
Getting your basic teaching qualification during your phd seems like a pretty good move though? If you want to work in academia you need to get the UTQ within 1 or 2 years anyway ???
Teaching is my favourite part, but I am often reminded how competitive, unstable and inconsistent teaching positions are post-PhD (as if a post-doc isn’t?).
They are wrong. It can make quite a difference between landing a faculty gig and not landing a faculty gig.
Empathy. You have empathy. That can be exhausting, particularly in the academic space where everyone’s so burnt out. Post docs/profs often shed their empathy for convenience. It’s why we have so many wild stories and wacky characters as profs.
Plenty of post docs take on students just because they need to fill a quota to for their career.
If you take on a student there’s going to be some educational coddling. I don’t know why that’s such a hot take for some people.
You’re not delusional, you’ve been given a job by your supervisor and are doing it properly. That said, be smart about this and ask for help when you need it. Your supervisor shouldn’t be palming off more work than you can handle, just because they don’t want to do it. It’s their responsibility too.
This may differ by field, but I cred a lot about teaching in grad school. I TAd a lot, and tried. Got great evals, which opened up the chance to start lecturing as a dissertator, which opened up creating my own courses.
My CV had more teaching experience than 99.9% of graduating students, and more teaching experience than most applicants until they were 2+ years out of their PhD. It ws a factor that helped tip the scales when everyone had great research and deserved the job based on that.
Depends on the person and the research group’s mindset imo. In the system I work in, Bachelor and Master students are more seen like an uniciated researcher that has little to no research ability.
In that regard, most of the group members just throw some articles of reference for them to follow, which as you can guess usually ends up in a disastrous way. It’s just seen (unfortunately, imo) as a waste of time as it is assumed that they’ll most likely do nothing useful.
I’m finishing my Master’s and since I’m a bit more advanced on research methods than some professors in the group, I’ve been put in charge of training newcomers as no one else in the upper part of the academic chain wants to do it
Can’t really say since I haven’t really had any training experience apart from some specific advices here and there, but I feel I’d love having a junior to guide and take care of. All things said, I’m an Educational researcher so I might as well be awfully biased
There’s teaching and there is student supervision. The second can be very helpful to your goals if done properly.
Research faculty too xd
To be honest, I don’t think a PhD student should supervise a thesis. It is the job of the professors. In my two years as a PhD student I was never tasked with such a thing. (For reference, I am in Austria)
I’ve spent hours and lost so much research and personal time to prep teaching. On day one most of my students hadn’t don’t the necessary preparations for the lab course and we got chewed out like it was our fault that they finished late. The other section didn’t have such an issue so I know it’s not us.
This attitude has helped contribute to the disdain that many in America feel towards academia. Universities lost their way when their focus shifted from education to research. One can do both, but that is not what gets you tenure.
I was like you. Now im a professor. The other phd students at my time either still are postdoc or out of academia. Not that teaching gave me my job, but if you are enthusiastic in all you do and don’t forget the important part about future generation, you will succeed. Plus teaching is a plus when comparing candidates
Ugh. I agree with you. I used to teach as a masters student and now I don’t. Teaching just doesn’t only introduce the new generation to research. At least for me, teaching made me a better communicator and presenter. It also made my writing clearer and straight to the point, too. If you can’t communicate your research as clear as possible, especially to the non-experts, then what’s the point? Teaching forces you to “dumb down” concepts – which is a transferable skill.
I think you might need to spend time with different people. I hang around with people who share my values and when I did my PhD I talked about teaching with people who also loved and valued it.
Every good, successful, PI I have met loves teaching. Going over the basics keeps them aware of the bigger picture. Students often see things from a totally different perspective, and can inspire different thought patterns. Inspiring others can remind you why you enjoyed a subject to begin with when you’re bogged down in research bureaucracy.
Yes, teaching can be hard and a lot of work. But the rewards can be significant, both professionally and emotionally. And no one who avoids hard work is successful in Academia.
Sorry to speak against the majority. But teaching at universities comes 2nd or 3rd by design. And PhD students extremely motivated to teach should consider becoming teachers not researchers.
The overall system at universities is designed for independent learning, rather than for guided learning, because university students are expected to be self-sufficient and self-motivated. Once they prove within these anonymous basic courses and exams that they’re good enough, they are allowed to tag along with a Prof’s assistent. Dropping out is always an option if that system doesn’t fit.
If assisted/guided learning is preferred then people can choose to go to Fachhochschule (Applied Universities) where research has far lower priority, attendence is controlled and professors have smaller student groups to manage.
Sometimes people end up at universities even though they’d fit better to an Ausbildung, but don’t go there initially because of prestige or career perspectives. Would such people be able to pass their Bachelor’s or Madter’s if they get pampered with enough teaching resources? Yes. Would they end up as independent academics with a sharp mind, reliability and solid resistence to stress? No. And it’s not the job of universities to pamper people to the career that they wish for. It’s only their job to allow people to struggle through the system.
Your students are truly fortunate to have a mentor like you. I recently completed my master’s degree, during which I didn’t have much guidance beyond my supervisor—who was wonderful but understandably short on time to teach me the fundamentals of research. Much of what I’ve learned has been self-taught, and I often wished I had someone to guide me through lab work and data analysis.
Now, as a research assistant preparing for phd, I’ve had the opportunity to co-guide a few students in their thesis work. Teaching has proven to be both challenging and deeply rewarding. I strongly believe that students should show genuine interest and a willingness to learn when they are fortunate enough to be mentored. Unfortunately, I’ve observed a lack of enthusiasm in many, perhaps due to academic stress or other pressures—which at times makes it hard for me to stay motivated to teach.
But my mentor always reminds me that it’s a privilege to be in a position to teach and help shape a student’s path, upholding a legacy of collective mentors and that perspective continues to inspire me. I hope I can inspire and teach as I navigate my journey too.
When it becomes worth something on your CV, people will see it’s value. Until the evaluation of applicants for postdocs/lectureships moves on from volume/‘quality’ of papers to a more holistic view nobody will care.
To add: German phds have a very tight timeline. Anything that doesn’t contribute directly to that is perceived as worthless.
System is broken. Note it’s mostly just broken in science and is less broken in fields where the private sector attracts more of the talent pool (business, law etc).
Teaching ability should have a higher weighting in academia, but it doesn’t, and that’s why so many science lecturers are fking terrible at public speaking. It’s harmful for the field as a whole imo, with less knowledge being communicated appropriately and excellent teachers with less of a drive for research are being driven elsewhere.
The best lecturers and professors I have ever had as teachers or supervisors are the ones with lower citation counts who don’t care that much about publishing. Being supervised by a paper farmer is literal hell on earth.
You’re not delusional, you just haven’t been jaded into silence yet, and that’s a good thing. I’ve been teaching 15 years, and what you described seems like a real mentorship. The system may reward papers over people, but students remember who actually cared.
Honestly, I only feel it is not a waste of time if the students are properly invested in learning or their work. There were times the master’s student I meet once a week turns up with some progress they made by working couple hours the day before, then it’s the biggest waste of time.
Universities, on the outside, are for education. The youth being educated by the smartest of society, right?
On the inside it’s about winning grants (in part to pay for the university administration salaries and team building lunches) and then publications from the grants – which often means the winner doesn’t have to teach to earn her way – which then spur more grants for the winner and more conferences and travel and publication partners, and more grants, and more speaking engagements, more grants and so on. If you put energy into teaching, you are not on that cycle. The publications and travel and prestige from grants, winning approval from vice chancellor, is the game.
Ah. But who does the labour in this novel research? PhD candidates.
And, where can society read about the great discoveries of these professors? Behind pay walls in journals.
It is a funny awful game.
The level of supervision you describe is that of the principle investigator. You need to be more focused on generating data, publishing and if at all possible getting in-class LECTURE experience. When you achieve PI-Dom, then you can exercise your desires. Right now, your focus needs to be on you.
Some people just don’t have the interest in teaching.. “most professors want to do research, and the price you have to pay to be backed up by a university is to teach some classes, and as always, you try to minimize the price” russel akoff said something like that.
I also disagree, and I think if you feel that teaching is important then just do it and when you feel tired remember how much you are impacting others. Im just about to finish my phd, and while i have advised a good few ug and msc people, i can only guess it doesnt get any lighter when you land a faculty position and start having 7-10 students to supervise on top of getting grants etc.
Its a hard job fit for people who do it because of love.. would be way easier to get more money and free time working in industry lol
You never really understand something unless you teach it.
Your priority as a PhD student should be to do the work that helps you get the PhD. You need to prioritize your research. For those of us who have to teach, teaching is what gets you paid, but you shouldn’t treat teaching as your first priority. While you are teaching give your best to it but don’t make your life about it. I have seen so many people go overboard with teaching especially supervisors giving so much time and energy trying to perfect a course or trying to correct every single thing about it. Give at most 20 hours to it and ideally find a way to be efficient with grading so you don’t give more than 15. While in lab focus on research instead of focusing on teaching. I say this as a fellow supervisor who made considerable changes to the syllabus to improve both the learning and teaching experience.
As a PhD student who has also put a lot of effort into teaching (I initially wanted to be a teaching professor) and who is simultaneously feeling burnt out by teaching, I can relate to this. Sending solidarity, OP.