An excellent piece in the Guardian today by Doron Shultziner on the state of graduate studies in Oxford has brought several sharp, recollective intakes of breath on my part. Shultziner outlines something desperately familiar to anyone who has studied as a graduate at Oxford in the last decade or so (I spent almost eight years there myself, doing my undergraduate degree and then a masters and doctorate): that the systems in place for supervision and for giving graduates a proper training in academic occupations like teaching and research are hugely variable and overstretched, and can leave many feeling profoundly isolated. As Shultziner begins:
About a year ago, two Oxford alumni published a critical review of their experience as graduate students at the University of Oxford. The former recipients of the prestigious Rhodes scholarship described "a frustrating academic experience" in an "outdated academic system" where advisers "spend more time avoiding emails than supervising students" and "where DPhil students struggle to have supervisors read their dissertations before submission, and poor supervision is the rule, not the exception".I feel especially torn because my own time in Oxford was, in so many ways, a joy and a privilege. As well as being the grateful recipient of financial support from my college, I found a supervisor and colleagues who helped me explore my field (20th century literature and philosophy) with a remarkable degree of freedom and flexibility. At the same time, the finest aspects of the system inexorably mingled with its worst: the flexibility and emphasis on individual relationships put huge pressure on contemporaries who didn't get on with their supervisors, or who lacked direction or research experience; the often informal procedures associated with teaching and publishing left many feeling "out of the loop" and disillusioned with academia as a career choice; because everything was so personal and pressured, it could be difficult for those who were unhappy to do anything about their problems, even though structures of support theoretically existed. And there was a great deal of pressure on the notably limited resource of really good (i.e. willing and able to teach) supervisors.
I only rarely found myself hankering for the greater formality of a typical American graduate system during my time at Oxford. But this was not true of many other graduates I knew, who (especially in arts subjects) often seemed to feel confused and abandoned. For some, a high degree of freedom and independence ultimately proved an impetus to originality and self-reliance. But for others, the lingering suspicion that the system simply didn't care about them enough, or contain enough checks and balances, was crushing. Graduates at Oxford are a privileged lot, and know they are. Most also burn with grateful ambition: a precious resource that no university should allow itself to squander.
