Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
News

Spotting a Bad Adviser—and How to Pick a Good One

By Leonard Cassuto July 21, 2014
Spotting a Bad Adviser—and How to Pick a Good One 1
André da Loba for The Chronicle

Seventh Annual Survey

Great Colleges to Work For 2014

  • Full List
  • Honor Roll
  • By Category
  • News Features

Spotting a Bad Adviser—and How to Pick a Good One

By Leonard Cassuto

Spotting a Bad Adviser--and How to Pick a Good One

André da Loba for The Chronicle

Universities have a lot of names for the professor who works with a graduate student on a thesis or dissertation and later signs off on it. The main titles are “adviser,” “director,” and, more rarely, “sponsor.” Some universities, including my own, call a professor in this position a “mentor.” I like “adviser” because I think that’s the best description of the job when it’s being done well.

The 19th-century term for such an adviser was “master,” with all of the connotations that the word carries. The idea of the guiding master originated in Germany. In the United States, the relationship quickly translated into what the historian William Clark calls an “intensely personal,” almost cultish, tie of admiring loyalty. So powerful was that tie that some American academics once floated the idea that an official Ph.D. award should carry the name of your master rather than the name of the university that the student attended.

The relationship between advisee and professor (whatever that person’s title) is the longest and most important one in a graduate student’s formal education, a unique blend of the professional and the personal. The tie binds like family—and genealogical metaphors for the adviser-student relationship abound. Some long-serving professors even become the trunk nodes of their own family-tree diagrams. (A site called PsychTree builds an adviser-student family tree in the field of psychology.) The students of the legendary historian Frederick Jackson Turner used to refer to him—and even address him!—as “my professional father.”

When it’s forged and maintained in the right way, this tie turns into a lifelong, productive, ever-evolving relationship of mutually rewarding collegiality. It often levels off into a friendship between peers. When it goes bad, though, the relationship can breed anger, resentment, bitterness, and an unfulfillment that extends far beyond graduate school itself. All of which ought to remind us that, family relations aside, this is still a connection between a worker and a boss.

So how do you spot a bad adviser? Or to put it another way: How do you pick a good one?

To identify what to look for, let’s go back to names. I said that I prefer the title of “adviser.” I like it much better than “director” in particular, because “adviser” is less authoritative. Graduate students need to write their own dissertations. Professors have a job to help them. Certainly that help will entail some guidance, and some of that guidance may reasonably be described as direction. But the fact that I offer direction doesn’t make me the director. The director of a movie runs the whole set. Dissertation advisers shouldn’t try to do that; it’s not their project.

“You are the CEO of your own graduate education,” I tell my advisees. I like the sound of that phrase because it conveys managerial duty and places responsibility with the student, where it belongs. Graduate school is professional school. It’s a graduate student’s job to complete the requirements for the degree.

But it’s not quite as simple as that. I have to approve my student’s thesis for it to receive credit. To return to the direction metaphor, perhaps it’s more precise to say that the graduate student is the director of the project, but everyone involved does well to remember that directors don’t always have the final cut.

Graduate students do have the final cut on their own lives. They choose their goals, and commit their own resources. Within that context, the adviser should make sure that the goals are rational, and the plans to reach them sensible. And there’s the rub. Based simply on the numbers, chasing a professorship is not exactly practical. Is it a rational career goal? That depends on how sensible the plan to chase it turns out to be.

Graduate students make that plan with the help of their advisers—or at least they should. But they often don’t. The education scholars Chris M. Golde and Timothy M. Dore reported two major findings in their oft-cited research on doctoral-student experiences. First, “the training doctoral students receive is not what they want, nor does it prepare them for the jobs they take,” and second, “many students do not clearly understand what doctoral study entails, how the process works, and how to navigate it effectively.” It follows from those conclusions that lots of advisers are doing a bad job—and also that lots of graduate students aren’t savvy enough to figure that out.

How can you avoid a picking a bad adviser if you’re not sure what you’re looking for in the first place?

One way is to study what goes into the decision. Be an informed consumer: Know what you want, and expect what you’re entitled to.

Graduate-student expectations of their advisers need to change, and they are changing—slowly. The history of masters and mentors that I unspooled at the beginning may seem extravagant and excessive to us, but it’s really not very different from the situation that prevails now. The advisers of today still attract students through charisma, and their recommendations still exert major control over the fate of those students, especially the ones who want to follow them into academe. Minus the affectations, not much has changed, and that ought to make us nervous.

It should also serve as a call to arms. Studies of graduate education are thin on the ground, but in one of the few investigations of the adviser-graduate student tie, Robert R. Bargar and Jane Mayo-Chamberlain talk about the “developmental” nature of the connection—that is, it should evolve over its duration. The students themselves develop as they move through a graduate program, and the adviser needs to adjust to their needs at different stages. Advisers and advisees therefore have to maintain open lines of communication, not only about the work that they are doing together but also about any potential emotional pitfalls that may attend that work. Better to defuse an explosion than have to deal with the fallout afterward.

Advisers, say Bargar and Mayo-Chamberlain, should create a “positive environment” for students by “showing interest” in their “work and welfare.” They suggest “open discussions” and “direct programmatic activities.” All of which sounds very blurry to me.

The career field for graduate students is likewise blurry. The higher-education-industrial complex is only lately beginning to recognize the fact that graduate school is not solely a training ground for future professors. Good advisers recognize that, and teach their students accordingly. Bad advisers don’t.

So if you’re looking for a good adviser, look for one who’s interested in your career. If you think you’re being collected like a bauble in someone else’s collection, then steer clear. Or if you suspect that you’re being recruited to run on someone else’s hamster wheel, then run the other way. Good advisers collaborate with their graduate students, but that collaboration has only one appropriate goal: It needs to be about you, and furthering your work and career.

I began this column with a preference for the title of “adviser” over “mentor.” Mentorship carries extra weight for me. Not just anyone who sponsors a thesis deserves to be called a mentor. In Greek myth, Mentor was a wise man who earned the trust of Odysseus, who selected him to educate his son, Telemachus. The word has a legacy: “Mentor” is a title that should be earned. These are challenging times for students to choose an adviser. Look for the ones who try their hardest to act as true mentors.

Leonard Cassuto, a professor of English at Fordham University, writes the “Graduate Adviser” column for The Chronicle. He welcomes feedback at lcassuto@erols.com. Now on Twitter: @LCassuto.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Seventh Annual Survey

Great Colleges to Work For 2014

  • Full List
  • Honor Roll
  • By Category
  • News Features

Spotting a Bad Adviser—and How to Pick a Good One

By Leonard Cassuto

Spotting a Bad Adviser--and How to Pick a Good One

André da Loba for The Chronicle

Universities have a lot of names for the professor who works with a graduate student on a thesis or dissertation and later signs off on it. The main titles are “adviser,” “director,” and, more rarely, “sponsor.” Some universities, including my own, call a professor in this position a “mentor.” I like “adviser” because I think that’s the best description of the job when it’s being done well.

The 19th-century term for such an adviser was “master,” with all of the connotations that the word carries. The idea of the guiding master originated in Germany. In the United States, the relationship quickly translated into what the historian William Clark calls an “intensely personal,” almost cultish, tie of admiring loyalty. So powerful was that tie that some American academics once floated the idea that an official Ph.D. award should carry the name of your master rather than the name of the university that the student attended.

The relationship between advisee and professor (whatever that person’s title) is the longest and most important one in a graduate student’s formal education, a unique blend of the professional and the personal. The tie binds like family—and genealogical metaphors for the adviser-student relationship abound. Some long-serving professors even become the trunk nodes of their own family-tree diagrams. (A site called PsychTree builds an adviser-student family tree in the field of psychology.) The students of the legendary historian Frederick Jackson Turner used to refer to him—and even address him!—as “my professional father.”

When it’s forged and maintained in the right way, this tie turns into a lifelong, productive, ever-evolving relationship of mutually rewarding collegiality. It often levels off into a friendship between peers. When it goes bad, though, the relationship can breed anger, resentment, bitterness, and an unfulfillment that extends far beyond graduate school itself. All of which ought to remind us that, family relations aside, this is still a connection between a worker and a boss.

So how do you spot a bad adviser? Or to put it another way: How do you pick a good one?

To identify what to look for, let’s go back to names. I said that I prefer the title of “adviser.” I like it much better than “director” in particular, because “adviser” is less authoritative. Graduate students need to write their own dissertations. Professors have a job to help them. Certainly that help will entail some guidance, and some of that guidance may reasonably be described as direction. But the fact that I offer direction doesn’t make me the director. The director of a movie runs the whole set. Dissertation advisers shouldn’t try to do that; it’s not their project.

“You are the CEO of your own graduate education,” I tell my advisees. I like the sound of that phrase because it conveys managerial duty and places responsibility with the student, where it belongs. Graduate school is professional school. It’s a graduate student’s job to complete the requirements for the degree.

But it’s not quite as simple as that. I have to approve my student’s thesis for it to receive credit. To return to the direction metaphor, perhaps it’s more precise to say that the graduate student is the director of the project, but everyone involved does well to remember that directors don’t always have the final cut.

Graduate students do have the final cut on their own lives. They choose their goals, and commit their own resources. Within that context, the adviser should make sure that the goals are rational, and the plans to reach them sensible. And there’s the rub. Based simply on the numbers, chasing a professorship is not exactly practical. Is it a rational career goal? That depends on how sensible the plan to chase it turns out to be.

Graduate students make that plan with the help of their advisers—or at least they should. But they often don’t. The education scholars Chris M. Golde and Timothy M. Dore reported two major findings in their oft-cited research on doctoral-student experiences. First, “the training doctoral students receive is not what they want, nor does it prepare them for the jobs they take,” and second, “many students do not clearly understand what doctoral study entails, how the process works, and how to navigate it effectively.” It follows from those conclusions that lots of advisers are doing a bad job—and also that lots of graduate students aren’t savvy enough to figure that out.

How can you avoid a picking a bad adviser if you’re not sure what you’re looking for in the first place?

One way is to study what goes into the decision. Be an informed consumer: Know what you want, and expect what you’re entitled to.

Graduate-student expectations of their advisers need to change, and they are changing—slowly. The history of masters and mentors that I unspooled at the beginning may seem extravagant and excessive to us, but it’s really not very different from the situation that prevails now. The advisers of today still attract students through charisma, and their recommendations still exert major control over the fate of those students, especially the ones who want to follow them into academe. Minus the affectations, not much has changed, and that ought to make us nervous.

It should also serve as a call to arms. Studies of graduate education are thin on the ground, but in one of the few investigations of the adviser-graduate student tie, Robert R. Bargar and Jane Mayo-Chamberlain talk about the “developmental” nature of the connection—that is, it should evolve over its duration. The students themselves develop as they move through a graduate program, and the adviser needs to adjust to their needs at different stages. Advisers and advisees therefore have to maintain open lines of communication, not only about the work that they are doing together but also about any potential emotional pitfalls that may attend that work. Better to defuse an explosion than have to deal with the fallout afterward.

Advisers, say Bargar and Mayo-Chamberlain, should create a “positive environment” for students by “showing interest” in their “work and welfare.” They suggest “open discussions” and “direct programmatic activities.” All of which sounds very blurry to me.

The career field for graduate students is likewise blurry. The higher-education-industrial complex is only lately beginning to recognize the fact that graduate school is not solely a training ground for future professors. Good advisers recognize that, and teach their students accordingly. Bad advisers don’t.

So if you’re looking for a good adviser, look for one who’s interested in your career. If you think you’re being collected like a bauble in someone else’s collection, then steer clear. Or if you suspect that you’re being recruited to run on someone else’s hamster wheel, then run the other way. Good advisers collaborate with their graduate students, but that collaboration has only one appropriate goal: It needs to be about you, and furthering your work and career.

I began this column with a preference for the title of “adviser” over “mentor.” Mentorship carries extra weight for me. Not just anyone who sponsors a thesis deserves to be called a mentor. In Greek myth, Mentor was a wise man who earned the trust of Odysseus, who selected him to educate his son, Telemachus. The word has a legacy: “Mentor” is a title that should be earned. These are challenging times for students to choose an adviser. Look for the ones who try their hardest to act as true mentors.

Leonard Cassuto, a professor of English at Fordham University, writes the “Graduate Adviser” column for The Chronicle. He welcomes feedback at lcassuto@erols.com. Now on Twitter: @LCassuto.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
The Workplace
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
cassuto_leonard.jpg
About the Author
Leonard Cassuto
Leonard Cassuto is a professor of English at Fordham University who writes regularly for The Chronicle about graduate education. His newest book is Academic Writing as if Readers Matter, from Princeton University Press. He co-wrote, with Robert Weisbuch, The New Ph.D.: How to Build a Better Graduate Education. He welcomes comments and suggestions at cassuto@fordham.edu. Find him on X @LCassuto.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
Duke Administrators Accused of Bypassing Shared-Governance Process in Offering Buyouts
Illustration showing money being funnelled into the top of a microscope.
'A New Era'
Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
Illustration showing classical columns of various heights, each turning into a stack of coins
Endowment funds
The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists

From The Review

John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson
Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin