A few weeks ago she left her course; depressed, berated and disappointed. Now the former student speaks to Lundagård of how her tutor problems resulted in her leaving her studies and looking for employment.
The student, who held a postgraduate position at one of Lund’s University’s institutions, felt that her tutor was using her.
“She was only a tutor by name. She sees a postgraduate as a slave who should work all the time. I never got the time to study or go to lectures, it was just her work that mattered.”
When the student expressed displeasure over these occurrences, the matter only worsened. The tutor then took her to a separate room and implored that she gave an explanation for her actions whilst verbally berating her. Even higher up in the academic chain there was resistance, when the prefect choose the tutor’s side of the argument.
“He said to me, infront of everyone: “ The problem might not be the tutor, it could be because you’re Asian and don’t know how to say no”.
“They can always bring in new people”
The young postgraduate became depressed by the situation and sought help from a psychiatrist. Under the course of a year she continued her work whilst taking anti-depressives to cope with it all. The whole time with the fear of being expelled from the course and therefore would be forced to return to her homeland. The hope for change ebbed slowly away.
“The more i learn about this system, the more i understand that it won’t change. They can always bring in new people, as soon as i left my tutor, she received another student.”
The postgraduate student finally received a placement at a company which worked in the same field as her Phd.
“She left her course. It wasn’t worth two years of pain just for me to receive a title.”
Unusual according to prefect
For the prefect in discussion, he sees the turn of events slightly differently and he strongly denies having questioned the student’s capacity for saying no due to her ethnicity.
“I asked her if she felt it was difficult for her to acclimatise to the work in Sweden, which i believe is a perfectly acceptable question and she actually answered yes.”
The prefect implores that its most unusual for students have conflicts with their tutors that are serious enough for them to leave their posts, this is very much an extreme case.
“Its been a huge trauma for the whole faculty, we’ve really worked hard with this case.”
Offered to change group
The risk that a postgraduate student is actually expelled from their post is nearly impossible.
“We have never excluded a postgraduate, they always hold the right to complete their work.”
Before the student quit; she, according to the prefect, was offered to change group and therefore being able to avoid the apparent problems.
“But she never took this opportunity. Which is a shame for i felt she was a brilliantly intelligent young woman.”
Since a few weeks back, the postgraduate works for a private company and is now generally pleased with her position. But at the same time she says that not everyone gets the opportunity to quit.
“We postgraduates don’t generally know whats legal or not, in this case and i don’t believe everyone can just quit or talk to someone about it.”
“Not easy to change”
According to the law, you have the right to change tutor if you want, but in practice it isn’t as easy.
“Within some faculties its nearly impossible to change tutor”, says Postgraduate ombudsman Aleksandra Popovic.
The postgraduate ombudsman works to maintain a quality standard for the postgraduate course. Aleksandra Popovic states that it’s the national board of higher education which regulates the way universities handle such situations. As a postgraduate you have the right to two tutors, something which you don’t usually get.
“The majority of postgraduates receive two tutors, but in practice its not unusual for only one to be tutoring.”
If you’re not satisfied with your tutor, you have the right to change. But thats not always that simple. For example, you can reach a stage in the research where it would be difficult for a tutor to be able to recap all the work or that no tutors in the specified field are available.
“At some faculties its nearly impossible to change tutor”, says Aleksandra Popovic.
Text: Tor Gasslander
Translation: Jens Hansen
