Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair

This happens in Scotland too and it’s made worse by the common sense of inferiority toward some English academics. In the Times Education Supplement today:

A new study of more than 300 PhD examiners found that most think the UK’s “closed-door” vivas should be reformed, with three quarters calling for examiners to be more carefully selected and two thirds advising more precise guidance on examiners’ behaviour. And the respondents felt pretty strongly on the matter: one said known “assholes” need to be kept “away from our students”, while another called for a “three strikes – never examine again” policy for examiners described as “sociopaths”. Lead author Zoe Stephenson told my colleague Jack Grove: “I was surprised by the language used by respondents, but it suggests it is an emotive topic.” The UK’s current viva system, one respondent said, encourages an approach of “deliberately intimidating candidates rather than making the defence a situation in which candidates will be challenged in a nuanced and thoughtful way”.

In my time in HE, I supervised 6 PhDs to completion, assisted with a similar number and an unremembered number who gave up at different stages. In almost every case the examiner would be expected to have come from outside of Scotland. I recognise the above comments all-too-well. In one case, an experienced HE teacher, an excellent student and researcher, mother of two young boys and holding down a job at the same time, on the corridor floor sobbing her eyes out after ‘trial by fire’ by a wee physically unimposing women who’d come up from England and with no warning attacked the thesis with surgical imprecision. I could hardly contain my fury.

It wasn’t entirely rare. Some folk suddenly in a position of unconstrained power over others, shed all empathy and understanding before destroying the student. As the supervisor, I was barred from any comment.

It needs to change and soon. Independence could only help.