Adventures in Ethics and Science: What (not) to do when the system is broken.:

There is something badly amiss, both in the advisor-advisee relationship, and in the oversight that the graduate program ought to have in such relationships, if a grad student can go through 19 years of a program before finding out that there is no way he’s going to get the Ph.D. he’s been working towards. Heck, it’s a problem if a student is allowed to go through 9 years of the program without a clear indication that he will be successful in earning the degree. At minimum there was some failure to communicate. Possibly, there was worse — a gleeful display of professorial power over the grad student who is, essentially, without power until he earns the Ph.D that grants him admission to the club of People Who Matter.

(Via Ernie’s 3D Pancakes.)