Dear mates,
I'm a part-time PhD student in a UK university. My experience is very depressing, probably not as bad as some that I've read here, but still a nightmare for me. My current supervisor is not an expert in my field, she has no knowledge at all of what I'm investigating (despite the faculty regulation stating that supervisors should be actively working in the research field of research students), and she's not particularly good in research methods and design. Last year she didn't provide me with good supervision, and as a result I failed my upgrade. Her excuse was that she was too busy to carefully read my research proposal, and for the same reason one of her students failed his viva. In addition, although the regulation requires the appointment of two supervisors, she discouraged me to find another one. Her feedback is all but useful, she often accuses me of not including certain aspects in my drafts although she didn't tell me what has to be included. For instance (but I've got hundreds of these) the most common comment I read is: "I'm surprised you didn't include a background section in your research proposal" but she never told me what in general goes into a research proposal, not even the basics. I don't if I'm wrong, but I believe I should expect this type of help from a supervisor, otherwise what are they for? On the top of this, she's quite rude to me. Last time I had a supervision, e finally got a second supervisor, she started alleging that I'm refusing the support from the supervisor and that I create fuzz. This is not true, after the upgrade I feel discouraged because I don't see anything useful in submitting my work to her again, and it's been five months that I don't meet her. Now I'm doing the fieldwork, and it's not easy to collect all the data, some people are not available for interviews and there are not written sources for some of the aspects I wanted to cover. I believe that I should downsize my thesis, and probably change the topic (still in the same field but different topic). I think that my supervisor could be helpful if she could advise me on the feasibility of my research, instead I didn't receive any advice on this, other than rewrite the whole research proposal because she didn't do her job properly last year. I can't do that just because the time for submission is coming for me as well and rewrite the whole research proposal would take me another year and I'm running low of money. She doesn't understand this and keeps saying that since I'm a part-time student I've got time and I have stay at the back of the queue of full-time students. I'm seriously considering to change supervisor, ok part-time, but we are talking about my money and my time and the more I go ahead, the more I think that if I remain with her I will most certainly fail. Let me know if you had similar experience and how you've dealt with it

This is very confusing as you contadict yourself quite a lot. To clarify
Have you now managed to pass the upgrade or are you working towards an MPhil now?
Was she complaining about you refusing help before or after you went out of contact for 5 months after failing the upgrade?
How are you close to submission, if you failed upgrade and now want to rewrite your proposal?
Is your relationship with your supervisor now irredeemable?

The answers to those would I think help people give you sensible advice on whether to change or not.

On the bits I think I have understood properly:

Fieldwork: if key people are not available for interview, try asking to speak to their assistants (who tend to be flattered and often know more anyway). Also try snowballing - ask everyone you do interview to recommend others you should speak to and then tell that person that person x said they were a key person to speak with. Namedropping and flattery can work wonders. Getting knocked back when you request interviews is really normal in qualitative research especially if you are doing elite interviews. You just need to regroup and think laterally about who would be good substitutes. On the no written sources bit, do you mean that sources you'd identified are not available where you had expected them to be? If you know they exist, try to contact the authors perhaps? Or think about where the experts on this topic work and check their institution's library catalogues. There are also metacatalogues that can help - this German site is quite good for example: http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/kvk_en.html You can always do interlibrary loans when you get back.
If you hadn't done your homework before going on fieldwork and were just assuming things would exist, I think the only thing you can do is work steadily through the potential libraries /archives in your fieldwork location and try to think out of the box about different search terms. Try to make the most of your trip even if it's not turning out as you hoped and gather as much as you can even if you're not sure it's relevant. You can always sort out and discard when you're at home. And honestly however well-planned, the fieldwork is always something that throws up unexpected difficulties. You just need your plan B.
I would also say that I think you're expecting your supervisor to do more than is reasonable on the fieldwork front - if she is not an expert in your field she won't know what sources are available in your fieldwork location or who is easy to interview. My very nice supervisor had no real input into my fieldwork - it was expected that if I wanted a PhD that I needed to figure it out myself and learn by making mistakes (and yes I most certainly made a lot). I don't think that's an unusual experience. Hope this helps a bit.

Perhaps I omitted some bits, but to answer to your questions: I did a new upgrade, second chance, and now I am working towards a PhD. I went out of contact five months ago and after the new upgrade. I've got the 6th year and another year after that. It seems a long time ahead, but take into account that my supervisor has never clarified what the required standard for a PhD is. And in any case most of the feedback I receive is more a proofreading rather than substantial comments that make my research grow. If she's not familiar with my topic because she doesn't do any research on it, she's not even able to give me advice on the data sources. Perhaps it's not the case for everyone, but I had several times this impression. Finally, if she keep on thinking that I don't work well or I'm refusing her supervision (this is not true, simply I don't find her feedback useful, especially after the failed attempt to upgrade) and doesn't listen, then I think it's wasted time working with her.

Fieldwork bit: the sources I mean are reports and minutes of meetings that partly I was expecting to find. OK if the latter are not available, but the former are not just because the authors themselves don't want to share them. Turning to the interviews, i tried to contact assistants and similar people, and I was aware that key people such as head of deparment or general directors are not available or willing to be interviewed. But it didn't work either: this people don't talk without the authorisation of the head of department. And this happened even if I alerted them about my visit several weeks ago. A plan B is then to downsize my research and concentrate on other aspects. The problem is not this, but my supervisor. I believe that the fact that she cannot advise me on the sources, even when I ask only advice and not to give me any particular input, it's a serious problem, also in the light of a failed upgrade. My concerns are for the future, if she didn't work properly so far, I'm worried that she won't be able to supervise me properly for the rest of my PhD. She seems to be too busy to be engaged with my research.

======= Date Modified 09 Jun 2011 01:05:07 =======
Hi Ladybird,

Unfortunately I can't give you any advice on your fieldwork as it's not my subject area but your situation is familiar.  It's difficult if you don't have a supervisor in your subject as they are suppose to guide you, give you ideas and enable you to bounce ideas off them to enable you to grow as a researcher! A PhD is research training after all!  If she can't do that she shouldn't discourage you from seeking another supervisor as that's even in your dept's guidelines. It's probably that her ego has been bruised as you know many academics especially ones with her personality have fragile egos!  She sounds a lot like my supervisor who also doesn't really give a lot of detail in their feedback which I only get if I'm very lucky some months down the line! That is very frustrating so I started to use other academics to gauge their opinions and get help on stuff I needed to do!

You have a good case for changing supervisor as shown by your upgrade report as it'll get tougher (sorry to bring that up.)  Your examiner will check your work is up to PhD standard so you will need someone to read your work and make sure you are going along the right lines! The fact that one of her students failed is rather worrying I'd agree so I understand your unease with your situation!  A good working relationship with your supervisor really does make all the difference especially towards the end but helpful in all stages! It is really unprofessional of her to say to you "get to the back of the queue" just because you are part time as you are equally her student and entitled to her time and supervision! 

Is it working out with your second supervisor? Are they knowledgeable in your field which I guess they are if you've chosen them?  An alternative if you don't want to change supervisors as there is a lot of politics involved that is to use your second supervisor as your main supervisor. It is definitely more useful to have somebody who can actually comment on the content and context of your work rather than just the general stuff! 

Is there a postgrad tutor/welfare officer that you can talk to, to discuss your options as they must want you to finish? Or an independent member of your supervisory team who is impartial and you can go to if your are having problems but don't want to go to your supervisor? Well you can hardly complain about your supervisor to herself as she doesn't seem like the type who listens!

I hope you get this sorted as it's hard enough to do a PhD without supervisor problems! You can do it!
Good luck!
(up) :p

I think doodle's suggestion about relying on your second supervisor more and talking to whoever is in charge of research students are both good. My worry given where you are timewise i.e. five years in is that changing your topic so much might a) mean it will extend the time to finishing beyond what your university allows and b) that you'd need to be careful that the new topic was sufficient for a PhD.
Your supervisor seems from your OP to want you to change topic, and in your OP you say you can't, but then in a later post you say you think it's the only thing to do. What do you want to do really?

On the interviews - is there anyone else who has contact with this organisation that could be helpful e.g. lobby groups, representative groups for recipients of what they do or another researcher who has managed to do some work on it - they all might be ways in. On the reports are they purely internal reports or where they written for another body - if so going to who they are written for might help. Alternatively not having a clue where you are doing the fieldwork, is there anything like the freedom of information act that might help?

The new topic is not completely different from the one I'm currently working on. I was able so far to do some interviews, and in the offices where I've been there seems to be people willing to provide me with more data if I require them. Basically I'm planning to downsize my topic but with the data available, I'm not changing completely my research. The problem of the PhD is what made me think of the possibility (or the need more like) to change supervisor. Since I need to remain in the PhD standard, I think that my current supervisor is not appropriate at all. If she was not able to give me ideas and guidance, it's pointless for me to discuss this change. Turning to the possible extension, I will consider this implication when I discuss this with the Director of research students, but I don't think it will be the case to request an extension. In these five years, due to the poor supervision I received, I almost wasted time and money and I think that what I did in 5 years could have been done in half of that time with good guidance. Since I was discriminated on the basis of my mode of attendance ("you're going too fast to be a part-time student", "you have to wait": these are my supervisor's comments). My supervisor didn't ask me to change topic, but she's never sure about what I'm doing because she's not familiar with my topic, my field of research and also the readings I'm doing. And the time goes, my fear is that if I keep on working with her I will fail even to submit in time. I understand that as a part-time student I'm not allowed to finish before 6 years minimum (as in my regulation), but I prefer to spend the remaining of the time to write up my thesis and get a decent job (since I need it also for family reasons), rather than playing around and have to guess what is in my supervisor's mind. I don't know if I'm clear, but my basic argument is that if I change supervisor and I get a more knowledgeable one, I will also able to use my time and money more efficiently. Anyway, I really thank you for your suggestions!

@ Doodles: you got it, that's the situation I'm facing. I believe it's a problem of ego and also that she doesn't like working with other people. She discouraged me various times to appoint another supervisor and then when the mistakes came, she said that it was my fault because I was insisting to keep the things in my research proposal. Obviously, this is not true. If it was my fault I wouldn't probably even complain here. Her supervision is no more than a proofreading, and she never gives me substantial comments. In any case, even if she was busy, she should have been able to recognise a bad research proposal.
The other supervisor seems to be ok, at least from the methodological side (which I need), and since mine is a supervision across school, I want to see whether I can transfer to my second supervisor's school. My topic is more appropriate there than in the department where I am now. I don't whether this will be possible, especially if my current school gets my full fee (horrible to say, but I suspect that my supervisor's only concern is the money she can get from me), but I want to try. Unfortunately in my university it happens frequently that students are not in the departments closer to their research interests, since they think that no matter who supervise you.

Your supervisor does sound like a handful and it sounds like she's not that helpful with a big ego! Unfortunately these people don't change and academia seems to have a good number of them! I'm glad your second supervisor is more helpful and actually takes the role of a supervisor more seriously!

I'm not sure it'll be so easy to change departments especially if there are fees involved as your dept would be essentially losing a student! But worth a try but I would be careful about this incase there is fallout. Good luck with it all and let us know how you get on.