Hello to everyone,
I am facing a horrible situation. To put it briefly,
1. In 2008 I submit my PhD thesis (social science) in a highly ranked UK university,
2. The examiners do not like it and mandate revisions,
3. My supervisor provides me plenty of support to re-write, and he (and I) are satisfied with the result,
4. I resubmit in 2010, but... the examiners do not like it again!!!
I am in despair... What did I do wrong? I was following closely the advice of my supervisor (a well respected full professor in his field), how else could I have written the thesis differently? As a 'customer' of the university, how possible that I invested years of my efforts in doing research according to their guidelines and at the end I am not provided any reward???
I feel that I am treated in an unjust, unfair way... The feedback of the examiners is rather off the point, and I suspect that they granted to the revised thesis enough attention - I think that they were biased from the first assessment and did not want to change their minds. I also suspect that some internal politics is going on here, as most of the opposition against my thesis is from the internal examiner (a department colleague of my supervisor, and I do not know how well or badly they relationship is... I understand that they talk little to each other)... and I could be the 'scapegoat' of some game I am not aware of.
Could you please advice me what to do:
1) I would like to make an appeal against the examiners' decision, but how? I know that I cannot question their academic judgement, but how to argue about the presence of bias, prejudice, or uninformed assessment? (i.e., what kind of evidence better supports these claims?)
2) I would like, otherwise, to send this university to the hell and to apply to another UK/EU institution which would like to make me get a PhD in a 'short track' route, as the thesis is mostly there already - do you know if this is possible, and which university could do this?
Thanks a lot!
I feel so bad... please help!
Eleonora