I have just received the results of my PhD exam and I passed. I will soon have my award confered next year and formally be called Dr. Anyone in their right mind should be celebrating right??? Well, I'm not because I found out couple of inconvenient truths that all PhD students should know about. It will save you much heartache, stress, time and agony.

When I was mid-way through my PhD, there was a professor (not my supervisor) who I was quite close to. At the time he was the head of school and although we got along well immensely. When his term was up he took a redundancy payment and then we had a chat.

He told me about John Howard's government RTS scheme. According to him, funds to train PhD students are paid on the basis of completion - about $200K for each completion. That amount decreases in proportion to the time taken past 3 years. If a student does not complete, for any reason, then the university is awarded none of the $200K. Furthermore, they lose a "student place". The bottom line is, there is a huge incentive for universities to pass PhD students.

The implications of this policy was, in effect, to put all power in the hands of the PhD student since they indirectly controlled funding. Only a PhD student can choose to complete his/her PhD. If they were to quit, for any reason, then a university simply can't replace the PhD student.

Meanwhile, my supervisor started bullying me. He exploited postgrad teaching in the usual fashion - and you all know what I'm talking about - and asked me to write journal papers not related to my PhD. He said that if I didn't then he would refuse to allow examination of my PhD thesis. Of course, I retaliated. I set up private tutorials with the international students knowing that once he found out I would never be asked to teach again. I also plagarised material and fooled him into thinking that I was doing research. In actual fact, I did bugger all for the last 2 years of my PhD - except to collect the scholarship and work full-time. I knew that even if they found out, there was little they could do given the situation.

When the scholarship was up, I decided that I would submit - but I'll admit I was tempted to leave them high and dry. You should have seen the comments he wrote on my draft PhD thesis which didn't include the plagarised work that he thought was for real ,-) But I adamantly and stubbornly refused to change my thesis despite all his threats. Instead, I reported to his higher-ups that I was ready to submit and that he was holding me back.

And oh boy, did the system come down on him... He was now willing to pay for my thesis printing costs. And once printed, he arranged for 2 of his friends to examine my thesis (guaranteeing a pass) and suddenly the journal papers he wanted so badly counted for nothing.

We PhD students are very powerful and have the means to ensure that we get a fair go - but do you have the nerve to threaten non-completion?