This is interesting. You raise a question, and I'll attempt a response, but I wanted to react to another part of this. WHAAA! It drives me crazy when I see tiny tiny projects that are not really projects. I hate it. After all the work I did on my dissertation (or even BA thesis), I'd like to see people doing at least half as much. Not that this is a hazing type of thing, but c'mon, I think we're awarding BAs and PhDs a bit too easily at times.
Okay, but to answer your question. This is a hard one. I do think it is very much an advisor's responsibility to discourage a student from a bad project. But I agree with you that some justification needs to be given. Otherwise, the student almost rightly can continue to be enthusiastic about his/her project assuming the prof just didn't get it.
I'd just try to explain that for xyz reasons where xyz could be a lack of theoretical contribution, triviality, something that's already been covered, something that's too hard, something that's empirically impossible or too hard at that stage, etc. the student shouldn't embark on the topic.
All that said, I would then work with the student to find something suitable. For one thing, I would ask what it is about x topic that attracted them to it and then see whether we can find another approach that still includes their core interest.
As to CW's comment, I considered a program where one of the few people who was suitable for PhD advising said to me: "Who cares about Apples?" where Apples stands for the topic that was absolutely dear to my heart and has constituted my entire career ever since. Needless to say, I didn't pursue my PhD in his program.
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Posted by Orange Ina to academicsecret at 11/04/2006 11:19:04 PM
