If you are thinking the student can decide his/her own future, let me tell you, you are wrong!
When looking for postdocs I’ve made the mistake several times to contact directly PhD Students that were about to finish her PhD in order to see if they were interested in applying for a postdoctoral position in our group after defending the PhD thesis.
Sounds reasonable right? Well, that’s what I thought before getting angry messages and having harsh conversations with a couple of supervisors for not having asked them permission before contacting the students.
It seems that they already had other plans for them (even if sometimes the PhD student was not even aware of those plans and/or they were worse in terms of money and career evolution) and they saw me as a clear threat/enemy. I was so naive to think that as supervisors we should wish the best for our PhD students even if that meant they would not be our “slaves” anymore! I’d like to thank those angry supervisors for opening my eyes! 🙂
I honestly believe this policy closes many doors to students since researchers don’t want to damage their relationship with other colleagues fighting over a student. Crazy but true.
Of course this only happens in countries where the university system favors endogamy but this is a topic for another post.
Is this a European phenomenon?
For sure this doesn’t happen in North America but I don’t know about Asia. In short, it happens in countries where is normal that PhD Students stay in the same research group as postdocs or even take a permanent position there
What are those plans those professors have for their PhD students?
Keeping them around with project contracts until they run out of money or there’s an open position they can apply to. Of course, the problem is the OR here.
A professor’s job is to help their students become independent researchers. Emphasis on “independent”. After that, they are your colleagues and peers. At no stage along the way are we allowed to surgically remove free will. 😉
Kahlil Gibran’s stuff about “Your children are not your children” is pretty appropriate for PhD students. Besides, the more different labs they’re in, the more they get to spread the word about your work (for better or for worse).
Unfortunately these things happen… And IMHO, this kind of behavior not only closes many doors to students but also negatively affect research (generally speaking)…
I have had students arranging a job without talking to me first. They come bearing the “good news” that their thesis must be done in X months (for some X < 6). Each time they grossly misjudged their writing speed and in one case never completed the thesis.
These were industrial positions and not post docs, but still.
That’s different and this is the reason why the title clarifies “after the PhD is finished”. Before then, there is at least a moral obligation (though not legal of course) between the supervisor and the PhD Student so I´d get angry if they came to me with this kind of news. They are always free to leave but you’re not obliged to go crazy helping them to finish the thesis in time for this job offer if this is not something they have discussed with you.
I have heard it many times in my stay in France that doing postdoc in the same team is not considered good for a young researcher’s career. I would like to have your opinion about it (keeping in view the research environment and preferences in France).
I don’t think anywhere in the world, they consider that doing as postdoc in the same team were you did the PhD is a good idea. Sure, you could stay some more time with your team (e.g. to finish some last works related to your thesis) but I wouldn’t call that a postdoc.
I understand that for family/personal reasons some people do it but the reality is that the most important part of doing a postdoc is seeing how other teams work. So, for me, the more different your postdoc environment the better (e.g. if you did the PhD in Europe, try to do a postdoc in North America)