swer is no.
Granted, the issues surrounding graduate stu-
dent mental health are much easier to describe
than to solve. But if academia is good at anything,
it’s tackling complex, multifaceted problems exact-
ly like these, and there are a number of starting
points for both students and administrators to
push forward. For example, universities could re-
quire multiple advisers within a student’s field to
evaluate degree time lines, preventing labor ex-
ploitation by a single professor with vested inter-
ests in prolonging graduation dates.
Departments could also streamline their gradua-
tion criteria to reduce disparities in student work-
load among different research groups and to in-
crease transparency of degree requirements. Fur-
ther, administrators could increase funding for
popular student mental health services and subsi-
dized housing that help graduate students offset
cost-of-living expenses. Some universities have al-
ready adopted these policies in earnest and oth-
ers only in name, but the point is academic institu-
tions need to be making a concerted effort to im-
prove the graduate student experience. For all the
research they have done, graduate students de-
serve to start seeing some results.
Opinion