Academic “supervision”?

What’s the role of an academic supervisor? As the name implies, it’s to supervise graduate students. Experience has shown me that there are many ways to interpret this; I’ve “anonymized” the names in the following quotes:

“I don’t have any time to actually listen to you, but here’s a postdoc to fill my role.”

— T.

“I can throw a few ideas at you, but the real work is yours, and yours only.”

— R.

“I don’t know how to do this, but you should, and I expect you to.”

— M.

Notice a pattern? That’s what people call negligence; Willingly opting out of one’s responsibility.

Now, what’s wrong with this? For starters, when you sign up for a research position, you expect the supervisor to be your main contact. That’s only reasonable, assuming the supervisor is also a reasoable person. If he/she is not, then… you’re in for a ride. Expect wrestling with paper-thirsty postdocs overriding you at every corner. And that’s the good case; at least you have an “ersatz” supervisor. It would be worse if you were left on your own; that happens far more often than people talk about.

Many people just take this as-is and suffer the mental overload of it. Some people change groups. Some people drop out. I don’t know which path is objectively better. I do know that not getting proper mentorship, not being guided in shaping your own ideas, doesn’t make you a good academic.