Rethinking the “Profkip”: From Counting Heads to Professionalizing Supervision

Yesterday, I attended the symposium organized by the KNAW and the Jonge Akademie on the topic of “Profkippen”—professors supervising an excessive number of PhD candidates. The background document highlights that a dramatic rise in PhD FTEs since 2019 has outpaced the growth of supervisory capacity, creating a “hourglass” structure that compromises quality and well-being.

While it is a great step forward that this topic is being addressed, the discussion itself felt somewhat fragmented. There were many “proefballonnetjes” (trial balloons) and diverse opinions (the panel consisted of a mixture of representatives of PhD, postdoc, assistant and full professor perspectives), yet the conversation was all over the place and often lacked a shared foundation. I found myself reflecting on a point I made years ago in my post, What is a PhD Anyway?: the way we define the “Profkip” problem and the solutions we propose are heavily determined by our underlying, often unspoken, understanding of the nature of the PhD itself.

We cannot fix the system if we do not agree on what we are fixing. If we view the PhD primarily as a production unit for research output, then the “solution” is simply to optimize the pipeline—perhaps by capping numbers (the proposed limes promovendi) or redistributing the load. But the metrics change entirely if we view the result of a PhD as a professional who is capable of thinking critically and doing independent research. The PhD trajectory then becomes a developmental journey, as a period of intense intellectual and personal growth where candidates learn to become independent scholars. With this understanding of what a PhD is, we can no longer ignore the power dynamic where the candidate is entirely dependent on the supervisor for their livelihood and future, making ‘feedback’ a high-stakes negotiation rather than a learning opportunity.

This understanding of the PhD as a developmental journey would also better accommodate differences between academic fields that were pointed out in the discussion, most notably differences between technical sciences and humanities.

The current discourse often treats supervision as a natural byproduct of research excellence. We too often still assume that because someone is a brilliant researcher, they are inherently equipped to guide others. This assumption is flawed. Supervision is a distinct professional skill set, one that requires emotional intelligence, leadership, and the ability to (self-)reflect and foster psychological safety.

Beyond Multiple Supervisors: The Case for Professional Coaching

The symposium rightly emphasized that supervision should be a team effort. However, simply adding more academic supervisors (postdocs, assistant professors, professors) to a team does not automatically solve the power imbalance or pastoral care deficit. These individuals are part of the same hierarchy with power imbalances, often struggle with their own precarious positions and lack formal training in guidance.

I propose we take this a step further and professionalize the pastoral aspect of supervision. Imagine a model where every PhD candidate has access to a professional coach, distinct from their research topic or method experts. Just as a research team might include a second supervisor with a distinct expertise, or a statistician, or a lab technician, the “team” around a PhD candidate could include a professional coach dedicated to the personal process of doing a PhD. This coach would not evaluate the science but would support the candidate’s personal and professional development, mental health, and resilient navigation of the academic landscape.

This mirrors the standards in professional coaching fields (such as those accredited by EMCC and ICF), where practitioners are required to undergo regular supervision of their own practice, and engage in continuous self-reflection and professional development maintaining transparency about their methods and limitations.

Why should academic supervisors be held to a lower standard? We need to install mandatory and continuous training in leadership and guidance skills for anyone taking on a supervisory role. Furthermore, we need mechanisms for accountability—where supervisors are evaluated not just on the publication output of their group, but on the well-being and development of their candidates and the way they reflect on the part they play in this.

We only achieve high-quality science when people can thrive

Academic research is about truth finding and research output quality is vital, but these are a downstream effect of a healthy environment. Therefore, we should place pastoral care at the front and center of the academic promovendi mission. If we want to change this, we need a fundamental shift in culture:

1. Social and Psychological Safety: Creating environments where all researchers feel safe to fail, to ask questions, and to be vulnerable. Safety is impossible without independence. A candidate cannot be truly safe if the person they are confiding in also holds the power to fail them.
2. Stable Careers: Moving away from the reliance on precarious temporary positions and excessive workloads. Any supervisor cannot provide long-term guidance if their own position and (mental) health is insecure.
3. Honest Conversations: We must be transparent about research integrity and diverse career paths (in more encompassing ways than in current discussions on recognition and rewards). The narrative that the only “successful” summit of achievement is a full professorship is not only narrow but actively damaging. We need to normalize, support and celebrate not only careers in industry, policy, and other sectors as valid and successful post-PhD careers, but also create fulfilling ‘horizontal’ academic careers for assistant and associate professors.

The Jonge Akademie’s proposal for a limes promovendi may be a necessary structural intervention, but it is not sufficient on its own. If we simply cap the number of PhD’s without addressing the quality of the supervision and the skills of the supervisors, we risk merely shifting the bottleneck. To address the root of the issue we need to elevate the discussion from workload management to ethical governance: professionalize the act of supervision, introduce the concept of “supervision of supervision,” and acknowledge that the well-being of the researcher (PhD, supervisor and promotor alike) is not a luxury, but a prerequisite for excellent science. It is time to stop treating the PhD as a commodity and supervision quality as a natural result of publications and research grant sucesses. We need to start treating the people involved with the professionalism they deserve. We need to re-humanize academia.

I’m curious to hear from both PhDs and supervisors: would a dedicated professional coach have changed your academic journey, how?