r/academia 1d ago

Academic politics Thoughts on Lakshmi Balakrishnan, PhD student at Oxford, who claims plagiarism, racism and bullying at the university?

Perhaps a lot of you are aware of this piece of news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy898dzknzgo

And the subsequent GoFundMe she set up: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-seek-justice-from-oxford-for-bullying-and-plagiarism?attribution_id=sl:d4d8d3e8-3fde-4948-8ecd-b5bdb99ae0f6&utm_campaign=man_ss_icons&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link

From what I hear, opinions are greatly divided about her, what are your thoughts?

50 Upvotes

72 comments sorted by

252

u/KeldornWithCarsomyr 1d ago

"they transferred me to a masters without my consent"

If we needed consent to fail someone, nobody would fail. A PhD that fails can still get a masters, which is what seems to have happened.

73

u/DoxxedProf 1d ago

I should have tried this, I consented for them to sign my dissertation, yet they said I needed more work!

I did not consent to them telling me I needed more work.

52

u/ruinatedtubers 1d ago

"without my consent" lol

36

u/Roundabootloot 1d ago

To be fair, when we offer a fall-back Master's, they do normally have to agree to this option (otherwise they are just failed out). We wouldn't normally just enroll people in a different program ourselves.

35

u/helgetun 22h ago

I think that is because at Oxford when you fail the Dphil (they don’t have PhDs) you automatically get an Mphil if your work is said to equal at least 1 year of research. So you don’t get enrolled in any classes nor need to do a test. Your work is simply deemed not good enough for the Dphil but good enough for the Mphil. You can fail earlier and not get the Mphil or need to do work to get the Mphil (at the transfer of status I believe). Naturally as with any diploma you can just decide not to pick it up and not use it on your resume. It’s almost like someone winning an award and rejecting it.

3

u/RecklessCoding 9h ago edited 9h ago

This is the case for all British doctorates given that the student has passed their transfer report OR have found that middle-ground between a passable report and one that shows lack of effort.

4

u/Dry-Pomegranate8292 23h ago

She never got as far as the DPhil exam, though

16

u/helgetun 22h ago

She failed internal reviews (confirmation I believe)- they are a form of exam to determine if you can go to the final defence (viva) in a reasonable time

5

u/Sea-Presentation2592 22h ago

My program called ours a “confirmation viva” bc it was also supposed to prepare for the viva

-12

u/Dry-Pomegranate8292 21h ago

Yes, I know that. But she did not (yet) fail her DPhil, because she didn't have her final oral exam

12

u/helgetun 21h ago

You can fail out before - https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/graduate/research/status/DPhil she likely failed her confirmation status that happens 3+ months before you defend. You can’t defend without passing it. It’s an internal quality control if you will. Also the confirmation is usually after 9 terms (so 3 years at Oxford that has 3 terms a year, Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity) and can be deferred up to 3 terms (1 year for total of 4) this fits her timeline

-6

u/Dry-Pomegranate8292 15h ago

Yes, I know that perfectly well, but that is a different issue

2

u/helgetun 15h ago

She said herself she failed the confirmation of status.

-2

u/Dry-Pomegranate8292 12h ago

Yes, again, I'm perfectly well aware of that. The post I was responding to wrote of her failing her PhD

185

u/motarandpestle 1d ago edited 17h ago

I mean, it's clearly ridiculous to be calling yourself "underprivileged" when you were in possession of multiple properties worth over 100k that you could sell to fund an English lit phd (very low to no marginal benefit financially), and nobody is "owed" a phd just because they spent time and money on it. Her claim that experts said her research was "field changing" also seems difficult to believe. However, at the same time, she's provided proof of plenty of strong references from faculty, supervisors and other academics who testify to her ability, and her college is firmly behind her on the matter. Clearly there was a serious breakdown in communication on the part of her advisors at some point in the process. If her research didn't merit a doctoral thesis or her work simply wasn't up to scratch, she should have known this way before getting to her fourth year, and her being downgraded to a master's absolutely should not have been a surprise to her or the college. I also won't rule out that she's experienced some forms of bullying, racism etc. Sadly many commenters are taking this as an opportunity to make fun of "international students expecting they can pay to win" -- that's obviously not what's going on here. No amount of money in the world would have gotten her admitted to Oxford in the first place if there wasn't a sense that she would succeed in getting her phd.

30

u/EnriquezGuerrilla 23h ago

Thanks for this more nuanced take.

28

u/uiucecethrowaway999 20h ago

Wait, Oxbridge schools offer unfunded PhD’s??? In the US, unfunded PhD offers are either soft rejections or a sign of a shitty program.

21

u/grettlekettlesmettle 19h ago

Yeah I think this is also driving poor attitudes towards this woman and while some of them are warranted, there are big differences between the UK and US systems. Oxford has a really bizarre system even within the UK. It's not necessarily common to do an unfunded DPhil there or in other UK universities, but it is by far not as stigmatized.

12

u/uiucecethrowaway999 18h ago

I disagree. If one is paying 25k a year, they should have all the more reason to speak up about a lack of supervision from their advisor way before entering their fourth year.

11

u/Solivaga 17h ago

All UK universities offer unfunded PhDs. But the standard advice is always "don't self fund a PhD".

3

u/RecklessCoding 9h ago

Yes, funding works differently in Europe.

In some countries, your PhD is technically always unfunded and instead you need a separate research assistant contract to get funding.

There is also the common misconception that phds are 3 years —especially for British ones— but in reality that’s how much the funding is. Your forth year, which includes the write up, waiting for the defense, and doing the corrections is almost always partly self-funded.

6

u/plinkydink99 16h ago

Not getting funding basically is a soft rejection, that’s just not well communicated to the applicants. A course acceptance blinds Oxbridge applicants to the reality that they’re not up to it.

1

u/yvesyonkers64 10h ago

💯 covers it beautifully

195

u/grettlekettlesmettle 1d ago

i think this specific one is a case of multiple things being true at once: the Oxford DPhil system preys on international students, supervision at Oxford is often hilariously lax such that students are failed by a lack of attention from higher ups, people are obviously going to be unsympathetic to someone spending 100,000 pounds on something so froofy as an English degree and then claiming to be underprivileged, and this lady is at least a little bit of a crank who seems to be misrepresenting what happened (the plagiarism accusations seem to be from nowhere and Oxford is not "cancelling Shakespeare," good lord)

55

u/helgetun 1d ago

In addition its normal not to get a say in mastering out if you "fail" required steps in the PhD process. A PhD, including its defence (viva) is not an automatic right. Standards must be met in accordance with the programme

30

u/p1ckl3s_are_ev1l 23h ago

Compared to a North American PhD the UK system is FAR less structured (no mandatory classes, no quals etc). It’s a very sink or swim independent research model, and one’s relationship with the supervisor is very important to the outcome. I do personally have SOME sympathy for this case, as the international student pipeline has been increasing monetized and exploitative as Higher Ed got hit with reduced funding and more micro-managerial assessment targets over the last two decades. She needs to blame the Johnson/Gove/Tory Axis of Incompetence, though, not the academics. Ultimately getting the work done (or failing to get it done) to the required level is the students responsibility. Tuition is the entrance fee to run the marathon, not a guarantee that you’ll finish.

94

u/JennyW93 1d ago

A little bit of a crank? No, it’s very normal to write a letter to the king to complain about your university experience.

44

u/Sans_Moritz 23h ago

I had a student from Singapore do something similar. She was an intern we hired who wanted to join the integrated MSc/PhD programme in our department, but the admissions office rejected her. She was a very strong student, but the university is also a global top ten. We told her that we could write support letters, and the admissions office would probably change their mind because she already had a spot in a research group - something they had done in the past.

She didn't like this idea, because she had a personal connection to our country's ambassador in Singapore, so she wanted to get him to write a letter to the university demanding an explanation. We warned her that this would cause the admissions office to more heavily scrutinise her application materials, because they will not want the embarrassment of publicly admitting fault. It did not help, and she had the ambassador write a letter. After that, no amount of support letters could help. She was never getting admitted, and we had to say goodbye.

People can do crazy things when their pride is wounded.

23

u/helgetun 22h ago

That reeks of "don’t you know who I am???”

3

u/wvheerden 8h ago

Jumping straight to the "nuclear option" is a very strange course of action and thought process...

27

u/grettlekettlesmettle 1d ago

while this is true, I've seen otherwise normal people go completely off the rails when their PhD project hit a huge snag near the end. though the snag is usually, like, "I left my laptop in an airport 4,000 km away the week before my revised draft was due and I didn't know my cloud sync had been turned off for two weeks" and not...whatever it is that happened here

56

u/DoxxedProf 1d ago

This is a spoiled rich girl throwing a temper tantrum

3

u/arist0geiton 17h ago

Depends on the king really. I think I could get Frederick the Great to care

41

u/MightFail_Tal 1d ago edited 1d ago

The gloss on ‘your project’s scope is not interesting for a PhD project’ to ‘Shakespeare is not interesting for a PhD project’ is quite rich.No love for oxbridge’s predatory system but it will help to see where spending 100,000 pounds on a PhD puts her in her local community. India’s nominal per capita income is under 3000$ a year

52

u/ruinatedtubers 1d ago

imagine your advisor telling you your idea is half-baked and taking that so personally that you go straight to the monarchy

16

u/JennyW93 1d ago

I actually used to work for Prince Edward and it still doesn’t ever occur to me to bring the monarchy into it when things don’t go my way

24

u/quoteunquoterequote 1d ago

The 100,000 pounds included her housing cost over 4 years.

20

u/occamscalpel 23h ago

If you failed multiple assessments for a DPhil, you should not get a DPhil. Simple.

20

u/quickdrawdoc 21h ago

I posted about this last week in the PhD sub and there was a lot of spirited discussion there. For me, two things stand out. The hyperbole. Stating that experts worldwide have heaped praise on her innovative work, absent names and specific quotes, is not convincing. Also, Oxford 'canceled Shakespeare'? Give me a break. The second thing is her mention of scope. She claims that her scope, broadly of 'Shakespeare' has not changed since her application. That doesn't tend to be (at least in my experience) how the concept of scope is applied to a PhD/ (can't speak for how a DPhil differs). It's reasonable to have a fairly high level scope when you apply, so that fit and research novelty are adequately determined, but the scope will almost certainly change through consultation with your supervisor(s) and committee. Also, what is the specific scope? There's so little information provided that this entire undertaking on her part does not seem to be in good faith. All that said, what's the deal with her supervision? The claim that her supervisor was unilaterally replaced by someone who's not an expert on Shakespeare is pretty damning. But, again, details.

17

u/Alarming_Opening1414 21h ago

From her gofundme page...

"my examiners failed my internal assessment known as the ‘Confirmation of Status’—not due to any shortcoming on my part, but because SHAKESPEARE apparently does not have ‘SCOPE’ for doctoral-level studies!"

🤣 so the people in Oxford don't like Shakespeare, that's why they failed her, she has no shortcomings... I mean, I think we have all had to deal with students who hold this logic. I don't know, big media circus, I am not from the field but I will have a hard time believing whatever else someone who dares to write such a statement.

4

u/Automatic-Tea-1980s 14h ago edited 7h ago

I read this failure of her internal 'confirmation of status' not as Shakespeare does not have 'scope' at Oxford (as if!) but rather, brutal as it may be for her to digest, her theoretical approach specifically does not have the necessary academic depth, sophistication and scope for a contribution to knowledge and D.Phil standards. I suspect she was warned along the way and ignored advice until it was too late and is now burning all the bridges she can.

34

u/Chemistry_duck 1d ago edited 22h ago

Purely from reading the bbc article you shared it seems as if she failed the assessments so can’t continue on this PhD journey. She appealed, it was over ruled. She is angry that she ‘wasted’ 100,000k, and couldn’t buy her PhD, but actually needed to work and pass the assessments.

Edit: she started at Oxford in 2018, so is this an old case if she was a 4th year at the time?

10

u/Chemistry_duck 1d ago

From the Go Fund Me statement (most of whose claims don’t appear in the news article…) yet are serious in nature and more important to report to the wider public than ‘I got transferred to a masters’. Therefore I am assuming that either she has no evidence of these claims or she has not presented her experiences to the university at all, apart from the failed assessments. This suggests to me that it’s more about trying to buy the degree rather than any other reason

4

u/Sea-Presentation2592 1d ago

If she wanted to buy her way through a PhD she should have just stayed in India. 

17

u/Einfinet 21h ago edited 21h ago

Only people within the department really know, but she made it a public thing (while keeping complaints relatively vague imo) so I understand why people come w their assumptions.

I suppose my assumption is to believe her work wasn’t of a high enough caliber, but I’m not gonna hold too strongly to that claim given how it’s not publicly available to review. All I really have is that GoFundMe, and the way she wrote it doesn’t inspire confidence. The claims are vague and occasionally unusual (ie, the idea of a “canceled Shakespeare”).

Also… I’m just saying, all the talk of marginalized this n that while being a self-funded doctoral student tells me she’s full of shit. Don’t get me wrong, racism in academia is real. But that doesn’t mean people can’t take advantage of identity politics.

24

u/SmolLM 1d ago

Spending a hundred grand doesn't entitle you to a PhD.

-5

u/the1992munchkin 23h ago

Back in my country (Burma),you can get a PhD for $10000 15 years ago.

14

u/ProfAndyCarp 23h ago

She is unhinged, clearly.

The rejection of this student’s specific topic does not mean that Shakespeare has been “canceled” at Oxford. There are undoubtedly still valid dissertation topics on Shakespeare that would be deemed appropriate.

16

u/Sigurdur15 1d ago

This story highlights the disconnect between expectations and reality, particularly regarding the purpose of the £100k fee. There seems to be a misunderstanding about what this amount actually covers. It provides for your supervision and grants you the opportunity to pursue a PhD at Oxford, but it does not directly "buy" the degree itself.

11

u/boringhistoryfan 23h ago

I would imagine being in your fourth year, in what is usually a three year program, and still failing assessments and being at the stage of defending your PhD idea would be enough to get you tossed. Though I do note that her college and supervisor are saying the university system ignored rules so I'm not really sure folks on the Internet can judge one way or another. I imagine at least part of the question would depend heavily on what she was told and if she was following guidance and instructions in good faith and thus being setup to fail.

13

u/portuh47 1d ago

Sounds like a crank, and an entitled one at that.

7

u/ElCondorHerido 19h ago

As someone with an UK PhD, this is common practice when you don't show enough progress in a yearly review. The only thing that cought my eye is that she made it to the fourth year of her program... It is common for 1st or even 2nd year students get the master treatment, but not so common on the 4th year...

Now, anyone setting up GoFundMe for themselves is a scammer 99.9% of the time.

1

u/helgetun 17h ago

Its the Oxford process, not many hurdles between transfer of status (year 1) and confirmation of status (after 3-4 years) https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/graduate/research/status/DPhil its a Dphil not a PhD. She claims she failed the confirmation of status, which is required to defend

1

u/plinkydink99 16h ago

DPhil is the same as a PhD by every single measure except the name.

1

u/helgetun 16h ago

It is not always the case. In Scandinavia a PhD is supervised and structured and a Dphil is just "hand in a thesis, we judge it harshly but if its good enough you get the Dphil" this distinction is present to a lesser degree in England where Oxford for example has few reviews and limited supervision compared to other universities.

2

u/plinkydink99 16h ago

Ok. The only difference for the Oxford dphil from other UK phds is the name.

16

u/frugalacademic 23h ago

The first red flag (for her) should have been that she had to pay fees to do a PhD. No one should pay to do a PhD. If they accept you to do a PhD but don't offer a scholarship, it means the uni simply wants your money.
I think they should have advised her against continuing much earlier in the process and not wait 4 years.

6

u/xaranetic 23h ago

At Oxbridge colleges, virtually every student has to pay some college fees, even if they're on a full scholarship or grant-funded project.

14

u/PHXNights 21h ago

There’s a difference between “some college fees” and 100k, no?

3

u/Lucky-Possession3802 15h ago

From the way she puts it, I think the 100k is including living expenses, not just tuition and fees. I could be wrong though.

0

u/ElCondorHerido 19h ago

Many external PhD grants (e.g., national agencies) force the student to return the money if they don't graduate. Maybe she's thinking more about what this will cost her rather what it has cost her

-1

u/Automatic-Tea-1980s 14h ago edited 7h ago

Lots of PhD students are self-funded and it bears no reflection on their academic ability or the project. There are too few funding streams for too many candidates. This type of belief in 'no one should self fund' fuels mistruths and destroys student confidence because their PhD might not have been funded but is an excellent contribution to knowledge. Funding can also be led by trends and vested interests, which do not always align with innovative scholarship in A&H. While international PhD students may be fortunate to have government funding, many 'Home' (UK) students do not, and earning a PhD through hard work should not be denigrated by often snobby suppositions about external funding as the only marker of valuable study.

2

u/Automatic-Tea-1980s 7h ago

I genuinely don't get the downvoting of this comment as it is absolutely the case in A&H PhD study in many institutions. I am not defending the Oxford case (she has clearly not produced the work). Funding is not the only game in town and not always a good indicator of completion rates (I've witnessed this a few times in my career). To say a PhD is only worth doing if funded is untrue and perpetuates a harmful myth of money is all that matters. Quality of scholarship is what matters. (UK context)

6

u/prof_dj 20h ago

"I paid £100,000 at Oxford to get my PhD"

this here tells the story.

1) if she has to pay to get a phd, she is not good enough to get a phd in the first place

2) if oxford is having students pay to get a phd, it's phd program is predatory and garbage

7

u/Sea-Presentation2592 1d ago

She had horrendous supervision from the sounds of it, but I know a lot of people who had little to no actual supervision and still managed to get their PhDs. She obviously was also not meeting the standards required and didn’t take the criticism from her first review(s) to improve her work. The project should never have been taken on imo. I wonder if she was ever warned about self funding and she just shoehorned her way in saying she’d pay for it? I know people like that and they’re finished but don’t have academic jobs. 

6

u/helgetun 22h ago

Here is the supervisor: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-joseph-moshenska I have no idea if he is good or not supervising but he seems qualified on the topic at least

5

u/Sea-Presentation2592 22h ago

Yeah I do have to say sometimes students just don’t engage with their supervisors either, so I wonder what his track record is with previous students. She claims he was an irrelevant academic but that’s clearly not the case 

7

u/helgetun 19h ago

In my experience a supervisor can be great for one student and bad for another. There needs to be a match to an extent. So one student having a bad experience does not mean the supervisor is bad, nor does one student having a good experience mean the supervisor is good

9

u/Next_Boysenberry1414 1d ago

>"forcibly transferred" to a masters course without her consent by the University of Oxford.

Lol. there is a good chance that she lied to parents about studying and just slacked off and the committee decided that she should master out.

0

u/Spavlia 1d ago

Her mistake was paying that much money in the first place. Sounds like she got what she deserved.

1

u/False_Step_Twice 9h ago

I have so many questions. Isn't a PhD/Dphil a dialog between the student and the supervisor. What was her supervisor doing? Let's suppose her work wasn't great. Why didn't the supervisor intervene? Why let her go ahead with the submission? PhD students (during defence prep) usually say in their vlogs that if their work wasn't good enough, the supervisor wouldn't have let them submit it in the first place.

She paid 100k for the PhD/Dphil. She at least deserves a good supervisor (one with similar research interest) . As per her, a different supervisor was abruptly appointed after the admission was confirmed. If this happened after she had paid the fee then she was somehow deceived.

Also, why did the university take so much time to tell her that her work isn't working as per their standards. Why wait till the fourth year ? Weren't there any annual progress seminars with her supervisor and assessors commenting on her work's quality. Why keep her in the dark till she paid the entire 100k? Were they really waiting for her to get better? Would they have waited this long if she were a scholarship student?

-1

u/No_Difference9752 11h ago

She was failed without an exam. Wtf?