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Comment by jp0d | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to talk about one particular professor, if I'm not wrong. Does anyone know if the majority of the advisors at MIT behave like this? Has anyone else on this forum had any experience like this? I'm sure if the advisor is an influential person who brings in a lot of research money, the administrators would try to ignore these complaints. I recently read about a case in Melbourne Uni. The professor was accused of sexual harassment and the uni only gave him a voluntary retirement and protected him from prosecution.

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I know of a case at Melbourne uni where a post-doc was extremely verbally abusive to the phd-students they were supposed to be helping.

The several candidates came forward to HR, but HR apparently wasn't able to do anything about it because "it wasn't physical" and it "wasn't against a member of the staff". Completely disgraceful from the Uni . The only reason any justice was done was that those close to the matter did not renew their contract, so they were essentially let go. HR IS USELESS!

WOW.. That's terrible. I was thinking about applying at Melbourne Uni for a graduate course in sciences department. I've to admit that I was attracted to it mostly because of the uni's global reputation. It's very expensive. Now I'm reconsidering. Just because someone is an expert in a field doesn't give them the right to be abusive. There are plenty people who're outstanding in there field of expertise and are also very nice and humble people. I don't understand what people get from such behaviour.

I wouldn't say that this is a pervasive problem, this is single issue over a decade. And it was dealt with by the relevant Managers but not the University HR. It's more of an indictment of HR in general rather than the culture of the uni.

I would still consider the Uni if I were you! What were you thinking of doing there?

Yes, you're right. I overreacted. I was thinking about applying for a masters of science in Statistics. I'm doing an online course from MIT to earn some credits. I could use these at RMIT and Deakins for advanced standing. I was interested in applying at Melbourne Uni just because of their ranking. However, after doing some of those courses from MIT, I'm finding it really hard to do it with a full time job. Let's see how I go. :)

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