Why does my advisor / professor discourage all collaboration? So I have had this advisor for about 8 months now. Literally all students in my department talk very highly of him: his previous graduate students (master's) have gone on to have successful careers in PhD programs or are top data scientists who earn six figures.
I just took his class this fall. He prohibited all collaboration for homework, and we were not allowed to ask him questions either, unless we thought there was a typo on the problem or similar. Also, we were not allowed to discuss the material with others i.e. we cannot study for exams together or even talk about the book we were using. Or any of the topics. According to him, &quot;collaboration is for undergraduates who struggle&quot;. So yeah.
Well, moving forward with his research. He refuses to read anything I write if it has a typo or I've made a mistake with citation. He won't read anything I've done, if he sees an imperfection. He also has strictly told me not to discuss my research with others / seek help elsewhere. Him I can ask questions, but only on papers / reading that I should do. Nothing about how to learn to program something or if I have a difficulty understanding a theorem. He always tells me &quot;you're a master's student, you should do this on your own, you're not an undergraduate anymore&quot;.
Also, he has questioned the legitimacy of my undergraduate degree a few times due to me not being able to prove something he finds &quot;trivial&quot;.
Now he wants me to learn programming in C, which we never discussed when I began my research. He compares me to his previous students, claiming how so and so worked 95+ hours per week on their master's thesis for 12 months after finishing all their classes. He idealizes cultures where studying is prioritized over everything, even one's mental health.
I am frankly getting tired of this, and contemplating on switching advisors. Am I just going crazy, or are his remarks completely out of line as an advisor? Is collaboration and similar stuff really that bad and makes you lazy and incapable of doing stuff on your own?
This sounds pretty extreme, even for the &quot;sink or swim&quot; school of education. If you can meet the extreme standard without going crazy you will probably turn out ok, if a bit of a workaholic. But the road will be hard and painful.
But, given your sense of it, you should probably move quickly to the exits. Not everyone is like that. Some of us actually try to be supportive.

As for the &quot;why&quot; of it, he just seems to demand perfection and won't compromise in any way.