PhD student wanting to do "the minimum required" I have met a strange situation with one of my 2nd-year PhD students. During the past year, their progress was minimum. They implement and retest existing literature material but haven't been able to develop new contributions based on their research plan (although the ideas are there). I set up a monitoring scheme with biweekly written updates and feedback, sent multiple (written) warnings and talked to the student many times (in the presence of other faculty).

At the annual review, the student was warned that they are endangering to fail their PhD. The student then complained that they believe I have "unrealistic requirements" from them, that I should judge them based on the "minimum requirements" for a PhD. They provided an example of other students from different groups (not my group) that are doing worse than the student.

The minimum requirements of the university are "a thesis with evidence of original work and independent critical ability considered suitable for publication". So, the student claims that my requests for submitting conference/journal publications during the PhD are unrealistic.


Have you ever met this situation before? How do you deal with this?
I have no control over the student's funding stream (external). The only thing I can do is to make a suggestion at the School level. But this will become a "what about" discussion.
There should be some university rules which state what the student has to do in order to obtain the phd. Treat them as a contract -- do they state exactly some minimum requirements to obtain the phd? Then, a student satisfying thoss requirements should obtain the phd. If (what is more likely) they say something about you being able to state more requirements, then you can give more requirements (maybe after writing them down formally). (Or maybe the rules allow you to remove the student? If yes, you might want to think if you want and can do this.)

Please be also aware that you may be requesting too much.  Some instructors were always the best in research and may be biased when supervising.

If the student meets the minimum requirements, they should of course be granted the phd. Not doing more might or might not be a problem for the student's future. You should warn them that (e.g.) an academic career might be a problem afterwards, but, depending on the student's goals, receiving a "minimum phd" might be not at all a problem.

Many people in the world do only the minimum required for their job/studies. If the mimimum is defined well, this should not be a problem.