A prominent professor at Macquarie U is ambivalently exiting via voluntary redundancy – but he will keep supervising PhD students  

The reasons cognitive scientist John Sutton tells his friends he is going are no less unhappy for their being so common – workplace change which may mean no place for him. But at least he will maintain an affiliation with the university, including he says, “supervising my great PhD students.”

Which rather makes it hard to see how he can be redundant but that aside can scholars whose services are not needed still supervise students?

It seems they can. The Higher Education Standards Framework requires “a principal supervisor” for research students, who is on-staff, is an adjunct with a relevant appointment, or “is otherwise formally contracted and accountable to the provider for supervisory duties.” Plus, there needs to be “at least one associate supervisor with relevant research expertise.”

There is no specific on supervisory workloads – which may mean an “associate supervisor” with more time than they used to have, can continue to work with the postgrads who used to be their students – and effectively still are.