What is it like to be a MSc supervisor?

This is a reflection on my recent supervision experience with a group of MSc students. I must say the experience has been challenging and, yet, not very rewarding or stimulating. The experience has been very challenging because I have to work extremely hard just to get my students to produce a 'passable' dissertation.Very few of them, in my opinion, will get top marks (i.e. 70 and above). But, most of them should pass their dissertations if they work hard. Many of them are clueless on how to conduct a research project and how to write a thesis. Since they have to submit their dissertation in early September and many of them did not start writing until mid-April, I as a supervisor, basically have less than five months to guide my students on how to conduct a research and how to write a 'decent' dissertation.

The supervision process could have been less challenging if I only had two or three students to supervise. Unfortunately, I have nine students this year and some of my colleagues have twelve students. Each of my students has a different research topic and, thus, this has made the supervision process more complicated and demanding. As a supervisor, I basically have to familiarise myself with nine different domains of marketing literature, ranging from consumer involvement and consumer attitude to consumer experiences and consumer decision making process.

I do not mind the supervision experience to be challenging as long as it is rewarding or stimulating, especially, in an intellectual way. Unfortunately, the supervision experience so far has not been rewarding or stimulating. Many of my students seem to lack the ability to exercise independent and logical thinking. Many of them have constantly asked for 'advice' and their definition of 'advice' is 'tell me the answers' or 'tell me what to do next'. Many of them just want to be spoon-fed. Many of them tend to choose the easiest way to seek the answers for their questions, that is, emailing me. Very few of them will take other initiatives to seek the answers for their questions such as reading journal articles or textbooks.

As a human being, I do, sometimes, get frustrated with the flood of emails I receive from my students. As much as I try to be patient in guiding them through the research process, some of them do not seem to get it. Some of them do not seem to understand why they need to provide a theoretical framework in their Literature Review chapter, why they need to develop an interview protocol before conducting an in-depth interview, why they need to have a Data Analysis Strategy section in their Methodology chapter. Their lack of understanding on these basic research issues makes me wonder about the knowledge they have learnt from their undergraduate degrees (and other degrees). Surely, many of them would have studied a research module in their undergraduate degrees.

Maybe, I am being too harsh on my students. Maybe, I should blame the educational culture in their origin countries. Many of my students are international students from China and Thailand. In these countries, pupils are accustomed to being told what to do and what to learn by their teachers or lectures. In these countries, pupils are not encouraged to challenge the views of their teachers or lecturers, but merely accept whatever their teachers or lecturers say are correct. It is this kind of educational culture that have created a problem for their learning process in a Western country like UK. That is, they lack the ability to think for themselves, both independently and logically. Throughout this supervision experience, I do sincerely hope that my students have learnt to be more confident with their own ideas or opinions and to be more independent in problem solving. Am I hoping too much from my students?