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human
Who decides when a PhD student is ready to graduate? The PI, the thesis committee, university policy?

Hello,

I am a PhD student in genomics/molecular biology and am close to the end of my fourth year. I feel I have achieved majority of the goals that were set for me at the beginning of my PhD. A first author paper based on my work has been accepted at a good journal and so I will soon have demonstrable proof of the progress I have made. However, a 4 year PhD in the US is very unusual and most people in my program graduate in 5 or more years. My PI feels it is unlikely that my thesis committee would agree to a 4 year graduation and I think he has a point. He is proposing I start work on a ‘small project’ that was not originally a part of my thesis but will help me get one more publication and graduate at the end of my 5th year.

I don’t mind spending another year but I also think my PI has very unrealistic expectations about how long it takes to publish even a ‘small project’. If I formally include this project in my thesis, I fear it might take another couple of years to publish it which is unfair given that I have already achieved most of the goals that were set out for me.

I will have my thesis committee meeting in a couple of months and want some advice about how to bring this up. Firstly, given that I have achieved most of my goals, should I insist on a 4 year graduation even if it is unusual in my field/university (I don’t think either my advisor or my committee would be happy about this)? Otherwise, if I agree to including the new ‘small project’ in my thesis can I say that it is something I am happy to work on but it should not be the criteria for my graduation if it takes longer then expected?

I am also not vey clear about who exactly decides when a PhD student graduates. Is it the PI or the thesis committee or the department policy? Who do I really have to convince when it comes to graduation time?

Would appreciate your opinions.

Thanks

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Update: Thanks to everyone for all the great replies. As some posters recommended, I think my best bet is to convince my PI/committee that I am ready to graduate but if they feel some extra work on a new project would be helpful for me, I would be happy to stay for some more time. But I would try to have my graduation timeline linked to progress or paper submission rather than publication and ask about the possibility of continuing as a post-doc in the same lab. A few people mentioned f32 grants and NIH fellowships for early career researchers but as an international student I don’t think I am eligible for most of them anyway. Also a little bit of a clarification that when I mentioned 4 year graduation, I really meant 4.5 years as even if my committee and PI agree to graduation at my committee meeting, it would still take a few more months to complete the formalities of thesis submission and defense so I would be graduating towards the end of this year.
gpt
I would say that realizing that you are done, and making this clear to your PI, is a part of the process. There will always be one more experiment, but you need to be able to both realize that it's time to write it up and negotiating this with your professor.