Why Master Students Want To Change Their Supervisors?

With the expansion of the scale of graduate education in China,the growth of graduate supervisors can not keep up with the expansion of postgraduates enrollment.The expansion of the scale of supervisors’ guidance,the lack of rationality in the selection of supervisors for master students,and the defect of the Two-way choice system and the exchange system have seriously affected the harmonious development of the relationship between supervisors and master students.The breakdown of the relationship between supervisors and master students is directly reflected in the willingness and behavior of master students to change their supervisors Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the relationship between master students and supervisors to reduce the dismatching and build a harmonious relationship between them.Based on the 2021 survey data of Chinese master students’ learning and development,the study firstly explored the influencing factors of master students’ willingness to change supervisors through binary logistic regression analysis.The influencing factors at the master students’ level include grade,institution level,subject background,and motivation for pursuing a master’s degree.The influencing factors at the supervisors’ level include the supervisor’s administrative position,the supervisory frequency,and supervisory style.On this basis,the author interviewed three types of master students who are willing to change supervisors,have changed supervisors and have no intention to change supervisors,and determined that the evolution process of the relationship between master students and supervisors consists of three stages: relationship establishment,relationship deepening and relationship termination / relationship continuation.In the relationship establishment stage,there are three types of supervisor-student matching: Master students contact first,supervisors contact first and supervisor-student’s random matching.The first two types are affected by supervisors’ willingness to receive master students and information risk.In the relationship deepening stage,the relationship between supervisors and master students is affected by goal identification,personality traits,competence,interpersonal interaction,guidance supply and demand,and group atmosphere.Among them,the interpersonal interaction with guiding supply and demand is the core category of the relationship deepening stage.In the stage of relationship termination,the master students’ changing willingness can be transformed into changing behavior,which is jointly affected by subjective and objective reasons.The subjective reason is the master students’ estimation of the risk and difficulty of changing supervisors,and the objective reason is whether there is the permission of the original supervisor and the acceptance of the new supervisor.There are four relationship modes in the termination stage of relationship,which are “coercionobedience” mode,“academic-employment” mode,“absence-dependence” mode and“offside-autonomy” mode.When master students have no intention to change supervisors,the relationship can be further continued.There are also four modes of relationship between supervisors and master students at this stage,namely “mentor and friend” mode,“win-win cooperation” mode,“virtuous master and diligent disciple” mode and “take what you want”mode.The research finally constructs the theoretical model of the dynamic evolution of the relationship between master students and supervisors,and puts forward countermeasures for building a harmonious relationship between master students and supervisors from three aspects: the improvement of the system of two-way selection between master students and supervisors,the complementarity of supply and demand in the process of getting along with each other,and the supportive strategies of rematching between master students and supervisors.