I am a senior graduate student in a north American University. I am orginally from an developping counntry, which I mean a poor country. I have worked in the lab for almost five years, and still don't have idea when I can get my degree.
My supervisor is a tenured senior professor. All the five years I have been in his lab, he only asked me to work on industry funded projects. In this project, it is almost impossible for me to learn any useful knowledge and skills. Actually it is 95% labor work – any high school students can easily handle. My supervisor does not want waste time to talk to me. Because he does not care my work and myself at all. Each year the total time we communicated is less than one hour. Whenever I want to talk to him about my project, he seems very annoyed, like I am wasting his time. Most times we even do not have lab meetings. At best every two weeks we have a 20 minutes meeting. I can only talk about 2 to 3 minutes.
From senior people in the lab, I know that each year for the project I work on, the industry company gave my supervisor at least $100,000. However, he only spends less than half on my salary and research. Each month my salary is only around $1300. I can barely live on that. If the company directly hired an emplyee to do my work, which costs them at least $5000 per month. My supervisor does not have much funding for the fundmental research that he is interested in. So he uses more than half of the funding of my project, to support other students and researchers' research.
He never provides me any funding to attend academic conferences. So on my CV the presentations is ballically blank. However, each year he funds other people to present their work at conferences. The money is from my work.
There is basically zero science in my work. So my supervisor does not care my work at all. Just at the end of each year, he asks me to write a report to the company, to show them we are making progress on the project they funded.
Last year my supervisor hired a female research assistant. For long time they were having coffee almost everyday. And sometimes they get on and off his car together. The research assitant do very little work. Many lab members say their relationship is very suspicious, but no one has hard evidence. I also think the money to pay for her is from the project that I work on. These days I feel it is very toxic to work in this envirnment.
There was a senior research scientist in the lab who helped me start my project. He worked in the lab for many years in a very bad mental state because he needs to wait for his green card and support his family. Fortunately, he left last year. He told me many stories of the lab before I joined. Basically all of the graduate students who work on the industry supported projects spent on average one or two more years to finish their program. And none of them have decent publications and can get a decent career. In they end of their programs most of them are in depressed state. Basically my supervisor does not have a normal relationship with any of his trainees. They cut off the contact with him immediately after they left the lab.
I have invested so much time and just can not just give up. Actually for many years my supervisor can only hire international students from poor countries. As even the monthly income of $1000 is high income in their own countries. That senior research scientist even complained the tenure system just makes some shitty people to be mordern slave traders under the title of professors.
I am not sure if I expressed clearly. All these years, even my English did not improve much. After whole day's labor work, it is hard for me to focus on study anything – including English.
In some departments, the tenured PI of a lab can just behave like a tyrant, and they can decide the fate of many young people, unforunately sometimes this is runing their creer, or even life.
I don't know if I can do anything. Maybe just to bear it longer time till I finish my program, and leave this environment.