The relationship between tutors and postgraduates is an eternal topic in science net. In sharp contrast are the blog posts inculcated by tutors, and the reports of graduate students fighting with their lives. Originally, tutors and graduate students should be a community of common destiny. So, what pushes tutors and postgraduates to the opposite of interests? In my opinion, one of the core factors is whether the tutor is a front-line researcher. If the tutor is a front-line researcher, it is easy for the tutor and graduate students to form a community of common destiny; On the contrary, there will be a fundamental conflict between their interests. Why do you say that? Let me analyze it slowly.

When I was a doctoral student in the United States, my tutor and I were a community of destiny. We work together to study the problems, to deliberate on the details, to inspire each other and to improve together. We breathe and share our destiny: we worry when progress is blocked, we cheer when problems are solved. We are partners on the road of scientific research and comrades in arms in conquering the enemy. Originally, the relationship between tutors and postgraduates should be like this. My relationship with tutors is not a special case. It is a common phenomenon in research universities in the United States and Europe. So, what are the core elements of forming such a community of common destiny?

The core element is that the tutor himself must be a front-line researcher (doing experiments, programming, deducing formulas and proving theorems). Scientific research is "catching a black cat in a dark room". Only when you come to the front line, can you master the mystery. If this is done, many contradictions between tutors and postgraduates can be fundamentally avoided or resolved. Why do you say that? There are four reasons

1. If the tutor himself is a front-line researcher and can complete the main scientific research tasks by his own research results, he will not rely on the students. In this way, the roles of tutors and graduate students are fundamentally clarified. The task of a tutor is to train and guide students, not to let students work for themselves. Tutors and postgraduates should be partners on the way of scientific research, not the relationship between employment and being employed.

2. Only when the tutor is a front-line researcher, can he maintain his sense of scientific research and become a qualified tutor. Scientific innovation can't be planned. Only in constant exploration can we make a breakthrough. If the tutor does not study in the front line for a long time, he will lose the sense of scientific research. When the students encounter difficulties, he does not know how to point out the direction to the students. As a result, the tutor complained that the students didn't work hard, and the students complained that the tutor was blindly directing, so the contradiction came into being.

3. If the tutor's main idea is to study knowledge, he will set a good example for the students and form an atmosphere of studying knowledge quietly. Everyone is equal in front of knowledge, and students will calm down to study knowledge, which makes it easier to achieve results and meet the requirements of graduation. Graduate students must have scientific research achievements after graduation, and the achievements are not forced out, nor anxious, but calm down to do it. If the tutor is a front-line researcher, it is easy to create an atmosphere of meditation and study, forming a virtuous circle.

4. If the tutor is a front-line researcher, he will realize the difficulty of scientific innovation, so that he will not put forward blind requirements to students and avoid the origin of many contradictions. Students need to be encouraged when they are new to scientific research. As a mentor of front-line researchers, it is easier to appreciate students' progress, formulate reasonable scientific research goals, and promote students' growth in encouragement and guidance.

In research universities in the United States and Europe, most professors are frontline researchers all their lives. They struggle for a lifetime and achieve a lifetime. Their childlike innocence never sleeps, and their original intention never dies. There are many such scholars in my research field (artificial intelligence, financial engineering, automatic control, Social Psychology). My mentor, Professor Zadeh, is a typical example. He has been opening up new fields all his life: he proposed the state space model in his 30s, leading the modern control theory; When I was nearly 50 years old, I opened up the field of fuzziness (one of the three pillars of computing intelligence); In his 70s, he opened up the field of word computing; One year before his death (95 years old), he was still making a report on his latest research results. What's more, Professor Hinton, who is engaged in deep learning of neural network, is even more so. He is in his 70s and is still trying to overthrow the achievements he has accumulated for more than 30 years.

In the field of financial engineering, when Soros was in his 60s, he blocked the pound and made a profit of $1 billion; Short yen in his 80s, earning at least $1 billion. All these require in-depth study, long-term accumulation and adequate homework. At the age of 73, he published his monograph "the alchemy of finance" to introduce his own "theory of Reflexivity". And lupien, a wall street gold trader I know and lived in his house for three nights, has been reading papers and trading since he was in his 70s. Often send some papers to me to discuss together.

In short, if the tutor is a front-line researcher, fighting with the graduate students in the same trench, then he will naturally become a community of destiny with the graduate students. On the contrary, if the tutor appears as a leader, it will definitely conflict with the interests of graduate students, and it will not be able to form a community of destiny with graduate students.