(Originally from Tony Winefield, University of South Australia. Came to me via an OU research degree supervisor workshop.)

Bad supervision, like any other skill can be acquired and developed with practice. Here are six simple rules to follow:

1. Be inaccessible.
2. Don’t return written work because you are ‘too busy’ to read it.
3. Humiliate and belittle your students with savage, brutal and unfair criticism
4. Alternatively, treate your PhD students as unpaid research assistants.
5. Offer bad advice. For example: suggest an inappropriate topic, recommend research methods that have poor relibaility or validity, recommend inappropriate mthods for analysing results, allow your student submit without doing enough research, encourage your student to do far too much work, discourage your student from publishing prior to submission
6. Choose bad examiners.