One of my more unusual summer tasks is dealing with students who propose their own dissertation topic. I always encourage that; it is cool to see what people come up with, and it is good to practise setting up a research question yourself, and the students end up with exactly the topic they want. Only advantages! Almost.
The thing is that someone needs to approve (or otherwise) these topics, and that would be me. And it is very rare that the students get a proposal past me in one go. General issues are that the research question is too wide, and/or that they not specific enough about where the data is going to come from. Sometimes what they propose is enough material for a career, and therefore too much for just one dissertation module. And I need to know they have the data sorted, and the project is feasible, before I approve it. If they only say that the data is going to come from peer-reviewed literature, that's not specific enough. Give me the references, and tell me exactly what data is in these sources. And what you are going to do with it.
At the time of writing, I have had 13 proposals, from 8 students. One has had approval already. The others are still working on it.
Experience suggest that there will be a flurry of these closer to the deadline. I hope in the end we have a lot of students who get the OK and can do a project of their own design! That's worth some extra work for me…
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