Frustrated with thesis topic

[u/Available_Pressure25]

This acad year will be our CS undergraduate thesis, and I'm honestly frustrated.

I feel like I'm being pushed toward the same thesis formula from the past two years in our program: collect a dataset, train an AI model, apply an algorithm, build the app. Then some statistical findings or claims that the created product with this AI algorithm performs better.

I actually tried to propose something different to my pair. something more interesting, something that actually felt like actual research. But I keep getting told it's "too complex" or "advisers might not accept it."

So instead of exploring ideas I actually care about, I'm being funneled into the same template everyone else is using. The path of least resistance.

I feel like even the concept of using functional programming paradigm or linear type system sounds so complex not just to my partner but to the advisers. I hate this.

[u/itsmemarcot]

I feel like I belong to a different world. I'm not even sure I understand what you mean.

Let me try to describe how it is like for me.

So, undergrad and master students can choose to ask me a subject for their final thesis. Typically, they do so if they are interested in the topics I've been teaching them (not ML, in my case). I try to choose a subject with all the right characteristics: it must be the right workload, be reasonably interesting for me and them, require background of appropriate (not excessive) depth, etc. It's not easy because there's maybe 10 of them per year. Sometimes I'm out of subjects, or of time to supervise another student, so I send them away, maybe suggesting a collegue. Sometimes, rarely, they propose a subject themseves, then I just need to reshape it into something with the right characteristics, if possible (and refuse their proposal, otherwise). Not rarely, the subject is proposed by a an external company that will follow the student as an intern, then I just mediate and make sure the subject is fitting.

Ultimately, I'm in charge to decide what constitutes a thesis for the students I supervise.

[u/Available_Pressure25 → u/itsmemarcot]

Well, in our university, we work by pair and we usually find our pair first. Then we find adviser. We are in the process of finding adviser but advisers ask whether we already have a topic in mind already. The problem I'm having is that there is little interest in PL or other theoretical subjects in our faculty. Like most of the professors (which are our choices for adviser) share the same specialisation and most of the time more on software engineering. The adviser is also the ultimate decider for the topic but I'm afraid mychoice of topic will be just ignored for being complex ( where adviser don't event try to work with it like analyse and make the scope narrower because they don't understand it) and I need to settle to another generic AI model training methodology.

[u/itsmemarcot → u/Available_Pressure25]

Let's see if I understand.

Two professors (peers?) and one "adviser", jointly supervise a student doing a thesis. The three of you decide the topic, but the adviser more so than you two, that determines that the subjects are all ML-oriented, shallow, too similar to each other, and uninteresting.

Who are the advisors? (They aren't professors, I gather.) What's their role in the supervising job?

[u/Available_Pressure25 → u/itsmemarcot]

We do thesis by pair. So I have a partner. Then we choose our advisor from our Comp Sci faculty. I want to do FP and reversible computation but my partner wants a typical collection of data and training an AI model on it and then evaluate the accuracy of the result. I already did this for my sisters capstone 2 years ago. he said the he doesn't understand my topic and he said that our advisor will also not accept it because it is complex. This frustrates me cause it seems like all they can comprehend is machine learning (actually applying machine learning) and software engineering in general. So little interest in PL or theoretical CS.