Doctoral attrition is often blamed on the candidate. This paper codes 400 supervision logs at The University of Edinburgh and shows that missed meetings cluster at timezone edges and at month-end reporting in candidates’ workplaces. A protocol that required a written agenda, a 20-minute recording, and a decision log cut time-to-confirmation by a median of 11 weeks in a faculty trial. Supervisors who only offered live slots at 09:00 GMT lost francophone West African candidates at a higher rate. AFU’s doctoral college should inspect supervision as an operational system. African doctorates will be finished by people who already have jobs. The university must design for that fact or keep producing ABD files.