Is there an unwritten rule against quoting literally in some fields? During most of an aspiring academic's schooling one (at least in my experience) is repeatedly told that quoting/reproducing other works is fine, if given credit. As long as you cite your sources, all is good. And of course this is true, in the sense that you will not get penalized for plagiarism.
But today I was left wondering... is it true? I had a think and in my field (computer science) I can not recall any quotations or reproductions of graphs/tables in essentially any of the works I have read, other than perhaps some quotes at chapter starts for entertainment value.
Whenever one references another work in my field one always seems to reword or summarize the reference, even if a direct quote is perfectly functional. Which leaves me wondering, is there an unwritten rule against quoting literally in some fields?

Yes, but it is better described as an "unwritten custom" instead of an "unwritten rule."


Co-authors request that others do not use "he" as a pronoun - is this reasonable? We are a bunch of people writing a collection of papers. Two of the writers are from Iran (where the common language does not have gendered pronouns), and they have expressed to me some concern with regards to the lack of gender-neutrality in our papers.

As you may know, English writing often exhibits some degrees of gender-bias, mainly the use of "he" to refer to a person with an unspecified gender. These co-authors would like to avoid such bias if they are to put their names on the papers.

They've told me this as we are close, but haven't talked to anybody else (there are 3 others). Is this a reasonable request? What's the correct thing to do here? I could just ask the others, but what do I do if somebody gets offended by the request and refuses? I doubt it'll happen, but in the current public discourse where "political correctness" is the new pejorative buzz word, I am not so sure.

This is an entirely reasonable request and you should honour it. It is very easy to write English in a manner that avoids the unfortunate use of 'he' as a placeholder for either gender, and doing so avoids needless sexism in your writing.

There's no real reason why you shouldn't comply and try to convince your other co-authors to comply as well.

Allow me to offer you some (both good and bad) alternatives to gendered pronouns:

Using "(s)he" or "he/she": This doesn't exactly fit the bill of an ungendered pronoun and it's annoying to both read and write.

Using an "alternative" pronoun (such as "xer" or what not): I highly recommend AGAINST this. It's weird and is most likely to be met with resistance if you suggest it.

Using "they/them/their": Using plural to refer to someone without specifying gender is a very common and accepted.

Using "the [noun]": Another common way to do this is to refer to the person with a noun such as "the reader" or whatever noun applies to the person. If done too much though the text becomes needlessly extended and much more annoying.

I would recommend using "they" while mixing in "the [noun]" occasionally when you feel that it needs to be more specific who you're referring to. This could be when who you're referring to changes or if you feel like the reference has gone stale after many uses of "they". If who you're referring to never changes you could for example replace the first "they" in every paragraph with "the [noun]".


How to neutralize an Ivy League obsession? Not disregarding that the Ivies are fine colleges in many aspects, how to deal with high-school students fixated on the idea that they need an Ivy league education, or otherwise their education would be second class. Or to deal with equally fixated people who think that academics in the Ivy league is the only golden rule (and the others are second class). Talking about this makes me sound a tad envious, but I like to make people see that many other colleges are fine too (although maybe not that famous).

It's not hard to find Ivy League alumni who will readily admit - even adamantly defend - the statement that there are other colleges in the US which are just as good academically, and that you do not have to go to an Ivy League school to get a first-class education. Of course this is purely anecdotal, not any sort of logical argument, but then again people who feel like the Ivy League is the only way to get a top-quality education in the US are also not drawing their conclusions from logic, so perhaps an emotional appeal is just what they need.

If you're talking to someone who might be open to an evidence-based approach, try asking them to name what they consider to be the top universities in the US. Or better yet, look up a few college rankings and find out which names consistently appear near the top. For example, the US News and World Report rankings for universities are headed by

  Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, University of Chicago, Duke, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Caltech, Dartmouth

and for liberal arts colleges, by

  Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Pomona, Carleton, Wellesley, Claremont McKenna, Davidson, Haverford

Forbes' top 10 are

  Stanford, Pomona, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Swarthmore, West Point, Harvard, Williams, MIT

Beyond those I'm not sure of other ranking systems' reputation, but the Parchment rankings give as their top 10

  Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Yale, Caltech, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Brown

and the Academic Ranking of World Universities gives

  Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Columbia, U Chicago, Yale, UCLA

and so on (you get the picture). Anyway, whether this person you're talking to comes up with their own idea of the top colleges or uses one or more of these lists, it's rather unlikely that their list will match the list of Ivy League universities: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. Clearly, while a university's membership in the Ivy League is somewhat correlated with having a high ranking, it is not the only way to get one.

You could also mention that the Ivy League is actually just an athletic conference, like the Big 10. The member schools generally happen to be academically high-achieving, but membership in the Ivy League is in no way meant to be a certification of strong academics.

In terms of getting a job that utilizes connections significantly :

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, (maybe) Wharton; required for employability
MIT, Brown, Penn and the rest of the Ivies; you need to excel in order to get the job
Below that : summa cum laude is all but required.

The trend is similar for law schools : but LSAT is closely related to which school you go to(for whatever reason) so it doesn't hurt, although it is not taken into too much consideration in the admissions office.

In terms of getting into academia
(extrapolating from article "Sorry Cal State, No Princeton Grad School for You")

A little bit lenient on the rankings but conversely the lower you go on the school ranking the better your grades need to be. Of course on average graduate school bound students get better grades than those who aim for employment post bachelor's.

Top 5~10 : To get into top 5~10 in your field, you need at least magna cum laude
Top 30 : To get into top 5~10, you need summa
Top 50 : To get into top 5~10, you need to be one of the best students in your class
Top 100 : Very rare(a handful a year, per school)
Outside top 100 : Once a few years(with an extra master's)

This trend is mimicked for MBA programs : leniency in GPA, need better GMAT or GRE.

So while in terms of employability many prestigious fields require that you at least go to a top 20 institution to have any good chance, graduate school focuses a bit more on marks and recommendations. Still, your college name goes a long way.

So it's not that some students are obsessed with rankings per se, it's that companies and schools that matter to the world are obsessed with where their applicants went to college.


How can I show local universities that I am someone they will want to hire in a few years? I've split this question into a general question that I feel applies to many people and specific details for those who are interested.

General question:I have accepted a 2-year teaching/research position in my home state and would like to look for a job in the surrounding area at the end of the time.

My just-finished job search convinced me that having skills is not enough to get a job in mathematics; you have to show the universities that you are someone they want to hire.

  Given two years to work with, what can I do to show local universities that I am someone they would like to hire?

My ideas so far include:

Attending and speaking at local seminars and conferences (for research-oriented schools)
Attending MAA meetings and giving talks on teaching (for teaching schools)
Working together with faculty at these universities on projects.

I'd especially like to hear from those who make hiring decisions on what would make them feel more comfortable hiring a candidate.

Non-essential, specific details
My postdoc is at BYU in Utah, and the schools I am interested in are all the 4-year schools in the area. University of Utah is most likely out of my league. I'm interested in UVU, Dixie State, SUU, USU, U of U (though that's a longshot), Weber State, Westminster College, and staying on at BYU. I'm also interested in nearby schools such as Reno, Colorado State, Northern Arizona University, Colorado School of Mines, ASU and U of A, University of Colorado, etc.

I'm finishing a postdoc at Temple in Philadelphia. I've done reasonably well in research (4 publications in well-known area-specific journals). My teaching record is excellent, with very good letters of recommendation, high student ratings, and a record of being given good classes to teach.

I am genuinely more interested in teaching than research, but I enjoy research enough that I am happy doing it for a good position. I have a research topic in a small new area (finite subdivision rules) that provides an essentially inexhaustible amount of new theorems but may attract less interest as it is off the beaten path.

I have friends at many of these schools, including UVU, SUU, Utah State, and Dixie State.

My students (at a large well-ranked R1) are having trouble finding a job anywhere in the world, given the current problems with the academic job market: too many PhDs at a time when universities are reducing the number of t-t faculty.

By limiting your search to one particular geographic area, you greatly handicap your ability to find a job. You must understand that in some departments, they will not have a job in your particular niche come up but once in 20 years when someone retires or leaves. Even given that you are looking at half a dozen schools, the odds that a job in your area will come up next year is -- there are some mathematicians here that can give you the odds.

That being said, the best you can hope for is to do what you are doing:

Research: Keep publishing as much as you can. Publish or perish.
Service: If there is a local/state/regional/national association of scholars in your discipline, join it and become very active. Show that you are the type of person willing to put in grunt service time and will create community. Organize a symposium that brings people in the area together.
Teaching: Come up with innovative courses that put you on the radar.

But you must also accept the very real possibility that your geographical limitation may very lead to no jobs or only adjunct positions in the coming years until the statistical anomaly of a job-in-your-research-area-in-your-geographical-area comes up.

Depends on the type of university. If it's teaching oriented college, teaching experience will be very important. Otherwise, it's your research career potential. In other words, how likely are you going to get tenured in 5 to 6 years should you be hired.

If you are at a top university and aim for a faculty position at another top university, your advisor's connections coupled with a strong recommendation is the single most important factor.


What terms should be better to set when creating a Startup with your PhD supervisor? What terms should be better to set when creating a Startup with your PhD supervisor?
I had the PhD project idea before starting the PhD and working on it for some years. Now my PhD research looks promising for commercial use and I am thinking to create a startup. I recognize the prestige of my PhD supervisor and he is willing to participate in the startup.
Which are considered fair terms for both me and the professor for our new startup, based on the fact that i have done all the development (spending countless hours of work the past years) and came up with the project idea, but the professor has the prestigious name to make the startup more credible (and maybe better funded)?
Share equal equity? Have equity based on hours spent on the startup? Something else?

I strongly suggest that you hire a lawyer to get this advice. Failing to do so could lead to a huge amount of conflict later. It is likely that your interests don't completely align with those of your advisor.
I'm not a lawyer so can't help much, but it might be possible to set up a joint meeting with a lawyer and the advisor to work out an equitable arrangement. Your joint venture will need legal advice in any case.
But you also need to consider what a conflict would mean for finishing your degree. Don't put that in jeopardy.

I was curious about this, universities like to attempt to take IP if it's related to your formal thesis/project/what-ever.
You need to be careful that nothing you do that you want to sell is developed on university property.
The advantage of course is that the university may "help" you but the problem is they basically completely own it.


Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science? Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science?

That is, while some countries may have a higher proportion of women in science, while others have a lower proportion of women in science, if you compared the gender ratio in physics compared to the gender ratio of biology in a country, would you always see the same or similar results? Or could you see a higher proportion of women in physics compared to biology in one country, but see a higher proportion of women in biology compared to physics in another country?

Within Europe alone there are huge variations in the number of female mathematicians as documented with lots of graphs and maps here.

It is a misconception that women are underrepresented in science or STEM fields fields in general. The reality is that women have entered some STEM fields to the point where they are no longer underrepresented (e.g., biology) while largely forsaking other STEM fields (e.g., computer science).

Today, more women than ever major in so-called STEM fields. More than 58% of all bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates in biology are being awarded to women.Within certain University biology departments, women also make up nearly half of the faculty. And within the department of behavioral and social sciences, 70% of faculty members are women :

However, women comprise only 18% of students receiving bachelor's degrees in computer science and engineering, and those figures have actually dropped over the past couple of years :

And in spite of having an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job in any STEM field, women remain underrepresented as faculty members for those fields as well. Policies to attract more girls and women into subjects such as computer science, physics and engineering have largely failed.

These trends in gender representation are consistent internationally. For example, if we look at Britain, we see that women are eg. less than 20% of all engineering and computer science undergraduates, but more than 60% of all biology undergraduates and even more than 75% of all veterinarian undergraduates :

If we look at Europe as a whole, we see that 40% of the 17 million scientists and engineers in the EU are women. However, men are particularly overrepresented in manufacturing (83% of scientists and engineers in manufacturing were male), while the services sector was much more balanced (55% male and 45% female).

Further, we see that women are in the majority in all of the EU Member States among students studying for Master’s degrees. Yet, we also see that there are considerably more female than male students studying social sciences, journalism, information, business, administration or law, with women accounting for 57.6 % of all students within this field of education :

Even if we look beyond Europe and North-America, we see a very similar gender distribution across different fields :

My girlfriend and I, both living in Belgium, are a perfect reflection this pattern as well : I work as a programmer in corporate R&D and have only male colleagues, while my girlfriend teaches bio-chemistry faculty at a local university and has mostly female colleagues.

Obviously, there still remain differences in the gender gap on a per county basis. Peculiar about these differences, however, is that women are actually less likely to enter a STEM field in countries with greater gender equality :

One possible explanation for the aforementioned gender distribution is the high "geek factor" in fields like computer science, physics and engineering. Another would be gender stereotyping transmitted through our interaction with others. However, there also biological differences to consider, like the difference between men's and women's brains.

Men may simply be more driven by a biological urge to build things, whereas women may simply be more driven by a biological urge to help people. It would be foolish to underestimate the impact of sex hormones on our individual preferences when even among monkeys males prefer to play with trucks and females with dolls!


Students requesting to switch partners mid term I'm a TA in a graduate level course. Students in the course have to hand in a weekly assignment which is done in pairs.

A few days ago, one of the students approached the professor and told her that they are not getting along with their partner and requested to join another pair of students, in practice creating a group of three students and leaving their current partner on their own. The professor asked me and the second TA for our opinion in this matter.

When we inquired further, the student stated (roughly) that they think the partner does not take the course seriously, does not put enough effort and expects them to do all the work. They also stated that success in this course is important for them and that they wish to work along with a similarly motivated student. (They named a specific student they would like to work with. That student already has partner so it would make a group of three students.)

While the request itself sounds legitimate, we are reluctant to comply with it, because we are not happy with the idea of students working on assignments in groups of more than two since we think this is unlikely to lead to situations where all students in the group put in a reasonable amount of effort. Also we are concerned of what will happen with the current partner of the student if we comply.
Thirdly, although we have no proof on this matter, both the professor and I independently had the gut feeling that the request might (mind you, I said might, again there's no proof and we may be totally wrong here) also be related to racial tensions.

A possible solution we were thinking about is to have a conversation with both students and see if we can make them work together in a more productive way.

I will be most grateful for any tips as to how to make this conversation  productive and as pleasant as possible to the students involved.

Also if someone has any other thoughts on this matter such as creative solutions or convincing arguments for/against the obvious solutions such as refusing the request, complying with the request, doing some reshuffling in the pairs in order to be able to comply with the request and still guarantee all students are working in pairs, I will be most grateful.

I would consider asking the student who is not getting along with their partner, whether they would consider leaving their current partner and work on their own from here on out. That way, the student still would have to do all the work on their own, but no longer has someone benefitting from their efforts without contributing.

If the student seriously considers this solution, you can be more confident that the complaint is genuine: if the student would be willing to go it alone, it is quite likely that the contribution of their current partner is near zero. But if the student is not willing to entertain this solution as a serious option, then you can derive the information that their current partner does contribute at least something to the team, and the request looks much less reasonable.

Based on the information you retrieve from this process, you can still decide to allow the student to join a team of three, or reshuffle some other way; asking the question does not commit you to actually make the student work on their own. But it might give you relevant insights.

I'm missing a crucial bit of information here: as TA(s), do your observervations of the students indicate that the non-performing student in question does indeed underperform to an extraordinary extent?

If not, i.e. the performance difference is inside what is to be expected => I'd say that's the normal range within which students have to learn to collaborate.
On the other hand, there may be situations where the disparity between student performance is so large that you decide the group should be separated for didactic reasons.

I'd say that different levels of disparity between/within groups may be expected in different courses.

Two extreme examples I encountered as student:

As student I once had excercises where the rules explicitly favored teams that would have strong and weak students rather than the strong students ending up in strong groups and the weak students forming weak groups. This was very much on purpose: strong students were expected to explain solutions to weak students.
In such a situation, the complaint doesn't make any sense and should be ignored.
But I've also had the experience of our group being seaparated - however, I didn't ask for a reassignment, the head assisitant told me they had observed that my colleague a) caused me a lot of additional work by frequently messing up the experiment, and/or b) didn't do anything themselves and obviously did not understand what they were doing.   So they had decided that our group should be split into two one-person "groups".
This came along with assigning us also different experiments which were suitable for single experimenters (and involved a bit more work for each of us than what we were supposed to do each as part of a two-student group). AFAIK, they had decided that the would be better for both of us: I was relieved of what they considered an unfair amount of work, and my colleague being forced to do their own experiment (and getting a TA closeby pretty much all the time) would learn far more than in the group. I may add that this was a chemical wet lab practicum with lots of time critical steps which left no time for additional explanations if one didn't understand what they were supposed to do in the middle of an experiment: in that case, the other had to work twice as fast in order to keep the sampling plan (and there usually was no time for redoing the whole experiment).
As TA, my experience with student groups was mostly also (wet) lab practica where groups did different experiments TAs belonging to experiments. One would occasionally get and hand on the information to "look with group x that y does their proper share of work", just like the information that "y in group x needs disability accomodation z".


Failing students when it might cause them economic ruin The issue has crept up on me slowly over the last several years. I am increasingly aware of the massive debt that many of my students are taking on, debt which is far beyond the sort of debt that I incurred as an undergraduate in the 1980s. Because of this, in recent semesters I have found it somewhat difficult to fail students. Instead of simply asking myself "does this student deserve to fail this class?", I find myself asking "does this student deserve to have their life ruined?" In many cases (e.g. students who are already on academic probation) this is not much of an exaggeration. It is a very bad situation to find yourself in your early 20s with no college degree but $30,000 in debt. In some cases, I am aware that a decision of mine might be a contributing cause of a student ending up in just such a situation. I can no longer regard a failing grade as a relatively minor matter (like a speeding ticket).

How do professors reconcile their de jure role as guardians of academic integrity with their de facto role of being (at least in part) responsible for their students' economic future?

You are responsible for teaching the students to the best of your ability, and to judge their capacities to use what they have learned.  That judgment is made based on their grades.  So you have several things to think about here.

Are you teaching the best you can?  Teaching does not mean "downloading facts", as I'm sure you're aware.  It means "transferring knowledge, skills, and attitudes".  That "transfer" part is the important bit — transfer means that the student is able to reproduce and use what they've learned.  Is your teaching enhancing this transfer?  This is a tough nut to crack — how do you know?  Are you planning your assessments so that you can really tease out the nuances and to see which students really understand, or are they just assessments because you need to assign a grade somehow?  Your institution might have a center for teaching how to teach, and if you feel that you aren't teaching your best class then start there.  Otherwise, lots of books and resources exist, which I'm sure we can all provide.
Are you assessing fairly?  Fairly doesn't mean easily.  It means that you are creating assessments that actually test understanding and that a student with reasonable ability will be able to succeed at.  It also means to understand their context.  It's easy to make a "really good" assessment that everyone fails because they also have three projects and two midterms in their other courses.  Are your expectations clearly communicated, and are you ensuring that you only assess what you've asked for? (that doesn't mean that you can't expect students to go above and beyond, just that you need to tell them you expect them to)
Are you assessing accurately?  I'm distinguishing this from "fair", but you can treat "fair" and "accurate" as two sides of the same coin.  Accurate means that your assessments are set up so that appropriate weight is given to appropriate topics, and that your tests actually enable students to display their understanding and capacities, rather than whether they memorized the example or found the answer on stack exchange.  Creating fair assessments is challenging, but there is a lot of research and resources available.
Are you giving every student the chance to seek help?  I often find that if students are slipping through the cracks, setting up a regular meeting with them to keep them on track can do wonders.  However, I am in a job in which I'm required to work with students like this, so it's easy for me to do.  If you are a busy research professor who is teaching two courses per semester while juggling other things, it's a lot harder.  Ultimately, the final exam is not when a student should find out they failed the course.  They should know that they are on a bad path long before then, and should have opportunities to get on track.

If you are doing these things, then you are not causing them financial ruin.  It's similarly not fair to say that the students are causing this — you don't know their context and can't make the judgment.  Perhaps they went to a bad high school that just didn't prepare them, or perhaps they are always on the train to another city because their parents are sick and they can't attend classes.  It is not your responsibility to help them in this way unless you are capable of providing everyone the same help.  Which brings me to the most unfortunate reality of post-secondary education:

Not everyone can make it.  For whatever reason, some students simply will not demonstrate that their abilities are up to the standard that has been set.  Notice the wording I used there — I didn't say that they don't have those abilities, but that they will not demonstrate that they have those abilities.  Provided you are assessing them fairly/accurately, teaching the best you can, and giving the help they pay for, then you are providing them with every opportunity to demonstrate those abilities.  If they are unable to do so, then it would be unethical to let them pass regardless of the reason.

All things in life can cause you economic ruin these days. House mortgages, car loans, hacking, frauds.

It is basically a society based on debt-based servitude where the banks are our overlords. You are likely just one well-meaning person in this huge mess and likely cannot affect this fact. As far as I know you also can not affect what these students future employers will base their decisions on.

It is not your moral obligation (nor is it even within your power) to try and steer where these students end up. It is the privilege of these debt overlords to do.

Your job is to teach and to grade. Do your job, peasant.


Do I have to Cite an Image I have edited? I have received an Image from a source I am not sure about, I have edited it to suit my own project, now do I have to cite the main source?

Of course, should you cite the original sources (just use the golden rule: think how you would like to be treated if you were the author of the original source). You may say something like

 adapted from < Figure X of original source >

However, as indicated in the comments, you should make sure that you have the right to do so. Note that sometimes it is possible to "read" the data values from an image and create your own image from those (but you still need to quote the source of the data).

I wouldn't use the source if you are not sure about it, and just use a new image.


Is a PhD (economically) still worth doing? I used to think that with every degree you get your salary goes up.
Universities produce more and more PhD's and i learned in economics 101 that once the supply is higher than the demand, the price (here salary) will drop.

Even if you get a little bump in salary, you have to take into account, that you are joining the workforce 3-4 years later and therefore "loose" those salaries.

From an economical standpoint : Is a PhD still worth doing ?

( I know, doing a PhD is not "just" about the money )

If you look at income alone, it's definitely not worth it - assuming you don't live in a country in which "Herr Doktor" is still highly regarded, and an almost must for high-end jobs in politics and business (like in Germany or Austria).

In industry, there are a few jobs (chip design for Intel or quantitative hedge funds come to mind; maybe in consulting it's a toss up; certainly there are others) where it might help. There are also jobs where it's required to have a PhD (some chemistry research, or such), or at least very beneficial. But outside these somewhat rare positions, HR will put you on a pile called "non-standard degree" which is largely ignored, and you rely on personal connections or quantitative recruiters to even get your foot in.

If you end up in academia as tenured faculty, you get a decent salary with a wide range (e.g., at the top end, Business School finance assistant professors lie around $200k at good schools, to a low end that's a fraction of that if the school or department is less wealthy, or the field less supported by industry). But if you're smart and driven enough to get there, you almost certainly could have long made partner at McKinsey by that time, where you won't go home with less than $1m.

I think the term "still" in your title is a bit off. I don't think this ever was different. You should write a Ph.D. as you're passionate about a field, look for independence, and genuinely love what you're working on. And you should be aware early, and accept, that this is not a choice made for the money.

Answer the following question: Do you want to become an academic?

If yes: Welcome to the club then!, you will need to do a PhD and a number of postdocs, and if you work hard at it, you will get an academic position.

If no: Simply do not do the PhD, because among other things definitely it does not help you get a better job (and money); simply because industry measure you based on your knowledge, which is determine through their interview process, and not your PhD diploma.


Is this plagiarism? Can I publish my work I happen to have worked on a Mathematical topic. The story is complicated.

It was not my original idea. My professor had already worked on it for a long time, intermittently. In fact, when we started out, I did not understand the concepts that well. Over a period of time, I picked up and managed to implement the algorithm myself; it proved to be even better than professor's implementation and speed was 10% faster.

We were to publish this paper, but it took a different turn. The professor has some different thought process, and wants to prove a substantial finding. He has linked it to a thought that it can be better further. We have a complete discord of thoughts on this. I do not deny what he is saying is true, but I think it should be the next phase. Our work till now produces best results, of course - under certain conditions.

I do not mind working with him further, and bringing it together to the research community. But I am going for a PhD. And I will not be physically available. I suggested an option of remote interaction, but the professor does not agree. He explained why meetings are important and why remote work cannot be carried out efficiently. After the discord, it is more of an ego issue, he did not directly indicate it. But I agree with most of his points on remote work being difficult.

But I have worked hard on the problem, sometimes 10 hours a day, for 5 complete months. And now I have to walk away without anything on my name. The nature of a professor is extremely dominating, and he will NOT mention my name in the paper once it comes to publishing after following his pathway. This is not my analysis, he clearly said this: "If you are not working on it any further, your name will not be included in the paper" He will probably find another student (MS level) and get it through.

Now my questions are:

Can I publish work till now, as it is also a major finding? I firmly believe I completely understand what is being proposed, under what scenarios finding is valid, simply put, I own the work, even though original idea is not mine. I indirectly talked about this with professor, he nullified that this is even possible, indicating I should not.
Will this be termed as plagiarism? I am ready to mention professor's name, but he does not even agree to idea of publishing it at this stage. So I have two options:

a. Mentioning his name as an author without his consent.

b. Mentioning him only in the acknowledgements, and also mentioning it was his idea and we worked together, but he does not agree this should be published without future additions.
Will this come back to me in a bad way, possibly unimaginable to me at this point of time. I am just starting out my research career and do not want it to be hampered because of my behavior/attitude.
Could you suggest any better way of resolving the situation? Talking to the professor is not really helping, yesterday we spent five hours discussing it. He is acting stubborn, uncooperative and because of that I have a feeling of wasting my six months. Of course, I learned lot in the process, my programming is much better now, my research methodology has improved. But unless I publish something, it remains only with me. I genuinely want to demonstrate my work, my abilities through a publication.

Pl suggest.

Edit_1_after_~20_months
I ended up not attempting to write a paper. At that time, I had a feeling that I did SO_MUCH work but have gained nothing, and wanted some output. I was wrong though, I learned how to approach a problem, how to carry out research iteratively, my programming improved a lot. The professor is still in touch. I have moved to different country and working on my PhD. Not having that work on my name does not matter a bit, but learnings do make a positive difference. I thank people who put out their thinking and suggestion. It was a vile effort from a bu**hurt person and that thinking does not make sense now.

There are a number of other questions on this site relating to these issues, although I'm not going to search for them now.

There are different issues going on here:

Firstly, you want to publish the bit of research you have done so far, but the PI thinks it should instead be turned into something more substantial before publishing. In this he is almost certainly right. It is not considered good practice to slice work into small pieces to get more papers.

You are considering publishing work with someone else against their wishes. Don't. Especially if you want to stay within the research community.

I take it you are concerned about having material for your PhD. Unless you are somewhere where publishing is a requirement for graduating, this is actually irrelevant. A PhD thesis should contain what you have done, and the normal progression of research is considered when assessing it.

You want to work remotely. I am confused as to who your PhD supervisor is. If he is your supervisor then you should expect to see him in person. If you are doing a PhD elsewhere, then how do you expect to have time to work on this project while also working full-time on your PhD topic?

Note also that writing a faster algorithm does not in itself really constitute new research in maths. Is there a particular theoretical change that made it faster? Or is it just that you coded a bit better? Does it actually make a difference in practical computational time, such that it allowed you to test some new examples that gave you the key insight for a theorem (or at least conjecture, or counter-example)?

The professor has said your name won't go on the final paper if you do no further work. It's possible that the professor is being unreasonable, and you can look up other questions along those lines. But the more likely situation is that your name won't go on the paper because what you have done doesn't count for authorship. Generally in mathematics the authors are only those who have contributed to what appears in the paper. It sounds unlikely that that would be true of the work you have done.

An unconventional solution, but one that would perhaps be more to your liking, might be to agree to release your write-up of your algorithm alongside the final paper, either as an appendix or as a separate paper. It probably won't do that much for you career-wise, but it might make you feel better and preserve your relationship with the professor. Also, by the time that happens you may be in a better position to admit that he's right. I know for myself it's hard to admit that your work isn't really that valuable, because it matters a lot to you. Over time you will become a little less emotionally involved.

Also, remember that this is someone you will want a reference from, if you are to stay in academia.

The only possible way is asking him to publish your name as one of the co-authour when the paper comes to pubish. It takes time to get publish, but you should wait as you beive it is a significant finding. meanwhile, start applying same mathedology to some other algo for furthur improvements. As you abilities in programming are enhanced, you can achive this fastly.


How to get rid of annoying graduate student "supervisor" I am an undergraduate student who has developed a novel new model which according to my PI (principal investigator) will have a high impact.

My PI assigned a grad student to supervise me. Supervision consisted of meeting once a week to update him on my progress so far. Sometimes he would provide certain helpful suggestions(none that are actual innovations just slight fixes/alterations that would improve the model).

During the course of the year he (the grad student) has become more and more annoying. Unhelpful suggestions/requests, etc.

During our last meeting the grad student made some bold claims on the model developed by me claiming to be an equal author/developer. He made it clear he wanted to get a large amount of credit for the model (co-authorship).

I do not think that he has done enough meaningful work to deserve credit for the model (although he would be listed in acknowledgements). Knowing his intentions I wish to distance myself from him(including not having him review the paper), as to lower his chance of becoming a co-author.

I would like to achieve this in such a way that does not negatively impact my relationship with my PI, as grad schools require reference letters.

EDIT:
I don't think I have been very clear and for that I apologize. I acknowledge that he has contributed to the work. I also understand that having more authors doesn't reflect badly on me(I didn't even know about the score system). I just have problems with his claims of equal authorship. As we are nearing final results/submissions of paper and he has better relation with the professor he may try to take the first authorship position.

Additional: By my university guideline policies about co-authorship he has not done enough to deserve even a co-author position.

I am an undergraduate student who has developed a novel new model which according to my PI (principal investigator) will have a high impact.

Great!

  My PI assigned a grad student to supervise me. Supervision consisted of meeting once a week to update him on my progress so far. Sometimes he would provide certain helpful suggestions(none that are actual innovations just slight fixes/alterations that would improve the model). (...) Knowing his intentions I wish to distance myself from him(including not having him review the paper), as to lower his chance of becoming a co-author.

Less great. Much less great. Let me make something clear here: this is not your project alone, this is the project of you, your advisor, and the PhD student. The guy has invested a serious amount of time into this project (not as much as you, clearly, but still a significant amount), and now you have unilaterally decided that he is to be cut out when the time comes to publish your results? Likely, this is not to be going over well either with him or the advisor, and for good reasons.

Deteriorating professional relationships are never fun, but it is simply not feasible to decide midway through a project that you now would rather not have another researcher on board. If he has already made contributions to the project, and it certainly sounds like he has, it would be unethical to publish without him now.

EDIT: to make it clear, I am not saying that he should get equal credit to you. But it certainly sounds like he should get some credit.

The very least you need to do is follow user11192's recommendation:

  it is best to meet with your advisor (and possibly the grad student) to discuss an authorship plan.

Finding a "sneaky" way to get rid of the grad student before publication time is not particularly ethical, and has a pretty high possibility of backfiring on you.

If this is copyright infringement, or intellectual theft then get a lawyer. At least call one, consultation is generally free. In fact, the lawyer will know more than the school as to how to proceed here anyway... Good luck.


When did it become inappropriate for a professor to smoke during lectures? Sidney Coleman smoked during lectures he gave. Was this universally acceptable behavior at the time? When did smoking during lectures become inappropriate?

Some older universities have lecture theatres of mainly timber construction.  At those places, I'd suggest it was always inappropriate.  Otherwise, I'd say it became inappropriate as soon as there was clear evidence in the peer-reviewed literature that passive smoking has serious deleterious health effects on otherwise healthy adults.  A quick Google Scholar date-range search suggests that this happened between about 1979 and 1981.
The "universally accepted" half of the question, of course, may be a very different matter.

This stopped when academia started becoming more professional.
In the days gone by, the proffs would be like "I'm all powerful- I'm above the rules and hence I can smoke etc".
The contract has changed a lot now- both professors and students are expected to maintian some level of professionalism and both sides are held accountable.
Another factor is that smoking has become a lot less popular these days than it used to be (think Mad Men days vs today).


How should a non-native English presenter respond to a question they did not understand? I'm not an English native speaker, and my question is, probably, only relevant for non-native speakers.

Sometimes, native speakers just don't care how easily the presenter can understand the question. Such a carelessness usually embarrasses the presenter enormously and makes him appear incompetent.

What is the proper way to behave for the non-native speaking presenter? Is it OK to ask for a repetition?

NOTE: I know, being a part of academic world requests some proper English knowledge. But you can hardly become as good as native speakers. And some native speakers have unusual dialects and use difficult expressions (sometimes, I bet, on purpose). I remember one speaker from Wales at a British conference. My God, that was Greek to me.

Yes, it is appropriate to ask the questioner to repeat the question, prefaced by:

  "I'm sorry but I didn't understand the question.  Can you repeat it or rephrase it?"

If you still don't understand it, you might ask someone else in the audience to restate it or rephrase it.

Some people at academic conferences are not good at asking clear, direct questions, even when they are native English speakers with normal dialect.  I have asked people to repeat or rephrase questions for this reason, and I am a native English speaker.

You can mention that you are a non-native speaker of English. Being a non-native speaker of English myself I face the same problem too sometimes and I use these polite expressions when I have not heard or understood what has been said:

Could you please repeat that?
Repeat that please.
I beg your pardon.
Come again.
Sorry
(etc.)


What to do when a professor hasn't uploaded course content for an online class? I'm a student in an online class at university, and we're now a few weeks into the course. So far, only two lectures have been uploaded—there should be six or seven. On the course discussion board, many students have expressed concern that we're behind and have asked when we can expect course content to be published. The professor has indicated multiple times (the first time was two weeks ago) that he's working on getting caught up and will post lectures soon. If I heard that once and things changed, I might believe it, but the professor still hasn't posted anything beyond those two previously mentioned lectures.

What's the appropriate way to handle this situation, and how can I ensure my success in this class?

What does the syllabus say about when the lecture will be posted? It should say something like "Lectures posted every Sunday", etc.
What you should do is copy and paste the discussion board items where students complained, and his response that he acknowledges that he missed his own deadlines, and email it to the Associate Dean (or Dean if there is no Associate Dean). One of the duties of the Associate Dean is to help students with these type of problems.
In your email to his "boss", be professional and fact-based. Merely state that the professors has not posted the lectures (fact), and you wish to have them so you can keep up (the impact to you). Don't say it so negatively that the Dean feels he has to stick up for the Prof (i.e defend the university).
Remember the goal is that you want the lectures posted. No matter how pissed you're at the Prof, don't try to "take him down". You just want the lectures, but at the same time you don't want a angry prof who'll nitpick your Final Exam answers? You can achieve your results with politeness and tact.

Your question lacks several important pieces of information: is there a teaching assistant for the course? A course book? Can the students give reviews for the quality of the course after taking the course?

If there's a course book, your best option is to read the relevant chapters from the course book. They may not correspond 1:1 to the lectures of the course, but often books are better than the online course material. However, since this is an online course, you can't attend the lectures, and thus the only way to know the material of the lectures is if you have some kind of summary containing the titles of the lectures.

If there's a teaching assistant for the course in addition to the professor, you could obviously contact the TA instead of contacting the professor.

If there's a review system in place, when contacting the TA and/or the professor, do remind in your e-mail that you are going to take into account late posting of the material when giving reviews of the course.

You should consider also possible reasons for why the material hasn't been posted. One reason is that the professor has the material but for some reason doesn't post it. The second possible reason is very worrying: the professor doesn't have the material yet.

Are there any alternative courses you can take instead of this course, or is the course mandatory? I would also prepare for the worst and consider other possible courses.


Is it valid to modify a student's exam grade if you feel they did not earn it? I am a graduate student who teaches their own class. I have a supervisor who I report to for everything, including final grades. We have a meeting every semester at the end to review our final grades and for my supervisor to see that I did everything correctly.

In my second semester, my supervisor looked through my grades before they were submitted or published.
At the end, she said: “Let’s look at your borderline students.”
She noticed that a student had a borderline C, say 73.5%, which is barely above the passing threshold of 73% for this course, and had us look at his final exam. The student got 66.5% on the exam, and she said to me: “Are you sure you want to pass him?” At the time I was thinking: “Well, the student did earn the passing score.” However, my supervisor kept suggesting: “Are you sure?” I looked up to my supervisor who was the one who taught me to be a teacher, and like anyone at their job listening to their superior, I felt pressured to say yes, because you do what your supervisor tells you to do, and I was told to take off points from his final exam to lower his final grade to 72.36%. The sole reason for this was not to let the student pass. My supervisor also mentioned specifically not to keep it higher than 72.5%, because students will ask for a bump.
So, in the end, I ended up giving him that 72.36%, a C−, which is a failing grade: They cannot move on the the next-level class.

The discussion happened before the grades were submitted or published, so the student never knew he originally scored 66.5% on the exam. There were no other students with borderline scores.

I felt extremely guilty because I knew who this student was; they didn’t do much of the work, they didn’t always come to class, but they knew the topic and did the bare minimum to pass. I went back to my office right after our meeting and was tempted to change it back to a C. But knowing my supervisor, I knew there was a chance I could’ve gotten in trouble because my supervisor might’ve noticed.

I feel extremely bad for doing this, I felt like I was pressured to do this and couldn’t turn back.

Was the supervisor's decision ethical, academically, and legally sound?

Since you ask, specifically, about legality, I'll say that it is unlikely that it would be a matter of criminal law anywhere, though, of course, I can't know the laws of every jurisdiction. But it could well be a matter of civil law and if this were known could easily generate a lawsuit against everyone involved.

I think that a person would be very hesitant to apply such a "rule" to the child of some powerful person. It depends, I think, on people either not knowing what really occurred or being so powerless as to be completely unable to prevent it.

But, as I've been saying in comments here, it is a profoundly unethical act and would, in my view be grounds for at least a reprimand, and even termination as an act of moral turpitude if repeated. It turns what should be a well determined process in to a form of chaos where we are just at the mercy of the powers.

An instructor needs to set a standard before the course begins and needs to make that public. You can make it as hard as you like and you can interpret it as strictly as you like, but you can't deviate from it to the detriment of an individual. I have no complaint about generous interpretations as most of us, I hope, consider generosity to be laudable and to believe that students can learn and improve.

I won't condemn you personally, however, since you may have had no agency here and may be as much a victim as the student involved. But I will condemn the professor, who should, at a minimum be reported to the dean for this behavior. Especially since the course is a gateway course and changing their grade to make it failing when it was not also denies them the opportunity to go on and, one hopes, improve.

It was especially pernicious, here, that the induced change in the average was set not only to unethically push the student below the passing grade, but further down so that it would be less likely they could appeal.

My advice to you personally, is to find a better mentor as soon as you can. This person is teaching you to do harm.

And, I don't know how you can make it up to the person you damaged. It may be too late, even to request a grade change. But the dean should be informed and if it is only you that knows that the professor is behaving this way, it is probably your responsibility to so inform them. I won't suggest that you do, of course, since it might have too adverse an effect on your own career, but there is an imbalance in justice that hasn't been corrected.

The things you should consider:

How much has the student and/or his family invested in this training? Not just money, but effort and time.
What has your decision cost the student? Include the ongoing costs.
Did the published criteria for passing the exam include your feelings?

As a teenager, I had my maths exam decreased due to the teacher not liking my writing (minor disability, tremors in fingers). This in turn nearly made me miss out on an apprenticeship. Fortunately for me, the teacher wrote this on the exam, and I was able to show this to my prospective employer.


How to ask rejected full-time candidates to apply to teach individual courses? My department has a number of courses we need covered by adjuncts in the next academic year. We were given permission to hire one (and only one) salaried adjunct and to cover the rest of the courses with per-course adjuncts. Salaried adjuncts receive benefits and are better paid than per-course adjuncts.

We received excellent candidates for the salaried position, only one of whom we can hire. After we close the search, (how) can I approach rejected candidates about teaching individual courses at the lower rate? Some career adjuncts have told me it would be offensive to offer a lower-paying and lower-status position to someone who applied for a better one, and I do not wish to offend anyone.

While the salaried position was publicly advertised, our institution does not advertise single courses. Furthermore, most of the candidates who applied for our salaried position were invited to by committee members or by our contacts, not because they were looking at ads.

How can I get the best outcome for our students and for teachers who would be willing to teach individual courses? I will continue to ask the administration for permission to hire a second salaried adjunct but do not expect to receive it. There is not much time to wait before starting our per-course search, as the current academic year is nearing its end (and our administration moves very slowly).

Update

Because each of the top two candidates seemed too good to reject, we proposed a second salaried position, which we made by cobbling together the remaining courses and one from a related program. To our surprise, the administration reversed its earlier decision to let us hire only one salaried adjunct, and we were able to make two salaried offers. While my question is moot, I will leave it up for future search chairs.

Don't ask them. It's a smack in the face. Advertise the position in the same place you advertised the salaried one; they will see it if they are still looking, and apply if they feel they need to.

I think everyone is looking at this wrong. The same people may take a permanent job for different reasons that they may take a temporary position. Someone who applied for a permanent position might still be happy to take a part-time role to build their teaching portfolio, or get some money on the side, or just to hang around a college a few hours a week when not working at their real job.

You probably wouldn't want to hire people who's prospects are so bad that they would settle for a life of adjuncting anyway. Unless they are nearing retirement and view it as a fun way to wind up their career or something like that. I'd prefer professions with careers and connections in the local industry, who bring a valuable complementary perspective to the department.

Offer it to the local applicants as the part-time gig it is supposed to be. "sorry you were not selected blah blah blah. However, we do have a need for someone to teach X Y or Z for the coming term. Please notify us if you are interested.".


Is it acceptable to require a student to use the supervisor's preferred software/tools? I'm about to supervise my first bachelor student and I'm not quite sure what is acceptable and what is not.

The thesis will contain math formulas, illustrations, images, graphs and tables - like any other paper / thesis in physics. The question is, shall I force my student to use (and learn how to use) certain SW tools (LaTeX, Matlab,...) instead of commonly used office packages (Word, Excel, PowerPoint,...)?

Is it acceptable to provide source files of my thesis and/or Matlab functions/scripts to the student? Note that the field of research is not connected to typography nor data analysis.

Edit considering JeffE's answer:

  Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to require students to use the software tools that are standard in your field when they begin working in your field, even as undergraduates.

There aren't defined standard, or mandatory, tools to use. Just only vague rules how the thesis shoud look like.

Tools for specialized work, say microhardness measurements and analysis, are set and there can't be any doubts and discussions.

Clearly define what are your goals and constraints, and work from there. What are the things that they need to learn in order to progress further in the field (and someday find a job)? What are constraints imposed by the research project you will be working on?

Goals — if learning a specific piece of software is required to become a professional in your field, then it is a de facto standard and they need to learn it. In this, a specific piece of software is just like a particular experimental or mathematical technique.
Constraints — there are cases where you need to restrict the choice of software to interoperate with others. For example, the student might not be able to choose his favorite programming language for a specific project because he has to use a specific advanced library, which only exists in e.g. Python. Or the project actually is to implement a specific functionality in an existing C++ framework. Or one of the goals of the thesis might be to produce technical documentation to be published in a given format.
Other than that, leave them free to choose whatever works for them. Be clear and upfront about what you advise them to use, and what you are willing to teach them (and what you cannot teach them). For example:

  The choice is yours, as long as your are able to efficiently produce and edit a professional-looking 200-page document with many figures, tables, references and subdivisions, and it adheres to the university guidelines. I myself use LaTeX for writing articles and theses, as many colleagues, and I advise you to do the same. I have little experience with word processors. I can help you if you run into problems with the first one, but will not be able to help if you choose a word processor.

I once had a student who mastered MS Word to a level that I had never seen, and did a superb job in an efficient matter. It wouldn't have been bright of me to require him to use LaTeX when he knew another tool.

Fred Brooks says in The Mythical Man-Month

  "A good craftsman is known by his tools"

So if the student has the time, and skill you should force him to use the tools of the trade. You are his trainner, his teacher he doesn't know what he doesn't know, so if the tool is important then he should learn it.

Obviously use judgment the goal is for him to write the thesis not to master tools, so if the deadline is approaching then focus on the product not the tools.


What research explains political attitudes of academics? According to the Times of Higher Education, there are more liberals* than conservatives in the social sciences. The ratio of Democrats to Republicans in economics is 5:1, in law it is 9:1, in psychology 17:1, in journalism 20:1, and in history a whopping 33:1.

From my experience, this trend extends outside the social sciences, i.e. to the humanities and the natural sciences, although it may be strongest in the former. I don't have data handy to back this up.

Is there any serious empirical research into why professionals in academia are more likely to vote democratic than the average of the population? If so, what are the main explanations? (Candidates could be self-selection, socialization, or confounding variables like income and education.)

  Moderator’s notice: As per this meta discussion, all answers to this question must provide external references. Please avoid any discussion about politics (rule of thumb: it should not be possible to deduce your political opinion from your writing). Answers and comments not adhering to this will be deleted without warning.

I really do not think we are going to get to any causal relationship here. One thing you might want to consider is the link between IQ and politics.

Smart people (generally) tend to be more liberal:
https://theconversation.com/do-smart-people-tend-to-be-more-liberal-yes-but-it-doesnt-mean-all-conservatives-are-stupid-57713

Childhood IQ in Britain, for a 1970s cohort, predicts voting for more liberal parties (Greens and Lib Dems):
https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/8896159/childhood_intelligence_predicts_voter.pdf

This answer is only meant as a starting point. You would need to consider all of the evidence from across the world (perhaps the reverse is true, in general, for example. And perhaps other variables come into play).

David French is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonpartisan group that monitors free speech on campus. In a 2005 interview with ABC News [1], French argued that "the universities have been so captured by the left point of view, that you're going to get more political and intellectual diversity at your average suburban mega-church than you are at an elite university." The cause, he believed, was the systematic suppression and censorship of conservatives.

That same year, Rothman, Nevitte and Lichter published a paper [2] using data based on a telephone survey in 1999 of approximately 4000 faculty, administrators, and students. The purpose of this study was to test if professional advancement is influenced by ideological orientation. What they found out, was that conservatives and Republicans taught at lower quality schools, compared with liberals and Democrats. This suggested, they argued, "that conservative complaints of the presence and effects
of liberal homogeneity in academia deserve to be taken seriously".

A 2014 study by Iyengar and Westwood [3] underscored how powerful political bias can be. In an experiment, Democrats and Republicans were asked to choose a scholarship winner from among fictitious finalists, with the experiment tweaked so that applicants sometimes included the president of the Democratic or Republican club. Four-fifths of Democrats and Republicans alike chose a student of their own party to win a scholarship, and discrimination against people of the other party was much greater than discrimination based on race.

For a 2016 study [4], Shields and Dunn surveyed 153 conservative professors. “As two conservative professors,” they wrote in The Washington Post, “we agree that right-wing faculty members and ideas are not always treated fairly on college campuses. But we also know that right-wing hand-wringing about higher education is overblown.” Nevertheless, about one-third of the professors professors admit to using "coping strategies that gays and lesbians have used in the military and other inhospitable work environments", ie they "closeted" themselves by passing as liberals. Some also said they were badly mistreated on account of their politics.

In a 2017 speech before the Stanford Board of Trustees [5], former Provost John Etchemendy argued that he "watched a growing intolerance", "a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for". "It manifests itself", he argued "in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands".

In 2009, world–renowned political scientist Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University for his criticisms of Israel's human rights violations against the Palestinian people [6]. In 2014, co-discoverer or DNA James Watson was forced to sell his Nobel prize after losing most of his income for stating that people of African descent are less intelligent than white people [7]. In 2017, graduate student Lindsay Shepherd was hauled before a three-person panel at Wilfrid Laurier University, which interrogated her for more than 40 minutes for showing a first-year communications class a video snippet from TV Ontario of Jordan Peterson debating another professor on the use of gender pronouns [8]. In 2018, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Amy Wax was removed from teaching mandatory first-year courses for saying in an interview that she didn't think she'd ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class [9].

These are some of many examples where academics / scholars have been reprimanded for making statements deemed too "politically incorrect" by their employers. While such cases are obviously but annectodal evidence at best, they do suggest Etchemendy may have had a point when he said he watched a growing intolerance "that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for". They do suggest it may indeed be safer for conservative professors to pass as liberals. They do suggest that French may have had a point when he argued there was systematic suppression and censorship of conservatives. And they do suggest that Rothman, Nevitte and Lichter may have been right to conclude that that conservative complaints of the presence and effects of liberal homogeneity in academia deserve to be taken seriously.

[1] Pierce, Fort (2005) "Conservatives Censored on College Campuses?"

[2] Rothman, Stanley; Lichter, S. Robert; Nevitte, Neil (2005). "Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty"

[3]: Iyengar, Shanto; Westwood, Sean (2014). "Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization"

[4] Jon A. Shields; Joshua M. Dunn Sr. (2016). "Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University"

[5]: Etchemendy, John (2017) "The threat from within"

[6]: Klein, David (2009) "Why Is Norman Finkelstein Not Allowed to Teach?"

[7] Perry, Keith (2014) "James Watson selling Nobel prize 'because no-one wants to admit I exist"

[8]: Walkom, Thomas (2017) "The problematic case of the Wilfrid Laurier TA who dared to air a debate on grammar"

[9]: Diaz, Andrea (2018) "Law prof ousted from first-year classes after saying black students never graduated top of their class"


Is it acceptable to ask an unknown professor outside my dept for help in a related field during his office hours? Would a professor find it strange or be irritated if an unknown student asks him a question during his office hours that is related to his field but either is or isn't related to any class he is teaching?

Sometimes I encounter a math problem in my engineering class where I'd find it helpful if a math professor could explain a concept to me when I don't have any satisfactory answers. Another example is if I am working on an outside of class project and would like to ask a CS professor what an apache log is?

Is this acceptable?

In general, yes. Personally I've been pretty open to answering questions about my field of expertise from "random" students during my office hours. But:

Ask first: "I was working on X and am wondering about Y. Do you think you would have time to answer a few questions?" Be prepared to hear "No, I'm sorry, I don't."
Ask the right person. Don't assume that a CS professor who teaches machine learning will know anything about Apache logs.
Come prepared with a specific question - don't expect me to explain an entire topic to you from beginning to end, or spend an hour walking you through a tutorial on some programming concept you want to learn.
Don't abuse office hours as a substitute for doing basic research on your own (e.g. "I know I could easily find the answer to my question online, but it was quicker to come ask you during office hours.")
Professors may want to give "priority" to students who are actually enrolled in their classes. If the office hours are busy, try not to monopolize the professor's time - or come back at a less busy time, like the week after the midterm exam instead of the week before ;)

If you send email to a professor, introduce yourself properly and politely,  compose it nicely, and don't be offhanded about it. Otherwise the professor might not take you seriously and ignore the email. I had an otherwise very smart student doing research on land use who wanted to meet professors working in the field. She'd write something like, "hey, could I come meet you?" and then wonder why she got no reply. I had to teach her in etiquette as well as the subject.


Are there any examples of legal issues with academic fraud? If somebody gets a law/engineering degree or something similar with academic fraud surely they could be sued for malpractice?  Maybe another examples is/are doctors.

Are there any examples of this ever?  If somebody got a Computer Science degree (via academic fraud) and then marketed it couldn't they be sued for marketing something they didn't earn?

In the United States and many other countries, engineering and medicine have revocable licenses to practice with an exam as well as the degree requirement.  The same is true of other professions such as law and the CPA designation.  It is presumably difficult-to-impossible to pass the examinations without the knowledge required for the degree.

Practicing such a licensed profession without the requisite license is a criminal offense, at least usually, but it is the absence of the license rather than the academic fraud that's illegal.

Generally what happens to (unlicensed) people who claim degrees they do not have is they get fired for lying on resumes.  I suppose if one held oneself out to the public as having a certain degree and charged for practicing the skill implied by the degree, one could be charged with fraud.  In fact, what likely happens is a civil suit for non-performance.

On the other hand Frank Abagnale did get imprisoned for fraud, although I believe it was the bank fraud, financial fraud, and forgery that nailed him and not academic misconduct, even though he both claimed a non-existent Harvard degree and impersonated a physician.

I have seen examples about teaching. Court can find someone guilty of malpractice if it decides that the professor is being intentionally unfair with assignments or grading. Academical bullying is also a thing.

In such event one can potentialy sue for damages and malpractice.


In U.S. universities, do male professors get paternity leave? Do American universities typically help male professors transition into fatherhood by offering (paid) paternity leave?  If so, what is the standard amount of paid time off that is offered?

Feel free to compare with maternity leave benefits for female professors, but my question is mainly on the availability of paternity leave.

The answer varies wildly across university to university, even within the same class of university. This can go from the mandatory FMLA minimum of 12 weeks (unpaid) to 12 months, with some pay. I've attached a comparison table from a 2009 survey by Robert Drago and Kelly Davis,  Parental Leave and Modified Duties Policies across the Big Ten.

I found this from the AAUP's page on family leave, which is fairly useful: https://www.aaup.org/issues/balancing-family-academic-work/leave-policies

In addition to the formal leave offered, there can also be varieties of teaching relief and tenure clock stoppage for both mothers and fathers. All of this seems to vary from place to place, and probably some details could be negotiated at the time of a job offer.

As AJK said, there's no "standard."  I can't vouch for the reliability of this source but fairygodboss.com states that the average paid paternity leave for colleges and universities in the U.S. is two weeks.


Is it appropriate and useful to inquire if an open position has an internal candidate? It is not unusual for institutes to advertise positions (faculty or not) for which there is an internal candidate.  In such situations, for external candidates, it may be difficult if not impossible to get in.  When a position is advertised, is it appropriate and useful to inquire if a position has an internal candidate already?  It might save a lot of time for the external candidate and possibly others (such as recommendation-letter-writers).

I assume that there are often-if-not-always internal candidates for open positions, in academia and outside. There are always students looking for Ph.D. slots, Ph.D. students looking for postdoc positions, assistant and associate professors looking to move up to the next level. (Same for non-faculty positions, but that seems OT.) Sometimes the people responsible for the position may not even know yet about such internal candidates, because they may not yet have sent in their application.

So the question probably rather is whether these internal candidates are already frontrunners. The professor may want his extremely productive Ph.D. student to continue in the postdoc slot but may need to advertise externally for some procedural reason. The department may want to continue a certain research specialization and plan on promoting the retiring professor's assistant prof. In such a situation, external candidates will need to be very convincing to win.

But: how often will the external candidate be told this? If the external advertisement is legally required, the hiring people may even open themselves up to litigation if they openly tell an applicant that they are only soliciting outside applications as a fig leaf.

On the other hand, the department may explicitly be searching for "new blood", so internal candidates may actually have worse chances than external ones. Which, again, nobody will tell you (or the internal candidate).

Of course, it makes sense to tap your network and see whether the grapevine can tell you more than official channels. However, this kind of information can be unreliable. So if you hear from multiple sources that a given position will be filled internally, it may make sense to not make the effort.

Thus: there will likely be internal candidates, but you will probably not know how good their chances are. If you are a good match for the position, go and apply. Don't worry about internal candidates. This is one part of the hiring situation you can't control, just like the mood of your interviewers. Giving up on an application because there is an internal candidate will be counterproductive in the long run.

It's usually a good idea to make some informal contact with the person offering the job before you submit an application. Send an email to briefly introduce yourself and maybe ask some questions (are there teaching opportunities for example). I've heard of cases where there will be a delayed or curt reply which may indicate that they're not interested in you. On the other hand if someone is genuinely looking for someone they are more likely to reply promptly and positively.


Professor I am working with asked for my code My postdoctoral adviser has a colleague (another professor) who she collaborated with occasionally. This professor has data that I was interested in. Together with my advisor, the three of us started a project for which I did all the modeling.

We have not finished the project yet, but the 'other professor' announced today that he will be moving to another university in the next six months or so (I am not sure exactly when). He asked me if I could share with him a copy of the source code that I wrote for the modeling and analysis of the data. I feel uncomfortable about this, since I don't know if I will be included on manuscripts, new projects, etc. that will be coming out of the current unfinished project. I talked to my postdoctoral advisor, but she is not very helpful and actually suggested to 'just give him a copy of the [source code]'. I am not against sharing code, but I am just afraid this other professor will be using (a modified version of) my code and then not include me on a any manuscript that will be resulting from the code.

You seem uncomfortable sharing interim results with  collaborators. That goes against the collaboration spirit and I implore you to share all results. In the future, don't start a collaboration with anyone who you aren't willing to share interim results with.

  I am just afraid this other professor will be using (a modified version of) my code and then not include me on a any manuscript that will be resulting from the code.

You are afraid this other professor will commit academic fraud, steal intellectual property, or both, seemingly without any basis for concern. Again, I implore you to share all results. (Although I think it is unnecessary, you could defend against this other professor by making interim results available online.)

Read the comments, they are excellent.

Given the nature of human beings, you are right to be skeptical. No one is going to look out for you except you. It comes down to ownership. Is the institution you are at now aware that this guy wants to take intellectual property paid for by their institution to a different institution? I would go up the ladder and make sure you get clearance from someone that it is okay to allow this person to take your work elsewhere. Colleges are in competition with one another despite what those in academia like to admit. You might find yourself in hot water if it turns out this guy goes somewhere else and publishes his work giving the new institution credit.

All of these answers suggesting you capitulate in the name of charity are hogwash. Follow your gut. Don't let people steal your success or try to guilt you out of it in the name of obedience or subservience to the collective.


Is it impolite to not reply back during the weekend? When someone writes to me while I am online during the weekend (a student or a colleague), is it impolite to not reply back, especially when they can see that I am online (on Mattermost for example or on any other app ...), although I reply back first thing Monday morning?
Edit: First of all, thank you all for your answers! :) I would like to clarify something: Even if I am working on the weekend, would you still say that it's not impolite to not reply back?
Edit edit: Since it was pointed out in a recent answer that this might depend on the location of the university, for me it's in France, but I guess (?) it would be more or less the same around Europe, though outside Europe, there seem to be other etiquettes..

No it’s not rude, it’s called boundaries and you are allowed to have them. Simply because you are online and doing something else does not entitle anyone else to your response. There’s some nuance to this though, depending on your relationship to the person emailing, but boundaries can and should be established.

Yes, it is impolite to intentionally not respond to someone when you can easily do so.
It's not immoral or unprofessional. You have no obligation to do work outside of work hours. Nonetheless, that is not the standard of "polite", which is behaving in such a way as to make life the most pleasant it can be for those who interact with you. If you wish to aspire to this higher standard, you must consider the feelings of others and whether your refusal to respond is causing them distress that you could easily avert.


Do I not have the personality for a PhD? I've been in the PhD program for a couple years now and I feel like people have a lot of expectations about the way I should think and feel about things.  Not just my technical competence, but also my motivations and personality.  I am wondering if my motivations disqualify me from being a good PhD student.

People expect me to have a specific research area I'm very interested in.  I would be fine working in any area and I'm not particularly passionate about any specific field.  They also expected me to know who I wanted to work with before I applied to the school (or even choose the school based on the advisor), and I only started thinking about that during visit weekend, when professors pitched their research to the students.
I chose which schools to apply to based on the US News rankings, and I went to grad school because it was more prestigious than the jobs I would be capable of getting.  It seems like nobody in grad school does this, even though I feel like for most people it is natural to go with the most prestigious option.
People expect me to go to talks and read papers for fun.  I don't understand how most people could possibly find talks fun.  Honestly I would rather watch a movie or play tennis.  I also find papers boring and difficult to read, unless they are in very soft subjects with no math.
When people come to my school to give talks, people invite us to meet with the speaker one on one.  I have no idea what students would talk to the speaker about or why they would want to sign up to talk to a stranger.  I guess they could collaborate with the speaker on research, but I would expect the professors to set up these kinds of collaborations instead of the students.  (It would seem weird to finagle my own collaborations because the advisor might not want to collaborate with those people.)
I have seen professors leave my university and expect their students to go with them.  I think if my advisor left my university, I wouldn't want to leave, because I have good friends here and I am dating someone.  It seems weird to be expected to uproot your life and move across the country just because your boss is leaving.
I follow my advisor's instructions on things and once in a while he says that I need to be more independent.  But if I did that I would be going against what my advisor tells me to do, and I think it's weird that my advisor tells me to do things and then tells me not to do what he tells me to do.  He said he expects me to "push back" and I find that kind of intimidating, because he is a professor after all.

It seems to me that many of these points could hit on very superficial differences — e.g., use of different words to describe essentially the same thing, or emphasis of one type of feeling over another, although most people have both.  On the other hand, taken together these could be signs that you are not interested in a long term (i.e., post-PhD) academic career.  Or not: that's up to you to figure out.  Let me quickly address your points:

  1) People expect me to have a specific research area I'm very interested in. I would be fine working in any area and I'm not particularly passionate about any specific field."

The negative way to spin that is that you're not passionate about anything.  The positive way is that you're interested in everything and willing to be versatile.  I am a tenured academic, and construing the above sentences in the positive way as I did applies pretty well to me.  Why are modular forms or Shimura varieties more interesting than Galois cohomology or geometry of numbers?  Answer: they're not, and I think it's slightly weird that most of my colleagues work exclusively in just one or two of these areas.

  They also expected me to know who I wanted to work with before I applied to the school (or even choose the school based on the advisor), and I only started thinking about that during visit weekend, when professors pitched their research to the students.

You didn't mention your academic field.  In mine (mathematics), most American PhD students don't give any serious thought to their research area until their second year.  So… clearly not a fundamental tenet of "PhD personalities".

  2) I chose which schools to apply to based on the US News rankings...

So?  I see no issue here whatsoever.

  3) People expect me to go to talks and read papers for fun. I don't understand how most people could possibly find talks fun. Honestly I would rather watch a movie or play tennis.

This seems like a conflation of what "fun" means.  There is professional fun and leisure fun.  You watch movies in the evenings and on weekends, and (except for weekend conferences, which I freely admit are not necessarily the events that I look forward to with bated breath) you attend talks during normal business hours.  On the other hand if you never read papers except when specifically asked / required to do so, that could be a problem.

  I also find papers boring and difficult to read, unless they are in very soft subjects with no math.

You didn't say what field you are in.  (If it's math, this is concerning!)  It is also worth pointing out that reading papers is really hard for most graduate students for the first 1–5 years or so.

  4) When people come to my school to give talks, people invite us to meet with the speaker one on one. I have no idea what students would talk to the speaker about or why they would want to sign up to talk to a stranger.

I felt exactly the same way as a graduate student.  Why would a famous mathematician want to meet a 24 year-old who is not yet fully fluent in the language the mathematician has been speaking for the last 20–40 years?  I found it very strange that some of my classmates saw no awkwardness there.  Now as a thesis advisor I wish my students interacted more with visiting mathematicians…

Somewhere between being a grad student and advising them I began to view myself as a professional. I now know that most academic jobs are offered based on some prior knowledge of or interaction with the candidate, so having visiting luminaries be able to connect a name to a face and view you as someone who is actively participating in the profession is very valuable. Getting students to understand, believe in and take part in their own professional development is one of my major goals these days (I've just accepted the job of departmental graduate coordinator)

  5) I have seen professors leave my university and expect their students to go with them. I think if my advisor left my university, I wouldn't want to leave, because I have good friends here and I am dating someone.

Here I think you are probably suffering from "small sample size" issues.  The majority of graduate students do not leave when their advisor leaves.  It's nice for the advisor to offer the option, but it is not practical in many cases… for the reasons you say.  On the other hand, if the idea of being uprooted seems sufficiently bad to you, then the academic lifestyle may prove unappealing, because the "uprooting" is probably going to happen several times before (if!) you land a tenure-track job.

  6) I follow my advisor's instructions on things and once in a while he says that I need to be more independent. But if I did that I would be going against what my advisor tells me to do, and I think it's weird that my advisor tells me to do things and then tells me not to do what he tells me to do.

I think you are not properly understanding what your advisor wants.  You make it sound like he wants you to sometimes stand up and refuse to do what he asks.  That's insubordination / contrariness.  Independence means that you do what your advisor asks and you do other things on top of it that you thought of yourself.

In summary: I see nothing definitive here.  I could try to read the tea leaves but… it doesn't matter what you or I think right now.  Unless you are miserable and/or failing out of the program, you should continue on in the PhD program, both doing your best work and doing your best to be happy about it.  As you proceed, keep an eye out for both things.  As you near graduation, you will have a better idea of where to proceed from there.  You don't need to "figure out your personality" as a second year student, and I don't see much of anything positive coming from it.  Definitely resist the idea that you must have a similar personality and/or similar practices to those around you in order to be successful.  Even — especially — in academia, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

People expect me to have a specific research area I'm very interested
  in. I would be fine working in any area and I'm not particularly
  passionate about any specific field.

This seems to be your only problem. The other issues stem out of your lack of passion for what you are researching into. Each PhD program is different and each field is different, but I think very few people find passion right when they start any PhD program. It would be like falling in love with the first girl you meet.

In the beginning of most PhD programs, you are exposed to a great variety of new research methods that you can use to better understand the world around you. Then you suddenly find yourself being able to research into issues that concern you. That is when you develop your passion. Just keep studying hard, be patient, and keep your mind open and you will find something you are interested in.


Relation of lecture mandatory attendance and lecture quality My university recently made a direction that lectures attendance is mandatory. Now my question is, are there any studies that compare mandatory and not mandatory lectures quality? The university is trying to increase its quality and this was its main step this year.

More description:
As lecture quality comparison I mean, when is it easier to concentrate, study, teach and learn? When lectures are mandatory, there are a lot of students that doesn't have real interest in subject and are disturbing and making noise. That influences all students, as you can't hear what professor is saying, professor is disturbed and interrupted in teaching. So are there any studies that prove this?

Is this in overall a good step of university? I believe that good professors can motivate students to come to lectures, and if lectures are empty, it's a sign of something (not necessarily bad quality of professor) and this doesn't solve it at all, or am I wrong?

In fact there are many studies undertaken in this topic. Below you may find the link to some of these papers.

Classroom attendance: Factors and perceptions of students and faculty in US schools of pharmacy
Student nurse absenteeism in higher education: An argument against enforced attendance
Student and teacher attendance: The role of shared goods in reducing absenteeism
Why do students miss lectures? A study of lecture attendance amongst students of health science
Does lecture attendance affect academic performance? Panel data evidence for introductory macroeconomics
The impact of charter school attendance on student performance

You can find tons of papers in this topic. Look at this link and her

Hope it helps

My school also has a mandatory attendance policy. While some uninterested students do cause problems there are classroom management techniques to handle that. For example when my students get out of control I warn them. If they continue then I remove them and mark them absent for the day.

While I do understand you are looking for studies I want to make clear that there is not much reason for lectures to drop in quality just because you have a forced attendance policy.

All that said, I could see how in-class activities have lower participation in such a situation and that could lead to reduced learning for the group.


Etiquette for returning to do research as grad student in same field as undergrad lab in same institution I'm a medical student planning on taking a year off in the middle to do research. I'm currently at the same intitution as when I was an undergrad (~4 yrs ago) and want to do research in roughly the same area. I did a decent amount of research as an undergrad, all in a single lab. The research area I'm interested in is pretty small and everyone knows each other, regularly does joint journal clubs, etc.

Question: Does it matter if I reach out to the same lab I used to work in? Would it be weird if I did? Would it be rude/inappropriate if I didn't? If I do reach out to a different lab, would it be expected that I ping my old adviser to say I'm back working in research, anyway (so I don't surprise them when I run into them randomly)? Or does none of this matter very much?

I guess I'm just ignorant about the etiquette surrounding stuff like this and was hoping for some clarification. To be clear, I had no problems with my previous lab--I had a good experience and liked my old adviser.

Absolutely not rude or inappropriate, I'm a bit puzzled where you got the suggestion that it might be. There is also nothing wrong with going to a different group. You can certainly let your previous advisor know, and they would be a good reference for you who can speak about your research ability to other professors you are interested in working with, but you don't have any obligation to that professor to only ever work for them.

However, is it normal for people in medical school in your area to take a year off to do research? That part seems a bit more of a potential issue to me. Certainly there are joint research/medical programs (e.g. an MD/PhD in the US), but they typically involve much more than 1 year of research. If this is not a problem where you are, though, then there is nothing wrong with going back to a lab you have positive experience with.

One other thing to consider is whether you could gain some additional breadth of experience in another lab, but this is more about your future goals rather than an issue of what is "appropriate."

The etiquette is to go do something else.  I disagree with it and think you should do whatever you know and can get done.  Life is too short.