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Why are most universities reluctant to offer open-ended contracts to research-funded-staff (such as postdocs)?
In some countries, labour law requires that if an individual has been employed on temporary contracts for a certain amount of time, the employer must offer them a permanent contract (or let them go).  They may be reluctant to do so when labour law stipulates they need a reasonable cause to fire employees; however, if a company cannot afford to hold on to people, they can and are let go.
Somehow, different principles seem to apply within universities, where postdocs¹ and other research-funded staff are often held on contract after contract, up to an entire career long.  The postdocs at my university want to persuade the university to offer postdocs a permanent contract, but with the understanding that if the money source for their salary runs out, they will be let go; just like employees in industry would.  I'm told some universities already apply that principle.  It would not increase the de facto job security for postdocs much, but it would open up the option of getting a mortgage for those who expect to stay in the same city for a long time.
Considering that universities could let go of staff if they can show they can no longer afford to hold on to them, why are they so reluctant to offer postdocs a contract that doesn't stipulate an ending date?
NB: to the best of my knowledge, this phenomenon is global; therefore I am interested in answers that are either generic or specific to a particular country

¹By postdoc I mean anyone employed by the university with a role primarily to do research.  Formally my employer calls this "research funded staff" but colloquially this group is referred to as postdocs regardless of age.

A country tag would be helpful.

Sequential contracts are different from one, larger one. I saw an opening for a "two year minus one day" contract somewhere in Canada...I'm guessing that there the limit is two years. Then they fire and re-hire you, its a different contract, loophole achieved.

@FábioDias Depends on the law, I think in Sweden the law is something like two years within a three year period or something like that, but I believe academia is exempted (I'm not sure, though).

@gerrit: As I understand it, a lot of this comes down to an EU directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Work_Directive_1999, which various member states have implemented in different ways. I'm not aware of anywhere which explicitly names academics as excepted, but each version will have loopholes.

@fabio in the UK that does not work and is still considered continuous employment, not that employers have not tried it.

@gerrit You should also probably note that in many cases an employee can't sign away statutory protections from employment law regarding situations like being "let go when the money runs out". As such, the University, as the employer, would have a large number of potential pay-offs or legal difficulties, if personal relations with the researchers soured.

This issue touches deep into my heart. Thanks for asking this question.

Something that may be important in the case of post-docs is, that often their position is attached to specific funding. - Thus you are working for 2 years on Grant A. Now if your department is good at getting funding, you continue on Grant B, but if Grant B were not obtained, you would not have the position (unless there is other funding, internal money, etc. etc.)

Using the term "postdoc" may cause confusion, because to me a postdoc is by definition an early-career researcher hired for a limited period.  But the question as I understand it has nothing specifically to do with the terminology.  It amounts to why universities don't offer long-term contracts conditionally on maintaining adequate external funding, but rather offer successive short-term contracts.
One answer is that sometimes they do offer long-term contracts.  In U.S. academic medical research, it's common to have long-term "soft money" positions for which most or all of the funding comes from grants.  There are even tenured soft money positions, in which you have a guarantee that you cannot be fired without good reason, but where there is no obligation for the university to pay the salary except as supplied by external grants.  (Sometimes they are responsible for a small percentage of it, and sometimes none at all.)  This becomes less common as you move further from medicine, but long-term soft money positions exist across science and engineering in the U.S., at least in small numbers.
Why not always do this?  One reason is to avoid raising expectations.  My impression is that it's rare to offer a long-term soft money contract unless there's a reasonably high chance that money will continue to be available for quite some time.  Even if there are no legal obligations, it's terrifically awkward to fire someone from a position for which they mistakenly believed funding would continue, and it's easy for people on soft money to be irrationally optimistic.  (You see this frequently with tenure-track jobs: someone starts by recognizing that they genuinely might not get tenure, but after a year or two their nerves have settled and they find it tougher to take the possibility seriously.)  This means there's a strong incentive not to offer long-term contracts that are too speculative.
Another issue is whether the department or university really wants this person to have a long-term affiliation.  There's sometimes a feeling that people on short-term contracts don't really count for the department's reputation, since they are just visiting anyway, while people on long-term contracts count more.  This means other faculty members have more of a reason to exercise oversight.

This answer is from a mostly German perspective, but I guess parts of it would apply to other countries with similar labour laws.
The key problem is who to "let go" when funding is short. Are you always going to fire the person that happened to work on the most recently finished project if there is no new funding coming in around that time? Well, according to labour laws you can't do that with unlimited contracts.
In industry, if money is running short for a company, it's not only up to the company to decide who will have to go and who will stay. Instead, a dismissal plan has to be carefully worked out between for example the union and the company, and deciding who has to go is to a large extent based on social aspects and time someone has stayed with the company. Take this to academia, and you'd always have to fire the youngest person when money runs short, which for sure universities don't want to do.
Also, in contrast to companies who can run up losses against their capital for some time, universities (at least in the systems I know) can not do that, so they don't really have the flexibility to tide over a bad time in funding.

Regarding the general employment laws, there is usually a catch with the "let go if you run out of money". Once you trigger that process, the law puts limitations on how you can hire in the future. For example, in Finland, if you lay off someone because you want to discontinue that role in the company, you are not allowed to employ anyone for the same or very similar role for a year and you are supposed to offer them an option of transferring to a different role with open vacancies, even with lower salary. (Which logically makes sense, coz otherwise companies would always use that or some other similar extenuating circumstance argument as a loophole to fire anyone unwanted with a permanent contract).

I can see how that would be a problem in academia where there might genuinely be a 3-month funding gap.  Is that not anyone, or not anyone else?  My department does have the policy of offering postdocs near the end of their contract the option of transferring to newly opening postdocs, but they have no obligation to do so.  With permanent contracts, they would.

You are not supposed to be reopening that role for a year. So technically, anyone. Though, to be honest, I am not a labour law expert. I believe it would make sense for postdocs to consult a good labour lawyer before making a proposal to the university. There may be some loopholes that work in your favour.

Another thing to consider is how you define budget. Because technically, "we ran out of money" should apply equally to everyone with a similar role. Which in your case is probably all postdocs in your department or potentially even across several departments. The funding, however, may come specifically to a certain research group. So it is possible that unless the university sets up every research group as a separate legal entity, they either have to lay off across the board at once or cannot lay off anyone at all.

Good point. Although the university would be able to argue that a sociologist on a project where the funding has run out cannot reasonably be offered to work on particle physics, I can imagine a situation in which the university would be required to channel money from the particle physicists to the sociologists to honour the sociologist's employment contract, for the university as a whole has not run out of money. But surely there must be analogous situations from other employers; but that would be a question for [Workplace.SE] or [Law.SE], not here.

Since the question is tagged UK, it's worth noting that here a researcher on an open contract isn't simply "let go", but rather "made redundant". Redundancy isn't a trivial occurrence, and implies several fairly onerous commitments on the employer, including redundancy pay, and a similar offer of alternative employment. https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/overview

@origimbo But Anyone who’s worked continually for the same employer for 2 years or more has the same redundancy rights as a permanent employee, so that wouldn't make a difference for the employer (I'm on a 4-year contract).

@gerrit it will, in the sense that the university is not obliged to renew the contract after 4 years, so they don't need to secure a permanent source of funding.

@OlgaK Why would the university be obliged to secure a permanent source of funding for a contract that is permanent rather than 4 years? Other employers have no such obligation. And if I read gov.UK correctly, not renewing a fixed-term contract is considered a dismissal and for contracts longer than 2 years the rights are the same, so it looks like we have the same rights already (I can't find anything in our local collective agreement saying otherwise)

@gerrit I suspect none of us are lawyers, but my understanding is that ceasing to employ a person on a single fixed term contract for a project that the employee knew would end after 4 years almost certainly counts as a justified dismissal, whereas letting the same person go for the same reason after multiple contract renewals, or after 4 years and one day must be treated differently, with a greater onus on the employer to do everything right. As you commented elsewhere, this could mean employing a researcher far outside their own field.

@gerrit other employers are required to "secure permanent funding" implicitly. Your business is either a going concern or bankrupt. Going concern means you are a functioning business in the foreseeable future. And functioning means you have to deliver on your liabilities, in particular, paying salaries to your employees. In other words, once you offer a permanent contract as an employer, you make a commitment to pay the salary in the foreseeable future.

Because they can. It isn't that companies are less reluctant than universities to offer permanent positions; universities -- at least in many European countries -- are in a better position legally to use fixed-term contracts.
Universities' interests as employers are not so different from companies. They like flexibility.

More and more, university research is funded by third party grants. This is a rather new development in European higher education. For example in Germany, between 1999 and 2011, third-party funding increased by 204%, while government-provided research funding increased only by 42%. These grants have a fixed duration and therefore don't allow for the long-term financing of permanent positions. To create permanent positions, financing would have to rely more on a university's basic budget, in turn requiring larger university funding, which in Europe typically comes from public education budgets. Thus, at the end of the day this is a political decision about the allocation of public spending with all the distributive bargaining that it entails.
Postdocs are hired by PIs or department heads with permanent positions. Those have mixed incentives. On the one hand, PIs need postdocs to keep their research going. On the other hand, PIs want to remain free in their own career choices, which implies the freedom to move to a different institution. In that case, they either have to convince their current postdocs to come along and the new institution to bring those postdocs on board. The latter impairs their own 'hireability' and their bargaining stance vis-à-vis the new institution; the first  depends on the goodwill of the postdoc. Or the PI can leave the current postdocs behind, but this will not be welcomed by the old institution, as it impairs its attractiveness for any successors who might want to bring in or hire their own staff.

Thus universities have similar interests as companies about flexible employment (although for partly different reasons). However, they have different opportunities:

Short fixed-term contracts indeed allow more flexibility than permanent positions. Letting go of employees on permanent positions is costly for the employer, and it is not easy: Compensations have to be paid, notice periods and social criteria (determining e.g. who has to be fired first) have to be obeyed, and perhaps even "social plans" have to be negotiated with the unions. The scope and stringency of dismissal protection varies between countries; by and large is is stronger in scandinavian social democratic systems and in continental conservative systems with a tradition of "neocorporatist" social partnership, such as Germany and France. It is more limited in liberal systems like the UK, the U.S. and in Eastern Europe. In any case, the point of dismissal protection is obviously to make dismissals more difficult.
Employers can use fixed-term contracts to work around this constraint, but governments set legal limits to this strategy by stipulating when work contracts can be time-bound. In Germany, for example, the Befristungsgesetz (time-limitation law) says that companies can use fixed term contracts for more than two years only for certain reasons (e.g. parental leave replacement). However, the legal bounds of fixed-term contracts are much more lenient for universities. The Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (fixed-term contract law for the sciences -- a nice German compound noun) allows fixed-term contracts for various reasons, most of which are trivial in academia. Examples include that the position is financed by soft-money (i.e. postdocs) or that the position also serves a training purpose (PhD students). I assume that similar laws exist in other countries.

In sum, universities as employers have similar interests compared to companies, but they have different opportunities.

As for your first point, I don't see how a P.I. relying on continued grant success is fundamentally different from a company relying on continued sales.  In both cases they could let people on "permanent" contracts go if income drops and they can't afford to keep them.

More and more, university research is funded by third party grants — As opposed to what?

@JeffE as opposed to direct state subsidies I assume.

@silvado Was there ever a time when research was primarily or even significantly supported by direct state subsidies?  (Not in my field, at least within my lifetime, at least within the US.)

@JeffE In Germany direct state subsidies make about 80 % of the total university budget, formerly it was even more. That is not easily split into teaching and research budgets, but still state subsidies would be the most significant chunk even when considering just research.

@JeffE In The Netherlands, 57% of university funding is from the national government.  This is used to pay salaries for lecturers, education infrastructure, laboratories, libraries, real estate, support staff.  This is the second-lowest figure in Europe; only in the UK it is lower (40%).  In Norway and Iceland it's over 90%.  The remainder is tuition fees (high in UK, moderate in NL, zero in Norway, Sweden, Iceland) and national or international grant funding.

@gerrit Almost 100% of academic research funding in the US comes from the federal government, but faculty must still apply for grants from federal agencies to obtain that funding. That money is counted separately from direct state (not federal) funding, which supports only a tiny fraction of research expenditures even at public universities.  At least at my large public US university, federal money for research is a larger fraction of the university budget than direct state support.

@JeffE Clarification: the 57% is direct funding.  A further 7% is funding through the Dutch equivalent of the NSF, which is competitive.  Those numbers cover all university expenses, I don't know the figures specifically for research.

@gerrit Exactly. The difference is in labour law, not in incentives.
Companies and PIs have the same incentive to be able to let people go when not enough money comes in. But different rules apply to companies and PIs relying on grants. The temporary funding through a grant can be used as a legal reason to use a fixed-term contract instead of a permanent one. Companies don't have this "tool". Granted, I'm generalizing from the German situation here.

I'm going to question the concept of "continuing funding source" and its expiration. Most postdocs paid from grants are in fact paid from different grants at different times, and sometimes from department money. The postdoc may or may not be aware of this, but in all cases where I have paid postdocs (quite a number of cases), we've frequently switched from which account someone is paid, in some cases making the change retroactively.
In other words, it is difficult to define what it would actually mean to have continuing funding. If I have paid a postdoc from 3 different grants in the past, all of which have run out, but I have a fourth grant that was approved, would that require me to continue paying the postdoc until that fourth grant also runs out?

Adding (quite late!) a slightly different perspective to the excellent answers already there.
As far as I know, in many countries in Western Europe, the long term dynamic  is actually the opposite: a few decades ago, the academic workforce used to consist of a large majority of permanent employees (with public servant status or similar). Quite consistently with this model, funding was largely channeled directly to research institutions which then enjoyed a quite high degree of freedom as to which projects they choose to fund.
In the past couple of decades, these European countries progressively switched to the US/UK competitive model. Similarly to the capitalist model in economy, competition is meant to encourage the best researchers to strive for the best funding opportunities. This naturally implies a significant reorganization of the way resources are allocated: in order to maintain a permanent competition between researchers and institutions, most of the funding is allocated on a "project" basis: researchers submit their project, projects are evaluated and compared against each other, and the winning team gets the money. Projects must be limited in time for the same reasons.
Given the very high degree of specialization involved in every research project and the uncertainty for any specialized team to secure funding in the long term, it wouldn't make any economic sense for an academic institution to keep a large proportion of permanent researchers on their payroll; the model clearly calls for hiring specialized research staff on a temporary basis, for the duration of the funding.

@NajibIdrissi I admit that my answer is quite subjective, since I didn't find any statistics to support it (to be clear, I didn't find any statistics at all about this point). I'm not sure what is wrong with it though, and your comment doesn't really help.


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Academic Genealogy
Mathematics Genealogy project has existed for many years. It currently  has 170,235 records as of 15 May, 2013. I understand there are many computer scientists in that database since computer science is generally considered a branch of mathematics.
I have found several other similar efforts. For example, the Academic genealogy of theoretical physicists Wiki page consists of about 100 theoretical physicists. I cannot find Physics Genealogy project in general. A Chemical Genealogy Database does not appear to have built a very large database.
My questions are:

Are there genealogy project for other disciplines?
Is there a general academic genealogy project somewhere? If yes, where? If not, are there efforts to construct it?

So you want to find the 'parent' which would tie together all of the other genealogy projects?

@earthling Yes, if there is one. So, I don't have to Google everywhere.

This could be one such starting point. I don't think there is a definitive source though. http://academictree.org/

The Mathematics Genealogy Project is already broader than math. It touches many disciplines related to math in contemporary academia and, as you go back in time, includes a wide portion of academic work. 1000 years ago my academic ancestors were a bunch of bishops. The difference between mathematics, philosophy, and theology was not always very clear or very large.

@Axel Please pay attention to my question •Are there genealogy project for other disciplines?

Mathematics Genealogy project has existed for many years. - Citation needed.

@LeonMeier the project went online there in fall 1997.

I believe Academic Tree qualifies as a general academic genealogy project. It includes the fields of:

Neuroscience, Experimental Psychology, Linguisitcs, Primatology, History,
  Philosophy, Music, Law, Theology, Economics, Advertising, Ingestive Behavior,
  Physics, Chemistry, Oceanography, Drosophila Genetics,
  Fission, Yeast Genetics, Mycology and Fungal Genetics, Evolutionary
  Biology, Marine Ecology, Terrestrial Ecology, Developmental Biology, Cell
  Biology, Telomere and Telomerase, Infectious Disease, Neuropathology,
  Computational Biology, Science and Techology Studies, Biomechanics

I think the neurotree subtree is the largest of the areas covered with 40,000 people. It allows me to trace my academic linage back to Jesus Christ (thanks to the philosophy tree) in a mere 88 steps.

The Mathematical Genealogy Project has well over 100,000 so it is definitely larger.

@BenjaminMakoHill I don't understand your comment. Why does the number matter in terms of answering the question?

I think I misinterpreted your answer. You said that neutreeo was the largest with 40,000 but it seemed, in your original text, that you were claiming that neurotree was largest genealogical database on the Internet, not the largest subarea covered by the Academic Tree website. I edited your answer to try to clear this up. If my edits are indeed correct, you can ignore my comment.

@DanielE.Shub I am wondering about the engineering disciplines.

There used to be a computer science offshoot of the mathematics project, but it's disappeared!  I was on both, but only put my PhD students on the CS one.  It was a pain.  There may have been issues e.g. about multiple supervisor, disputed supervision, policing?

I don't think multiple supervisor would be an issue. There are math PhDs with multiple advisors in the math project. My real question is, why math is successful but other fields are not that successful?

@scaaahu If you look at http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/acknowledgments.php the answer to why the Math Geneology Project is still around looks like "money." Mostly raised from individual contributors.

@BSteinhurst Thanks for the info. I just look at the last section: To the order of FLT (FWT), etc. I agree money is one of the factors. Now, my question is, there is no or not enough money from contributors for other fields? Engineering seems to be more wealthy than others. This is still a puzzle to me.

@scaaahu I think you are underestimating the amount of work that goes into collecting that money. Talk to any fundraiser and they will tell you it is a nontrivial task.

Wikidata collects doctoral advisor relationships between reseachers (among many other kinds of relationships). By now there are 900 such relationships1 but I would not be suprised if people start to import data from other academic genealogy projects.

1Try SPARQL query SELECT (COUNT(*) AS ?c) { ?s p:P184 ?o  } to get current numbers. Anyone more familiar with SPARQL can surely query a distribution among academic disciplines.

Does this require both researchers to meet wikipedia's notability standards? If so, it would only record a small fraction of all such relationships.

Wikidata's notability standards are less strict. I'd guess at least all PhD's having advised another PhD can be included.

@Jakob standards are less strict, but "has advised a PhD" would probably still fall well below their threshold.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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Persistent issues with salary pay as a postdoc in China: What can I do?
I am a third-time postdoc, and had never before had problems with getting paid. For almost two years now I have been a postdoctoral fellow at a university in southern China. This is my first experience in Asia, and thus I am not sure of how common the situation I am facing is. Communication is arduous, not due to language differences, but a number of cultural traits which are hard to explain.
At the end of my previous contract, I contacted many institutions for job opportunities. I did not plan on accepting yet another postdoc, but these colleagues here convinced me (> 100-long-email negotiation) that I'd be paid a good salary, enjoy a good work environment, and easily take an assistant professor position as soon as conditions allowed. To make it clear, I signed a postdoctoral fellow contract for a 120k RMB salary per year, with a promise of an extra 60K RMB per year to be provided by the college. There are some extras on the contract, such as 10K RMB for purchasing a laptop, and reimbursement for moving expenses  (to date, I never saw those).
I was instructed to apply for a visa after signing the contract. I needed a certain official document about which they claim they were unaware. After further email exchanges where I had pictures and links about the document, it took 2 months to get it by mail. This delayed my arrival btwo 2 weeks from the start of the contract, but over email they said that was no problem. In reality, they never paid me that 1st month while dismissing it by saying "probably will fix that later".
Another full month came without any pay, and apparently the administration couldn't agree with the bank on spelling my name, but I never knew the details. After many trips to the administration to find out what was wrong, I was paid ca. 5,500 RMB for the month. I tried to complain but no one would understand me. Then the confusion started.
I will try to summarise below as best as I can. It is really complicated, and everyone tells me "not to worry".

I get paid ca. 5K RMB as fixed salary on the 5th-6th every month.
Around the 25th they pay me another instalment which is highly variable, typically within 1.5K-4.2k RMB. (Tends to be higher before long holidays).
After one year I got ca. 90K RMB, irregularly paid out of the contract's 120K.
Only after aggressively complaining, hinting a lawsuit, I received 100K out of the promised extra 2x60K. (divided in 3 irregular transfers, made by some 18-y-old undergrad, late at night)

I get more info only by pressing uncomfortably hard. I was once told I'd get 13 payments per year (never happened). Then I was told some unspecified large sum is retained to fund my expenses to any trips/conferences I might wish to attend. I was not clearly informed of when or even if I would get the withheld amount. Few other postdocs openly discussed this problem with me, and they said (one Chinese and one foreigner) they had the same issue. The Chinese postdoc recently was offered to move to a new salary regime where he now gets a fixed, higher salary (took him months to tell me).
To make things even more complicated:

I have found in my internal access system some separate account originally containing 40K RMB under my name (some "funding" mentioning my name), which is being used to apparently pay internal procedures. Upon asking about it, I was told to "not worry about that". There are currently <20K RMB left in this virtual account.
A PI which is not the person I dealt with over emails is the person who signed my contract. According with local standards I am then supposed to consider him my "leader". This person is frequently absent, shows no interest in what I do, and refuses to reply any email about my salary/project. Now I am pushed to list this PI's name as last author in anything I write. My first paper from here is about to come out, and at the last minute I am requested to ask the editor to finally list this PI as the corresponding author.

I feel like I am being constantly blackmailed over retained promised salary payment. My visa expires in a few months. They passively owe me >80K RMB and I do not know what to do. I hear that suing is usually not advisable in China as lawyers ask for huge fees and judges tend to favor local standards and influential institutions/persons, plus the defendant will typically delay forever by refusing to engage.
I wish to ask whether anyone here had a similar situation, and would know what could be done? Particularly in China?
Before you ask: further unmentioned issues not directly related to salary finally did not make this a "healthy work environment". I am now informally told that "it is really hard for foreigners to get accepted locally as assistant professor because getting a major NSF grant is required, and that depends on significant connections (guanxi) and understanding of Chinese language/culture". Not that I was planning on staying longer, but just to clarify.
* UPDATE * 02/04/2018
I finally left China yesterday. I will summarise the chain of events and the current situation. I think I understand most of their scheme now.
About two months prior to my departure I started pressing the administration about the rest of the salary. They insisted a large, unspecified part, would be paid as soon as I finished all necessary exit procedures correctly. Moreover, the secretaries said a part of the payment would be retained as "taxes," but they were unable to specify what percentage nor type of taxes. Exit procedures included preparing lengthy reports which had not been requested before. At the same time they further reduced my salary, interrupting the last "2nd parts of salary" due to "unforeseen reasons" and said they'd try to fix that also at the very end!
After I quickly assembled reports and delivered all documents (signed by several professors who make it clear they are making some favor), the administration agreed to finally calculate how much they owed me. I went there several times only to hear back more nonsense. For instance they kept remarking they might not pay me for the last month "because I had delivered a final report prior to the end of the contract period" as they instructed!
Finally, after pressing them considerably, within 10 days of my departure they provided me their numbers. They would pay me a "reward" for completing documents, plus one month of basic salary, and promised a large sum adding up to the final amount... in exchange for invoices.
I confirmed with responsible PIs the need for invoices. They explicitly instructed me to buy invoices from companies they'd recommend by paying 10-15% of the declared value to "reimburse the rest of my salary". They insisted this is common procedure, offering help to "find invoices to exchange". I was shocked and refused.
I went to the Principal Office with a complaint letter, in English and Chinese. I spoke with the sub-secretary for 1h. They explain that what is declared on the contract as salary includes a significant amount which is to be spent with research only, and that invoices ensure the university can pay/reimburse. They say this is detailed in rules in Chinese in some book somewhere if anyone had questions. I made it clear nobody had ever clarified that, it should be explicated in the contract, and that I could not deal bogus invoices in exchange for payment. I told them I could only provide true invoices, which they accepted as a clean solution. They thanked me for "bringing me a major misunderstanding to their attention".
Finally I purchased credit for services with biotech companies with about 5k USD off my promised contractual salary. Got the "rewards" plus some delayed payments. It is not crystal clear from the numbers where is the last month of payment (I haven't had the guts to sieve that now).
After being paid I contacted my Consulate reporting the events, letters. Mainly to ensure some authority was aware in case of any political revenge (e.g. unfair accusation, arrest). I finally left without any events. I avoided physical contact with the PIs, who refrained from answering any further emails after I refused to purchase invoices. A few hours ago the Consulate notified the situation to the local Foreign Affairs Office, and emphasised it looks very serious.
This is where I stand. I hope something will be done to at least stop these schemes ongoing with other postdocs. I am moving to publish the story in the international press, and possibly file everything to the Ministry of Education right after. I thank everyone here for providing insights and suggestions. Keep an eye on the news.

@SolarMike In fact when my visa expires I am leaving back to my home country. But this is not to say my experience has been much better around there: I just had no issues at getting paid. I am wondering whether I ought to just drop their debt behind when moving on, or whether there is some internal resource (Foreign's Interests Office or sth) I could mention or reach out for.

@Scientist find a LAWYER and also you can report to bureau of employment, and central Education commision

@hexadecimal Thanks. Actually I did contact the local consulate of my country and was provided with significant attention (they held a special meeting with me reviewing all documents) but no direct support was offered. They said the best they could do (at the beginning of the situation) was to phone them for some enquiry but they guaranteed that would make matters worse. They told me to 'play their game' for some time and see how it goes. Eventually I contacted them again and all they offered was a lawyer's number. They said there are many other similar cases happening.

@SSimon That sounds like more specific advice. Thanks. Would you know further details about this commission? As mentioned I was told by different sources (consul included) that involving a lawyer is likely to waste more time/money and result in a null outcome.

@Scientist From what I gather the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) can mediate problems between foreigners and their employers. I thankfully don't have experience with dealing with them and as you say the fact your employer is presumably a large public institution could make things more difficult. But it may be worth giving your local branch a call (or getting a Chinese speaker to do so).

Is the university a public university or a private university?

@Bobgom Thanks, I had heard of this organ before. I will try to check their website for any standard instructions and see if it looks like a good bet. Perhaps I will mention them prior to making any actual moves to see the effect.

@Scientist yes, you need to involve beurocrats, china law system is different. Embassy will help you by sending letter to ministary of education! This is china dont think in western way

@SSimon Sorry but I am not sure exactly what you recommend. First you said a lawyer, then "bureau of employment", and "central Education commision" and now the "ministary of education". Please, could you provide me with further info on these organs? The local consulate of my country wasn't finally willing to intercede with anything (e.g. a letter) but I haven't tried the Embassy, which is much further away.

@Scientist Going to embassy is big minus, China is communist country and asking embassy to do something is last resourt, your only option is ministry. I think I need to write answer.

@scaaahu I will not hint too much at this moment. Let me just state I am not aware of any actual private universities around here.

https://www.zhihu.com/question/52131526/answer/232792998 The above post (in Chinese) also states how a postdoc/research fellow was cheated of his salary. Basically, the salary offered can be deducted in many ways (like "insurance", "tax", etc.) in the end it is nowhere as near as the original offered salary.

@yoyostein Yes, I have heard from several other colleagues about similar schemes here and elsewhere. My impression is that most local postdocs get scammed passively while convincing themselves that everything is correct or else pretending. Under the hopes they'll be rewarded later, or find something better, believing this is like that everywhere.

@Scientist It is quite sad and discouraging to foreign academics. Also, the post I quoted above happens in a 911, 285 school in China, in fact a top 10 university in China. If such top universities still resort to cheating researcher’s salary in such cunning ways (that even locals get cheated), I have little hope left in what happens in other universities.

@yoyostein I unfortunately find it very hard to read. A local friend here insists that they situation they describe in this post is "not that bad" because "everyone locally knows of those problems". As I said I believe people here convince themselves that they're not being cheated. I know this university they're talking about. It is very near to where I am. Just take your personal conclusions then. Thanks for sending, BTW, it looks very useful for later.

@Scientist  I dont see this as China only problem, recently the same problem was in famous French Institute, I see it as unnecessary hustle, that unfortunately will emerge by adding number of PhDs that finish

horible event, mainland China is so obscure sometime. Generally, no one should accept

@SSimon I believe only through ample exposure this can cease from being obscure, towards becoming impracticable to maintain. If you hear or know of other such cases, please report them somehow!.. Let us see how this one fares.

@Scientist maybe for Chinese yes, for foreigners... Even they have a need for post docs, I would suggest NO.

Invited by the OP to post my comment under another post here:
Courts in China are often unwilling to rule in favor of foreigners in economic dispute cases. Not to mention that Chinese law already provides inadequate protection for workers in this case. I am not a lawyer myself, so I do not feel qualified to talk about the legal details, but in general it is very hard for workers to get what they deserve when they end up in a wage dispute, and especially if you're foreign. (Source: a close family member has experience working as an attorney-at-law in many wage dispute cases, including a few involving foreigners).
China can be pretty unfriendly for foreigners living in the country, as there are a lot of limitations on them. I would not suggest avoiding the country, but do expect a lot of difficulties.

More:
To solve this problem, you do need to know some Chinese politics. In China, universities are placed under direct administration of either the Ministry of Education or the provincial Department of Education, and they have no administrative autonomy whatsoever (unsurprising, because there is no separation of power in the Chinese government system, even on paper).
So, a court might not solve your issue. The court, as another government agency, would be unlikely to rule against another government agency. Also, this is a case of economic dispute and you are a foreigner. If you really want to go to court, find an experienced lawyer. Note, however, that Chinese courts can forbid foreign citizens with unresolved civil litigation from leaving the country; if your bring the case to court, you might risk not being able to leave the country until the case is resolved.
You might have a better chance if you escalate the issue to a higher level governmental agency. The Ministry of Education 教育部 might be a good choice (they likely are your university's direct supervising agency), so is SAFEA 国家外国专家局. Do try to contact them.
If you think there's corruption involved, try the Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection 中央纪律检查委员会 (aka 中纪委). The Ministry of Supervision (now the National Supervision Commission) is in fact just another name under which the CCDI operates, so no need to contact them individually. The CCDI is an extremely powerful agency, so they might be the most helpful to you (of course, that's if they do take your case seriously).
Do write a letter to the CCDI if you are confident that misuse of public funds is present. However, instead of writing to your university's president 校长, perhaps writing to your university's Party Secretary 党委书记 might be more helpful. Also, see if there's a Central Inspection Group 中央巡视组 inspecting your university. If there happens to be one, you might as well report to them directly.
Do consult a lawyer. Be sure to choose a lawyer with experience working with foreigners.

This is excellent advice, thanks much for your investment here. I will update here on where I stand. I left an official complaint with the Principal and "spent" the rest of the money they owed me as credit with local companies. I had the unofficial support of the local Consulate of my country in case any threats were made, and left the country. My plan was to splash the whole affair in the international news, and follow with an official complaint to MoE. However I hit a deadlock: reporters are apparently scared of publicly commenting on this since I did not take this to court first.

My plan was News -> MoE -> possible litigation or agreement from abroad. But reporters would prefer I'd go the other way around, and I am the strong impression that if I contact MoE alone and from email they will just ignore me, as the local Province Administration has been doing. I do not wish to waste time & money on lawyers just to get ignored and perhaps encourage reporters. I have been meantime warning colleagues informally via talks and discussions about what happened, via Postdoctoral Associations.

@Scientist I don't think reporters will help you much in this case, especially if it's international news. But indeed appealing to party apparatus (likely there's a party discipline problem here) will be much more effective than lodging complaints with the government. Indeed, if you don't intend to take it to court, a lawyer might not help you too much, plus lawyers with experience working with foreigners are expensive indeed (I know how much they make! :-D). I would say try reporting this to more places definitely. Of course, cnsult your own country's MoFA too!

Thanks! My main objective is to neutralise these people, while they rely on me keeping quiet. Also I think a news press piece would break the communication iceberg from government organs, because of "face". The consulate did contact our MoFA about filing a joint complaint with the Chinese FAO but they finally claimed they'd refrain from "getting directly involved in professional contractual disputes" while, again, pushing a lawyer recommendation. Perhaps if more cases surfaced (I am sure there are many silent victims) more will happen. There is strong local custom of hushing these issues.

Regarding finding a lawyer: the law firm behind this blog gives an impression of great expertise and while their focus is on enterprises they may well be able to help find a suitable lawyer for your case. Don't expect any of this to come cheap or be worth the trouble.

Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection... Sounds scary. Like something from a Orwell novel...

@fgysin Well, it basically is...

there is some sort of administriation court in china, i think

Your first stop should be: Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security
中华人民共和国人力资源和社会保障部
How you will contact and make a complaint without knowing of Chinese language, I am not sure. I would suggest you a lawyer, but the culture is not the same, so what is consider lawyer in West it is not considered as usual in China.
there is also Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Also, there is Ministry of Supervision 中华人民共和国监察部
I mention them because the information you provide clearly indicates misuse of public funds.
if you dont know the Chinese language I recommend going for help to Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China. they should know English and they can advise you where and how to complain.

This looks good. Do you think I should first mention these names at the administration to see whether they fix the situation before I actually move with the official complaints? I heard from expat SSL teachers that usually mentioning SAFEA may resolve many salary issues with bad schools (but yeah: a crummy language school is different from a big institution). Also, please, could you also provide the official Chinese name for "Central Commission for Discipline Inspection" ? Thanks much!

Sorry if you feel this is too personal or risky, but have you ever heard of such a situation before in China? How common is this? Was there official any precedent from which you took this protocol of reaction?

@Scientist no because they know you don't speak Chinese.

@Scientist It is common, but not common for first Tier cities. You need to tell me what is the tier of city that your uni belongs

This is a full-blown first tier. Also, please, could you also provide the official Chinese name for "Central Commission for Discipline Inspection" mentioned in your answer? Yes: I don't speak Chinese but finding someone to at least translate won't be too hard. I say it because from my experience they get scared quite easily, around here.

@Scientist OMG it is first tier!!!!! You shoud report them in ALL of them!!! this is not common...

中国共产党中央纪律检查委员会 quite unusual for first tier uni. make two reports, one to president of the university and one to central commision

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

See also the discussion linked above to zhihu.com/question/52131526/answer/232792998 . Apparently it might be more common than we thought. This other place is not only 1st tier but also top national uni. In fact quite close to where I am, physically.

@Scientist I apologize if you misunderstood me, yes this is common in China even in first tiers, however, it is much more easier to report and handle the issue in first tiers,bcs they are closely alligned to the party.

I wish to ask whether anyone here had a similar situation, and would know what could be done? Particularly in China?

I might add my feedback on this, comparing it to my experiences.  I've been a postdoc at Nankai in Tianjin, and have worked here ever since.  I love China!
Miscommunication is normal here: you plan your life and career based on the information they provide, only to find out what you envisaged is incorrect.  If you're particularly concerned about money, China is probably not the place to be.

I signed a postdoctoral fellow contract for a 120k RMB salary per year, with a promise of an extra 60K RMB per year to be provided by the college.

I'm an associate professor with years of experience working in China, many Chinese co-authors, and a fellowship; I'm a native English speaker, I speak Chinese (sort of), and I have a Chinese green card.  Regardless, this salary would be higher than my current salary.  Very few postdocs (any?) in China will get such a high salary.

I needed a certain official document about which they claim they were unaware.

This happens a lot: rules and regulations change in China quite frequently, and officials don't update the websites (both the Chinese and English ones).  It's normal to find out mid-way through an application that something else is required.

In reality, they never paid me that 1st month while dismissing it by saying "probably will fix that later".

I arrived in January, started getting paid in May, and they backdated it to March.  During this time, I wrote papers which would probably impact me far more than a few months salary.  I also get to live in China!  China!!
I also didn't (and still don't) pay rent as the university covers my accommodation, and I barely pay bills.

Then I was told some unspecified large sum is retained to fund my expenses to any trips/conferences I might wish to attend. I was not clearly informed of when or even if I would get the withheld amount.

I've racked up some huge travel bills: 9 countries this year; 10 countries last year.  The payment of flights, accommodation, and registration is usually done by the university, so I don't have to do much.  That's quite a lot of life experiences!

...everyone tells me "not to worry".

I've learned not to worry.  I just work hard, gain experience, and publish, and money sorts itself out.

Exit procedures included preparing lengthy reports which had not been requested before.

I was asked to write a report at the end of my postdoc too (something like 70+ pages); something like a "postdoc thesis".  I copy/pasted my papers into it, put in a whole bunch of conference photos, etc.  Nobody is ever going to read it.

They would pay me a "reward" for completing documents, plus one month of basic salary, and promised a large sum adding up to the final amount... in exchange for invoices.

I've never heard of this.  Here, invoices are needed for reimbursement (e.g. for hotels, taxis, etc.), but never anything else.

They explicitly instructed me to buy invoices from companies they'd recommend by paying 10-15% of the declared value to "reimburse the rest of my salary". They insisted this is common procedure, offering help to "find invoices to exchange".

I've never heard of it.  I'd probably refuse too.

They explain that what is declared on the contract as salary includes a significant amount which is to be spent with research only, and that invoices ensure the university can pay/reimburse.

That explains the extraordinarily large salary, and the mysterious invoices.
It sounds like your colleagues were trying to find a "workaround" ("buy invoices from companies they'd recommend") so you can claim the research-allocated funds.

My experience with "don't worry" agreements (not in China, but in Europe - but I am fairly sure that this is universal) is that they only work as long as there is nothing to worry about. When shit hits the fan these agreements are not worth the time spent on talking about them. By now I get an allergic reaction as soon as somebody tells me not to worry.

Hi , thanks for your feedback! In fact the whole situation is in the past by now. My conclusions when related to your answer below: (i) postdoc salaries in China have increased considerably, and annual 180-250k rmb are being offered now (if paid we don't know); (ii) on working free for months, I'd rather do it from home than abroad, especially in the life conditions offered; (iii) on the postdoc thesis I did the same as you; (iv) finally on the invoice scheme I now understand they wanted a share of the funds as they claimed over data, authorships, etc. Calling it salary was just a bait.

As an example of a fairly high salary offer for candidates (alongside discussions of not being paid correctly): https://www.zhihu.com/question/52131526/answer/232792998

@user74089 Really hard to say because I don't have a wide experience around China which is a huge country. But I have heard that problems with salary pay are a local constant, and that an unbalanced relationship with supervisor is to be expected.

"buy invoices from companies they'd recommend" => indeed, this is a big thing in China! Illicit street doodle ads often sell invoices ("fapiao"); there's a quite big black market (but which operates in a not-quite-underground way) for those. However most people only use them to claim expenses while doing their taxes, and the revenue agencies sort of turn a blind eye on this (b/c income tax doesn't make a large percentage of the revenue of Chinese gov't). But you can easily get into trouble if you use fake invoices to claim fraudulent reimbursements

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text:
My adviser agreed to write a letter of recommendation, but hasn't done so
I am currently a M.Sc. student and I was planning to apply for PhD programs. I asked my adviser to write me a letter of recommendation two months ago, and he agreed to do that. However, now that the deadlines are approaching (in 2 days) he has refused to write a letter, and basically he says that he wants me to stay in his research group and do a PhD under his supervision. In other words, he is forcing me to stay in my current school. I have been rejected from one of the PhD programs that I had previously applied, because he did not submit the letter of recommendation.
My first question is: what should I do? I do not want to create conflict, because he is my adviser and I need to defend my thesis in peace in the next two months.
My second question: If I do not send a letter of recommendation from my adviser, will it affect the decision of admission committee?
This is a time-sensitive manner and I really appreciate it if you could give me some insights, I am absolutely stuck here.

Gee, no wonder you don't want to stay in his group next year.

This is unacceptable behavior. I would escalate to the department chair or director of graduate studies.

That goes beyond unacceptable, to professional misconduct. I would report the situation to the Dean of Graduate Studies as well as the Department Head, and consider forwarding a transcript of the conversation you had with him to the institutions you have applied to, in place of his recommendation letter. Being publicly seen as a unprofessional buffoon by his peers may get him to smarten up, as that affects his research grant applications.

He says in his emails that he writes a letter, but I dont have any written document of him stating that he does not do it. He just did not submit the first letter and kept saying me that he wont write a letter. He is smart, never wrote an email saying that he wants me to work with him...

First point: what your professor is doing is absolutely not OK. There are valid reasons to back out of writing a recommendation letter late (illness, family emergency to name a few), but what he is doing is intentionally sabotaging your PhD applications.
Second: ask for a meeting with your advisor, where you can have some uninterrupted time to explain your motivation for wanting to go elsewhere for your PhD. Focus on things like wanting to diversify your interests, work with a large variety of people, maybe work on a research project that is not available at your school. Feel free to add in things like how working with him has helped you realise how many opportunities are out there and prepared you to undertake studies at insert name of university you are applying to. Ask him if he could write you the recommendation letter and tell him that when you have your acceptances you will make a choice of where to go, and you will not rule out your current institution until you have all the answers. Explain that you feel that he is limiting your options, and feeling shut in is not a good place to be when you are trying to make serious decisions about your future. In short, flatter him and the current programme, explain your motivation in a way that doesn't come off as "this place sucks" and hope for the best. Keep the tone of this conversation calm and non-confrontational. You don't want to destroy your last few months there, and even if he says no, thank him for his time and explain calmly that you hope he understands why you will still go on with the application with another recommender, and that you hope there will be no hard feelings between you.
If this doesn't work I would go to the professor that knows you the second best in your master's program, or maybe even from your undergrad, and explain the situation to them (confidentially) and ask if you can get a letter of recommendation from them instead on short notice. It will probably be seen as a little strange that your advisor isn't writing you a letter of recommendation, but at that point it's your best option.

Thank you very much for your support. I actually asked a post-doc to write me one, since I did not have any time. deadlines are tomorrow. The worst part is that all the schools that I am applying for know him and I was hopeful of an admission with his support...He ruined all of my dreams...I wish he could have told me from the beginning. I spent a lot of time and money for the application process...

While this is unacceptable behaviour, it it not uncommon at all. Many of my friends doing Master in Korea were in exactly the same situations as yours when they wanted to apply for a PhD in the US. Even worse, their advisers wrote for them bad LoRs, so that they could be rejected. Somehow they were all accepted, because doing Master in Korea often results in lots of publications.

Your first question: there is nothing you can do with your adviser. Your LoR should come from a prof. who really wants you to be accepted, and writes a LoR with his best effort. A bad LoR is much worse than no LoR at all.
Your second question: do not worry about what you can't control. Instead, try to make the best application with all you have.

When I wrote my Master thesis, I was having a family problem and couldn't focus. As a result, my adviser didn't satisfy about my work. Of course, he didn't want to keep me for a PhD, and was willing to write  a LoR for me. But I thought his LoR would not be strong, so I chose not to get a LoR from him. This is not really a problem for me when applying for a PhD in EU, because most of positions required a Skype interview (and some followed by on-site interview).

Thank you very much for your support. I actually asked a post-doc to write me one, since I did not have any time. deadlines are tomorrow. The worst part is that all the schools that I am applying for know him and I was hopeful of an admission with his support...He ruined all of my dreams...I wish he could have told me from the beginning. I spent a lot of time and money for the application process...also Im scared of him now, what if he makes trouble for me in defending my thesis. He can easily do that I guess since he is the dean...Thanks again


text:
Do PhD advisors allow students to collaborate with faculty from other institutions?
I would like to know if PhD advisors allow students to collaborate with professors from other institutions in a major way. The context for me here is that I will be joining a Top-50 institution for a PhD in Physics. Considering the job prospects in academia, I think it would be worth collaborating with the topmost people in the field directly (who generally reside at topmost universities like Stanford, MIT, Princeton, etc.) to get solid recommendations from them along with my advisor's recommendation (assuming I produce good quality research with them). I would like to know how such an arrangement can be made possible without making my advisor feel bad. Are such arrangements common?
Of course, my current institution has brilliant professors as well and I would like to do my best to produce good research with them too. This is why the consent of my advisor in whatever I do is very important to me. I just want to make things as productive as possible in my current PhD program and have the best people in the field write recommendations for me so that I could continue working in academia.

Related-but-no-obvious-duplicates: Is it reasonable to collaborate with a professor when you are employed by a different professor? and How can a PhD student enlarge his academic collaboration network? and Can I instigate collaboration outside of my current research team, or is that bad etiquette? and...

... How can PhD student repair relationship with supervisor after PhD student engages in independent research without supervisor? and many questions tagged both "collaboration" and "Ph.D.", especially How should a PhD student approach a collaboration?.

This question is unclear. Are you asking whether your professor will let you collaborate? Are you asking how to approach other professors to collaborate? Are you asking whether collaboration is a good idea?

Please ask one question per question.  Your title currently has two different questions stuffed into it.  This site format often doesn't work well when you have more than one question it.

If two faculty members are interested in collaborating with one another, an excellent way to bootstrap such a collaboration is with a strong student who is interested in being working with both.  This is often much easier than the faculty members trying to work directly with one another, since they are often each quite busy.  It also often ends up resulting in a co-advising arrangement, either formally or just de facto.  With the right student and project, this can be a really good, productive, and career-positive experience for everybody involved (it certainly has been for me as the external co-advisor), and many faculty members that I know tend to welcome such opportunities.
If you want to build an independent collaboration that does not involve your advisor, on the other hand, you should not be surprised if you run into resistance, particularly if your advisor is funding your position.

Thanks for your response. I definitely do not want to do things keeping my advisor in dark. It would be good for me that I get to work with the topmost people in the field with my advisor in the loop as well somehow.

Interesting thought. I will try to offer some factors to consider related to the approach you are suggesting.

There's a risk of spreading yourself too thin. All things held constant, I would expect it to be more difficult on average to build relationships with faculty at institutions other than your PhD "home base." The time and effort spent building these relationships would thus be re-routed from what should be your main thrust, i.e. developing a reputation as an excellent student in a place that actually voted to have you and invested resources in you.
Faculty at top institutions are extremely busy and inundated with queries from all sorts of places and people who want their time and attention on collaborations of various types. Successful faculty are very strategic about where they invest their energies (especially in Physics? sorry, bad pun). This partly explains the uphill battle presumed in point #1. They usually have plenty of students and postdocs of their own who want to "collaborate." The returns from such one-off partnerships with this or that individual who met them at this or that conference are dubious, and typically high-flying faculty end up collaborating on high-visibility/payoff projects. Unless your work will fall in that category, I think productive sustained collaboration with quality attention and care invested in the relationship on both sides is highly unlikely.
The only relatively common, accepted form of collaboration with faculty from other institutions that I am aware of is IF those individuals are  members of your dissertation committee. Colleges (at least in the U.S.) often require that at least one committee member be from another department at the home institution. Along the same lines, it is typically viewed as OK if there is another, additional committee member from another institution, as long as their being on the committee is well justified, e.g. by filling a gap in expertise or being in a unique position to contribute something given their specific context/resources. In contrast, collaboration on side projects can cause some minor (which could become major if left unchecked) issues involving your Advisor wondering what the heck is taking up your time that you could be spending in his lab and writing his papers...

This being said, it is possible that in some disciplines such collaborations are more frequent and more accepted than in others, and may pay off in some ways. However, the though I would like to leave you with is to carefully reflect whether such collaboration will in fact help your career plans, over and above similar collaborations with faculty at your home institution. If you find yourself in a situation/project where the answer is a clear YES, well, you can at least give it a shot and see what happens.
However, if by looking over the fence (where the grass typically looks greener) you might end up missing some gems on your own lawn, I would say stick to the familiar environment and try to make the most of the opportunities under your nose.
Lastly, collaboration can take many forms. It may not be necessary to go it alone and try to carve out an independent project with someone from another university/lab. Being on a research team (as a Research Assistant) that has some external partnerships with teams at other institutions can be enough to develop some contacts and build some name recognition in those places. Being considered a valuable member of the research team at home, and being valued by your own Advisor can speak louder than trying to convince someone on the outside that you are wonderful and totally worth their attention. When you will be close to graduating, if your Advisor believes in your potential, s/he will go a long way to help you network with various other labs/teams that s/he has relationships with. I personally would recommend this more "organic" route.
The academe is a big boat that doesn't like to be rocked, and stability is generally considered an asset. Having a reputation for dedication to one or two large-scale, complex, team projects is probably going to help you more than having 10 separate fledgling solo projects/partnerships. (Note: If you were an undergrad with a major in Business/Entrepreneurship, this advice would be the opposite. But a PhD in Physics seems more aligned with the solid/long-term academic paradigm.) Whichever way you choose to play your cards, good luck!

@ChrisWhite +1 in both cases

@ChrisWhite, thank you for the counterpoints, this provides a better overall perspective. I guess I was speaking from personal experience and what I observed among my peers (in the social sciences) where outside collaborations weren't a major factor in employment prospects.

Yes. I recommend it and endorse the strategy.
I was a PhD student in the UK, but I think in total I spent more time working in Japan, France and California than I did at my institution in the United Kingdom.
At the beginning, all trips were at my advisor's suggestion (he was very well connected in numerous collaborations himself) but as time went on I built up my own "network", and eventually it became normal that I would be "invited" to join in directly.
As you can imagine I left my PhD with a lot of air miles, and more importantly I knew a lot of people on whom I could count for a good reference.
However it was never a "co-advising" situation as some have described. I always felt that I was visiting as my advisor's representative, and I always tried to keep it that way. As with any job it is important to manage your relationships with people carefully; if it seems like you are suggesting making your advisor redundant she is probably not going to be happy about the idea. Therefore I would always be sure to talk regularly with my advisor when I was in town and to keep him in the loop by email or phone if I was away.

A very important point is that of managing interpersonal relationships. A.k.a. "being fair".

@paulgarret Can you expand on what you mean by "being fair"?

Well, I guess "being fair" includes not swindling people. Not taking anything from the under false pretenses. Not giving away their confidential/secret information, that they might feel gives them a useful edge. As though one signed a "non-disclosure agreement" with nearly everyone one spoke to, especially one's advisor. Violation of expected confidentiality will not only upset people but will trash one's reputation. Is this responding to your query?

@paulgarrett I see what you are saying about misusing other people's work. However, I always worked in very collaborative atmospheres where we were all strongly encouraged to share our ideas (with attribution) rather than guard them as secrets.

Very good that you've had positive experiences! But we note that not everyone plays fair. Attribution/acknowledgement is, in my opinion, perhaps the most critical human-aspect thing about any progress. Both acknowledging "prior art", and explaining how one "came this way". :)

@paulgarrett Absolutely. But I think, or at least I hope, the more you work with potential "rivals", the more chances you have to build collaborations, or at least how to deal with rivals when you are no longer a student.

As a supplement to the other good answers, one might be a bit careful, since one model of "PhD advising" is for the advisor to give a student a sort of "insider information" (much like the notion of "insider trading" on the stock market, which is illegal... unless you're a member of Congress, but nevermind...), which the advisor might want to keep "inside". And the student should, hopefully, benefit from having this sort of head-start, as opposed to competing against more experienced people in real time.
Especially if the advisor has more than one student, keeping information (temporarily) non-public benefits all of them, so any one of them "blabbing" dis-serves the others, which is a bad thing. Vaguely reminiscent of the game-theoretic aspects of "prisoners' dilemma".


text:
Is it acceptable to ask a question concerning a proof in a thesis?
Is it against the "code of honor" to ask a question concerning the correctness of a mathematical argument in one's doctoral thesis?
I'm unsure about one argument in my thesis and I would like to discuss it. Would it be considered inappropriate? In which circumstances is it appropriate to talk about one's own work on the internet, i.e., when to be mindful of it?

Maybe I am missing something, but isn't this what you'd typically ask your advisor?

My adivsor is unavailable for two weeks and I'd like to proceed now.

A code of honor seems specific to your university. When I was in graduate school, we could talk about our research where ever we wanted.

The tag [tag:legal-issues] is for questions about "real" laws, the kind made by governments.  There aren't any laws about this as far as I know, so I changed it to [tag:ethics].

Definitely appropriate.
A thesis is not a homework submission. You need to be the one writing the thesis (i.e., no ghostwriting or copypasting), but there is no requirement to work entirely on your own, as long as you cite the contributions of others.
A thesis may even contain no new results or ideas whatsoever, but just be a textbook-like treatise of a subject. In most cases (i.e., unless the treatise is really a lot more readable than existing literature and thus forwards science by making the subject significantly more accessible), such a thesis will probably be declined for lack of novelty if it's a PhD thesis (for a master's thesis, it's fine), but it does not constitute research misconduct.

I assumed so, since its fine if I ask someone personally, but I didn't know the general consensus. Thanks Darij, I will just wait a bit for another opinion and then accept your answer.


text:
What should the startup package consist of at US (primarily) undergraduate institutions?
What should one list in the startup funds if you are taking up a tenure-track position at a public undergraduate university in the US, mostly focused on teaching? I'm asking specifically for mathematics/applied mathematics/computational mathematics.

What country is this? Is it a purely or mostly teaching position? The meaning of "public" is different in the US than some other places. Usually it means run by one of the states.

@Buffy I edited my question. Please see changes.

I don't understand. Who edited it? Are you the same person? I don't understand if they are asking what funds they need to provide you for things like travel and publishing, or if they want to know what funds (grants...) you expect to bring.

@Buffy I go by the username "math". I don't know who the other person is. Regarding the question, I am asking about the list of things I can include in the start up funds if a school  asks me  to provide a budget while making me an offer of a tenure-track position. I know i can include travel expenses for the first 2-3 years and computing resources. But I wanted to know if there are other things that I am missing.

While I don't have a whole lot of experience with the kind of schools you mean, in math I have never heard of a school asking you for a start-up-budget in order to make an offer.  Has this actually happened?  Are you trying to negotiate an amount of a start-up or what you can use it for?  (At my research school, they have set rules for what you're allowed to use start-up for---will they not tell you the rules?)

You need to do a fact finding mission if you want to do this properly.  Institutions vary widely on their policies, and while I have worked as a research administrator at two research universities, PUI's (Primarily Undergraduate Institutions) can offer more flexibility than large institutions or much less due to funding restrictions.  I am going to generalize my answer a bit for the masses.  Some of this will not apply to you in particular, but as a research administrator, I make no assumptions on what cost categories may or may not look like for a researcher.  You really never know.
In this answer, I am going to break down questions about individual cost categories to consider, as well as larger policy considerations that may affect your maneuverability in the future.  Institutions vary so widely, a policy may make you claustrophobic or give you so much freedom, you can't imagine how it could be problematic.  These vocabulary terms are so standard in research administration, that you should be able to Google them easily for most institutions.  I am using Wellesley as an example in point of fact-- I have no connection to the institution, and yet can quickly find the policies I want to do this basic research on how they function.
Make sure you know the answer to the following questions as you make your budget.

Constructing the Budget:
A. Salaries.  What are the policies on paying for undergraduate students (graduate if available)?  Can you hire postdocs or is that forbidden?  What about other staff?  Is this regulated by the institution or the school/department?  This information may not be freely available, but you should inquire about school/department policies.
B.  Fringe.  The forgotten cost.  Google your institution's name and "IDC agreement".  (Also referred to as "F&A" or "Facilities and Administration" Agreement.)  Here's an example from Wellesley. You will skip the IDC section, which applies to sponsored funds only, and go to the fringe benefits rates.  In this case, regular employees  have a 34.6% fringe rate.  Thus $1 of a "regular employee" at Wellesley actually costs $1.346.  Next question-- is a student a "regular employee"?  My guess is no.  Typically institutions pay fringe for undergrads only during the summer (that temporary employee rate).  If your institution's website doesn't explain this easily, try contacting the Vice Provost's office or Office of Sponsored Programs.  While you are looking at a PUI, one of the reasons fringe is important to consider is that junior faculty often bring in postdocs in their first couple of years, because in a graduate structure, it's hard or impossible to get students in the door right away, and they are completely untrained.  Postdocs typically draw over 20% fringe on higher salaries (~$50-80k depending on field).
C. Travel.  Depending on the field, this is a lot or a little.  I have worked in chemistry and CS, and CS is much higher than chemistry due to the way publishing works in the CS field.  How expensive are conference fees though?  Gordon Research Conference is really expensive, particularly if you are sending more than one student.  Be aware that some sponsors will not fund foreign travel, if that is a consideration.
D.  Capital Equipment.  Is this something you need?  This money is hard to get from a sponsor, and should be absolutely a priority for a startup package.
E. Materials and Supplies.  This includes, but is not limited to:  publication costs, poster printing, lab supplies, minor equipment, computing equipment, catering, and other supplies.  Ask about policies for things like user fees and gases (if applicable), and other possible department-supplied expenses that may not be a consideration.  How are office supplies handled?  Are you responsible for your own printer and toner, or is that forbidden?
F. Tuition.  Are you responsible for any tuition costs whatsoever?  If so, find out what these costs are.

Other Considerations:
Uniform Guidance.  If you apply for sponsored funding, you have to be able to allocate a cost with great precision in order to assign it to the grant.  See federal law, here.
Thus if a computer cannot be allocated with any accuracy to this one project (e.g., an NSF grant) you should pay for it with startup.  (See paragraph d in the above link.)  What types of expenses will be difficult to divide between sponsored projects?  Allocate more funds for these.
Supplemental Salary Policy.  Are you limited to three summer months? Can you charge salary during the academic year? Can you charge your startup for this?  (Typically, startups do not allow supplemental salary to be charged, supplemental salary provided from the school is a different pot of money.  Do you get this or not?)
Direct Charging on Sponsored Awards. Does your institution allow you to charge your academic salary to a sponsored award?  This can increase your flexibility in sponsored research, particularly if you are interested in relieving teaching load.  Wellesley's policy is here.  I have seen this policy used as a negotiating chip during difficult periods of funding.
Restrictions on Spend for This Account.  As with the last paragraph, are there cost categories that are forbidden?  Typically supplemental salary, staff salary, and non-research expenses.  There may be more.
Cost Sharing and Matching Policy.  If you want to apply for a grant that requires cost sharing or matching, are you responsible for this, or do you apply to the chair or dean for funds?  Wellesley details their policy here.
Computing Policy.  What devices are provided for your personnel (and yourself).  Can you purchase any endpoint device you need or are there restrictions?  What softwares are provided? Wellesley has a pretty impressive list available, listing Adobe, MATLAB, Mathematica, EndNote, and other software that one may be happy to not have to pay for.  (Link is to Windows, but they have a Mac list as well.)
IDC and IDC Cost Recovery Policy.  While there is no IDC "indirect costs" charged to your startup, you should understand the rate that applies to any sponsored funds and this recovery policy.  Wellesley explains theirs here.
The reason you care about the IDC rate for startup is to understand the impact of IDC on a sponsored budget.  If you apply for an NSF grant at Wellesley, the IDC rate is 75% of salaries and wages, which is really high, but only applies to salary and wages (not true of all institutions).  That means for $1 of salary expenses, $1.75 is charged to the grant instead of the $1 that would be charged to startup.  If the IDC base is listed as "MTDC" this IDC would be charged on other direct costs (including fringe) as well.  This creates a compounding effect, whereby salary has fringe AND IDC applied, and IDC is applied on the fringe as well as the salary.  As some sponsors  (e.g. NSF) provide small, all-inclusive budgets, this could affect your feelings about your startup.  This is typical in theoretical and physical sciences, compared to NIH-funded medical research, where IDC is paid IN ADDITION to the requested direct costs, rendering the IDC rate irrelevant to these researchers.
Does the institution give you funding back for the sponsored dollars you bring in?  This policy varies widely, from nearly nothing to large percentage.  Here's an example of Wellesley's policy, where they give the PI 10% of the IDC they received during the year.  Is this something you expect will be a good source of revenue?
Internal Funding Availability.  Are seed programs offered regularly, or other fellowships or initiatives?  These are frequently found under the Provost or Vice-Provost's page.  Wellesley's is here.
University Resources.  High-performance Computing Resources, for example has a page here.  Other pooled university resources should have a page with rate information or someone to contact.

Negotiations:
Some of these questions may seem like we are getting quite into the weeds.  However, I have managed startups over dozens of faculty over the last 8 years, and I can tell you that they never last long enough, and it's an important emergency fund.  So many expenses are unforeseen, and had department/school policies been more readily understood and available, the PI may have restated their requested budget to be more realistic.
While I haven't seen the negotiation processes, myself, I can tell you that it seems institutions frequently find a balance in your own compensation and your startup.  I have seen startups in computer science pushing $1M (major institution) and their own colleagues may receive paltry amounts and get a decent bump in salary.  [FWIW, a non-trivial number of PIs want more lab funding than personal funding.  The stress of finding funding for research is very high.]
Make a formal, detailed budget, referencing policies as needed, and people will take you seriously, even if they can't give you everything you request.  In general, I find this changes the tone. My detail-oriented PIs get more than those who don't put in the energy-whether from a sponsor or their own institution.  There is a certain amount of respect from administrators (who tend to set school/dept budgets) when a PI pays attention to and references policies that are publicly stated on the website.

What do you think you really need in order to conduct your research program? Can you justify why you need these things in order to conduct the research?  How much of this is so important that you'd turn down the job offer if you didn't get it?
Things that you might ask for include summer salary for yourself for a year or two, computer equipment (say $3K for a nice desktop computer up to $100K for a high performance computing cluster), funding to travel to conferences or money to pay undergraduate students to work on your research with you.
At a regional comprehensive undergraduate only public institution, chances are that there isn't much money available for a startup package.  Based on my experience, I'd be surprised if you could negotiate for much more than a couple of months of summer salary, a few thousand for travel expenses and a few thousand for a desktop computer.  At an institution with a graduate program, you might also ask for support for a graduate student.
In negotiating these things, you're likely to find that the chair of your department (or search committee members if the department chair is negotiating with you) can be helpful in telling you what others have received in the past and what the administration is likely to fund.
Whatever you do ask for, be sure to ask politely and don't let it seem as though you won't accept the offer unless your wish is granted.  It's not unheard of for offers to be retracted in the face of startup package demands that are too high.  You should also give a budget with justification rather than negotiating for a simple dollar amount.
The strategy of negotiating the salary and startup package verbally before a formal offer is quite common.  It is a smart negotiating tactic on the part of the institution since you have nothing to fall back on until they make a first written offer.  If you demand too much, they can simply move on to another candidate without ever making you a formal offer.  Another advantage of this strategy is that it forces you to make a decision quickly- you can't draw out the process with multiple rounds of offers and responses.

Interesting.  Do you have an experience with startup packages for experimental sciences?

I'm aware that science and engineering faculty often get much larger startup packages that include money to purchase lab equipment and renovate lab space.   I'd still expect the package at a four year regional comprehensive state university to be much less than at a large state university.

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text:
I would like to apply to a masters program in Japan but I have no research experience. Any advice?
I am pursuing a B.S in Math at UCLA, which is in the United States. My academic performance is above the average. My major GPA is 3.73 and my GPA for upper division courses is 3.56. My GRE General is 327. I might also pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level N1 held in this December, so I might be able to apply to programs taught in Japanese.
I am thinking about applying to some master programs in Japan such as information science in Tokyo University. The only thing that troubles me is that almost all universities require you to write research plan and contact the professor whose research interests you. This is quite different from US. As someone without research experience, how should I deal with this situation? Is there any taught masters program in Japan? Thanks in advance.

Which universities offer taught masters program in english language (in aerospace or mechanical to be specific)? All that I have come across demand research and no where it is mentioned about coursework or taught masters.

I'm currently on a Masters program in Japan, and I also didn't have any experience with research at all when I had to write a research plan, which made me very stressed.

As someone without research experience, how should I deal with this
  situation?

There is no other way. You'll have to write your own research plan and contact your potential advisor.
It is pretty hard to write a research plan when you have no clue, but here is what I did:

Find something you would like to research that can actually be done at the lab you pretend to go. Read about previous publications on the laboratory's homepage, read about your potential advisor's areas of interest. You should know how to justify why you chose that lab as your potential advisor will probably ask you during email exchange.
Now that you have something that can be done at where you want to go, you'll have to justify why you chose that theme. Try to write about the potential applications of [your research theme] or how that will save the world or make everybody happy. Being able to strongly justify why your research is important is also essential.
Describe concretely which approach you will take to tackle [your research theme]. Of course you might have no idea, but you should at least have a hint from the point you researched the stuff that can be done on the lab. Write a rough schedule of about how much time your research will take (literature review, experiment designs/simulations, analysis, time for writing up your thesis etc).
Your research plan should have at least introduction, objectives, methodology (possibly with a schedule), and references. Include references from japanese authors if possible.

Remember that there is some flexibility, and once you are here you might find other research themes that are also interesting and/or more feasible than the one you initially planned.
Contacting your potential advisor is also a very important step. Professors from prestigious universities receive a LOT of emails and yours may just be easily ignored depending on your attitude. Depending on the university's guidelines, you'll have to first introduce yourself to the university's international office ("Kokusai-ka" or 国際課), which will then contact your potential advisor.
You should be very humble and polite. Of course they might not expect it from an international student, but it will give you a positive image. Overdo it and you'll look desperate.
In the first email, apologize for the sudden contact, introduce yourself, write up which university you're coming from, from which major. Say that you've read [potential advisor]'s articles about [research theme] and that you're interested in doing research under his/her guidance, and ask if that is possible (the lab may be full capacity). Do NOT attach anything in the first email, it's suspicious and will look rude (like you're pushing something for them to do for you).
If you are lucky, you might receive a reply within 2 weeks. If it is positive, you may be asked to send your research plan, academic transcript, TOEFL or JLPT certificate and possibly be asked some questions via email or Skype. At this stage you will probably be fine.
In case your first option gets rejected, write another email from scratch for other potential advisors (read his/her papers, etc - they suspect when the email looks like it had just one or two names changed, it suggests that you send the same email for many other places and conveys that you are desperate).
In any case, be prepared not to receive any reply at all. I tried contacting over 15 potential advisors/laboratories and got replies from 3 of them. I got rejected from one because the lab was full, and from another one because I didn't have a JLPT certificate.

Is there any taught master program in Japan?

I'm currently in a taught masters program in STEM field. We have many lectures, tests, appointments, seminars, etc. pretty much like undergrad, except that grading is mostly done by assignments instead of tests. Of course, it will depend on your university and department.

If you're talking about the IT Asia Program at the University of Tokyo then you don't need to contact faculty in advance:

If you already have any specific faculty members in mind under whom you would like to conduct your studies, please list them in the space below (in order of preference, if there is more than one). Although your wishes will be taken into consideration when assigning advisors, please note that they cannot always be granted.

However, in general the assumption is that the student will take some initiative in finding an advisor. Most of the faculty affiliated with these programs will speak (or at least read/write in) English so you should e-mail faculty of interest ahead of time. This is true as a general rule, not just with University of Tokyo.


text:
Do I stand a chance in US universities? How can I ask for so many recommendation letters?
I'm a fresh graduate with a bachelor degree in electrical and electronic engineering, currently aiming to study in the US for my masters degree. I am an international graduate from an accredited university. I graduated with a GPA of 2.61 which is low and I know it, my transcript is a combination of extremely bad grades and real good ones too, I have them all, As, Bs, Cs and Ds. I even have an F.
My question is, do I stand a chance at US universities?
I graduated from a university that is ranked among the top three in my country, I know I may have a bad record of grades, but I have been involved in scientific research group and I have also been part of the student community and club managements.
keep in mind I'm not aiming for the top ranked US universities, but I am more concentrated on the universities that have a good program regarding my area of interest.
Any advise is highly welcome here.
Also, seeing that I did bad in plenty of my courses, would it be okay to ask for a recommendation letter from a professor whom I did bad in his course?
keep in mind that I might apply to about 15 or 20 universities, that's a total of 60 letters ! How can I pull this off?
What is your best recommendations for me to conduct a strong enough application?

This is me.

possible duplicate of How does the admissions process work for US Ph.D. programs, particularly for weak or borderline students?

If higher education is what you are seeking , why does it need to be in USA? Why can't you continue in your home country?

Also, seeing that I did bad in plenty of my courses, would it be okay to ask for a recommendation letter from a professor whom I did bad in his course?

It is generally not a good idea! What do you expect the professor to write if he only knows you through a course that you failed? Best case scenario: he tells you honestly that he can not write a strong letter for you. But he may also write a bad letter, which would seriously compromise your application.

keep in mind that I might apply to about 15 or 20 universities, that's a total of 60 letters ! How can I pull this off?

You would of course send the same set of 2-3 recommendation letters for all your applications.

I'm going to disagree with this.  If the professor knows you well, and you know he would write a good letter for you that places your bad grade in context that would mean something.

Yes you are right, I agree that it can be a good move if the recommendation letter does explain that the bad grade was an accident. However the original statement was 'I did bad in his course', and not 'I had a bad grade at final exam despite doing top work all semester and having a good relationship with the professor'!