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If I believe a student lacks the preparation to pass, what should I say to them?
I'm an Advanced Level math teacher in my country. I teach  two courses Pure and Applied. Its duration is 3 years. At the end of three years, there is one exam for the whole three years. Only 1200 students are selected for universities out of 50000.
I told (Privately) two of my students that they are going to fail the August AL exam if they are not going to work hard.
They have no knowledge of their syllabus. (They joined my class three weeks ago). I myself told them the truth and they stopped the class telling me that I'm a very discouraging teacher. I could have told them "Yes you can," but as a teacher I told them the reality.
Is it better to tell them that "You will get an A" or to tell them the truth?
This course contains 40 lessons and it is a 3 year course from which now only five months are left.

That is very hard to answer without having the full facts. Yes, I can often predict with a fair rate of success how each of my students will do in exams (and even later professional life), often with little hard evidence. But I would not base any decision on such a hunch. I consider it my duty to help them overcome any shortcomings, but also to assess them fairly, and in an objective manner.

Based on your comments and accepted answer, it appears you are not looking for an honest assessment of how you could communicate better with your students. You are just looking for validation.

@DavidHill I know that I took the correct decision . I asked what will be good ? Tell them a lie or the truth ? Simple as that. Because in my 8 years teaching experience , I know it for sure. They have Pure , Applied , physics an chemistry. I do Pure and Applied. I told them privately that they gonna fail if they are not going to work hard. It is the truth. I could have been dishonest and just take their tuition fee.

"I directly told two of my students that they are going to fail the August AL exam" and "I told them privately that they gonna fail if they are not going to work hard" are pretty different advices. Please just give a more objective and complete account of the exchange by revising the question.

@IlmariKaronen In our country Advanced level is a whole 3 year procedure.      Not just a course unit

So you're saying that the students joined mid-course, with only about 15% of the course (5 months out of 3 years) left? How is that even possible?

@IlmariKaronen This course contains about 40 lessons. They have changed their class and came to mine. In our country there are so man private tutors like me.

Hold on a minute... you said "private tutors like me". Does this mean you're not their teacher, and you're not administering or grading the exam(s)? Are these students paying you for private help? [OT: what kind of place only has one test for 3 years of work??]

@Penguin_Knight:  They're not inconsistent; perhaps they're not of the type to work hard, or it's just humanly impossible (I guess the speed of light, efficiency of one's brain, etc. are in principle the only ceiling =P but for practical purposes even giving '110 percent' probably wouldn't make it).  Or maybe his first statement is an enthymeme, or maybe it's just that no one -- unless they're mute -- has the vigilance to speak every sentence precisely and technically correctly and to make the assumptions explicit at each step.  I suppose the implications of the two are different though.

@Xen2050 I'm not administering or grading the exam(s). In our country people do private tutoring , as government schools lacks good education. And government schools are free of charge.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it appears to be about high-school education, and undergraduate entrance exams, which are off-topic, here.

Focus on teaching the material rather than telling students they will fail. A teacher told me (in class!) that I wouldn't get into my university of choice. He was wrong.

Entrance exams for University / College and private tutoring starts to make sense now, at least the students should still get their high school diploam (or equivalent for Sri Lanka, I'm very unfamiliar, maybe Wikipedia's Education in Sri Lanka will be useful). As a private tutor I'd imagine your priorities are to teach the required material & get paid, customer (aka student) satisfaction is probably more important than a school-paid teacher.

With only three weeks you can already tell they are bound to fail in five months? Yes, that is too discouraging.
There is a middle ground between "you will get an A" and "you will most certainly fail", i.e.,

If you want to pass, you'll need to strengthen this and that and do a lot of exercises on the material of the class. I know August looks far away, but actually, it will come sooner than it seems, so I suggest you start working on this right away.

By assuring them they are going to fail you have discouraged them from even trying, and possibly planted a predisposition: they know they will fail, you know they will fail, so they will fail (or you will fail them, or they may think you graded them too strictly to fulfill your prophecy).
Your task as a teacher is to help them learn as much as possible, and at the end, assess if they have learnt enough and grade them. I was recently teaching some programming courses, and some of my students were really bad. I knew one of them wouldn't be able to finish the tasks on time, but he took a bunch of tutorials and painstakingly went through them, trying to understand every step of the way. At the end, he didn't know enough to pass, but certainly learned more than if he had just given up at the first try; and he knew that was a possible outcome.

Your task as a teacher is to help them learn as much as possible, and at the end, asses if they have learnt enough and grade them. But that is not all: his task as a teacher is also to provide his students with honest feedback, which is what he did. And you may think you helped your weak student, but the student might have wasted a couple of thousand dollars on a class he needs to repeat, and wasted a lot of time and energy that would be better spent working on material appropriate for his current level.

@Davidmh This is a 3 year course containing 40 lessons. And they have stopped two classes before mine. Differentiation was the easiest among them. Unfortunately they do not know how to differentiate $x^n$.

This is spot on. The teacher is not a financial adviser or scheduling assistant. They provide honest feedback in the context of supporting and encouraging learning. However, qualified and attentive the teacher is, they are not monitoring students 24/7 and are not soothsayers. Let the test determine failure or success - not your fallible pessimism.

@Dave  If i'm going to be their last teacher. They will definitely blame me for their failure . Thank you. I have no interest in taking their money for nothing. They have not done anything for 2 and half years. So what ?

@AngeloMark It's very clear that you've been set up to fail. How were they permitted to join your class 2 years into the course?

@CaptainEmacs That is the educational system here. Parents come to the institute and ask for miracles. How can I deal with it ? Payments a based on daily. So anyone can join anytime.I'm not the owner. So I told them the truth.

@AngeloMark No, you definitely shouldn't lie and I do not think Dan Romik intended that. The information you give is quite disconcerting. Sounds like it's better to seek another institution. But, failing that, best you can do is telling them "Your chances are like winning the lottery, very slim. Hard work, 16 hours a day, will improve it from hitting 6 numbers right to hitting 4 numbers right." - or similar.

@CaptainEmacs Yes ! Very precisely. I'm little bit upset that I planned the whole the syllabus for them. At least they could just pass. Then that is what I got "You are a discouraging teacher "!

Don't expect gratitude. Not from good students, and certainly not from weak ones. You do a good job, because that's what you do. And sometimes, you will get the odd grateful student, and it does not even have to be the strongest one; and that's nice.

In the realm of computer science we can predict with very high reliability at week zero.

It's not that they have 5 months left, it's that they joined a 3 year program with only 5 remaining months... and in the 3 weeks they've been present, they've not demonstrated the capability to pass. I think the professor was being brutally honest - but it's likely the reality.

In general, it is not a good practice to make negative remarks about a student in front of others. Any such feedback should be provided in private. Also, since your course is only three weeks old, you may not have enough information to gauge a student's ability.

I would think knowing nothing from the required knowledge in the syllabus is quite a bit of information to gauge how well someone can handle a class. If I was taking an advanced algorithms course in CS and didn't understand the basic principles of logic, my chance of passing the course is slim at best.

@M D I said them in private. After the class. Told you have to do all the 40 lessons syllabus of 3 years in 5 months. For me it is the hardest truth.

Sorry I misunderstood your original post and thought that you gave the feedback during a class.

Looks like this response is not relevant as the assumptions about the OP do not match what this responds to.

You may use the same trick that support staff and sales representatives use: avoid using expressions like "no", "cannot", "sorry but...".
Instead you turn it around like so: "In order to achieve this goal, we need to do the following...", and then list all the things that are required for it to happen.
If you follow this pattern you have been honest and given full disclosure about what they need to do, without explicitly discouraging.

The response to such a case is almost always: "Yes, but...". You present a clear and present picture of what their problem will be, make clear that it is going to be more challenging for them than for anyone else at the course, as they started late, and they thus have to work much harder than anyone else to achieve the standard. You may be quite right that they are not the students that end up with an A, but it is not for you to decide at this stage whether they are, only to demonstrate to them what they need to do to achieve it.
Maybe they will surprise you, maybe not. But present to them their available choices, and there is always the chance of a "Kobayashi Maru" (unexpected solution of a seemingly impossible dilemma).
TL;DR: make them appreciate the difficulty of what they aim to do, but don't tell them that getting an A is impossible, because you do not know for sure this at this stage, as well-founded as your estimate may be.

+1 for the Kirk reference. And a possible example is that the students in question has a lot of time on their hands and the discipline to make use of it.

This is a 3 year course containing 40 lessons. And they have stopped two classes before mine. Differentiation was the easiest among them. Unfortunately they do not know how to differentiate $x^n$.

@AngeloMark Ah, yes, I know that type of student. I then slightly modify my statement. While I (privately) agree that they are not going to succeed, I still wouldn't say it. I found it much more effective to make clear what they need to achieve (even if I do not believe they will) to succeed. You made clear your problem was that they complain about you demotivating them. Well, what I say is that you can say - practically - the same thing as you did, but in a different form, and they cannot complain about you anymore by visualising to them through how many hoops they have to jump to succeed.

@CaptainEmacs They just come and go. I remember how our teachers scolded us when we got lower results . That is why we have BSc(maths Special) . Modern generation only know how to cuddle with teacher and do nonsense. Eventually they will complain both types of teachers. That is the ultimate truth. But they will eventually realize it.

@AngeloMark I am afraid these are the times. It's not the fault of the students, it's not the fault of the parents, and it's not even the fault of the institution. We have a fashion in our time that learning must always be fun and easy and entertaining and everyone should achieve an A. No, the statement should read "everyone can achieve", and in math, not even that is true. The best you can do now is to manage expectation. But once people expect you to make pigs fly, all you can do is to attach wings to the pigs and say that you are working on the flying part and prepare the catapult. ;-)

@CaptainEmacs Thank you ! This is what I am saying as you said precisely " But once people expect you to make pigs fly, all you can do is to attach wings to the pigs and say that you are working on the flying part and prepare the catapult."

When I was in college I had long hair, wore a bandanna and workout clothes to my classes, if I ever showed up.  The fact is I learned faster on my own.
I was in an advanced Calculus class my freshman year due to me testing out Calc I-III.  I showed up the first class and grabbed the syllabus and then a month later, the class before the first exam.
The professor asked me a question, I misheard, and he basically told me the same thing you told your students.
I came to the test two days later, turned it in a half hour later - he asked to talk to me in the hall.  He said he rather not fail me and asked me to drop his class.  I just told him to grade the test.
I got a 97% on the test (points taken off a problem for not showing work).  I grabbed my test and left the class right after.
The next test, same deal, he asked to talk to me in the hall.  This time asked me if I thought about switching my major to mathematics (I was taking his class for an elective).
My point is - you do not know who you are talking to.  By making assumptions you will just make yourself look like an ass.  If you want to get your point across make a really simple (very simple) pretest that anyone that has a chance passing should get a 100%.

Okay ! Yes I'm not talking about just a single course unit in university. Even I did my freshman semester test in two days an got A. I'm talking about 40 course units . Two 5 hours papers at the end. This is not a semester  month single course. Calculus is one of the courses listed. Thank you. I know you are talking about university life which I have finished. So this is not 3 or 2 credits paper. This is an island wide contest paper.

I am just saying maybe they don't need prep and maybe they don't need to study.  I would focus on showing them with proof (prep-test) or showing them where other students are at comparatively.    You aren't giving them useful feedback.

Think that you are going to do all the courses in 1st year 2nd year 3rd year just in 5 months ? All of them in one paper containing big 20 essay questions !

Just looking at your course list... I would be fine with doing every one off the top of the head when I was 19.  Now maybe not haha.  But then yes.  For the Calc class I studied an hour the night before each test.  So take that times 3 tests per semester times 40 courses and that is just 120 hours of studying - not that big of a deal.

Ah for the model papers they got 4 out of 100 an 12 out of 100. Even there school term test marks are 13 and 17. I did not ask whether I would look like an ass , I asked if a teacher should lie or not!

You missed the applied syllabus ! Well I agree . University is something we all work night before the exam.

You want your students to trust you and be a role model.  Assuming things like performance and how much studying one will do is pretty hard to communicate and you doing it in a crowd is worse.  There is nothing wrong with someone failing and learning from the experience.

I told them privately. I know you have your view in this question in university level. Yes I agree for that case.

Instead of telling the student that he or she will fail, and thereby making a judgement of them at your own prerogative, you could delegate this difficult judgement to the student's own mind.
Doubtless you do not baselessly decide a student will fail or not on a whim, you have some sort of logic. Even in your question you have hinted at the logic: They have poor knowledge of even the syllabus and seem to be at such a low level that they are unlikely to cover all the material in the time that remains. Also, sometimes instructors who have seen dozens or hundreds of students develop an intuition for the sort of student who will do well or badly, just based on how the student is acting. This may not always be 100% correct, but in my experience is often quite informative. Rarely have I seen an instructor claim that student X will do badly, after which student X will perform well in spite of expectations (note, I say "rarely", which means exactly that - not never, but not often).
Take the logic, and the facts you are basing your thinking on, and explain these to the student. Do not conclude that they will fail or not, let them judge for themselves how likely they are to succeed, how much work it will take, and whether they are willing to do that work.
For instance:

"You were consistently in the bottom 10% of the class in the last 5 quizzes - in my experience, it is very uncommon for a student to suddenly improve in the exam after a run like this - I have never seen it happen having taught about 400 students."
"You have missed 60% of the lectures - in my experience, students who miss that many days have a lot of difficulty dealing with the exam, because class discussions are directly relevant to the exam questions."
"You don't seem to know the syllabus very well, but this is a very comprehensive exam. Students who don't know the syllabus would have a lot of trouble getting up to speed with the material in a timely manner."
"The exam is soon and there is a lot of material to cover - do you think you will be able to manage it all in time?"

After explaining your reasoning, make sure to finish with something like "If you want to succeed in this course, you would likely need to work very hard, based on what I've told you".
Advantages of this:

It is honest and treats the student like an adult, not a child, letting them make their own decisions about their life. The responsibility for the decision is likewise placed on the student, not you.
If the student is a genius who can succeed anyway, they are free to disregard your advice, and nothing you said is falsified even if they do since you only advised them of heuristics and probabilities.
If the student indeed fails as you suspect, you have not told them a comforting lie about how they will "get an A".
Limited self-fulfilling prophecy effect - you do not tell the student that they cannot succeed, thereby killing their motivation and thus ability to succeed, you are only giving them an idea of their odds.
If the student is enlightened by the information you provide, they have the opportunity to steer the discussion in a direction they are comfortable with: Those who feel they have the mental fortitude can say "I'm gonna fail, won't I?". Those willing to rise up to the challenge can say "This sounds like it will be a very tough exam, what do you think I can do to improve my odds?".

The disadvantage is that some people may feel that full, unconditional confidence in a student's potential (even in spite of the facts) is necessary for optimal learning outcome. If you subscribe to this notion, you are effectively doing a disservice to the student, by not giving them the most optimistic version (and instead giving a sober, realistic version). The decision here is whether you subscribe to it, which is for you to resolve.

Teachers should make every effort for students to learn, but in some professions, you also have to weed-out those who don't qualify.
In this case, you should have a conversation with these students and give them your honest assessment. If they really want to pass this course, you may want to set some intermediate goals. Could you prepare a sample test to cover a subset of the material? If they're able to do what it takes for them to learn it, they may have a chance.
This just seems like a very rigorous program that many students cannot handle. You owe them your professional opinion. It's up to them to heed the advice and either do what it takes to improve or drop out.

Many students lack the emotional maturity to understand you are telling them this for thier own benefit, but they will eventually realize it. A high schooler doesn't typically take a graduate level physics course, nor should someone who does not have the rudimentary math skills necessary to effectively complete an advanced class be taking it. Their time is simply better spent on progressing in area of math they have a base knowledge in. I wouldn't feel bad about telling them this, even if they get mad at you for saying so. It is, what it is. The field of mathematics is very linear as you know; you can't just jump from pre-algebra to econometrics without a hiccup, it will be a foreign language.

Yes of course ! This is a 3 year course containing 40 lessons. And they have stopped two classes before mine. If i'm going to be their last teacher. They will definitely blame me for their failure . Thank you

Kudos to you for wanting to honor the truth. Now:

I myself told them the truth and they stopped the class telling me
  that I'm a very discouraging teacher.

Question: Are you happy with this interaction? If you continue with the same tactic in the future, do you think that you'll get a different result, or the same result? Some observations:

There's a difference between "telling a lie" and "being diplomatic" (it's not entirely a black-and-white relationship). You could say something like, "Yes, it's possible to pass. It's going to take a lot of work. In your case, we know that there are some gaps that are going to make it more challenging for you. In my experience, few students in your situation pass the final."
Due to the Dunning-Kruger effect, the worst students will also be the ones least capable of honestly assessing their situation, or interpreting your advice. Regarding the suggested line above, they may hear the first word and then zone out on everything after that. Being brutally honest with these students is more likely to cause more conflict. Maybe you're okay with that.
I've personally been wrong about predictions like this in the past. I actually had a disagreement with an administrator in which I said of a particular student "She obviously has no chance of passing the final" (had failed 2 of 3 tests to that point, skipped the 3rd). Then she did actually pass the final, and I had major egg on my face. So there's at least some margin of error in our predictions that you have to account for in your statements.
Depending on your situation, your employer may also possibly sanction you or say that it's not your place to encourage students to leave the institution (actually, there's a famous case today where the President of Mount St. Mary's College in the U.S. was forced to resign over similar comments). But this needs to be balanced with possible complaints on the other end regarding how much people "blame you" for their failing.
A great idea, as others have mentioned, is to use/highlight a first-day diagnostic and later in-class quizzes (or tests, or test previews, or whatever you call it). This gives documentation you can point to, that the student in question was deficient all along, even on the first day before you had any interaction with them. This at least gives a stronger trail of evidence if a student or administrator complains in this regard.

I would encourage you to broaden your skill set and find a way to be diplomatic in this regard.

It is not your responsibility to tell them if they are going to pass or not (in your view) unless they ask you explicitly.
Your responsibility is to teach, theirs is to learn. If they don't learn it is their responsibility, if they don't care to figure out how they are doing, it is their responsibility.
Your responsibility is to teach them, help them when they ask, be available, and be honest to them (when asked a question).
If they are disrupting the class it is your responsibility to tell them to stop, but you are not responsible to tell each and every student if they will pass or not, just to do your best so they can understand the material.
You could, if you have already given them partial grades, make a general statement such as "whoever has a grade so far of less than xxx better work harder or he/she may fail the exam", but make it general, not personal.

Never underestimate the power of motivation, goal setting, and breaking a task down into "bite sized" chunks.
The word "educate" comes from Latin "e" and "ducare" - "to draw out that which lies within". As a teacher, you may think it is your job just to cram knowledge into your students; but as an educator, it is your job to "find what lies within the students, and bring it out".
That means that you have to get to know your students and their innate motivations; shape those motivations towards the goal; and then leverage their talents and passion to help them prepare themselves to meet the challenges they will have to overcome along the way.
While giving an honest assessment is an essential element of this, it should be cast in the context of the bigger goal: "at the rate you are studying, you will only cover half the modules needed to pass the exam" is an objective statement, and the student who hears that feedback can decide "work harder", "plan to take the exam next year", or "drop out". On the other hand, "you will fail" is not objective, and does not permit the student to make adjustments that will get them closer to (your or their definition of) success.
I moved to a different country when I was 17; the school I attended had a special course to prepare for the very tough entrance exam of the most prestigious universities. I was told that, as a foreigner with little English, my chances were extremely slim - almost no pupil of that school had ever passed the exam, even after being "in the right syllabus all their life", and having English as a first language. But the way they phrased it, it became a positive challenge to try where others had failed. Nobody stopped me from studying harder than I had ever done - and I passed.
Realism is good - but focus on bringing out the best in your students. They will amaze you.


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Is it possible to do research in cell/molecular biology without doing experimental work myself?
I am currently a master’s student hoping to shift into a PhD. The thing is, I hate the lab work. I love all the literature review, designing experiments, troubleshooting problems and data interpretation.
Is there some sort of work around or is this just part of paying my dues?
The most likely answer that comes to mind is: “suck it up and pay your dues”, which I totally get, but is there an area somewhere that negates the benchwork, or is that just years of climbing until I get to be a PI (well, if I get to be a PI).

Is there a way to get all of the satisfying parts of research without being bogged down with endless hours at the bench? Or is this just part and parcel? I've spoken with my professors but they sort of hedged the question and pushed me back to the bench.

Is your field pure math? Or experimental science? Or engineering? Or Humanities?

Cell/molecular biology with some pharmaceutical chemistry tossed at me because I'm not afraid of the other chemists (weird department dynamics). So yeah, very experimental.

If you don't like lab work, you could switch into a field without lab work. Or are you saying you like designing experiments, but don't like to do them...?

@scaaahu that's a very fair point. I'm afraid I've let myself be spoiled by my time in industry, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and tie myself to the bench. Thanks, sometimes having your words turned around back at you can be very clarifying.

@earthlin, that's pretty much it. I love all of it except the actual experiment execution. Once the background is done and the experiment designed I'm happy as heck to pass it off and review the results later and see where we should go from there.

@scaaahu: Note that this question was very likely edited after the first close vote to contain an actual question. I disagree that this question is a rant. If “getting your hands dirty” is inevitable in these fields, that could very much be an answer.

Short answer: if you want to avoid the bench, switch to bioinformatics. I never step foot on a lab. It is not free from detailed, painstaking work, though.

You don't design experiments as a bioinformatician. Maybe you'll have a say in sequencing depth. Maybe you can say protocol X of the two protocols they have tried is better. But you won't be designing experiments in the traditional sense

@J.J there is more to bioinformatics than sequencing data analysis. :) I design my computational experiments, and machine learning algorithms are my beakers.

Hehe, ah, you make a very good point with ML. That's more hard-core than what I do. I wouldn't define the software I write to involve experimental design, because there's often 1 correct way to do it. Biological experiment design is more like "we have enough money for either option A, or option B. Which one is the best compromise?".

I don't think it is possible or constructive to avoid lab work in your field at PhD level.
The point of a PhD is to train you as an independent researcher, and therefore you need to be familiar with all stages of the research process, including data collection. There are plenty of fields for which data collection does not involve lab work, but unfortunately for you, cell and molecular biology are not among them.
Going through the process of lab work is not just important in terms of getting the data, it informs the rest of your work. I don't believe you will design an experiment as effectively if you are not familiar with exactly how long the different processes will take, where the challenges lie, where errors might creep in, and so on. Likewise, you are better able to interpret the data if you understand how it was collected. This stuff can be learnt to some extent by reading/talking to people/being given a demo, but by far the best way is to do it yourself.
"Paying your dues" may be a part of it - certainly, someone needs to do the legwork! - but I would encourage you not to look at it that way. At this stage in your career, it is highly valuable to you to gain an overview of the research process, even if later on (and you might not have to wait until you are a PI) you specialise in a particular phase of research.
EDIT: Others have pointed out fields, such as bioinformatics, in which it is possible to avoid lab work. Perhaps I was considering "cell and molecular biology" too narrowly. Nonetheless, bioinformatics still ultimately relies on data, and so I still believe that gaining experience of how that data is gathered is highly valuable.

Reason for downvote? I'll happily edit given constructive comments...

I down-voted because I think this has a very limited and lab-centric view of the biosciences, as indicated by some of the other answers as well.

I upvoted because jakebeal's explanation made no sense.

I am surprised that no-one mentioned kinetic modelling and the like? Of course, you do need to like mathematical modelling and/or simulation and statistics, but that's the price of staying away from the bench.

If you want to avoid laboratory work, you need to go into an area of the field where you develop a valuable expertise that is not laboratory work.  That may then put you in a position to be a valuable collaborator for people who do engage in laboratory work, rather than a parasite upon them.
Fortunately for you, in this computational age there is quite a lot of such work.  Examples include molecular modeling, *omics, bioinformatics, metabolic engineering, sequence optimization, and many others.

I am currently a master’s student hoping to shift into a PhD. The thing is, I hate the lab work. I love all the literature review, designing experiments, troubleshooting problems and data interpretation.

You've just described a couple potential directions you could go in, depending on your inclinations. Someone in the comments suggested bioinformatics, but I don't think that's quite right.
For me, the fundamental question here is "How strong is your math background, and do you like theory work?", neither one of which is really answered in your question. But there's some paths potentially open to you:

Biostatistics: Biostatisticians are (ideally) involved in the design of experiments stage, and in analyzing data, while someone else is responsible for actually collecting it. Their expertise is concentrated in analysis, and being able to work in the areas where the usual tools used in a field start not working any more.
Computational/theoretical biology. There's lots of modeling work to be done that's informed by experimental work, but isn't actually based on wet-lab experiments. You can fairly productively collaborate in this field, and having a little lab experience is a plus.

The latter is the path I took in my own field - I'm a computational epidemiologist. If all goes according to plan, I never see the inside of a lab, nor talk to a study subject.

You may have already seen this
And although it's meant to be a joke, there's a rather large element of truth to it. Science is built on a foundation of cheap labour. It's not about paying your dues - because that implies you already owe it, and it implies that once you've paid it, you're morally free to do it to many other people.
Rather, think of it this way - if you want to be in a situation in 10 years time where you can boss 10 people around and not do any labwork, you have to be bossed around, and then beat 9 other people for the bossing-around job (or hope they drop out of academia altogether).
This might sound a little negative, but it's important that you see the road ahead clearly before you walk toward it. Too many people enter academia expecting the PI position after paying their dues, but the reality is that most people who enter a PhD never make it to academic independence ever. I don't know anything about you, so I would say there's a 9/10 chance that will be you too. If you feel you're the 1/10, then go for it! But realise it's not something you can afford to simply endure. You have to excel!
(As a side note, if you can use Linux and program a bit, you could do a PhD with some Bioinformatic element to it - but this will be no less intensive. In many cases, it's more hours per day since you can work from home.)

Funny, my experience is the exact contrary to this. The profs I know would rather delegate the administrative hurdles and spend all their time in the lab.

Man, if I ever saw any prof in any of the labs where I work, I think i'd have a heart attack. Sometimes they walk through, but it's very rare. To actually pick up a pipette and do something? Man. No way. They are all way to busy for that. My institute may be a little unusual though. Everyone here is heads-of-their-field kind of thing. It's a pretty intense results-orientated atmosphere.

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Is it common for universities to have multiple boards (eg, a General Planning Board, a Finance Board, etc.) and what is the typical name for these?
I am wondering if it's common for universities to have multiple boards, each with a specific mandate to manage and carry out initiatives in a specific field, such as General Planning, Education, Finance, Global Initiatives, etc. I am particularly interested in universities in the US and the UK.
These boards would be hierarchically under the main governing board of the university and would be staffed with professors and led by trustees from the board. They would be at the administrative level.
Would it be more common to name these boards committees or subcommittees?

I know that you ask preferably for the US and UK, but as a side note, this model is standard for universities in Switzerland (and presumably other German-speaking countries). These are typically called Kommissionen (which translate to commissions or I think more appropriately committees). Contradictory to your example, these committees are not exclusively staffed with professors. They are composed of a president and representatives of all levels of the university employees and students: faculty, "intermediaries" (postdocs, lecturers), admin/technical staff, and students.
Here is the list of the different committees from the University of Zurich. It includes the research committee, the ethics committee, the disciplinary committee, etc. The other universities of the country are organized in a very similar manner.

Yes, they are generally known as committees and they are common.  PhDs don't generally like to be led (or perhaps there's just no one that seems qualified), so they form committees to get consensus and allow participation.

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text:
Should Professors and by extension their TA's, hold student athletes to the same standard?
As a former student athlete at the high school level who played football, the academic requirements asked of me were no different than that of my fellow classmates. I never asked for any special treatment and I rarely if ever discussed my athletic activities with my teachers. I would also suspect that if I had asked, no special consideration would have been given. I had to make decisions that affected my academics as well as limited my ability to pursue other extracurricular activities.
In college, I focused on research, work experience, and academics.
Now that I am in the process of applying to graduate schools where I presume I will be a TA.

How should I approach the situation?
Would I hold student athletes to the same standards in terms of deadlines and grading, or should I take into consideration the added-value and extraordinary circumstances that student athletes face at a university setting?
If I am asked to give special considerations, would I have the right to refuse such requests or would it be strictly the decision of the instructor?
If I am asked to overlook the actions of a student, whether suspected or flagrant, is 'rocking the boat' an action considered worth pursuing given the cost in terms of time and attention?
As an undergraduate, my professors had a 'catch-all' offering a case-by-case review of such requests but without explicit determinations, would this be the best course of action as a TA?

I approach the question namely to conceptualize different scenarios in case I find myself in similar waters, balancing the time and effort cost of pursuing such a case as a TA with the responsibilities as a graduate student completing my degree.

If your professor expects you to loosen criteria for athletes, you've found a bad professor. If your administration does, then you're at the wrong university. Almost no one on the teaching side of academia considers lower standards for athletes to be a good thing.

I agree with the ideal, but I my goal here is to plan for contingencies.

Taken to the extreme: the UNC scandal

In my experience, you aren't likely to find the athletes to whom special consideration is given in your courses.  They have special ones.  There are some athletes who take a normal course load, and they generally neither need nor want any special consideration, other than perhaps some scheduling flexibility.

Is this very likely to come up? Of course I’ve heard the clichés about US college football but, with the exception of a few rotten apples, is this actually practiced nowadays? (Honest question.)

I work, raise my kid and study. Should I have easier exams? NO, and neither should you. A rather different thing is: "Should we have extra materials/guidelines for being able to compensate the missed classes?" and up to now every professor I met was on the YES side.

Unless they are students with special needs (e.g. disability), there is no need for special treatment.

You should cross this bridge if you come to it, and not worry about this right now. If you become a TA, If you're not given appropriate training/instruction about student athletes as a TA, If you actually end up instructing student athletes, If those student athletes demand special treatment that goes against your future school's guidelines...

@Andrea Lazzarotto: But that's what the question is about, really.  Some (not all, of course) student athletes are arguably disabled, at least when it comes to doing college-level coursework.  Their "special needs" are for something they can pass in order to keep their academic eligibility.

At Stanford, student-athletes even have access to special classes that are easier than usual: https://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/

@jamesqf The question is conceptual. What should a TA do when confronted with requests to accommodate for extraordinary circumstances. The type of circumstance, the extent of accommodation, and subsequent reporting as needed.

@half-pass, very bad method (although I understand it's part of US culture). Students should be treated equally unless they have specific mental/health conditions that require proper support. Being a good football player does not exonerate you from studying for an exam.

@AndreaLazzarotto Should =/= will.

@AndreaLazzarotto, I fully agree! That was a descriptive comment, not a normative one.

@Andrea Lazzarotto: But studying for an exam could be rather difficult, when you're a college athlete who reads at a 5th grade level or less; http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html

@KonradRudolph yes. Except since I'm further north we actually have this happen with hockey where sometimes the athletes presume that they should have special treatment over other students.

I'm tempted to answer "not if you want to keep your job," as that may well be true for some Div1-A schools.   However, at any school where there are aren't  athletic scholarships,  there's no excuse for treating athletes differently.  So they have time commitments. So do musicians, artists,  etc. It's part of college.

As a rule, ALWAYS treat every student the same no matter what the situation is.

The following is specific to my university, the University of Michigan, but I would guess that the situation is similar at many other universities.
As far as I know, I am not allowed to apply different grading standards to different students in the same class, except that, if a class has both graduate and undergraduate students, then the graduate students may be held to a higher standard. (I've never used different standards for grad and undergrad students, but I believe it is permitted.)
Despite the general rule, there are oft-repeated stories about a particular professor (not in my department but in my college) who allegedly applied easier grading standards to athletes, over a decades-long career, and apparently got away with it. I don't know whether a tenured faculty member could get away with it nowadays, but I certainly wouldn't advise a TA to try it.
Apart from grading, though, athletes in major sports have one advantage, which may compensate for the time demands of their sports. The athletic department provides tutoring for student-athletes and tries to keep an eye on their academic progress (partly so that they don't become academically ineligible to play, partly to keep up a respectable graduation rate, and partly for the genuine benefit of the students).  I once had two varsity hockey players in my class, and an assistant coach phoned me (this was long before email) to check on their progress and to ask me to let him know if they had difficulties in my class.

Sounds like there will never be a definitive answer to the question. The defacto policy is "no", while in practice it always varies.

@FrankFYC: I have an impression that your "defacto" is a "de jure" ;)

@darijgrinberg I always got the two mixed up. De facto is in practice but not official right? De jure is in both practice and official?

“de jure” = “by law”, and “de facto” = “in practice”. Neither implies the other.

Alright, it would appear that I got it reversed. The de jure policy is "no". But there are cases where the de facto policy is "yes". Correct?

@FrankFYC: Correct. The situations I am aware of (not first hand, but from blogs like Margaret Soltan's) involve special courses created (de-facto) to funnel athletes through with little workload; you probably won't end up grading such courses unless they get the impression that you can be trusted with this discreet and difficult mission...

Understood. Based on what is said (in the answers thus far) the possibility is real, but remote.

I always wondered what language is de jure, since the Latin phrase never had that /dʒ/ sound and was spelled de iure (nowadays dē iūre). I've looked it up and it seems that the spelling alone is a French influence, although the phrase is Latin.

@kubanczyk Well, in the Middle Ages people started to write ‘two types of i’ (i and j). These were considered mere variants with no difference except in appearance for quite a while. In German blackletter, j would be used at the beginning of words and i inside for both /i/ and /j/ sounds. Only later, after the 16th century were the two distinguished depending on whether the symbol represented a vowel or a semivowel. Since jure would contain the semivowel, it only makes sense to write it with j. How you pronounce it depends on your flavour of Latin pronunciation.

You might also note the point made in Peter’s answer below: that athletes will often require special accommodations regarding attendance if they need to, e.g., travel for games. In my institution they usually provide you with a list of conflicts early in the semester so you know when your athletes students will be absent and can schedule alternate test times if needed.

Wouldn't it violate some kind of privacy law (FERPA?) to tell someone the student isn't doing well in the class?

@Mehrdad This might have been before FERPA, but even now certain university employees are apparently entitled to get such information. I regularly get requests from an assistant dean to provide information about students who are doing poorly, so that academic advisers can try to help. And of course, at the end of every term, the registrar's office gets all the students' grades. I would think the assistant coach and the athletic department's tutors are in the same category as the assistant dean and the college's academic advisers.

Regarding a class with a combination of undergraduate and graduate students, often times the graduate students are registered for a separate class than the undergraduate, so the separate grading standards just reflect that they are in different classes that simply share resources like class room, time slot, and instructor time.

Re: Different standards for graduate and undergraduate students: At the maths department of University of Oslo, they are (or were, at least) not allowed to clone courses (i.e. give exactly the same course to graduates and undergraduates). The result was that when I took General Topology, which on paper has both a (penultimate term) undergraduate and a (first term) graduate version running parallel, graduate students were required to hand in TeX-written assignments, while the undergraduates were free to choose. Apart from that, lectures, assignments, and the exam were shared between the courses

@Arthur If I wanted (or was forced) to make a small difference in requirements between grad and undergrad students, this TeX requirement would actually look rather reasonable to me.  Anyone intending to get a Ph.D.in mathematics really should learn TeX, whereas that wouldn't necessarily be the case for undergraduates, who might be planning to go into an entirely different field even if they were very strong in math.

The main difference between my athlete students and my non-athlete students is that I have to provide more regular feedback for the athletes, and provide accommodations for them to make up work when they have to miss something because of a scheduled athletic event.
I have been fortunate that my athlete students have been very good, conscientious students who were eager to ensure that they stayed on top of things.
Personally, I agree with the posters above in holding athletes to the same standards as everyone else. In the long run, it's best for everyone involved.

Re "provide accommodations for them to make up work when they have to miss something because of a scheduled athletic event": If OP is worried that this is extending special treatment to athletes, they could broaden this to any student who misses class due to a university-sponsored event (e.g. debate team, field-trip for another class).

Or who misses any class for any reasonable cause.  My wife gave birth to our 3rd child via scheduled c-section, which was during the exam window for a statistics class I was taking, prof was willing to let me take the exam the day before or a few days after.   As a teacher, I've extended the same courtesy to my students who have had to travel for work, work weird hours to finish a special project, etc.  Even had one student who couldn't make an exam because he is the nuclear safety officer for a reactor nearby and the NRC had scheduled their regular audit.  Got some cool pictures to show too:)

@ivanivan I had a similar experience. My third child was due at the end of finals week, but the previous two were a week or more early, so it wouldn't have been a surprise for her to come at any time at the end of the semester. I let all my profs know of the potential conflict on the first day of class and all were willing to accommodate rescheduling if needed. Luckily she held off until the day following the last exam.

I think it is a mistake to make rules for yourself ahead of time. When/if such a situation comes up, ask your colleagues at that institution how to handle it.  (If you are a TA, then of course ask your immediate supervisor in the course: in that case you are perhaps not even authorized to act on your own.)

I agree with this answer.  Two general points: (i) trying to figure out how academic culture works at level X / institution Y before you get there is most often more trouble than it's worth.  (ii) The whole point of being a TA is that you are assisting the instructor of record.  So when in doubt, ask the instructor.

@PeteL.Clark The OP didn't mention his field.  In some (many?) fields the GTAs are instructors of record.  But granted, in that case, the statement only changes from "ask the instructor" to "ask the coordinator" :-)

This is useful only up to a point.  Local academic culture isn't the only consideration here; you also want to have a sense of the "global" academic ethics on this question.  That way, if your particular supervisor or institution turns out to be out of step with the rest of the world, you'll be able to recognize it and consider how to respond.  So I think the other answers are useful as well.

I'm a former D1 athlete so I'll offer a bit of a different perspective here.  During competition season I was often out for multiple days a week for travel and meets.  I always got deadline extensions when I was going to be out but I don't think was ever graded on a different scale then other students. I think your ability to refuse to make accommodations depends on your university.  I was always told that if a professor wasn't making reasonable accommodations; to let the support staff at the athletic department know.  All of my professors were always reasonable so it never came up, but I got the sense there would be some pressure applied to the professor to be flexible on deadlines around school sponsored events.
I think the answers to a lot of your questions will depend partially on what department you're in.  I was an engineering major in undergrad.  A lot of the professors there didn't have a ton of athletes and therefore didn't have a ton of experience in dealing with the somewhat unique circumstances.  I needed to spend more time with them communicating and negotiating reasonable deadline extensions than professors in some of my electives which had more athletes in them.

I played football in college (Full disclosure, Division III so not a money making system for the university and no one's going to the NFL, but still 20-30 hours a week in season between practice/film/travel, maybe more).
We never got nor expected any special treatment from our professors. At most, professors were willing to work out a schedule with us. I even recall coaches proctoring tests in hotels if we were traveling on exam day. Personally, I had to do Transport homework problems on the bus on more than one occasion. And there are support systems. We had study groups on the team. There's the study groups from the university. For those who really aren't there for the education, there's counselors who will help plot the path of least resistance with regard to course loads.
By and large, student athletes know what they're getting themselves into by committing to athletics. It's a huge time-commitment and you learn how to manage it. It's hard work and that's a big part of the appeal. Frankly, most of them know that they're in school for the education. Very few expect to make a living in their sport.
Do not do a disservice to the vast majority of athletes who want to earn their degree honestly and ethically and take great pride in doing so.

As a graduate student employee, you'll have a supervisor.  If you're a grader, it will be the professor or instructor of the course.  If you're an instructor, there will be an administrator who will oversee your work.  When you're not sure about something like this, you should get in the habit of asking your supervisor.  This is very important.
You can certainly read up on university policy, but checking with your supervisor is the most important thing.
Your title looks inside out.  "Professors, and by extension their teaching assistants" would make a lot more sense.
Side note: as a graduate student instructor I had two members of the university tennis team in my class one semester.  They were conscientious and well organized.  They knew the dates they would miss and were proactive about requesting work ahead of their absences.  I think the only type of student-athlete you might be pressured to ease up your expectations for would be in the money-making sports, in some universities where academic rigor is less important than bringing in the bucks for certain high profile men's sports such as football.

A faculty member's role as your supervisor is distinct and separate from his/her position as a teacher in charge of a course.

@einpoklum - I don't know what you mean.  If you're using "supervisor" to mean "thesis advisor," then that's not relevant to my answer.  I used "supervisor" to mean "someone who oversees your work."  You could think of this person as your boss or manager, in some sense; however, you'll have more autonomy than one usually associates with a job where you have a "manager" or "boss."

There's one general rule that you'll find works well for all special cases, whether you're a TA or teaching:

If the student is making a legitimate effort to learn the material, you should be accommodating. If they aren't putting in the time, don't bother with yours.

For example, an athlete turns in homework late because of a game, but is otherwise to the standard of the rest of the class. Maybe they asked for permission in advance. I would tend to overlook the lateness and perhaps grade a little easier.
In contrast, if they submit junk but on time, I'd give them a poor grade.

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As a TA, you don't have much power.  Stick to the policies of the class.
As a professor, you have more power, although you might (or might not) be beholden to the department or university for some of your course policies.
However, there is usually a way to hold athletes to the same standard as everyone else while understanding their special needs.  Just have a generous policy toward assignment extensions and make-up exams.  Athletes shouldn't really be treated differently from people who are traveling for the school debate team, or who have special assignments for their work-study jobs, or who need to take care of sick family members.  If you want to, you can also give assignments and grades so students with many other commitments can still do well in the course.  That way, athletes would be at less of a disadvantage without being treated "unfairly" well.
And no, you shouldn't be more lenient on athletes when they're found to violate the honor code.  But you can probably decide what does and doesn't constitute cheating, e.g. you should be able to let students bring a piece of paper with the formulas when they take an exam.


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Is there a (text)book on how academia works?
Is there a (text)book on how academia or science works? What I'm looking for is not anecdotes and tips, but actual insights presented systematically, like any textbooks in every disciplines. This book should provide connections between varieties in academia, and how the root of seeking new knowledge shaping the varieties as they are now. I think this can be categorized as an application of sociology.
Some questions I want to know:

How does a new theory spreads out and be accepted?
Can it answer everything?
How do governments fund researches?
[to be added]

Meta discussion: How to make the question asking for books on academia/science not a shopping list?

I'd find it difficult to write a book on something that varies more than you think it does ;-) When I was a 15-year old kid, I enjoyed P. B. Medawar, Advice to a young scientist, but nowadays I'd consider it a bit outdated.

BTW, most of the books I read so far about academia are books that complain on how badly the level of academia has fallen down, or about the eternal fight between hard sciences and the humanities.

Academia (and 'science') is a human organization, subject to all the advantages and frailties of humans.

@MassimoOrtolano yes, and while writing and reading them are good, I feel that are still circular. The mean of textbooks is to provide connections between varieties. Those varieties are exactly the reason I ask this question.

How science works, and how academia works, aren't exactly the same thing.  I heard an interview on Fresh Air once about college campuses' race to build more and more campus buildings.  That doesn't have anything to do with science, directly.

@aparente001 I would prefer to know both. But I admit my interest is more on the side of science

Science and academia are two distinct and very different things. Pick one for the question.

Sometimes I’m tempted to suggest Kafka’s The Trial.

@Greg regarding the two existed answers, how would you think how this questing should be edited?

one and only Jeff Schmidt ...and Disciplined Mind

For a bit of satire, try Moo by Jane Smiley

@JeffE I find the Laputa adventure from Gulliver's travels even more apt.

Alright, I feel we need to have a post about fictions in academia

Thanks @greenb for your link to Merton, I found a good pointer to everything about science itself: Science studies. One of the introductory books I found is David J. Hess, Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction. Here is its introduction:

Science Studies is the first comprehensive survey of the field, combining a concise overview of key concepts with an original and integrated framework. In the process of bringing disparate fields together under one tent, David J. Hess realizes the full promise of science studies, long uncomfortably squeezed into traditional disciplines. He provides a clear discussion of the issues and misunderstandings that have arisen in these interdisciplinary conversations. His survey is up-to-date and includes recent developments in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and feminist studies.
By moving from the discipline-bound blinders of a sociology, history, philosophy, or anthropology of science to a transdisciplinary field, science studies, Hess argues, will be able to provide crucial conceptual tools for public discussions about the role of science and technology in a democratic society.

Glad you got unstuck.  I haven't read it but Wikipedia has an article on "sociology of scientific knowledge."

So this is mainly about science, and not academia as a whole.  I imagine academics in the department of English differ substantially from academics in the department of Chemistry.

For science you may also find the fields of "philosophy of science" and "history of science" interesting. Kuhn's classic book "The structure of scientific revolutions" is very readable and can tell you quite a bit about how new theories spread out.

The study of the higher education and academia is a huge area of research, and I must admit, I am no expert in it. While some publications are opinion-based, as Massimo Ortolano notes in his comment, there is a growing number of research-based works on academia developed within different disciplinary frameworks, which includes those developed within the framework of academic sociology, as you mention in your question.
Among the trailblazing works in the sociology of academia were the publications by R. K. Merton, and also
R. Whitley, The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences (1984), and P.  Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (1984), focusing on French academia.
Among the recent notable books in this field, I can cite M. Lamont, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (2010), based on a study of US grant peer review panels, and
J. R. Posselt, Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (2016), based on participant observations about a number of graduate admission committees at US universities. Tracing the differences between the branches (varieties) of academia and explaining them is a major theme in both these books. But there are many more.

Thanks, I found a detail review for The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences. Do you know any other books along that theme?

Take a look at Tomorrow's Professor: Preparing for Academic Careers in Science and Engineering
The book is focused on STEM professors, but most of the research and advice is probably cross-discipline.  It's probably the best book about what you're in for as a graduate student, postdoc, and tenure-track professor.

Not really a book, but as a start one can visit the Category:Academia in Wikipedia, trace through the links they are interested, and look at the references if necessary.

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How can an Error in Google Scholar be corrected?
The bibliographic data of an article of mine is confused with that of a book with the same title. Not so long ago the book was confused with another article of the same year, thereby cancelling the citations. How to correct and restore?

The solutions from How to split two papers that Google Scholar incorrectly thinks are the same paper? might work.

The general answer to "How to do x with Google Scholar" is "with great difficulty" - I don't think Google care much about Scholar, as it doesn't make them any money. There is a support form at https://support.google.com/scholar/contact/general. If you are lucky you might get a response.

I can attest to google scholar answering requests for help. But they were often not willing or able to fix problems I described.

First of all, make sure that the place where Google Scholar is getting the data from has it listed correctly. They scrape from other sources and there's a mistake in the source, then there will be a mistake in Google Scholar as well.
Then you should try to contact them and let them know of the mistake. Even though the chance to get it corrected might be low (Google Scholar isn't as highly prioritized for Google as some of their other services), it is still worth a try.

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How to deal with poor teaching evaluations on academic job market?
I will enter the academic job market after having received poor teaching evaluations for my first and only independently taught class. Some of the criticisms were well founded, and I am trying my best to improve the class in the future. The teaching evaluations for the next (and hopefully improved) installment of the class will not be available in time to include them in my job applications.
While I am still inexperienced as a teacher, I don't think the evaluations are entirely fair. My predecessor agrees with me that the class is one of the most challenging classes to teach (it's a mandatory statistics class for terminal masters students without a mathematical background).
How should I deal with these teaching evaluations in my job application? Is there any way to provide context for the hiring committee?

Are you applying mainly for positions which are teaching-focused or research-focused?

Mainly teaching-focused.

Everyone has a tough time the first several years of teaching. It takes several years for people to find their feet. We can't all be Richard Feynman right out of grad school.
Still, a search committee might note your poor scores. You can compensate in several ways:

By remarking on this in your Statement of Teaching. I would try not to dismiss or shift blame, but tackle it head on. "In my first year of teaching, I received poor scores in Nuclear Physics 101. These mainly centered around X and Y. I have revised my syllabus to handle X and will dedicate more time to discussion around points Y. I have also changed how I handle Z, which should alleviate both problems, etc. etc. I have also decided to be less of a jerk."
By delivering a stellar guest lecture when you're brought on campus for your interviews.

Note that #1 and #2 both involve practices (statement of teaching; guest lecture in a class) that not all universities and colleges follow. Generally the ones that care about teaching require them and the ones that don't don't.
For example, I teach at an R1 where undergraduate teaching is ... deprecated. We mainly care about your research and that's what we evaluate our candidates on.

P.S. Most everyone hates teaching and takes statistics. If this were a course which you should have excelled in (ie, your research area), it might be of more concern.

+1 for not dismissing or shifting blame. Take responsibility and explain how your going to do better.

Darn the inability to edit comments. It should be "hates teaching and taking statistics"

I would see if you can find someone willing to write you a positive teaching recommendation letter.
In mathematics, applicants are typically expected to provide one or more such letters. Sometimes these read "So-and-so had difficulties in his/her first year, but responded markedly well to feedback and constructive criticism. H/she is now teaching the course a second time and is doing an excellent job: [here the letter writer gives a lot of detail....]"

Depending on where you apply, it may not be required to provide the teaching evaluations. For example, in the past, I have applied for a few jobs in Canada and other countries and it was not required. However, when I was invited for job interview, they asked me to give a 10 minutes course demonstration, so they could evaluate my teaching skills. I was required to do this for at least three different job interviews for professor positions. So I would say to provide the evaluations if they ask for them. Otherwise, you don't need to.  If they ask for the evaluations, then you could always explain that it is a difficult course to teach. As a professor, I am aware that some courses are more difficult and I think that most professors should be aware of that and understand that.


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It is possible to obtain two PhD degrees (various fields) on the basis of one interdisciplinary PhD dissertation?
It is possible to obtain two PhD degrees (various fields) on the basis of one interdisciplinary PhD dissertation? Is this something feasible (in Europe)?
Or maybe there must be two different 'physical' doctoral dissertations?

Usually not, because it's forbidden to defend the same thesis twice.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path/17245

Why would you want to? It seems like a waste of energy to me. A research degree is a paper saying that a department at a university judges you able to do independent research on a scientific level. Why would you want two of those?

If you love to research then you should research instead of getting back into the situation in which you have heckloads of obligations other than research to do. If you don't love research but got the degree to get some job in industry which requires the degree then you should go for that job.

@mathreadler A PhD in a particular field is often taken to be a strong qualification of one's expertise in that field.  It's not strictly necessary to have multiple PhD's to be have cross-disciplinary credibility, though it certainly could be helpful.

@Nat I don't think so. Most people would be puzzled why you'd even think of doing it. I think many people would be curious to ask "So why did you go for a second PhD? Could you not find any post doc spot or assistant professor spot, or job in industry..?".

I have seen this happen, with multiple cases of the same student earning PhDs from different departments (somewhat related topic areas) at the same top university.  One department required a private defense and the other, a public defense, so I think there were two defenses.  For privacy reasons, I can't name names.

I believe it is possible, as @WBT has mentioned. I think I have heard of such a case. I even understand the logical reasons behind it, and how it could positively benefit one's CV. But I do not think this is a good move you intend to stay in the academia because most people will see it as borderline unethical at best.

I'm intrigued by this question! Suppose someone researches two fields during their PhD and publishes manuscripts for both, then can they take manuscripts for one field and write a dissertation, and take the manuscripts from the other field and write a second dissertation? The dissertations are based on distinct manuscripts, hence, the objections below do not apply. Of course, producing enough research to fill two dissertations is probably beyond the vast majority!

No, at least the regulations that I am aware of require that the dissertation be a novel contribution to the respective field and that it has not been submitted before.
If you write a dissertation at the crossroads of different fields, you have to decide for a field in which you want to formally graduate and obtain a degree. It may be advisable to look for supervisors from different fields or with an interdisciplinary background.

Would this still hold if submitted in different countries? What do you think personally?

@SK19 yes, it does.

Or, alternately, find one of many interdisciplinary PhD programs.

@SK19: A (state of the art in a given) field does not end at national borders.

It's hard to imagine any legitimate university allowing a thesis that has already been submitted for some other degree, whether at that university or somewhere else.* If you lied and claimed it was a new thesis, your degree would be revoked if they ever found out. Furthermore, there are more requirements to earning a PhD than just presenting a dissertation. You're not going to be able to register as a student and submit a pre-prepared dissertation the next day.
And, anyway, what's the point? A PhD is generally treated as a level of achievement, rather than a quantity of achievement. Getting two PhDs is like getting two driving licenses.  That doesn't show you're twice as good a driver – it's just saying "I can drive" twice. Why would you want to prove twice that you're at the same level, instead of using all that time to advance beyond the level of being a grad student?
Having two PhDs is so unusual that everybody is going to ask you about both of them. How impressed do you think they'll be when you admit that this second PhD you were bragging about was just the resubmission of the same dissertation to another university?

 * And note that la femme cosmique's answer is a case of the same thesis being simultaneously submitted to two universities as part of a joint programme that both universities agree to when the student enrolled.

Getting two PhDs is like having two driving licenses. I have to remember that one.

Some universities allow this. I have a friend who did 2 years of his PhD in France and 1 year in China. He now holds, at completion, a PhD from the French institution and a PhD from the Chinese one, from one thesis (although separately in English and Chinese). But it's still the same field. Semi-related. OP could find a 'co-tutuelle'-ish arrangement between two institutions/groups in different fields in which this is theoretically possible, but that would be a pre-established relationship rather than something to do during the PhD.

@lafemmecosmique That's interesting to know. I think it would make a good answer.

I have two driving licenses -- one for the left and one for the right. :P

@DavidRicherby ok, I added it as a "super specific but theoretically possible" answer.

Well, I finished one PhD in chemistry, but thinking to take one in humanities/social science, I am stupid for dooing it?

"Getting two PhDs is like getting two driving licenses." - which can be very reasonable thing when wanting to drive in two different "contexts" (here: traffic legislations). The driving licenses indeed seem to be a pretty good analogy to why it can theoretically make sense to get two doctoral degrees in different fields.

@DavidRicherby You can read something about the double degrees achievable through agreements between universities in the answers to this question.

@O.R.Mapper Of course, the analogy isn't perfect. However, most countries accept other countries' licenses as evidence of competence to drive on short-term visits. If you want to drive long-term in a country, you typically need to get a license in that country but my understanding is that this is basically because it's impossible to impose penalty points on a foreign license. As for multiple PhDs, the asker of this question wants to use the same thesis to prove that they're good at two different subjects. But you don't need two PhDs to do that: you just need to say "Hey, look at my PhD in...

... widget-theoretic aspects of gizmo studies. That proves that I'm good at widget theory as well as gizmos." They don't need to say "I have a PhD in widget theory and a PhD in gizmo studies" to prove that.

@SSimon Well, to stretch the analogy a little, that sounds much more like getting, say, a car license and a truck license since you're proposing PhDs in two completely different subjects. The asker is proposing to use the same thesis to get PhDs in two different fields whose intersection includes that thesis.

@DavidRicherby: "most countries accept other countries' licenses as evidence of competence to drive on short-term visits" - yes, that's why I wrote "theoretically". Seeing on [travel.se] and other travel-related message boards how drivers cause dangerous situations simply because they are allowed to drive somewhere with a foreign license, but without any requirement of familiarizing with the local laws of the road (that can differ in basic things such as default right of way at junctions compared to their home country), it arguably isn't very reasonable other than for facilitating the ...

... whole process. Local rules and conventions differ. And the same can be said about different research fields. Note that my comment referred exclusively to the cited statement about two doctoral degrees being pointless, not to the OP's particular case of wanting to use the very same research work to obtain two degrees.

It is possible to do this, but usually the arrangements are pre-designated before you do the PhD. My answer is going to be very specific here; I have a friend who did this, and I know it's "a thing" at least in France. But as I said, the scope of the answer is therefore limited to a PhD done jointly between a French lab and one somewhere else.
A friend of mine has done a "co-tutelle internationale de these" which means that he spent 1 year of his PhD in his home country (China) and 2 years in a lab in France (paid by the Chinese government). At the end he wrote his thesis in Chinese and again in English (with a French abstract), defended in China, and he has two PhDs; one from the home institution and one from the French one. These agreements are somewhat common, at least in France, although I cannot really speak for other countries. However, that does mean that it is theoretically possible. As far as I'm aware, besides the language, the theses he submitted were the same.
It is not difficult to imagine a situation in which one of the labs is a different discipline to another (e.g. something like engineering vs. astrophysics) and so you could end up with 2 PhDs in such an arrangement. However these things are pre-arranged before the start of the PhD, and to form a new one would probably be a lot of administrative work.
However, it's possible, at least here.
Some stuff about it is written here:
https://ressources.campusfrance.org/catalogues_recherche/diplomes/fr/cotutelle_fr.pdf
Especially the paragraph that I'll poorly translate:

Which degree do we obtain?
Each cotutelle thesis is held within the framework of a convention
  linking two institutions of which one is necessarily French. The
  procedures and rules are those of the French doctorate and those of
  the doctorate in the partner country. The two universities recognize
  the validity of the cotutelle set up and that of the degree supported
  (grade of Doctor for French university and equivalent diploma for
  foreign university).
Concerning the issue of the diploma, there are 2 possibilities:
• The student receives a Doctor's degree conferred jointly by both
  institutions. The diploma is mentioned under his two appellations (for
  example: PhD in French literature and PhD in French literature).
• The student receives two doctoral degrees from each institution.
  Each diploma then bears the mention of the diploma specific to each
  institution, mentions the fact that the thesis was made in
  co-supervision and specifies the name of the partner institution.
In both cases, the thesis is defended in only one of the two
  institutions associated with the cotutelle, by decision of the two
  research directors.

But this is a highly-specific answer which is France-centric. Is that possible elsewhere? Probably. But I don't know enough about it to answer.

Yes, it's possible elsewhere, see also this answer of mine. I know of different cases, e.g. Italy/France (a student of mine who graduated last year), Italy/Germany and Italy/Finland.

I wonder how much these dual degree programs are really just the result of (or vestiges of, in the case of a post-Bologna Europe) bureaucratic headaches that people have to have their degrees recognized in different countries.  I'm not aware of any of these programs being within the same country (unless one is a professional degree, e.g., MD/PhD at Emory / Georgia Tech)

@guifa knowing French administration, this would not surprise me in the least ;)


text:
How to write an email to request a dataset to a professor
I'm interested in a dataset used in a scientific article, but I am not able to find this dataset on the Internet, I guess it is because the dataset was provided by NSTAR (an energy company) that no longer exists (it has merged with Eversource).
I have thought of requesting it to the corresponding author of the article, but I have never sent anything to a MIT visitant professor (female, just for the record) and I have never called a teacher of mine by its title. I think that there is not such a strict culture in Spain of calling everyone by its title. Can anyone help me in writing the letter? Will it bother her if I send such request? How should I start? What should I say about myself? How should I end the letter?

Professors are just normal humans, even at MIT. Be friendly and brief. How about this:
Subject:

Request for dataset used in [article name]

Body:

Dear Professor [last name],
on page [page number] of the article "[article name]" you are referring to a dataset consisting of [elements of dataset]. I am currently working on _____ and would like to ask if you could send me this dataset for further analysis as it would help me [benefit for you, e.g. "verify your results"].
Thank you,
[your first name] [your last name]

Nice answer. My only suggestion would be to use the correct title: either Dr. or Professor last name.

@RichardErickson Was about to make the same suggestion! Definitely use the correct title (I recommend Dr. if you're unsure of their professorship standing).

I assumed that most people in academia don't really care about their academic titles when it comes to day to day communication and that they are only used in very formal communication.

After reconsideration I agree with your suggestions. It is more safe and reduces the risk of offending her by not showing enough respect. I changed my proposal.

@problemofficer If you wish to be informal, avoid the use of any title and use the [first name]. However, using the wrong (i.e., "Ms" in this case) would be insulting. My personal rule of thumb for academic writing is to be formal unless indicated otherwise.

@problemofficer My bad... I have sent the email with my personal email account instead of my academic one... Do u think that it can be a problem?

@vicaba: It think, it will probably make a difference since a university domain gives you more prestige and trustworthiness, but I don't think that it is going to be a problem. It is just research data after all.


text:
Alphabetical Order for Authors in Computer Science
I was wondering, in the field of Computer Science, if there is a convention for acknowledging that author ordering for an academic paper is by alphabetical order, not contribution.
I know that in CS, alphabetical ordering, isn't all that common, however due to a lack of internal consensus, alphabetical ordering would be preferred in my situation.
Even in fields outside of CS, is there a convention for perhaps indicating in a footnote that the author list is alphabetical and NOT by contribution?
EDIT: To elaborate a bit more, after examining the question posted here, our field would likely be considered 'computer systems' (rather than theoretical computer science) where it is stated that the first author is usually the team lead. However in our situation, as I said, we are having internal disagreement over which person would be considered 'leader', and I was wondering what the best way to indicate equal contribution, or perhaps use alphabetical ordering to avoid the issue all together. We weren't really expecting to submit our work for publication (we're undergraduates), so this all has been rather unexpected.

Why would there be a footnote? A simple examination of the author list will indicate that it is alphabetical ordered. It is quite the convention in certain sub-fields in computer science.

I've seen tons of math/theoretical CS papers with authors listed in alphabetical order, and I don't remember a single instance of mentioning how they ordered authors. It'd be strange to see such a footnote.

@Shion I don't think simply looking at the author list is enough to tell how it's ordered. For example, how do you know it's not in oder of contribution (or whatever order) when the paper is written by "Fujiwara and Shion"? Technically, it's in alphabetical order. But just because it coincides with alphabetical order doesn't mean it's not in order of contribution. You don't know if the authors' intention was to list them in order of contribution or not, do you?

possible duplicate of What does first authorship really mean?

I have seen such a footnote, but never in a theoretical CS paper.  I have also seen a couple of TCS papers where the authors were randomly ordered (with an explanatory footnote) but that idea never caught on.

@JeffE +1 Like the notion of the random order idea.

@JeffE - do you put the seed in the explanatory footnote?

In theoretical CS, alphabetical order is the norm - see the relevant wikipedia entry.

We ended up making a note with the author's list that names were in alphabetical order an not indicative of contribution.

It depends on the subfield.  Andrew Appel has a nice paper working this out for different conferences.  (Hat tip Dylan Thurston on MO.)


text:
If a thesis committe member asks for changes in my thesis does that mean I'm not getting a PhD "summa cum laude"?
I am a PhD student in Germany. I had a question regarding the summa cum laude mark for my thesis.
To open the examination procedure, I asked three reviewers to read my thesis (my main supervisor and two external reviewers). Now it seems my reviewers evaluated my thesis and they sent their mark to the university. I received a letter form the PhD committee that now the chair of my oral examination will fix a date. Together with this letter, I have received another letter from one of the reviewers. The reviewer asked for some changes in the introduction part of the thesis.
My question is:
If the reviewer requests for changes, does it mean that he did not give the best mark? I know that all three reviewers of the thesis, beside four members of the examination committee, should gave me the same (best) grade to receive the summa cum laude mention.

Huh, I didn't know that one could get grades for a PhD beyond "You have a PhD". Clearly one can in Germany. I learn something new every time I visit this site :)

@Flyto: Some universities give special awards for exceptional dissertations, but I too have not heard of the kind of "dissertation distinction" that Kathe asked about.

@Flyto I have seen several universities giving a mention to PhD degrees: cum laude (funding ran out), magna cum laude (good job, most people get this) and summa cum laude (f**kin A)

@Flyto My PhD even had a numerical score (70/70).

There is really no way to answer this. It is what it is. The person asking will make the judgement and we can't read minds here. Relax.


text:
How to encourage self-archiving of preprints in science?
As the background, I am a graduate student in high energy physics, mainly theoretical physics. Recently, I have sen that there are a few scholars who don't put the preprint versions of the paper in the preprint servers such as arxiv. I must add the fact that for many of the journals the self-archiving of the preprint is allowed, and I see no point for not putting the preprint version submitted to peer review on arxiv. I have seen that there are some old researchers and also some not so old ones who don't put the preprint versions of the paper on arxiv and sometimes make it difficult for some papers to be read. Hence, the question would be on how to promote open access and convince people to be opened within this direction.

How to encourage self-archiving of preprints in science? — Cite self-archived papers more often than papers that are not self-archived.  Oh, wait, that already happens naturally.

From what I see, some organizations are solving this by making self-archiving mandatory. In the UK, research funding bodies are now starting to use only open-access publications to assess the quality of research. As a result, the universities are starting to require their academic staff to self-archive publications. Also, I've seen a conference organizers discussing whether they should require the authors to self-archive the accepted papers.

This is a very broad question that the open access (OA) community has been discussing for ages and, as you point out, is not solved yet.

Universities have tried adopting open access policies to encourage researchers to share their works. (See ROARMAP for an overview of these policies.) However, many of these OA policies require researchers to deposit papers in institutional repositories (such as DASH for Harvard) instead of topic repositories such as the arXiv, for various reasons.
Many research funders also encourage OA (for instance, the Wellcome Trust or the BMGF), but they often foster hybrid OA: paying publishers to make the article freely available even if it was published in a closed journal. These fees are called Article Processing Charges (APC). These policies do not focus on fostering self-archiving by authors.

Topic repositories are successful when they are adopted by scientific communities: this is the case for arXiv (originally in physics) but also for more confidential platforms such as IACR eprints (cryptography) or LingBuzz (linguistics). By definition, scientific communities span accross universities and funders, so these repositories are quite orthogonal to institutional efforts towards OA. I think the best way to foster them is to have some influence in your community and advertise the repository you like.
Note: I am involved in the dissemin project, which tries to help researchers upload missing papers to open repositories (not specifically topic repositories though). Feel free to join or to send us your comments.


text:
Overview of the mathematical (and computer science) world by countries
I am looking for statistics of research done in mathematics and computer science by country. I found reports for Thainland, Kyrgyzstan and Finland in mathematics. Where can I find similar statistics for other countries, and also the "bigger" ones like USA, Russia, UK, France, Germany etc.
Things that should be mentioned are: Major universities/institutes, what was achieved in the last decades, research output, people, topics and conferences held and a general overview. So how to find such information?

"conferences held" - Thailand is a pretty and interesting place, and thus quite suitable as a location for international conferences. Not sure how directly that attractiveness counts as "research done" ;)

At least in computer science conferences are mostly organized by a local research group in the field, so it has a link to the research done.

Let's just say ... there's a reason why the annual HICSS conference takes place on Hawaii, and it's not exclusively because the local research groups are particularly prolific in the topics covered by the conference, compared to research groups at other places. Of course, there need to be local research groups interested in (co-)organizing the conference, but they're certainly not the only reason (and not even necessarily the most important one) for the selection of a location.

Okay, I agree; then conferences might not reflect the research done or might not count as an evaluation thereof, anyway would be good to have an overview, as conferences in some sense show whats going on.

Sure. Even though I am generally suspicious of seemingly one-dimensional rankings for complex things such as "research", I agree this comparison can be interesting in some respects; my comment about conference locations was a bit tongue-in-cheek, anyway.

Never said they are meant for some kind of ranking. If in country A where published just 1 article in a year, and country B maybe 100 articles I never meant to imply that country B might be ranked higher, as the content of the one article might be highly interesting (btw is it not clear how to compress all these factors mentioned into a single ranking). Just to have an overview, where, how and what, and in what intensity, is done in the countries. Pure numbers and facts, what anyone might derive from them is up to them.


text:
Why mention town and country of equipment manufacturer?
For reproducibility I see the use of mentioning the equipment type, version number and manufacturer. But in the internet age it seems unnecessary to me to mention the town and country of an equipment manufacturer in the methods section of an academic paper.
In my opinion it was probably useful when you needed a phone book to look up the company details. Nowadays, I think these details make the papers less readable because they break the flow of the text.
However, my PI and some coworkers always want me to add this information without giving a reason why. (If they give reasons they are: "the journal wants it" [not true], or "everybody does it this way" [bad reason])
Is there any good reason to add the town/country that I did not think of?

Which field? I surely mention neither the town nor the country of an equipment manufacturer, just the manufacturer and the model number (not even the version number).

Could it not just be a historical thing? If you go back to a pre-WWW time, where perhaps there were many more small, local, manufacturers then it would make sense to specify the location of the manufacturer. Is this a reason to continue to do it? Perhaps not, but I can't imagine it's the only practice that we persist with despite the reason that necessitated it ceasing to be the case

As an alternative, baseless, speculation. Perhaps its for manufacturers who have factories in different locations? The (quite unrelated) example that springs to mind is Fender, who manufacture guitars in America, Japan and Mexico, with consensus suggesting that the quality of the product decreasing as you move across the locations. If I was buying a Stratocaster I may well want to know which factory it was made in.

The field is Biophysics. As for the (good) comment by Ian_Fin: I think that usually the company location listed refers to the headquarters. We do not usually know which factory equipment comes from. And then still, different parts may come from different locations.

Perhaps this is similar to including the town and country where books were published when you put them in your bibliography.

Great question - I've often seen this and thought that it seems somewhat archaic. It's even used for software such as 'Matlab, Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA' (random example) which seems even more unnecessary to me.

I think this is especially common in the medical literature. The objective, as you said, is to make sure readers can find the exact same product you used to get the full picture and for the purpose of evaluating or reproducing your work.
Even in the "Internet age", there are many reasons why one might need the physical location of a manufacturer in order to access their products. Here are a few that come to my mind:

Many companies are not easy to locate with a google search and I know several that don't have a public website or any sort of web presence at all. It might feel silly to write "we used Gmail (Google, Mountain View, California)" but there are many businesses that are not as publicly known. If you're looking in an online phone book you still need to know where to look for.
Companies might have many subsidiaries and divisions that could be developing products and prototypes without the other ones necessarily knowing about it, especially prototypes. Contacting the wrong one might lead to a dead end.
Due to different regulations (and that is especially true for drugs and medical equipment) it can be that the same company is selling different products depending on the location. The exact composition of a drug or the firmware might differ depending on where the products were sold.
It actually sometimes happens that two completely unrelated companies providing the same type of services or goods that are active in separate countries have the exact same name. Confusing, I know.
Companies disappear, get bought, change name, etc. Knowing the location at time t might help locate the new entity that could deliver the product.

This being said "the journal wants it" is a valid argument, if it's effectively the case and "everybody does it this way" is not that bad of a reason when it comes to article structure and writing practices. Be creative on the content, not on the form. I personally don't feel brackets with (Nvidia Corporation) "break the flow" less than (Nvidia Corporation, Santa Clara, California).
Plus it brings back good memories of time spent in California.

California is not a country!

I would elaborate the "everybody does it this way" point to note that if it's so ubiquitous, it becomes an expectation among reviewers  that can count against a paper if omitted, even if it doesn't actually weaken the paper in a substantive way.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit yet.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit anymore.

+1 especially for "selling different products depending on location". This is something most people find surprising. Even things which are assumed to be "the same" such as branded food products (McDonalds chicken nuggets, Haribo gold bears) have different composition due to local tastes. But then there are differences nobody knows about - I once worked for a biologist whose PhD student's mice experiment failed at a stage which had worked with the same mouse strain in another country. Then they imported the pellets used in the original experiment and the problem disappeared.

I've always assumed that this is in case there are two different companies with the same name. The location of those companies will almost certainly remove any ambiguity.

For rather obvious company names this is definitely possible, though trademark rules would normally mean that a country is sufficient to disambiguate.

"trademark" are only within the same trade, so you can have two companies with the same name selling different items.   It can take many phone calls to track down the correct company, so having the name of the town saves a lot of time.

@Ian yes, but the trade may be as broad as "medical devices" or even broader, thus probably obvious from the context

@ChrisH, not to google when you are looking for the current contact information for a company.