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Is there an incentive to submitting a math PhD application before the deadline?
I was aware that there are a few REU programs that began offering positions before their stated deadline. Is there an advantage to submitting my application early, besides the reassurance that my supporting materials like letters of recommendation will be received on time? For example, if the admissions committee starts reading applications early, they may look at my application more favorably when they aren't inundated with applications.

Is there an advantage to submitting my application early, besides the reassurance that my supporting materials like letters of recommendation will be received on time?

I'm not aware of any advantage to submitting a math Ph.D. application early, beyond knowing for sure that you have not missed the deadline.  Not even for letters of recommendation, since it's not clear that submitting early will lead your recommenders to do likewise.
There are certainly advantages to preparing your application materials early.  You'll have more time to revise them, and you can share polished versions with your recommenders before the last minute.  However, this is a different issue than whether you should submit them early.  You might as well submit everything once you're done making changes, but there's no need to rush.

For example, if the admissions committee starts reading applications early, they may look at my application more favorably when they aren't inundated with applications.

I doubt that many people will look at applications early.  For example, it's common to assign each application to one or more faculty members, who are supposed to carry out an initial evaluation.  (This ensures that no application gets overlooked and that the readers have equitable workloads.)  In such a system, there's no advantage to starting early since the assignments will not yet have been made.
Even if someone does start reading early, I'm not convinced they will necessarily evaluate the applications more favorably.  One can imagine the opposite scenario, in which early readers are harsh, in the hopes that the upcoming applications will be better, while later readers have a more realistic assessment of the overall applicant pool.  Ultimately, I have no idea whether early readers would be more or less harsh, but I'd bet the effect would be very small.  If it's unpredictable and small, then it's not worth worrying about.

a few REU programs that began offering positions before their stated deadline.

Could you provide evidence to this claim? I never heard of anything like that let alone couldn't find a logical explanation for it.

For example, if the admissions committee starts reading applications early,

Well, I would say part of it depends on the particular institution, the selection committee and the number of applicants.

... they may look at my application more favorably when they aren't inundated with applications.

No they will not. Often the selection committee comprises of three or more members and it is an established norm that you select the best from the lot no matter where you are from or when you have applied provided the application reached within the deadline. Usually the admission process comprises of several steps. Some institutes conduct several rounds of interviews (personal experience) to select the most suitable candidate.
That said, I have no supporting evidence to concretely prove the claim wrong, but in my opinion I wouldn't want to be in an organisation where haste precedes meticulousness.

Some REU programs use the rolling admissions system, so you can submit and receive a response far before the actual hard deadline. I had a friend who got into an REU as early as December (applications typically close in Feb-Mar)

authors: k频道在线导航kpd3com_kpd频道在线导航入口


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What consequences are imposed by an institution when a researcher commits plagiarism?
Not sure if you've been following the story of a South Korean Prodigy, who tried to get his PhD degree based on a proceedings article (copyright protected) that his advisor has previously published thirteen years ago, by duplicating everything word-for-word, and rearranging some equations. Not surprisingly, his article was retracted. The advisor and the student are still claiming innocence and saying that the reviewers of the article are not experts of the field. Their case is currently under review by their institution.
What I'm curious about is what happens when graduate students or more senior people are caught by plagiarism. In my fifteen years or so as an academic, I have never seen a paper so blatantly plagiarized, and it got me thinking about what I would do if one of the graduate students committed such plagiarism, and if I were asked to reprimand those who have committed plagiarism in an academic capacity (note that I am not talking about undergraduate students).
I would think that there should be a pretty severe punishment, since when the undergraduate students are caught cheating or copying their homework assignments, after maybe a warning, their transcript contains a record of it. If they continue to cheat, they could get expelled. And obviously, doing this as an academic is a much more serious thing.
So I am interested in those who have served as deans, or otherwise some kind of academic integrity panel in your institutions. Do these things happen frequently (obviously on a smaller scale)? How did you deal with it?

OK, I have made another attempt. I'm still learning how stack exchange works, but thanks for your comments. It was (hopefully) helpful!

I think it's much improved (I've deleted the comments which were about the previous version of this question.)

Different institutions have different policies in place; however, it is the duty of the author's institute to conduct a detailed investigation if there are allegations of plagiarism or any other form of misconduct. If the author/researcher is found guilty is confirmed, depending on the nature and extent of misconduct, one of more of the following actions may be taken by the institute:

At first, appropriate steps are taken to correct the damage
Letters of reprimand may be sent to the guilty persons
Sanctions are imposed on them
Their work may be closely monitored to ensure compliance with the funders' policies and publication ethics
The institute informs the funding agency and this can lead to suspension or termination of a grant
In extreme cases, the guilty person may be suspended or terminated from the institute
If copyright violations or fraud is involved, the institute sends the findings of the investigation to the appropriate agencies. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) releases the names of people guilty of misconduct on its website. This can damage the reputation of the researcher, and he/she might be banned from submitting papers to journals for a certain period.

It depends very heavily on whether the plagiarism is reported before or after the degree is awarded.
If after the awarding, it's very hard to get discipline taken; you can find examples here on ac.SO.
If before the awarding, it's possible - it depends on the integrity of the institution and whether it actually performs an impartial investigation and takes action. In the South Korean case, it was before the awarding.

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Should I quote Wikipedia if I can't rephrase it?
I want to write down this idea that I get from Wikipedia: both (James Watson and Francis Crick) thanked the Schroedinger's book for their inspiration.
(More specifically, that page is What Is Life?, and that idea comes from the last sentence of the second paragraph.)
This is what the wiki writes:

each respectively acknowledged the book as a source of inspiration for their initial researches.

Of course that statement has a reference back up. My problem is that I can't figure out how to write that idea down without using the exact one used by the wiki. In my opinion, that sentence is better than any sentence I can think of to rephrase it. If I just use it anyway without quoting it, I'm afraid that I will be plagiarism. If I say that it is from Wikipedia, well, you know the result. My best solution I can find is using this clause:

stated by Wikipedia, with Julian F. Derry (2004) backs up

But it is super awkward. In case I can't think of any better sentence, do you know how should I do?

Quoting and citing is not plagiarism -- plagiarism is claiming others' work as your own. By quoting and citing you are not doing that.

So you are suggest that all I need is using the quotation marks and leave it without saying where it is from?

NO. You need to say where it is from -- citing the source.

actually, I'm not writing a paper, which demands highly creditable, but only writing a normal stuff. Still I need to cite it?

Not citing is plagiarism whether you are writing a paper or not. Putting a quote in without putting the source is non-sensical.

Should I quote Wikipedia if I can't rephrase it?

Yes.  If the important thing is the facts (and not the phrasing), then forget what Wikipedia said, read the source cited there, and work from that to find your own wording.  But if Wikipedia has a better phrasing than anyone else has, and you want to copy that phrasing, then you need to credit it to Wikipedia.  You shouldn't use this phrasing while trying to disguise the fact that it came from Wikipedia, or try to modify it just enough that nobody can be sure of its origins.  You should either credit Wikipedia or rewrite it from scratch.
If the quote is genuinely great, then using it makes sense, and nobody will care that it came from Wikipedia.  (It's reasonable to question Wikipedia as a source for facts, but that's not a reason to avoid crediting it for good writing.)  However, I'm not convinced this quote is so obviously wonderful that quoting it would look natural.  Would it be that much worse to say something like this?  "Schroedinger's book was written for a popular audience, but it was nevertheless highly influential among scientists.  For example, it inspired Crick to take up the problem of the physical basis of genetics."  (Note that the Derry reference you mention never says it inspired Watson except via Crick.  Wikipedia cites Watson's book "Avoid Boring People" for its influence on Watson, but I haven't checked what he says there.  Derry cites "The Double Helix", but I haven't checked that either.  In any case, you'd need to check these references, see how to incorporate Watson, and add a suitable citation.)  I'm not saying this phrasing is ideal, but it could be good enough, and I bet you could come up with various alternatives, depending on exactly what you want to convey.  I doubt it's crucial to your paper that this one sentence convey exactly what Wikipedia said.  If it is, then quoting Wikipedia is fine, and if it's not, then the whole issue is not so important.

Thanks for your answer. I'm not a native speaker, so that it is not easy to make a complicated sentence. The problem is that I want to make a sentence as condense as possible.

actually, I'm not writing a paper, which demands highly creditable, but only writing a normal stuff. Still I need to cite it?

@AnonymousMathematicia, By citing Wikipedia, you are suggesting that the text on Wikipedia is "original research". How does this match up with the policy that Wikipedia forbids original research?

@Pacerier: Wikipedia could have an exceptionally well-phrased description of something that is not original research.  Anyone who quotes that description would need to cite Wikipedia to give credit for the quote.  (It would also be best to give a more authoritative reference to establish the actual facts.)

I believe you should quote the initial source, not wikipedia. Quoting an article will not change in time, while nobody guarantees that a wikipedia entry will be the same after, say, a year or two.
Now, I don't see any problem in rephrasing what the wikipedia article says in other words, thus avoiding plagiarism, while also citing the original source.
E.g. "both scientists have acknowledged that their initial researches were inspired by [book citation]."

very clever. You don't rephrase that sentence, you just reorder it.

Wikipedia is version controlled, it's trivial to link to a specific version of a page, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Watson&oldid=643394062

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Living standards for academic/postdocs
I'm a PhD student that is finishing up, and I want to do a postdoc. Yesterday I went to a lecturer's house (he was above 60 years old) and I was really shocked because it is not what I expected.
Right now I live in student accommodation where I pay about £500 per month (without bills) and it is decent. But now I am really worried and sad because I don't want to be a poor academic having to live in some little awful house just to make ends meet... I want a nice house (though it does not need to be huge).
Am I worrying for no reason???

Knowing academics, I'd find more likely that he can afford living in a better house, but doesn't want to because he is content like this; not everyone is craving status symbols such as a big house. Or he might be the kind of person that reuses tea bags and has one million dollars on his bank account.

Since you talk about £, I assume you are talking about the UK. It is well known that an academic in London, especially at the lecturer rank, is poor. I was interested in possibly moving to the UK and was told flat out that if I wanted to have money, I should avoid London.

In any case, here are some raw numbers: http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/CareerComparisons/SalaryComparisons.aspx#Information

If you want to get rich as an academic, find a research area where you can make a breakthrough that can be spun off as a company or sold to industry...

"Lecturer", in short, is one of the bottom rungs of academia hires, and is a term that may be applied to a large number of hires, despite that not being their official title/position.  It's better than adjunct, if for no other reason than you have a more stable income and teaching load.  If you don't think you can make it as a tenured researcher, then you may find your future prospects unappealing.  If you think you can, then no worries: tenured and tenure-track hires make much better money.

Paul Erdős didn't seem to care much about these issues.

The average rent in London is 1500 £/month.  In Yorkshire, it's 600 £/month.  The same difference applies to buying a house.  For your personal wealth in the UK, where you live is far more important than how much you are paid.

I've had the exact opposite experience: a researcher at NASA/JPL was hosting a conference reception at her holiday home in the California Sierra Nevada, and house was huge (for a secondary residence).  I found myself quietly wondering if her spouse had a well-paying job.

@zibadawatimmy "Lecturer" in England isn't the same as a lecturer in the US. In England, this is the equivalent of an Assistant Professor.

@djechlin Yes they are big issues, but my day-to-day existence is bigger I would say.

@gerrit AFAIK most companies adjust salaries for London prices, so why don't universities do the same?

@user38336 So just because I want to have a medium-sized apartment which is nice, it means that I should not be in academia?!?

@C_Al Universities do salaries, but not by nearly enough.  Moreover, they only have two categories: central London, and rest of the UK, even though cost of living 20 km from London is a lot higher than 200 ,r 800 km away.

@C_Al You can have a medium-sized apartment at an academia income, in particular if you have a spouse contributing equally.  Just not in London.

@djechlin Well I never said I am worried about living standards when/if I'm a professor, I am worried about it as a postdoc, then a lecturer, then whatever comes. It is easier to worry about short term things like housing than about long term issues like "what if I don't become a prof?

Current salary scales for UK academics can be found here. Lecturer pay scales start at point 30 (currently around £31k). I would expect most lecturers to be paid at point 40 or above (currently over £40k) within 10 years at most through promotion and salary increases - many that I know of did it within 5 years, or were appointed at that level or close to it.
For comparison, the UK salary deciles are reported eg here, with a source linked. £31k is in the top 30% of salaries, and £40k in the top 20%. Professorial salaries will be in the top 10% nationally.
We could make endless comparisons between countries or within different parts of the UK, but compared to salaries in general UK academics are not badly paid.

Until you realise that they have to work extra on top of their contract hours to get the job done because there is always too much work and too little staff... (I'd say there is work for at least 20% more staff.) - And of course many researchers only live grant to grant - tenured permanent positions are the exception for the majority of academics.

@DetlevCM Both are true but neither question is about pay; and working for a small private company, the entire company may exist project to project.  So uncertainty is not limited to academia.

@DetlevCM Most professionals don't get to work 9-5, academia is not special in that respect

@Calchas Except that you don't normally get paid overtime in academia - and during busy periods you can quickly end up with a 70 hour week - with ZERO compensation.
In most regular businesses (at least assuming they aren't the exploitation type and of course assuming something like workers rights exist in the country) you will generally get some kind of compensation for extra work - this could be pay or extra holidays.

If you're working 70 hours in the EU, then you've signed something (not under duress) to remove your rights under the Working Time Directive @Detlev.  I also don't know where you got the idea that other businesses paid overtime  - in a "professional" job this is unusual, though there might be a bonus at some point in the year.

@DetlevCM There's no overtime pay in many cases for being a programmer or a consultant, even if you have to work late. It's just part of the job. Like being an academic.

@Calchas but they get paid a lot more. A decent programmer (e.g. someone who could have become a lecturer instead) will get 25-30 right out of university, and can easily go up to 40k within a few years.

Your numbers are badly skewed. 31k may be in the top 30% OVERALL, but that needs to take into account that there are a LOT of minimum wage (or close to it) workers, and even a number of people earning less (interns, apprentices etc). If you narrow that field down to only people with a university degree or above, you'll find that 30k is definitely on the low end of the scale.

@Benubird - if you follow the link, you'll find that comes from the UK tax authorities for salaries overall. As the question asks "Will I be able to buy a good house?", the point I'm making is "You'll be in the same position as the top 20/30% of the UK population", which is the only relevant point for this question.

The standard of living you'll attain depends massively on where you are and what field you are in (note that my answer assumes tenure, rather than the horribly exploited condition of adjunct professors).
In the United States, for example, liberal arts professors are typically paid much less well than professors in science and engineering subjects, who are in turn paid much less well than law or medicine instructors.  Location makes a difference too: a big midwestern state university will probably pay less well than Harvard, but Ann Arbor is a lot cheaper to live in than Boston.  In general, though, you should expect that a professor can have a relatively comfortable (if not lavish) lifestyle.
In other countries, academics may have significantly higher or lower relative standards of living.
FYI: For many US public universities, their employees are considered government employees and thus subject to public disclosure of their salaries.  You can thus find the salary distribution of most positions directly yourself if you wish.  For example, searching this database of the University of Illinois system shows that University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign currently has 632 assistant professors: the highest paid make around $200K (at the business school), the lowest paid are visiting professors and clinical professors for whom the bulk of their income is clearly elsewhere, and the vast majority make in the range of $60K - $120K, with humanities at the low end and biomedical sciences at the high end.

Hmm, let us constrain to US and Germany, UK, Italy, France and Spain. Suppose I am a postdoc or a lecturer (not a professor). Do you think it is still good? Since i have no way to know if I'll be a professor, and anyway, that is many many years away.

@C_Al My salary as a postdoc was double that of my salary as a graduate student, which is relatively normal in the US. I think the typical range is approximately 1.5x to 3x.  I don't know the statistics for Western Europe.  Postdoc, however, is expected to be only a couple of years way-station on the way to a more permanent position that will likely amplify your salary by a similar factor.

@C_Al As a "PostDoc" in Germany you would have no job security and live temporary contract to temporary contract - also beware that there is a time limit for temporary contracts too.

@DetlevCM, postdocs in most countries are intended to be short-term, and this is stated up front. The whole point is to give you a little time to publish things from your dissertation, broaden your horizons, and find a permanent position. Tenure-track faculty positions have little security either. You either make tenure in 6 or 7 years or are fired.

There are already a couple of good answers but there is another point:

You do not stay in academia to make money.

Just on an anecdotal side from a friend in Russia, you'd be hard pressed to live from the pay you get there - it is very little.
In most "western" countries you get enough to live decently, but then quite often you live grant to grant, especially if you do research.
Permanent positions are far and few - and mainly coupled to teaching - so if you really want to stay in academia you will have to aim for something like lecturer/senior lecturer (and maybe a professorship eventually).
Now there will be some people who make a lot of money in academia, but these will be far and few again. To earn a lot in academia (aside from being at the dean or vice chancellor level for the UK), you would have to be so important to the teaching/research of the university that they will do their best to keep you. But then again, they will possibly try to keep you with research resources rather than personal pay.
If you are only motivated by money, industry would be the place that - depending on subject - pays better eventually (or sometimes already right at the start).

Of course, I am not too worried about money, but I think you need to be happy in your own home. Some places I have seen are horrible.

@c_al: some folks are perfectly happy to continue living like a somewhat-well-funded student. Different people have different priorities.

I think the broader concern is that in academia, you take jobs where you can get them, and you might not get the chance to live in the kind of town/city that most appeals to you.
I'll speak to the US because that's what I know, but I'm guessing that the UK is roughly similar. In research universities here, it is relatively typical for assistant professors to make around $70K, and for tenured professors to make around $100K. (There are, of course, outliers in both directions.)
As it turned out, I got a job in a rather small city. The city is quite inexpensive, and it's very easy to find spacious and convenient housing on a professor's salary. The downside is that it's somewhat dull, the public schools are only so-so, and the dating scene is limited.
People who get jobs in the Bay Area, Boston, New York, Seattle, etc. (and I'm guessing also London) have the opposite problem. These places are very exciting and considered extremely desirable by many, but academics living there typically have to compromise on the kind of housing they can afford.
The job market is extremely competitive. If you are very, very lucky, then you might be able to choose between these two sets of tradeoffs. That said, most of the tenure-track or tenured academics whom I know are happy with their housing situation.

What you mention is an anecdotal fact. According to a recent New York Times  article, the salary of someone not at the beginning of her career is sufficient to support a middle-class standard of living.
This is statistics, each person has a specific personal situation (a partner with a good job or with no job, no or a lot of children, a side job as a consultant, etc.). If you don't know the personal situation and way of living of this lecturer, there is nothing you can conclude with your visit.

(The following answer focuses on France)
Researchers
In France, CNRS researchers (largest governmental research organisation in France) are paid according to the class they belong to (monthly gross salary):

chargé de recherche de 2 ème classe: between 2 200 € and 2 600 €
chargé de recherche de 1 ère classe: between 2 300 € and 3 900 €
directeurs de recherche: between 3 000 € and 6 000 €.

In addition to the base salary researchers get some bonus that can go up to 1275 EUR per year:

Each grade has several levels that determine the remuneration of researchers . The gross monthly salary research managers is between € 3,000 and € 6,100 (assessments in September 2007) . In addition to the base salary directeurs de recherche receive a yearly research bonus ranging from 650 to 1275 EUR (depending on the corps and grade) and , where applicable, family supplements.

Professors
The following two Wikipedia pages contain the salary grid for Maître de conférences and Professeur des universités:

Maître de conférences:

 - Professeur des universités

Research engineers
Gross salary for research engineers working in public institutions:
Ingénieur de recherche de 2ème classe

Début de carrière : 1907,68 euros
Milieu de carrière : 2 546,66 euros
Fin de carrière : 3 301,39 euros

Ingénieur de recherche de 1ère classe

Début de carrière : 2 694,83 euros
Milieu de carrière : 3 398,63 euros
Fin de carrière : 3 801,46 euros

Ingénieur de recherche hors classe

Début de carrière : 3 046,73 euros
Milieu de carrière : 4 079,28 euros
Fin de carrière : 4 458,97 euros

For the sake of comparison, the monthly gross median wage in France is around 1717€, and the average monthly net income is 2128€.

You should read this:

My mid life crisis, by the way, was having three kids preparing to go to college and realizing that even a senior tenured professor at a good university can’t send them to college and can’t buy a house.

This Georgia Tech professor then resigned from his position, and joined Amazon. So your lecturer is in better situation, because he has his own house.
Since you are paying £500 per month for student accommodation, I guess you live around London or Cambridge, because in the north, even in the biggest city like Manchester, one can rent a 3 bed room apartment with the same amount of money.
In these areas, around London, Cambridge, Oxford etc, as long as you have your own house, you should be happy. You can check the house prices in Zoopla, and estimate the time you can buy a house by mortgage with your expected salary.
I give you an example. I have a friend who are working as a Software Engineer in Cambridge with a salary of £50k per year, i.e. equal to that of a lecturer. He is paying mortgage for a one bed room apartment, far from the center, for 30 years.

To that article: it's worth pointing out that Greg Duncan, who said that, was at Georgia Tech; the median salary of the 494 people there with job title "professor" in 2014 was almost $160,000/year. (here, search "Units of the University System" / "Georgia Institute of Technology", sort by salary, click to halfway) Though someone like him can obviously make much more money in industry, "can't send [three kids] to college and can't buy a house" seems like an overstatement; $160k is in the top 10% of US households even assuming zero spousal income.

For the record, median income for "Assistant Professor" at Georgia Tech is about $102k (81st percentile of all households according to whatsmypercent.com), and for "Associate Professor" it's $115k (83rd).

@Dougal I don't know about Georgia, but here in Mountain View, California, you can't buy a decent house with $160k/year. Note that the tax is around 40%, and there is no decent house that value less than $ 1 million. I know several well-respected researchers at NASA Ames who could not buy a house after more than a decade working here. And they haven't had kid yet.

£500 pcm will not get a 3 bed house in nice parts of Manchester.   However rents are still about half in Manchester then Cambridge

£500pcm in the Midlands (where I am) gets me a nice en-suite room with shared kitchen in a student flat in a splendid central location of a great town, which I am more or less happy with. Right now I get paid around £15000, no tax. My worry is: if I get a postdoc, my salary won't increase all that much, so I wonder if I can afford £1000-1200 pcm rent on a nice apartment for myself (I won't be eligible for student housing of course).

@C_Al You can afford it, salary for postdoc is about double that of a PhD student. But having your own apartment is a totally different story. If you want high salary, try to find a postdoc in Switzerland, many PhD students there have higher salary than lecturers in the UK (75K CHF with 10% tax).

@qsp Mountain View has one of the most famously expensive housing markets in the country; Georgia not so much. Also Duncan said he went to Georgia Tech because of a two-body problem, which means he has a spouse who is also a professor and so is presumably making similar amounts of money. I'm not saying they'll be rolling in it, but they would certainly have been far better off than most of the country.

@Dougal I don't know. But he is a well-respected professor. He said he hadn't had a house, so he actually didn't. It is really really sad that such a well-respected and successful academic was unable to have a house when his youngest kid was old enough to go to college.


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I submitted my own code on someone elses account
I was flagged for plagiarism on a programming assignment. We get 3 submissions a day for the ~3 weeks that the project is open. I finished my project in about 1 week, but on one of those days I used my friend's computer to submit my assignment to the autograder (so I really got 4 submissions in one day). The undergraduate Honor Council at my college found me guilty of cheating on the assignment, and I'll have to report to another Honor Council with 5 professors evaluating my case and asking me questions to determine my ultimate punishment.
In all honestly, I just submitted on my friend's account to see if it would work (I was curious if they checked on submitting on peoples' accounts who weren't in the class). I still had ~2 weeks worth of submissions when I submitted my project for the final time, so I don't really think I had an unfair advantage over my peers.
Is this really a serious offense? The undergraduate council recommended to the official council that I get a 0 on the project (I actually got 100 on it), which would put me at a <= C- in the class (which is failing) given how heavily weighted this assignment was, but this seems rather ridiculous given it was all my code.

Is the council calling this "plagiarism" or are they calling it "cheating"? Was this assignment supposed to have been completed within a lab? Did you use the information from the autograder to improve your score on your submission? Does your instructor allow you to submit to the autograder multiple times?

The automated system marked it as "plagiarism." The undergraduate council gravitates more towards "cheating." It was a home project to be completed in about 3 weeks on your own time. You can submit to the autograder as many times per day as you want, but only the first 3 have (restricted) feedback. The additional one I submitted on my friend's account one day came with feedback as well, so I got 4 graded with feedback scores from the autograder in one day by submitting to my friend's account 1 time.

Never, ever, ever do things by using other people's account. And what is that "I was curious if they checked on submitting on peoples' accounts who weren't in the class". Are you sure you are telling us the whole story?

The presumption is likely to be that if the code was submitted from a friend's account, then that friend was able to view it.  Allowing another student to read your code would definitely be academic misconduct under any policy I can think of.

@sapi: and that's a very peculiar feature of student life, that students don't find intuitive at all. Showing your work to someone not even in the class is definite academic misconduct. Imagine if it were professional academic misconduct to allow another academic to see your work ;-) But it looks to me like the questioner is being pinged here for experimenting with a way to work around the constraints of the homework, not for allowing another student not on the course, to see his course homework.

I think it's also time for you to grow up.

Despite all the comments and answers here I still do not understand a basic fact: how is the council supposed to know it was you who submitted the assignment? Why should they believe you?

Given that the student Honor Council has already found you guilty of cheating, maintaining that what you did was simply out of curiosity does not seem like a good strategy.  I don't find that explanation so convincing myself: your "curiosity" got you an unfair advantage in the grading of the assignment.  Your position that this advantage was not relevant to the final outcome is really not the point: many if not most students who cheat on assignments and exams could have reached the same outcome honestly if only they had been more patient (and honest!).  If you were really "just curious", you could have asked about it, and you certainly could have submitted only the allowed total number of submissions in a single day.
The real question is whether you deserve the punishment you've thus far been given, of a 0 on the entire assignment.  Generally, when students don't follow all the rules of an assignment, they can reasonably expect to be penalized for it in some way, but the penalty need not be the entire value of the assignment.  I think your position should be that you agree that you did not follow the rules and that you did this out of a combination of curiosity and stupidity.  You can make a reasonable case that you did not violate any fundamental principles of the assignment: all the work you turned in was your own, and you got it 100% correct well before the final deadline.  So all in all you did more good work than bad.  You did exhibit poor judgment and agree that some penalty is reasonable.
I would suggest that you ask to be given the score that you got on the last attempt before you submitted on your friend's computer.  This score is undeniably legit, and giving you that score for the assignment seems like a nice compromise between giving no penalty for breaking the rules and ruining your entire course grade.
On the other hand, all this is to answer your question "Is this really a serious offense?"  (TL,DR: probably not too serious, but you did do something wrong.)  What I suggested above is really more a suggestion for what I think a just outcome of the faculty deliberation would be.  Depending upon how your system works, you may or may not have the opportunity to suggest a punishment.  As others have said, your real strategy here is to remain calm, explain all the facts as clearly as possible, accept that what you did is wrong and convey the impression that you are nevertheless a good student overall.  What they decide is really up to them.

Indeed if the aim were just to kick the tires of the system, the questioner could have submitted an empty source file using the friend's account, to see whether or not it got the detailed feedback. Then the plagiarism trigger wouldn't have tripped. But it's easy to say with hindsight what an ethical pen-tester might have done, the fact is the council won't accept that the student is any kind of legitimate pen-tester anyway...

+1 for "that you did this out of a combination of curiosity and stupidity". This is the only logical explanation of the OP's behavior.

What you did, in my opinion, doesn't deserve more punishment than a frown. Your problem now is convincing them that that is exactly what happened. It should be easy to see that the code is all yours, and that you had plenty of extra time. It would speak in your favour if the submission you did with your friend's computer was the same as one done with your account.
Keep a cool head and explain things clearly.

Thank you. The submission I had on my friend's account was a slight modification to one of my previous submissions that day (they were both < 100%). The undergraduate council felt like I gained an unfair advantage in knowing my project was < 100% more times in one day than any other student.

@Ashley, don't you think they have a fair point there?

@Ashley if that is the problem, your best bet is to show them that what you did was stupid, but you didn't get any advantage.

The advantage was getting more rapid feedback than you're supposed to. There's a reason the system gives you 3 responses per day for 21 days, not a total of 63 responses at any time during 21 days. Whatever that reason is, you're ignoring it by defending yourself with "I didn't use more feedback than I was entitled to anyway". People who administer these rules systems don't like it when you break the rules and claim it's OK because you don't accept that the rules have a good reason. They also don't like it when you say it's OK because you're smart (100% in much less than the time limit).

@Ashley Before you pat yourself on the back, please do remember that Davidmh's opinion isn't the one that ultimately matters.  (Nor is mine.)

Be ready to explain your code and prove it is yours. It was submitted from two accounts, the council knows it was from the same author, but they don't know who the author is yet. At my school the students are questioned about the code and how it works.
Explain to them what you did was dumb and that you did not benefit from it. Technically, you found a loophole in their system that could give you an unfair advantage. If possible bring the assignment sheet with due dates, and the dates/times of each submission. Have evidence that you didn't do that for fraudulent reasons, and that if submitted the next day it would still be on time.
And as Davidmh said, it is very important to be polite and calm. No one has ever gotten a warning from a police officer after being disrespectful to them. They may very well have not dealt with a situation like this before, and are treating it with a guilty until proven innocent approach. Treat it as a court case and professionally present your evidence and make your case as to why you didn't benefit and that you didn't plagiarize.
Lastly, learn from this. I have painfully learned like you that following your curiosity without either notice or consent from those in charge can end badly. People just see the outcome, with no knowledge of if the intent was malicious, and sadly most the time people assume the worst.

"Technically, you found a loophole in their system that could give you an unfair advantage." I think busting everyone trying to abuse this pretty much fixed the loophole. Perhaps not in a satisfactory manner, but for the Council it looks fixed.

You knew what the rules were (3 submissions a day) and you knowingly violated those rules (by making 4 submissions in a day). This gives them a slam-dunk justification for giving you 0 on the assignment. If this happens your response needs to recognise that you are in the wrong and accept the consequences of your actions.
It does seem on the harsh side however. To convince the council to favour you, I would suggest that you must first convince them that you (a) accept you did something wrong and (b) won't do it again. Once you've done this you may be able to achieve leniency by arguing that these were your submissions and they are of the highest standard.

This does not seem to be a case of plagiarism but identity theft (or "surrogation").

In all honestly, I just submitted on my friend's account to see if it would work (I was curious if they checked on submitting on peoples' accounts who weren't in the class)

Sure it's all your code, your programming skills may be unpaired, but you are going to be taught a lesson on ethics, protocols and behaviour. Be prepared. This is the result of curiosity, now you learn that and its consequences.
It's really not about the qualification or your skills, it's about sending a message about what is misconduct and the tolerance to that. Basically, you are questioning the rules (I can have 4 submissions in one day and that doesn't make a difference) and they won't like that.
I don't think a 0 in that project is too harsh. For the reference, real plagiarism in my university would imply a 0 in the whole course and waiting for 2 years to be able to take it again. This is not real plagiarism, hence just a 0 seems reasonable to me.

"This is not real plagiarism, hence" it doesn't matter how harsh the penalties for plagarism are.
Or let me put it another way.  Where I live, murdering someone will get you at least a few decades in jail, possibly even executed.  Luckily what you did was not murder, so "only" getting a 0 on your assignment seems reasonable.

I was a tutor once for a couple of years and I had students like you who tried to push the boundaries, doing things that were forbidden and trying to make excuses similar to yours... Your excuse seems really poor, I'm not sure if they will believe it or even care, as others have pointed out, you could have:

asked whether it would work
upload something from your friend's account that is not your code
upload it on a day where you did not already have 3 submissions

Honestly, did you even think about what you where doing?
I don't mean to be offensive, I want to believe that you didn't mean to cheat or get an advantage, but from the position of a tutor/teacher, such behaviour is annoying. It means more work for them (5 professors have to deal with your case!) because of something that you think is not serious at all.
 I would probably give you 50% of the points you had on your last legitimate submission.
What I suggest you to do is to apologize (mean it!), say how stupid and unthoughtful that was and kindly ask to get the points you had on your last legitimate submission.


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Do people need to have their PhDs at Harvard to get tenure at MIT (and vice versa) in STEM fields?
My friends and I were just discussing about this question: do people need to have their PhDs at Harvard to get tenure at MIT (and vice versa) in STEM fields?  I know theoretically, the answer is supposed to be "No", and "It depends on many other factors". But I just skimmed through MIT's Biology and Harvard's Biophysics department; it appears that those two giants only want to marry each other.
I wonder if there are are any detailed statistics of where faculty from H&M did their PhD and postdoc.

I don't know much about the departments you mention, but I see no evidence at all for this (and in mathematics it's certainly false).  I just looked at the first ten faculty members in the MIT biology department, alphabetically.  One assistant professor, two associate professors, and one adjunct professor (deputy director of the Broad Institute), and the rest were full professors (one emeritus).  Three were Stanford Ph.D.s, two Berkeley, two Harvard, and one each from UMass, Vienna, and Wisconsin.  This isn't a good enough sample to answer your question definitively, but it's not 100% Harvard.

+1 for asking for interesting statistical data; -1 for the question written in an argumentative way. Not upvoting for now, I encourage you to edit it to a more neutral tone.

This is probably true to some extent, but for good reasons. Harvard & MIT are located on the same street in the same town, so being a PhD student or post-doc at one more or less entails being the same at the other (speaking from personal experience). The hiring department at either H or M will then probably know the applicant personally, and they have most likely worked together. That always increases the chance of being hired.

The answer certainly is "no".  This question suffers from two misapprehensions.  First, it is not at all true that Harvard and MIT are unambiguously the top universities for STEM fields.  In my own discipline of mathematics, they are among the top, but are essentially tied with Princeton, Chicago, Berkeley, and Stanford; similar things are true in other disciplines. (continued)

Secondly, where you got your PhD probably plays less of a role in hiring decisions at top places like Harvard and MIT than at lesser institutions.  The kinds of people who sit on hiring committees at those kinds of places are not at all impressed by a fancy degree -- what matters is the work you have done.  This is especially true since they typically do most of their hiring at the senior level.  The majority of their faculty certainly have degrees from top places, but you shouldn't confuse correlation with causation...

Even if you find x% of faculty at MIT/Harvard, you have to look at the ratio of other large (or famous) schools doing similar things.  From how I read your question, it sounds as if you are picking out Harvard/MIT as an anomaly since you dont ask "do schools only hire from other schools in the area" or "do top schools only hire from other top schools", so you consider a look at Oxford/Cambridge as well.

where you got your PhD probably plays less of a role in hiring decisions at top places like Harvard and MIT than at lesser institutions — [citation needed]

I have never sat on a tenure case at either Harvard or MIT, so my answer is purely conjecture. While it is possible the first thing the tenure committee does is look at where the PhD is from and throws out everyone not from Harvard/MIT, that seems very unlikely. Tenure decisions are about teaching, service, and research. At the point of tenure decisions, the school your PhD is from is essentially meaningless although there may be some correlation between research productivity and where your PhD is from any longer term causative effects are probably pretty limited.
Where the PhD is from plays some role on initial hiring at all universities and if you don't have a TT position it is much harder to get tenure. Additionally, where you work probably has some causative effect on research productivity giving Harvard and MIT PhDs additional advantages (or at least preventing disadvantages). Therefore it is not surprising that lots of tenured faculty have PhDs from Harvard and MIT.

FYI: the Harvard math department has only one rank for tenure-track faculty: professor [i.e., full professor with tenure].  They sometimes hire people who become very young full professors, but most of their hires were tenure track or tenured elsewhere.  Though I don't know for a fact that "Tenure decisions are about teaching, service, and research." is inaccurate, I strongly suspect this is not the case nor even claimed to be the case.  It sure looks like they go after whoever they think is absolutely the best research mathematician they can get.

(They actually have a separate position "Professor of the Practice of Mathematics"!)

@PeteL.Clark I didn't mean to imply the three were equally ranked. I wasn't aware of how Maths works at Harvard, I think that structure is not the norm.

That structure is definitely not the norm: it would only be relevant in a question which is specific to STEM departments at Harvard and MIT.  :) Part of the point of my comment is that the tenure decision is synonymous with the hiring decision, so they are not evaluating candidates on their teaching and research at the given department at all.  My honest guess is that teaching and service (anywhere) is not evaluated in the slightest when it comes to these hiring decisions.  It would be understandable if an expensive private university would not say this so baldly, but even so...

@PeteL.Clark yes it is relevant, but there are a lot of departments in STEM fields that have more traditional hiring and tenure processes at Harvard and MIT.

I agree with you.


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When looking for students to work on a research project: contact good students directly or contact all class then select the good ones?
When teaching an undergraduate or graduate course and knowing about some good students, what would be the best approach in inviting them to join a research project? Contacting them directly, or send an email to all students and then select the "good students" that are also interested?

At my institution the selection was two-fold. The professor usually has an open invitation for all students to apply for their lab, but chosen students were known to be approached to raise their interest. This was always done carefully as to don't imply any precedence between students, but not secretly, and almost always orally (not by email or similar). For example, at the project oral defense, the instructor would suggest to the best students to consider applying for their lab.
At least all of my instructors were careful not to "flatter" the students, but only to raise their interest. There is little sense to have a, no matter how brilliant, student working on a project, if they are not interested in the subject.

I agree with you, but some good students may not understand the project well or may not realize their capabilities, so maybe it is the faculty job to invite them directly? Not sure though.

Of course, all I wanted to imply is that the faculty I know avoided praising the student to get them to work on the project, but rather by emphasizing the subject of the project to gauge whether the student's interests match. Then leave it to the student to think about it and possibly inquire further and/or apply, if interested. That's what I meant by "raising the interest".

@Mindwin I read that sentence as using singular their as a gender-neutral reference to the professor (i.e., his or her).

@JeffreyBosboom I stand corrected.

As an undergrad, I was both approached directly by a prof and responded directly to a job advertisement that a prof posted on a bulletin board near the entrance to our building. Both led to great research experiences for me and no apparent sour grapes or other complaints when my peers found out about my research opportunity. I have also seen a professor simply advertise during class that they had some opportunities available and that those who were interested could see them after class during office hours.

It would be better if you could contact whole class and then select the students who might not only be good, but also very much interested in doing the research. If you think that, someone is good and haven't approached you, you may just ask him/her about it.
Also, there's a possibility that you might not know all the students very well, so if you plan to select only the students whom you think who are already good, there's a chance that you might miss out someone who might be better and also more interested.
So, I would say to ask the whole group and then decide, depending on the response.


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Do faculty members get additional compensation such as bonuses in industry?
Do faculty members get bonuses similar to industry such as cash bonus, stock bonus, profit sharing, commission sharing, and tips? Or only for teaching more courses?

stock bonus — Unless you are taking a job at ITT Tech or similar, I don't think this will be an option. Could you clarify if you are talking about for-profit or non-profit institutions?

I assume non-profit institutions

In a certain country the ministry of education offered cash prizes for a while for each paper published in a high impact factor journal.

Since most faculty members are employed by non-profit institutions, there is little in the realm of corporate benefits that directly carries over for all faculty members.
However, there can be some carryover if faculty have intellectual property which has been licensed through the university to a corporation. In such cases, they usually share in whatever revenues the university receives from the corporation.

It would be somewhat trivial for universities in the US to pay bonuses to PIs of large grants out of the indirect cost/overhead they charge to granting agencies. Nevertheless, I don't think it's ever done.

@Bill Barth:  There's a lot of freedom for an institution to spend the overhead money they get from a PI's grant.  However, there is certainly not unlimited freedom.  Paying the PI extra would a clear violation of those rules for most funding agencies.

@Buzz, to my knowledge, that needs a citation, but I'd be happy to know about it.

The Code of Federal Regulations at §200.414 limits indirect costs to facilities and administration.  Moreover, §200.403 says that the same kinds of costs cannot be charged as both direct and indirect.  My understanding is that both these sections are interpreted as forbidding direct payment to individuals involved in a federally funded project out of indirect costs.

@Buzz, good call. It's a good thing that money is fungible, then. I withdraw the suggestion of using IDC and suggest that universities could use other funds which they offset with IDC.

In addition to the other good answers, it is also possible to make additional money by consulting and other activities. In the US, faculty are often hired for 9 months out of the year. They can make up their salary for the other three months in a variety of ways. New faculty often receive some sort of startup package which they can spend in a variety of ways including hiring students and postdocs or paying their own summer salary. Grant funds won from a government agency like the NSF or industry can also be used to pay summer salary (though the NSF limits you to 2 months on their dime without special permission). Faculty can also sign up to teach more classes in order to pay themselves in the summer.
If the faculty member chooses to take their 9-month base salary in 12 monthly payments over the year, which is pretty common, then any additional summer salary payments they receive might look like a bonus in some sense.
Now, any awards that are made to the institution or extra classes that are picked up, do not generally allow the faculty member to increase their annual/monthly salary, just to fill in the months between 9 and 12. However, under many 9-month contracts, your summer months are effectively your own. A professor might take on an industry consulting gig for 3 months over the summer completely separate from their university appointment. Depending on the field, this might come at a substantially higher monthly rate, thereby allowing the prof to pad their salary.

In general no. Faculty are salaried employees with no bonus structure. Faculty often can work "overtime" where a department may allow a staff members to commit 110% or even 120% of their time by teaching additional classes, taking on additional administrative work, or conducting additional research. In some cases universities offer bonuses for jobs well done. These are tiny (e.g., 100 USD) compared to most industry bonuses.
There are also bonuses that are not directly paid to the staff member. Teaching releases and additional discretionary funds are often provided as a reward for a job well done (generally large amounts of grant capture).


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Should interviews be arranged by less-preferred schools first?
I read that some candidates will arrange their interviews by not placing the preferred ones at the beginning. How that is possible? Do they wait for few weeks to know all their interviews and then decide?

Sounds a bit like a luxurious problem that not many people will have.  Getting both a lot of interviews in short order and being able to steer in which order they happen seems a bit like magical Christmas land to me (all campus interviews I had so far were more or less "come on this day" - I could reschedule one because I was at the time at a conference, but the communication never sounded like "pick a date" to me).

I read it from two sites, the guys graduated from top schools.

That seems like a bad idea since it might make it more likely to get the less desirable offer first.

@StrongBad this really depends on the schedules and how quickly you have to reply. Sometimes it is doable.

@StrongBad That would be exactly the point: get the less desirable offer first, so that when you get an offer from the stronger program you are in an ideal negotiating position. Not to say it would work out, but that would be the rationale.

@Tim it doesn't matter what order the offers come in terms of negotiating, it is simply a matter of how close together they come.

@StrongBad actually, it will matter what order the offers come in if the offer periods don't have substantial overlap.  Since it's not uncommon these days to have an offer with a very short time limit (reportedly as short as 2 days in some cases!) arranging for this overlap may not be practical.

This is a common strategy, but it can backfire on you in the following way.
If you interview for the position that least interests you and are given a job offer, you may have to respond to that offer before you have a chance to complete the other interviews (or before those institutions are ready to make an offer.)  If this happens you may be faced with the choice of accepting an offer from your least favorite institution or refusing that offer and then running the risk that none of the other interviews will result in an offer.

As I have heard of the practice, it is essentially putting the less-favored opportunity first so that the person will be more practiced and more ready to deal with questions and challenges when they go to their more favored opportunity.  I'm not sure whether this is actually a good idea, but if one wants to do it, it is really only possible if the invitations happen to come closely enough together that the person knows about both invitations while scheduling is still being sorted out.

Generally the tactic is to try to schedule interviews in places you really want as late as possible and try to schedule interviews in less desirable places as early as possible. Depending on the schedules, sometimes this is feasible. For example, some times people pack 5 or even 10 interviews in just a few weeks. Of course you have to make sure you are not too exhausted when you get to the important interviews.
I have heard many people recommending this strategy, and I somewhat recommend it myself, although it is not really a big deal. The idea is that regardless of how much you prepare, you still learn a lot from your first interview and can significantly improve in the next ones (especially in aspects that are more difficult to prepare for, like the chalk talk). It is also about reducing stress - in the first interview many people are very stressed but once they see that they went through it and it is not so bad, they are more relaxed for their next interviews.


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What are the benefits and drawbacks of rotating professors to teach subjects not in their areas?
It seems that many universities are rotating professors who teach a subject. I was talking with a friend and he mentioned that as a result of this, he is struggling with a professor who is teaching a subject outside his area and is still learning the materials. My question, is why do schools apply such strategy? Wouldn't it be better to focus on few related topics, instead of assigning professors to some random courses?

One advantage I get is to investigate how subjects in a sequence of courses link together. Therefore I'm better equipped to know what my incoming students should know, and what I should prepare them for in the future.

@DanielR.Collins if they are related

Sometimes there are just courses that have to be taught, and it is not the field of any of the available faculty.

Most programs I've ever heard of don't randomly assign professors - but the typical system in the US I'm aware of has each professor required to teach X number of credits. The department has requirements for what class must be taught (like standard intro classes, courses required for the major, etc), as well as the opening for a variety of specialty courses (often called "electives") - but the core courses have to be taken up first.
While departments differ, it seems the most common system is one where professors pick the classes they will teach (sometimes by seniority or department rank getting their first pick, sometimes by some other method). The natural order of things is that it's easier to teach a class the second time than it is to teach it the first time (since you already have so much material prepared and you have had some practice now), so professors naturally end up teaching many of the same classes year after year. However, most departments have comings and goings nearly every semester - retirements, people leaving, sabbaticals, medical leave, changing course load amounts (buying out of teaching, becoming a department chair, not being the chair anymore, winning a big grant, having a big grant run out). Thus things are constantly in flux, so even if you really, really wanted the same courses taught by the same professors every semester - you can't have it, it isn't possible.
There is a downside to having things static, even when you somehow manage to have so much stability that it's possible. Some examples:

Many professors get comfortable with the material enough that they don't make large updates, and it can get stale and out of date over time (both materially and in method used).
Professors, being human beings, get bored of saying the same thing over and over and their excitement, passion, and patience can begin to wear thin even with classes they once enjoyed.
Some students aren't a good fit with some professors, and if a required class is always taught by a professor they don't get along with this may interfere with academic progress.
Professors can lose sight - or just not have a good idea to begin with - what the goal of teaching some material actually is. Most programs have courses that build on each other, like Introduction -> Research Methods -> Stats -> Advanced Research Methods. If you only teach stats and don't ever run an advanced class, are you sure you are teaching the stats students will need - and are you emphasizing applications that best prepare them for the advanced material? If you teach a Calculus I class, are you making sure students get all the groundwork they need for Calculus II? I've had students tell me "the Professor assumed we all had JavaScript in the previous class and designed the whole class around it, but half of us had never seen it before!" - with not very encouraging results.

However, there are downsides to moving people around a lot too:

The first time is always the hardest. No one knows what to expect, every question asked will be one you might not have answered before, the teacher's idea of pacing and time required to complete assignments will basically be wild guesses, etc.
Sometimes someone is asked to teach a class because no one else is available. I talked with a visiting academic who was a statistician, and he said in his first semester they came to him and said, "Hey, have you ever used C++ before?" He said, "Well, I guess a little bit in undergrad..." And so they said, "Great, don't have anyone else to teach this required class - will you teach a C++ class for us?" So he just had to figure it out as he went. It isn't ideal, but the alternative: no class offered that semester, which may mean students can't take required key classes or they will just miss out on learning important material entirely. Sometimes everyone just has the make the best of a non-ideal situation - come to think of it, that's what most of us have to do most of the time!

In the end, there is a first time for everyone. Experienced professors had to teach a class for the first time too. Sometimes this can even be a positive experience for everyone, if the professor and the student choose to handle it that way. One of the hardest things about teaching people is when you've forgotten what it was like to not know. You can all learn together, and it can be easier to have empathize with students confusion and anticipate their questions when you are confused and have questions too! The job of a teacher isn't always to be an expert bestowing their grand accumulated wisdom, but instead sometimes they are just a guide and skilled companion to help you through difficult territory.
...and sometimes neither of you want to be there, but it's a required course and the department is making them teach it so you suck it up and move on. :)

It seems that many universities are rotating professors who teach a subject. Why do schools apply such strategy?

One instance why this may happen is for core courses that need to be taught, and for which no clearly matching faculty is available. My department, for instance, has a very clear focus on applied and practical computer science. For some fundamental courses, we simply do not have obviously matching faculty, and no plans to hire people for this profile either. This leaves us with the options of either finding external people to teach the course (preferred if said people exist and funding for paying the external person is available), or making one of our faculty from a different field teach the course, fully knowing that (a) the faculty will not be happy and (b) that (s)he will probably not do an outstanding job either. Part of convincing said faculty is usually also a promise that (s)he needs to teach this "foster" course only one or two times, before passing the token on to somebody else.
An alternative reason for rotating teachers is that there is more than one faculty that can teach a course, but the course is highly disliked and an agreement was established that multiple people take turns teaching it. I have seen this happen for courses such as "Introduction to Programming", that many people are in principle qualified to teach, but few really want to teach.
Finally, it may be that the school (correctly or incorrectly) assumes that rotating a course will indeed improve the quality of the course or add in some way to it. For instance, in my old alma mater, we had the concept of "AK courses" ("selected topics in SOMETHING"). These courses were advanced courses with no fixed content, only a sort of framework or direction. Every year, a different professor would be teaching it, and give it a completely different spin depending on his own current research interests. You could do the same AK multiple times, assuming that the professors agreed that those years were indeed sufficiently different.

What did the "AK" stand for, exactly?

@DanielR.Collins "Ausgewaelte Kapitel" (German for "selected chapters"). For example, there was "Ausgewaelte Kapitel in betrieblichen Informationssystemen", or "selected chapters in enterprise information systems".

Your question suggests that you are viewing a professor's teaching as "just a job" they have to do. However, this picture is missing a key aspect of our jobs and why we do what we do. For many professors, teaching is a deep source of personal satisfaction, learning and growth. Many if not most of us love to learn new things and expand our knowledge, and teaching a class on a topic we are somewhat familiar with but haven't taught before is a great opportunity to brush up old skills or sometimes master an entirely new area, including on occasion an area that we would like to expand our research to touch upon in the future. This opportunity to learn through teaching and later apply what one has learned to one's own work is one of the great synergies that makes the research+teaching combination such a successful model for academics.
To summarize, it may be helpful (and not entirely inaccurate) to think of professors as "professional students" or "students who never grew up"; that is, students who never got tired of being in university and have made learning more and more about their discipline (and sometimes about other disciplines) a lifelong goal, and were eventually able to turn this passion into a source of employment as well. When you look at it this way, it makes perfect sense that professors would not be very happy teaching the same old basic courses about their main subjects of expertise over and over again.

The "main subjects of expertise" is expanding and new things would be added and updated.

I think there are two very different questions here: one is about having faculty teach courses that they are apparently either incompetent to teach or too disinterested to bother to take the trouble to teach competently. The other question could be about having "non-expert" (but competent) people teaching courses.
For the latter: for introductory graduate-level courses in math in the U.S., for example, some of which may be effectively "required" regardless of students' professed interests, there might be some reason to avoid the "expert-blindness" (or sheer jadedness) of most-expert faculty as instructors. At best, this can certainly get out of cliched ruts.
Regarding the question of incompetent instructors... At least in mathematics, it is not so easy to get a PhD while being completely ignorant of basic graduate-level math outside one's "specialty", in the first place. Second, an experienced mathematician should be able to get a grip on basic graduate-level math even if they've not seen it recently, or maybe never. Specifically, some of the "practice" of being a mathematician is learning to cope with new things effectively. Yes, some exertion might be required... so that the only sure way to be incompetent with relatively basic things is by not caring enough to exert oneself. This is always a possibility.
But, to repeat, at least in mathematics, it is simply not the case that a seasoned professional is innately unable to teach some mathematics even if it's unfamiliar... Rather, I'd think that only sufficient disinterest so as to allocate essentially zero time-and-effort would give a truly bad outcome.

A big drawback I haven't seen mentioned here is that students use courses to find faculty advisers. If you have other professors teaching the probability courses but the student never has a probabilist as a professor, it can make it harder to meet the appropriate faculty. For undergraduates, this may mean that they won't take courses in their field of future research with the faculty who they are doing their honors projects with, which in turn may weaken a letter of recommendation. For graduate students in large departments, many students will take certain courses just to meet the faculty in the area to find an advisor which is harder if the professor rotations are more random.
Also, while most professors can teach a course outside their expertise, it can limit what students learn. For the best students, learning what's in the textbook is not enough: becoming prepared for research is what matters. These students may be asking a professors questions like "can this proof generalize to the case where ..." which, with the right faculty, is the start of a research project. Or, in open-ended projects like in many graduate courses, an advanced student may finish the project and start adding new ideas, which the right faculty use as a lead in to a new lab member and research project.
There's also a large drawback in fast-moving fields. For graduate/upper division courses in things like computational biology, if you're using a textbook you're years behind. Some subjects need to be taught from the latest research articles.
There is a big upside though: sometimes faculty can be awesome researchers and horrible teachers. Or even more likely, great researchers but not good at teaching students who aren't interested in going the extra mile and doing research. Some people just don't teach lower/middle division undergraduate courses well since half of the problem in these courses is motivating the students. In these cases, it can be good for a department to give this job to people who are good at teaching younger students even if the subject is not in their area of expertise. Of course, the strongest students in the course (those who will become majors) will recognize this issue due to the problems mentioned above, but for the larger courses you do have to cater to the crowd.
Lastly, something mentioned by other commenters, is that sometimes a course just needs to be taught. Maybe there's a new subfield that undergraduates are requesting an upper division course in, but the department hasn't adapted yet. A faculty member who is looking to pick up this expertise may start by teaching a course on the subject. Not everything is a con in that situation, since the faculty member will likely be using books and other materials that are easier to comprehend than someone "more established" in the area.


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If a conflict of interest is not literally declared, is it safe to assume there is a conflict of interest? What does this imply about the findings?
For the first example below, a conflict of interest (CoI) isn't literally declared, but seems to be implied in the funding section. Additionally, the majority of the studies included have a similar CoI. For the second example, again with funding there seems to be partial CoI. Is there any credence to studies funded from food industry sources not be tolerated?
Example 1
2009 Effects of soy protein and isoflavones on circulating hormone concentrations in pre- and post-menopausal women: a systematic review and meta-analysis
forty-seven studies (11 of pre-, 35 of post- and 1 of perimenopausal women)
isoflavones – soy phytoestrogen (which mimics estrogen in the body, beneficial in combating symptoms and conditions caused by estrogen deficiency)

To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review and
meta-analysis to compare the endocrine effects of different soy
products on hormonal status in women at different lifecycle stages. It
provides weak evidence that soy and isoflavones decrease FSH and LH in
premenopausal women, and a suggestion that they may increase estradiol
[estrogen steroid hormone and the major female sex hormone] in
post-menopausal women.

Results

Twenty studies declared a funding source with a commercial interest in the study results; 25 did not report industry funding; and 2 were
unclear.

Funding

This work was partially funded by the Soy Nutrition Institute, Inc., St Louis, MO, USA. M.J.M. consults for companies that manufacture
and/or sell soyfoods, soy protein and isoflavone supplements and is a
Scientific Advisory Board Member of the Soy Nutrition Institute.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2691652
Extra for 1
Letters to the Editor

These estrone levels are important because in the meta-analysis of
Hooper et al. (2009) […] evidence indicates that isoflavones will not
increase breast cancer risk in healthy women or worsen the survival of
breast cancer patients.

academic.oup.com/humupd/article/16/1/110/709455

Example 2
2010 Clinical studies show no effects of soy protein or isoflavones on reproductive hormones in men: results of a meta-analysis
36 studies

The results of this meta-analysis indicate that neither soy protein
nor isoflavones affect reproductive hormone concentrations in men
regardless of age or cancer status. Although the duration of most
trials was <6 months, soy protein and isoflavone intake greatly
exceeded typical dietary Japanese intake 2. These results suggest
that consumption of soy foods or isoflavone supplements would not
result in the adverse effects associated with lower T levels
[31][32][33].

J.H.-R while a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota
received some minor funding from the Soy Nutrition Institute for work on this manuscript. G.V. has nothing to disclose. S.J.D. has
nothing to disclose. W.R.P. has nothing to disclose. M.S.K.
occasionally consults for the Solae Company. M.J.M. regularly consults
for companies in the soy food industry.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524224/doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2009.04.038
Supplement for 2
2011 Re: Clinical Studies Show No Effects of Soy Protein or Isoflavones on Reproductive Hormones in Men: Results of a Meta-Analysis
Editorial comment

The authors performed a meta-analysis of the available literature, and
conclude that soy protein or isoflavone intake had no detectable
effect on free or total testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin or
free androgen index. While the study does not include measurements of
semen or paternity, and androgenic status does not tell the whole
story of male fertility, this meta-analysis is a step in the direction
that soy products are unlikely to be harmful to male reproduction.

sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0022-5347(11)60138-9

I don't understand. Do you think that the statements are less than full disclosure? Why would you make assumptions about anything? Your real concern may be hiding in the detail here.

For research without industry funding, I've always seen some literal statement along the lines of "no conflict of interest."

Seems to me the literal statements there describe that they got some level of funding from an industry group with interest in the outcome of the study. What more do you want them to say? Not publish because they got funding from an industry group? If fully funded by, say, the NIH they could state 'no conflict of interest', but that is not the case here and they reveal the potential conflict of interest.

Please ask only one question per post.  Evaluation of a particular study is off-topic.

Two studies were given as literal examples.

Edited to appease

Conflicts of interest on their own do not imply poor results is the blanket answer to this question.  It is true that in several high-profile (and most likely lower profile) research projects funded by industry that muzzling or cherry picking has happened (here is an interesting analysis of one particular industry and its issues).  Industry obviously has an interest in funding research that will give them favorable results.  However, just because industry has funded the research does not mean that it is automatically untrustworthy.
Unless there is good reason not to, we have to trust in the peer review process and acknowledge that it is our job as readers of research to interpret and contextualize studies regardless of conflicts of interest.   For instance, we should always be sure to thoroughly read and understand the methods used in the research and to determine if they are up to acceptable scientific standards.
It is similarly important to understand that a single study or suite of studies does not imply scientific truth.  For instance, if a paper shows that they were able to observe a particular thing in a particular population, that implies only that the observation is possible under certain conditions, not that it is universal.
Conflicts of interest are also sometimes unavoidable.  A drug company trying to do trials of a specific, proprietary drug must fund those trials.  That's a conflict and they obviously have an interest in favorable results, but just because that interest exists does not automatically imply that the results will be untrustworthy.
Finally, just because something is not declared does not mean that you should automatically reject it.  Of course be critical, but don't assume that just because something is unclear the authors are being evasive.  At the end of the day you can always try to send an email to the corresponding author and ask.  Worst thing that happens is you are ignored.

It's perhaps also worth noting that 'industry funding' covers a wide range of possibilities. At one extreme, researchers may be contracted by the company to carry out specific studies that the company hopes will benefit its business somehow. At the other end of the spectrum, a company may sponsor scholarships or prizes awarded by a university or professional body, with the company playing no further role in determining what the money is spent on.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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What types of higher than undergarduate degrees look exceptionally good relative to other equal level degrees?
I've heard a few people get exceptional job offers (huge pay and great benefits) just by getting a masters in certain fields. This has happened more than once. They describe a wild job offer as though their grades and institution (inside the US) had little or no impact. Instead, it was more about the degree title alone. (If I recall correctly, one individual was not even interviewed. The employer saw they had a PhD in some field, and gave them an incredible offer.)
To be more specific, which masters or PhD level degree did you have observed graduates get exceptional (almost over the top) job offers? Also, why do you think that degree is viewed so highly?

Just be in the right place at the right time.

Can you ask those individuals?

I hope you aren't going to use such information to choose your life's direction. Right this instant, someone with a degree in virus related pharmacology gets a pretty nice ticket. Next year. Who can say?

Comments aren't for extended discussion. I'm asking for instances people have observed.

People have only their own experience..

Those stories exist, but not all of them are true. Be careful and look at the source of the story: Does it come from the institution itself (who is trying to "sell" its program), or from someone who is trying to make her or himself look important by telling about the wonderful job offer(s) they received? Also consider if this is it a selection of success stories or if this somewhat representative of the experience of all the students who finished that course.
Moreover, even if a field of study is now lucrative, that does not mean that it will still be lucrative when new students finish their education. Pork cycles are a big problem for many fields of study.

There are quite a lot of incredibly stupid (even evil) people with advanced degrees from, say, Ivy League places and other R1's.

@Buffy that is undoubtable true. However, I don't understand how that relates to my answer. Could you clarify that?

Actually more of a heads-up to the OP. Your answer is fine.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How much money can an electrical engineering professor earn from grants in the US?
For US universities, I believe electrical engineering professors earn money in two ways:

salary from the university, normally $70k to start
grants from researching projects involving different companies or other

How much money can an electrical engineering professor earn from grants normally?

Professors typically do not supplement their salary with grants with one very large exception. The grant money can allow them to trade some number of required courses for research time.
The big exception to this is that the typical appointment for a university professor in the US is for 9 months. If the professor wants to teach some summer courses, they can earn 3 more months of their salary for doing that, or they can get grants to fill in that time. The National Science Foundation limits US researchers who are professors to 2 months of summer time funding, though, so to get 12 full months of compensation, a professor will need income from some other source (summer teaching, another agency's grants, industrial grants, consulting, etc).
So, that being said, typically professors cannot increase their salary rate. They can only use it to fill in the months that the university does not usually pay them for. Finally, most universities give the option for their professors to take the 9 months of salary over 12 months of payments, so filling in those 3 months may look like a monthly raise from the perspective of their bank statements.

Thank you very much. One person, how claimed that is assistant professor in electrical engineering department in Caltech  University, said to me that he earn 100 k$ from university as salary, also, 200 k$ from grants!! Do you think he is lying or not?

Without seeing his exact words, I can't be sure, but he may have meant that he had brought $200k in grants to the university. That doesn't mean that he got to take it home. Also, most universities do not put a cap on what the professor can charge for their time as a consultant, so he may have spent his summer 3 months charging a business for his time at a very high rate as a consultant.

His comment is not in English and you may not understand his comment :( He said that he give many projects with grants from companies and his graduated student do them as their thesis, so, he pays their funds from those grants and finally $200k remains for him.

Is that $200k per year or does it pay 3 months of his salary every summer for a number of years?

I do not exactly know what he meant :( he said that he recieves 100k from university and 200k from Extramural projects.

I would take that to mean that he's got $200k to cover his summer salary or more (by buying off courses that he's required to teach) not that he can supplement his salary. It would be unusual if he could do that with grant funds. Maybe you should ask him.

The OP is about electrical engineering but for what it's worth I understand things can be quite different in the health sciences. It's pretty fuzzy now since it was years ago but an asst dean once told me his researchers can earn up to something like $250k annually and that he paid $80k of it.

YMMV. I'm not a prof, just around and on grants with many of them. I may have the accepted answer, but it's not authoritative. I gather that some institutions do have arrangements to allow for outside consulting for profs. I just don't know how it works at each of them.Typically, IME, you can't use outside money to change your salary rate, even if you can supplement your earnings.


text:
Is this ethical and what recourse do I have?
My nursing instructor thought I was taking drugs while at clinical within ear shot of patient I just helped. Teacher made a comment about me shooting up drugs. She also caused embarrassment by throwing up her arms after asking me to take a drug screen and made comments where staff and other students could easily hear.
I was not on any drugs. Another teacher lied for this teacher when I had meeting regarding first teacher. The teacher who lied gave me a passing grade on a procedure, said I did very well. There is documentation that teacher passed me on procedure. She never said anything to anybody about me being under the influence. She allowed me to work with sharp objects and then drive.
Several days later, the day of the meeting regarding the first teacher, this teacher wrote a letter saying I was not capable of performing simple math, slurring my speech, and being high. How can she get away with this obvious lie? The letter she wrote was about my open lab performance--which she gave me a passing grade for.

It might help answers to know which country your course is located, as regulations are location specific. If this is the UK the Nursing Instructors have definitely strayed outside the NMC guidelines that govern their own license to practise, for example.

This probably will fall under defamation (among other things) which is illegal in US.

You need to work this out with your university. Only there is there any chance of verifying your statements and the statements of others. There is no way to find truth at this distance with this information and therefore no way to help you.

Might be better addressed in the WorkPlace SE even though you are a nursing student.


text:
Can applicants answer faculty campus interview questions while checking their notes?
During faculty campus interview, is it possible for applicants to check their notes from papers or laptops, or should everything be memorized? In other words, are faculty interviews open book or closed book? Does it make a difference for the search committee if applicants want to check their notes? Having the ability to check personal notes would be useful to list all relevant points in order, unless this is not allowed or can affect applicants. In addition, I found that some suggests to prepare notes for phone interviews, however, can such notes be used in on-campus interview?
Examples of using notes while interview:

List future research plans - 10-15 points
List names of collaborators - 10-15 names
Style of teaching - 10-15 points
Names and research area of the department faculty members - 15-20

What type of question are you talking about?  I can't think of anything I was asked during faculty interviews where notes would have helped?

@espertus You can memorize, but would it be bad thing to check personal notes, if an answer was lengthy or require some unfamiliar names or terms?

One scenario in which notes could be useful for a candidate is to remember what questions to ask. I had a list of dozens of different questions (not research questions) that I wanted to ask the different people I met during interviews. In some cases, when I was asked whether I have any more questions, I asked if it is ok if I check my notes and people were fine with that.

Given the tags, I assuming you are talking about interviewing for a faculty position. (Not that it really matters; my answer would be the same for a graduate interview).
In general:

Having some notes that you look at between interviews -- e.g. on the research of each faculty member who you will meet -- is just fine and probably a good idea. I'd just try to look at them unobtrusively, e.g. in the bathroom rather than while walking across campus with the chair.
I would consider it extremely strange if a faculty candidate turned to notes or to the web to answer a question that I had just asked. Even thinking about the interview as an exam indicates a substantial misunderstanding about the process. You certainly should know things like your own research plans, the names of your collaborators, how you like to teach, etc.
There is an exception, though. If a candidate wants to show me something about her research, a laptop, tablet, or even printed paper can be quite useful. I've had applicants use a tablet to very good effect in answering questions about their work. Not because they don't remember -- that would be the kiss of death -- but because the tablet allows them to call up figures and illustrations that allow them to better explain the findings to me and/or go beyond what was printed in their papers.

Yes faculty position, I updated the question with more details.

If the search committee is humane, they may have scheduled some short breaks during the interview day, when you get a few minutes to yourself.  You could check your notes then.  Referring to notes while talking to people wouldn't really be disallowed, and your interviewers would probably go along with it if you did so, but it would certainly seem weird and off-putting at a time when you want to make the best possible impression.


text:
Is it better to negotiate a faculty offer by email or phone?
When negotiating a faculty offer with a search committee chair, is it better to do it via email or phone? Which one is more efficient and can get better results? For example, email have the advantage of written points, while in phone you can sense the other person feedback.

Could you elaborate on the kind of offer and general circumstances surrounding it.

A lecturer position in a college

@ThomasLee A few questions: (a) are you asking the question from the perspective of the applicant or the recruiter? (b) Why is face-to-face not an option? (c) You may wish to provide further context for what is being negotiated or at least what is motivating the question? (i.e., pay, lab startup, level, etc.)

@JeromyAnglim: "why not face-to-face?" Because it's generally  impractical to do face-to-face negotiations. However, I don't think the question fundamentally changes if we ask "orally or by written means?"

Better in which respect? And with whom are you negotiating? With some admin person having to decide about your resources or with colleagues in your future department to figure out the teaching allocation?

@JeromyAnglim both sides, and it is not possible to travel, mainly salary and other associated items.

@CrepusculeWithNellie speed and efficeincy. With search committee chair.

@ThomasLee Given the additional information added into the question (lecturer position, search committee chair), I think the question is specific enough to answer and I have voted to reopen.  It would also be useful to know what country (e.g., "lecturer" means something different in the UK and US)

When in doubt, I'd ask what the other party would prefer. As the supplicant, you want to make yourself as easy to work with as possible.

Negotiating the conditions of any future employment is an important conversation.
Most of human communication is non-verbal. We communicate a lot through our voice tone and body language.
Some people avoid face-to-face, or telephone conversations, as they find the interaction awkward. Ask yourself:- if you were the search committee chair, would you want to employ someone as a lecturer who was uncomfortable in face-to-face communication?
At least offer to have a telephone conversation, or Skype, or video conference with the other party, if a face-to-face meeting is impractical or inappropriate. This shows you are keen to engage in the most efficient means of human-to-human communication. Then follow this up with an email clarifying the main points of your conversation.


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Why some faculty have teaching reduction in the last semester or two before being tenured?
It is understandable that new faculty members have reduced teaching load, but why some others have reduced teaching load just before filling for tenure? Isn't that late to do any progress?

Is this common?  In my experience, you might get a course release after your 3rd year review (which gives you another 2 years until tenure review), but I haven't heard of 6th year course releases pre-tenure.

As I understand it, the point of such reduced teaching loads is to allow for more time for writing papers and research proposals, as well as preparing any "package" required as part of the tenure application. Ideally, such a reduction would be done a little bit preceding the last semester before submitting the tenure application, so that the papers and proposals can be reviewed and published (or accepted, as the case may be) before submitting the application.

Would it be a convincing case that a faculty has more publications and maybe a grant just in the last year?

One or two additional grants can go a long way toward changing the complexion of a tenure case. One or two papers won't have nearly the same impact, unless they're in very prestigious venues for the given discipline.

@ThomasLee Bringing in an NIH R01 or the like can very reasonably run all the way up to the deadline, and would make for a vastly different case.


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Is it fine to ask who are the search committee?
I saw that some friends know who are the search committee members before their interviews. So would it be fine to ask the department who are they? And if it was fine, why the department didn't mention their names since the beginning? Could asking about their names be taken as negative thing?! A strong applicant could say that she doesn't care who are finalizing the list or interviewing her.

In general, I would recommend against asking who the search committee is. It might give the impression that you are trying to "game the system" rather than simply put your best foot forward for everyone. That said, I don't think this is a serious faux pas.
Some departments, including my own, post a list of committee assignments on their department homepages -- mostly out of convenience for their own faculty. So you might be able to answer your question without asking.

Unfortunately some may consider it gaming. However, I think the departments should include such information in their emails or sites. It doesn't make sense to talk to a group of people, without knowing who are they and what they do, and whether they are the right people to ask a question or it should be delayed for others.

I think it's perfectly fine, and indeed a good idea, for candidates to ask with whom they'll be speaking, and to whom what questions should be addressed. And, more generally, what they should expect at the interview. (And I don't think one needs to worry about posing questions only to the "right" people.)

Indeed, it's not really knowing who's on the search committee that will be of help, but rather who you'll be talking to.  Interviews and searches vary a lot, but really the most helpful thing is knowing not who specifically you'll be talking to, but who your audience is.  Often it's more than who's on the search committe that will decide who gets an offer.  (Will you need to explain your research to the dean?  Do you have to give a talk to the whole department or just people in your area?)

Depends on the culture of the field. In economics, the placement officer told all candidates from our PhD program to ask who the interview committee members were when receiving a call or email offering an interview.
Sometimes the question was not answered or the answer was delayed, sometimes the committee was on the website of the hiring department.