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Can I get a good phd with a poor master thesis?
I am a month away from graduating in Math. I spent the last six months working on what I consider now a poor master thesis.
I was asked to discuss some connections between model theory and combinatorics.
I think this bad result was due to the topic itself, my poor organization and an even worse selection of papers that was given to me by my advisor.
In the end, I couldn't obtain any new result, and my thesis is basically a list of well known elementary theorems. I even thought on starting it all over again with a new advisor.
I am feeling very discouraged, because I think I could have produced a decent thesis with the right suggestions.
Is my academic career over? Will I be able to get a good phd in math? In general, how important is a good master thesis in obtaining a phd? Should I consider again writing a new thesis?

What country are you interested in studying in?

I would prefer to study in a European country.

Did you get a bad grade for your master thesis or could your self-criticism simply be a result of your progress?

Just produce some nice plots with Python, possibly with some interactive notebook and you will have a safe plan B to get into the industry (any industry). Now, for your plan A about getting to a PhD ... see my answer ;)

@Louic My thesis has not been evaluated yet, but my advisor told me I won't probably get a full score.

@EarlGrey Unfortunately, plots are not useful in a pure math thesis, especially in a non-quantitative area of mathematics like model theory.

@Blueday they are not for your thesis, they are for your next application to industry position when you have to present your work to absolute ignorants (no judgmente intended)!

In my experience in UK and Spanish universities, a masters thesis quite rarely has new results, and is very extremely often just either an application of a problem or just a good state of the art description of already existing work. This is the norm, I would not worry.

Honestly.  Of course your academic career isn't over --- that is just ridiculous.  Even if you failed your masters program, that would not prevent you from learning more, applying to and completing a PhD, and developing into a good researcher.  Hell, there is at least one person I've heard of who led a militant group conducting bombings in their own country and then later became a university professor in that same country.  So no, a somewhat disappointing Masters thesis is not fatal to an academic career.
There appears to be a somewhat recurrent class of question on this site from young people who think that any minor misstep in their grades or extra-curricular activities is fatal to their whole career.  It is ludicrous self-pity and has no basis in how the academic profession works.  A Masters disseration is primarily a learning exercise rather than a scholarly contribution anyway, so if you learned something of value and got to build up some research skills, that will stand you in good stead for a PhD program.

It looks like you learned a lot with your Master thesis, not about a topic itself but about how to tackle a topic.
Even more, you have one aspect that you can directly tackle and that you should focus:

bad result was due to [...] my poor organization

You have a very strong selling point: you can show that you have an idea about the path to a better Master thesis, maybe you learned it the hard way, but it is still a learned lesson  [1].
Now, the thesis in itself is not that important (as long as it does not have a strikingly bad grade, if it is graded), but sooner or later you will have to present it as part of a PhD interview. How do you present it?
Show that you learned your lesson, not by saying "I had poor organization, so thesis is crap", but by having a well organized presentation (or poster).
You will soon learn that in life the "how" you did something generally has a much larger impact than the "what" you did ... because how you do things dictates what you can potentially achieve, all conditions being optimal [2].
The fact that you did not discover anything new would be just a nice side aspect of the thesis, of course you will win no Fields'medal with your thesis.
But.
An excellent thesis shows that the student mastered the path to the results and obtained worthwhile results, a horrible thesis shows that the student didn't master the path but obtained interesting results, an average thesis shows that the student have an idea about how to get to some results and has an idea about how the results could be improved.
On average in a given year, there are more PhD positions available than excellent thesis prodcuced: good luck!
[1] Try to look deep into your aspect of "failure", the poor organization: are you poorly organized because you had some thought about the path to tackle the topic, but you still tried mostly to follow the path shown by your advisor and the literature you were given by the advisor (exogen disorganization) or was it your side (endogen disorganization)?
[2] don't think in purely rationalistic terms. For example, How does not mean that you should be as efficient as a computer/robot. Optimal conditions refers to your capacity of expressing your potential, maybe someone needs to sleep during the day and work at night and living isolated in a cave, to achieve his/hers potential, while someone else may need continuous discussion with peers and structured working days 8-5, Monday to Friday ...

'On average in a given year, there are more PhD positions available than excellent theses produced'? What prompts you to make such a statement? I think it is dependent on the specific field, but in general I'm inclined to be more skeptical.

@ThomasBakx don't limit your applications to a specific country/continent. Then, there are less and less professorship, or postdoc for each completed phd...

@ThomasBakx Additional data from statista/google/etc: In the academic year of 2018/19, about 833,710 students were awarded a Master's degree in the United States, In the academic year of 2018/19, about 85,769 male and 101,799 female students earned a doctoral degree in the United States.
I konw the time frame does not match, but it means roughly that there is 1 PhD every 8 completed master student, and that's in the US only. Field dependent? sure it is , but field dependent it is the motivation of a student to pursue a PhD,too  ...

Is my academic career over? Will I be able to get a good phd in math? In general, how important is a good master thesis in obtaining a phd? Should I consider again writing a new thesis?

These questions are not for an outsider to answer. You should instead talk to your Masters advisor, who will in all cases have a huge impact on your ability to get a good PhD in math. Paramount to figure out is if your thesis really is as bad as you think it is. I know you write that you didn't discover any new results and your thesis is just a collection of old theorems, but whether you were expected to discover any new results is a major confounding variable. For example, if your Masters was one year long, then you might have made real progress but simply ran out of time to discover anything that's genuinely new. If the advisor is engaging another Masters student or PhD student to finish your work, you could easily end up with a second-author publication. Still not as good as a first-author publication, but it's something, and it would indicate that your thesis isn't that bad.
If your advisor says you should not do a PhD, then it might be time to worry (what else did they say? Why do they think you should not do a PhD?) - but it's too soon to worry, let alone make plans, before talking to them.

I think that the part about the second-author publication is not really applicable here since OP seems to be in pure maths where this concept does not exist.

@Christian is right, this is not common practice in pure math.


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Conditionally matriculated in PhD program
I am an engineering MASc student and received a conditional acceptance to a PhD program in Mechanical Engineering for Fall 2024. One of the admission conditions was the successful completion of my MASc by early August. However, my MASc oral exam is scheduled for late August, which is after this deadline.
I have previously reached out to the graduate admission committee about this issue and got this response: you will be condition matriculated in the program in late August. What exactly does this mean and entail? Will I be considered as an MASc student this Fall semester, and once I graduate be officially enroled into the PhD program? Or will I be considered provisionally as a PhD student, and be granted full admission upon completion of my MASc requirements?
My supervisor will likely be the same as my MASc, so will they also begin as my PhD supervisor in Fall, or only after I am officially enrolled, since a supervisor has not been officially assigned yet, only I have stated my current Master's supervisor as my preferred PhD supervisor?

Only that program can tell you what they will do.

They told you that you will be matriculated into the Ph.D. once you have passed your MASc orals. If this answer is for some reason not sufficient, you need to ask them (and not the internet) for clarification.

The underlying meaning, hidden in bureaucratic language is that you have been accepted conditional on passing the masters exams. Should you fail them, you will be dropped.
Effectively, it likely means that you can proceed just as if you have been fully matriculated, but you'd better pass. The language is just to cover themselves should you fail.
You can, and should, ask them yourself, but any other interpretation would seem outside the bounds of decency. They aren't, I certainly hope, playing a game with you.
Edited to add: If, for some reason, your exam gets delayed, then you will need to renegotiate with them what they are willing to do. Don't let that happen.

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Why there are so few south americans working extensively at NA/EU unis?
May seem obvious, but don't strike me as such. I'm a undergrad physics student at University of Campinas, in Brazil. From what I took out of my professors, I noted that most, if not all, of them did their graduate education (mostly PhD or/and Post-Doc) in great universities in NA/EU, but, they obviously didn't stay. I'm, obviously, talking about a part of the professors here, since there are a lot of europeans, and some north americans who teach here.
I don't see much people from SA being able to secure extensive positions there, and I do wonder why it is so hard to do so. Obviously, it's already difficult for someone already from there, but it seems to be even harder for us here.
I'd like to understand, generally, what exactly could be the explanation for that, the fact that it's usual to see good south americans students being able to do a part of their education in those well-known unis, but being absurdly rare to see one stay. Seems like a vague question, but maybe there's something in the structure of the processes that could point out to it. Because, as far as undegraduates go, it's not really much different from NA/EU (when talking about the best universities here, which are not a lot).

Just as a quick fact: currently, I think faculty in STEM fields in the US have a hard time appraising the background of people from SA...

@paulgarrett Do you know why, exactly? I could vaguely understand why that would be the case for some unis here that could come out as "obscure", but for the high tier ones, I don't, particularly. Well, I'm talking about Brazil, specifically, I extended to SA because we do have south americans from other countries studying here, and some researchers as well, who follow pretty much the same "pattern" I described.

Anecdotally I find it easier to think of Argentinian physicists working in NA/EU than Brazilian ones. Instituto Balseiro is notable. Anyway, this 2000 Physics Today article may be of some interest to you.

@Anyon heh, yes, it's true. I, myself, would immediately think of Maldacena, and another professor that, if I'm not mistaken, works at Oxford. There are some great ones. I'm really talking about Brazil specifically because it's pretty much my reference. But it's interesting, that aspect in Argentina.

Have you considered they might not have been interested in staying?

Unless you are from Patagonia, go to Norway for one winter semester and you will understand why not many people from SA have a position there.

I wonder if the statistics for Spain and Portugal are the same. Language comfort is possibly an issue for some.

One other factor might be growth within academia. Academia is fairly stagnant in the US and Europe, in contrast with the post-WW2 decades when there was explosive growth. In those days, many PhD students were able to become professors; these days, very very few do. I don't know much about the state of academia in South America generally or Brazil specifically, but is it possible that academia in Brazil is growing a lot? If so, it's likely much easier to get an academic job there for anyone, and certainly natives have an advantage (language, existing ties).

My professors in Oklahoma usually went to Stanford and Harvard, not Oklahoma universities. Professor jobs are hard, and elite universities graduate a lot more would-be professors than they can hire.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the weather ?  Being near to family ?  The culture ?  We all tend to stay in the places we grow up in because they tend, for most people, to be where they feel most comfortable.

South America has about 5% of the world's population.  It's certainly true that elite universities do not draw their people at random from the world's population, but no matter how they select people, there will not be many from South America.
Culture, language, and arbitrary bias (including visas) are big factors in academic immigration.

I do understand that. But, when talking about the specific subset of student who did manage to study at the "elite universities", that is, among those who, to some extent. already managed to overcome the completely accurate problems you've cited, it's really rare to see some manage to stay. That's the core of my line of asking, I would guess.

@Adrien-MarieDeschamps It's really rare for anyone to stay, even among those who study at elite universities. I have no idea quantitatively whether it's less likely for people from Brazil than other international students to stay in those countries or similar ones in academic positions, but I do wonder whether your perceptions are biased a bit by expecting too many to stay.

I'm not sure the question even holds statistical water. I believe that in essence you say that the fraction of South American students in the US who end up being professors in the US is smaller than the fraction of European students who end up being professors in the US. Whether that is true or not can almost certainly not be determined without having actual statistical data. Since the fractions are small for both cohorts, and since everyone's sample is biased towards people like yourself, I doubt that the observation in the post is reliable.
But in addition, there are also many other factors. These may include:

Do you have family in your home country you want to be close to? (The "pull" of the home country.)
Does the culture you're from expect you to live close to your family? (Not so true for northern Europeans, for example, but very much true for Italians and in many Latin American cultures.)
What is the standard of living you can expect if you go back to your home country? (If I went back to my home country Germany, for example, I would have to give up rather little compared to my home in the US now, and so there is not very much "push" from my home country to stay here. But if I had been from, say, Albania or now Ukraine, I might have good reasons not to go back to my home country.)
What is the political situation in your home country? (If you're a political scientist originally from Russia, this may not be the time you feel a great pull to go back.)

In other words, there are a million reasons that could underlie the assertion -- but I am not convinced that the original assertion is even true.

The way you formulate the question seems to imply that when one does a PhD or a PostDoc in NA/EU then will try to secure a position there simply because of the geographic factor (i.e. staying in NA/EU).
If your plan is to stay in a specific region of the world (it can be a region as big as North America or as small as Copenaghen), the ratio benefits/efforts is  strongly against academia and strongly in favor of the private world.
Additionally, you are only seeing the subset of people from SA that are now professor in SA. If anything, it tells you that in SA there are way less PhDs and PostDocs opportunities than what are needed. You should check what are the career of this SA professors from SA peers, so you should check their fellow PHDs that were in the EU/NA at the same time and check where they are now.

Trying to make a link between the number of professors at your university with a graduate education in Europe or North America and the chance of these persons to get a faculty position there does not seem well-founded.
If you want to evaluate the chance of researchers from South America to get faculty positions in Europe or North America after doing a PhD or post-doc there, you will need to look at the respective ratio of PhD graduates to professors within Europe and North America and compare that according to region of origin.
Formulating your observation the other way round, it seems that few or maybe none of your professors got their graduate education locally. To find possible reasons for that observation, I would more look into the local education conditions or the recruiting strategies of your university than to how foreign universities recruit their professors.

Similarly to other answers it's difficult to give you the right answer without statistical data.
One number that striked me is the statistical fact that in Germany from 100 students (whose parents were already acedemians) 10 graduate with a PhD, and only 1 student with no academic parents.
In other words, academia is a highly socially selective branch, especially in Germany. You will not find many professors with a lower class ancestry. Of course you can further analyse and argue, students of lower social class have worse starting conditions than in middle or higher class. But, the IQ and education is actually in german quite equally and normally distributed and in a branch like academia people from lower class should actually have higher chances to move up to higher positions than in industry. Though, this seems not to be case empirically. Professors mostly come here from middle or high academic class also because the selection and hiring of new professors is in my opinion very conformstic and the right social reputation expected. Scientific or academic excellence alone don't guarantee you a professorship, social soft skills and networking are extremely important, more than in any other job branches.
These kind of social mechanisms and selection can also be strong factor why applicants from poorer countries might not be the first choice among the rich NA/EU unis?!
(Of course I expect strong critics here, but actually as the IQ is largely normally distributed among the population and social classes, one has to really ask and look for a good argument and strong factor, why academia is actively or indirectly socially discriminating so much, much much more than in other job branches.)

You're conflating a lot with your "in other words". First, graduating with a PhD doesn't make you a professor. There are various numbers around, but 3% of PhDs becoming professors seems pretty normal. Secondly, you're completely ignoring self selection; academia is usually not as lucrative as working in industry, and can be harder to break into; hence children of non-academians might be less likely to see value in such a job.

@prosfilaes you are backing me up... The selection for professorship is even more socially selective than PhD, this is the point I make. To make money in industry you need to have money or a social network of wealthy people. Of course therefore people from lower class would and do rather aim for a fixed job in public service if they are academically qualified for. This is also known by polls in Germany. Sorry, your comment is just guessing/wishful thinking but beyond reality. Fixed job in academia is the most easy and safe job in comparison, the current crisis and future recession proving it.

You claim that education is equally distributed after you state that education at the PhD level is not equally distributed. In the US, it's well known that a PhD in the right fields can easily make six figures, far more than a professor; what happens in Germany is moot for this question. There's no cites for anything you say, so it's impossible to verify or even analyze.

I'd be very interested in those studies you mention!

@guys I'm not here to google studies for you, I point you to things and share my wisdom and experience. It's obvious to anybody who worked 10-20 years in academica that it socially very selective or even discriminating, this will vary from country to country, in GER the ratio is as I wrote...and this even so the IQ and general high school education among low middle high class is pretty much equally distributed and not 1:2:10 or worse

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Absent / unavailability periods in ScholarOne and other platforms. When are these options useful?
Submission systems like ScholarOne or Editorial Manager have options where one can indicate absence / unavailability periods. In what context are these options useful and do you make use of them?

In all cases I'm familiar with, this is used to indicate periods when you're unavailable to referee papers. APS' system asks you to state a reason, and lists a number of examples, which give an idea of when the feature can be useful:

traveling, vacation, overburdened with administrative duties, editor of another journal, retired, switched career, etc.

I would add medical reasons and intense job search periods to that list. In short, you can report unavailability if there is a period during which you don't want to be distracted by the publisher sending review requests, or if you won't be responsive to emails.
I have made use of these systems when I've had periods several months long (may depend on the field and the frequency at which you receive review invitations) during which I'd prefer not getting the emails in the first place over having to repeatedly decline invitations.
In practice, sometimes editors will still contact you through editorial systems you indicated unavailability in, apologetically asking if you can review a resubmission of a paper you refereed in an earlier round, which typically is much less work than reviewing a paper de nouveau.

Thank you so much! Is there also a benefit for authors?

@Dr.M I've never seen these features used for authors to declare when they're available to handle resubmissions, etc., if that is what you're asking. Journals send their decisions when they're ready. But if editors manage to avoid inviting some potential referees who'd decline or be unresponsive, it can help speed up the review process, at least on average.

I don't use them as it would just add to my administrative task for no personal benefit, and I'd have to do it for each and every platform that might contact me. However, I do use automatic responses to emails (including invitations for review and reminders about them), when I am absent for a while. However, journals/publishers often send invitations from no-reply accounts, and thus never see my note of absence...
Not sure I should be the one in this case that helps them to figure out when I am not around..


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How to perform quality checks on a conference?
I want to present my paper to a conference which is related to graph and combinatorics.
The problem is I don't understand the quality/reputation of the conference.
The conference has a section "Call for Papers".
The conference will be done online.
It claims that the selected papers will be published in conference proceedings with a ISBN number.
The journal charges a very nominal fee and the invited speakers are from prestigious institions.
I am confused whether I should send my paper to the conference or not. I am worried if the conference is genuine or not.
In case of journals there are many checks which can be done on the quality of a journal such as whether it is SCIE or indexed in Scopus and many others.
Are there any checks that can be carried out in case of conferences?
I am worried because since I am submitting my unpublished work, so if the conference is not reputable, my work will go in vain.
Can someone please suggest some ways on how to check reputation of a conference?
Another question is
If I submit my work to a conference, can I extend the results of that work and submit it to another journal later ? Or is it considered plagiarism?
NOTE:
My question is not a duplicate of How to identify predatory publishers/journals since in my question I have asked about conferences and not journals.
Finding fake journals is easy as there are many ways to check it but I am asking for some possible ways to check conferences.


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What is the correct time to contact the Editor for a decision when the revisions are elementary
I received a review for my manuscript 6 months after submission.
The reviewer pointed some minor corrections like grammatical errors, missing brackets and so on.
Though I submitted by revisions to the journal 3 weeks back, the Editor  has still not yet given a decision.
The status remained "With Editor" for 2 weeks and now it is "Under Review" for 1 week.
My question is since the errors are elementary, why is the Editor taking so long to check them.
It is evident that it will not take more than an hour to check the revisions.
Then why is the article still "Under Review" for so long.
I am getting really impatient and at the same time afraid about the outcome.
What is the correct time to contact the Editor for a decision when the revisions are elementary?
What are the steps I can take as a author in this kind of situation?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

What are the steps I can take as a author in this kind of situation?

Be patient. Your editor may be:

Busy.

On vacation. It's summer, many academics vacation then.

On vacation, but while being on vacation also busily preparing for (or already started) the upcoming semester, especially during a tumultuous pandemic where they may not know if they are teaching classes in-person or online.

Thanks a lot Sir, When do you think is the correct time to contact the Editor in this type of situation?

@Math_Freak see this question. If your revision went for peer review, then it's one situation. But before several months (2-3), there is unlikely there is any reason to contact the editor.


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Is it appropriate for an undergrad to friend grad students / postdocs on social media?
I'm guessing that if the grad student / postdoc is directly supervising the undergrad, friending would not be very appropriate. However, would it be ok for an undergrad to friend other grad students / postdocs in the lab?
This is for a university in the U.S.

It's even appropriate to befriend them in real life.

You might like to add details about your current cultural background. Social norms are strongly dependent on local context, and country culture. For instance, you will get a different response whether you're in South Korea or Mexico.

I don't think there is a general social media rule about this. I have had many undergraduate friends on social media during my Ph.D. and postdoc. My rule is to send friend requests to whoever you like. It is just a request, they don't have to accept it. If someone sends me a friend request and I don't care to be their friend, I just ignore it.
But if you're worried that it could get awkward, you can just ask them if it is okay with them before sending a request.

My personal take is:

Twitter: I would say this barely counts as social media any more. Its more about broadcasting your opinion and 'upvoting' other people's content on particular themes. Most established academics have a twitter account and they LOVE having more followers. Younger grad students may be less enthusiastic about Twitter coz their parents are all over it ;-) (c.f. Facebook);
Instagram: If the instructor has an instagram account, its probably because they take a lot of quirky pictures and want the world to see (see twitter above);
Linked In: I tend to get Linked In invitations from current and former students. Frankly these tend to be from the more engaged students who are probably going to continue in their field. Personally I think Linked In is appropriate especially if you are particularly interested in the topic(s) taught by the instructor and may continue studying/working in that area. Linked In is used by a lot of academics to build their networks, so I think following on Linked In is totally appropriate;
Academia.edu: I think following on Academic is more particular to research - specifically - reading their stuff. To me if you follow an academic on Academia to me it means you have an active interest in their area of research. If this is the case, go for it;
Facebook: Personally I think Facebook is fine though I never use it. It does seem more personal. Paradoxically if we were actually friends you would know it was pointless 'friending' me on Facebook. Everyone has their own opinions about this platform;
Tinder/Grindr: Does send a different kind of message ;-) Maybe think twice, at least while you are enrolled in their class.

There’s no harm in sending a request, but you should be prepared to deal with the situation in which those students do not want to accept your requests. Social media can act as a platform for people to express themselves and having younger students observing their activity on social media can undoubtedly become a liability for ones career - it just creates a new opportunity for a complaint to be filed.
So go ahead and send it, but don’t be offended if the request is not accepted so to maintain professional and personal boundaries.


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Cite chapter without number in IEEE
I'm writing a report where I need to use the following document as a reference: https://ibex-core.readthedocs.io/en/latest/03_reference/index.html
I want to cite this reference as accurately as possible in-text. I've considered citing the chapters I have used, for example, [1, Ch. 3]. The only problem is that the source doesn't number the different chapters. Would it be ok to, for example, cite like this: [1, Ch. "chapter x"]? If not, how should I do this?

Do you mean the chapters are named but not numbered? You could consider citing the page (range) instead.

Yes exactly. That would be an option, except the documentation includes no page numbers.

I think the best approach is to follow the suggestion in this answer, which is to look for a single PDF version of the documentation. A PDF is more likely to include chapter and page numbering than the online version of the documentation. In your case, a link to download such a PDF version can be found by clicking "Read the Docs", which leads to here. Unfortunately, it has some formatting issues and is missing some figures. If that's a deal breaker probably it is best to cite specific "chapters" as individual websites.


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wondering about Follow-up email after a campus interview
I had a campus visit that I thought it went very well at the beginning of Feb and I was informed that there was another candidate a week later. So it has been three weeks after they saw the final candidate.I emailed the search chair two days ago to get an update after three weeks passed. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard from her yet.You might guess I feel like I was left in the dark and this makes me a little cranky. What might be happening? Do you have any suggestion about this apart from just waiting or maybe just accepting that I didn’t get the offer?

Who can say? Maybe they are just busy. But it is also possible that there was someone who got the first offer and they are waiting to hear if it is accepted. Sorry if that increases your anxiety, but you need to be patient.
You will hear at some point, whether it is good news or bad.


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Called Dr in government setting?
I work in local government (law enforcement), where titles are pretty important. I am a civilian supervisor with a doctorate degree. No one else there has this degree. I completed it two years ago. Is it unreasonable to be referred to as Dr. in a professional setting? Don’t know if it makes a difference but I am a female in a highly male industry.
For example, we had an awards ceremony that certain supervisors spoke at. The Chief of Police referred to them with their title, such as Lieutenant Camp, Major Short, but I was referred to as Jen Smith (my name is Jennifer). Even in the email previously about it, the Chief called everyone by their title and me as Supervisor Smith.
The year before he called me Dr. Smith. Even other emails that come to me refer to people’s titles except for me.
I know typically only people in academic settings are called Dr. except for where titles are used, and they are used pretty strongly at my place of employment. I am five years from retirement and have been with the organization for over 20 years. Originally, I got the doctorate because I thought I could make a difference, but now I don’t even care because I do not think I am taken seriously. Almost everything I do is questioned. I have the doctorate designation in my work e-mail signature.
Thanks for any insight.

This question might be better suited for [workplace.se].

Probably not. Usually in legal settings, "Dr." refers to MD's or similar medical doctors.

@RichardErickson What do you mean by legal settings?

This is an interesting question, but it probably comes down to your office's culture (or "police culture" more generally). As a bunch of academics, we really can't tell you anything other than the technical answer, which is that you do technically have the right to your title if you have earned it.

I just want to reach out and say - this is really frustrating. I think that the biggest issue is that you don't feel respected in the workplace. Like so many women and minorities I have talked to, you got a graduate degree thinking you would finally receive some respect, and it has not worked. It is a tough nut to crack. I think you should definitely continue to "advertise" your degree in correspondence, but I am not sure what to do about asking your supervisors to use the title...

Thank you, GoodDeeds. I wasn’t sure.

Contrary to what other people here think, I think that the Academia.SE community would better be able to relate and answer questions about when academic titles are appropriate to use, even if in non-academic settings. The vast majority of the people at Workplace.SE don't have doctoral degrees, and this question won't have the same meaning to them as it does to people here.

@GoodDeeds He probably means that if the chief of police starts calling her Dr. Smith, people may start bringing her bodies, and asking for autopsy results.

@NickS I've had my lawyer tell me "Dr." are used in court (and, presumably other parts of the justice system such as the police) for medical experts only. For example, a clinical phycologist would be "Dr.", but an academic phycologist would not be. However, "Dr. Bones" on is "Dr." So, maybe I'm off-base.


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The title of Dr. rer. nat in my country
I would like to ask a general question.
I graduated Dr. rer. nat from Germany in 2017. The question is, can I use title Dr. rer. nat. (in front of my name) in my country Malaysia ?
Thank you for your answers
SAB


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I was asked to reimburse the flight ticket after I cancelled the on-site interview
Two days ago, I accepted a desired faculty job offer and cancelled an on-campus interview at another university that was scheduled for three days later. I wanted to be honest and not waste their time. However, the university has asked me to pay for the flight ticket they purchased for me due to the cancellation. Is this normal? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

In what country?

It's not to hard for frequently-flying individuals to persuade an airline to give credit on an unused booked ticket ... and even easier for institutions.  I certainly wouldn't be rushing into paying them ... especially as you have no way of verifying that they haven't obtained a credit.

Would they have cancelled your return flight if you had declined the job after the interview?

If you like to travel, you can offer to visit them anyways. Maybe they have some weird reimbursement/accounting rules (imposed upon them by some external funding or government entity), and it makes everyone's life easier if you fly over, have a coffee with them, fly back and then officially decline the offer. And, who knows, maybe you'll meet interesting people in your line of research and find opportunities for future collaboration.

What was the sum requested?

When they offered the tickets did they stipulate as a condition that you would have to refund if it was cancelled by you ?  Unless you agreed to such a stipulation I cannot see any way to enforce their desire that you refund them (which tells me you're better off not working for them anyway !).

Who asked you for a refund? Was it a specific person you recognize (i.e. the search chair or department chair) or was it someone else? This person might not fully understand your situation.

Related, possible duplicate: Travel reimbursement for interview after accepting another position

Another possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/131420/interview-not-reimbursed-if-offer-is-made-but-not-accepted-uk

Many universities have policies that require them to interview an m number of candidates before they can hire someone for a specific position. Sometimes they are really looking for new staff but regularly they just need some seat-filling applicants to deal with the formal requirements. In this case your cancellation does not save them time. But of course they can ask a reimbursement, but they won't take you in to court for it.

Having worked briefly as a student in an administrative university department that, among other things, handled travel bookings for staff, guest lecturers, interviewees, etc., I have to say I find it very doubtful and more than a little dodgy-sounding that a university should ever book a ticket that wasn’t fully refundable. If they actually did that, they’re extremely unprofessional. If they did it without telling the interviewee that the ticket was non-refundable and would be considered his responsibility in case of cancellation, they’re downright scammers.

Actually I don’t think it’s right of them.  If you had gone to the second interview you would have wasted everybody’s time in addition to hotel and meal expenses for your stay at the second place.
Part of the cost of advertising a position is that some candidates will change their minds at the last minute, or will have to reschedule because of some unforeseen event.  I can understand the 2nd institution not being happy about you cancelling but you did the right thing by telling them ahead of time that you would not accept their offer.  Moreover, it’s usually possible to get a travel credit even on non-refundable tickets so the cancelled fare is not an entire loss.

They really should've thought about the alternative. Would they rather you show up, waste everyone's time, and simply turn down the offer?

@Nelson It's possible, but I think very unlikely, that this request is coming from the academic side. I'm sure it's from the university business office, or even potentially from the university's travel agent or something. Perhaps the person making the request doesn't even understand that it was an interview or what OP's relation to the university is. The relationship would be different if OP was a contractor working for a company who suddenly realized they couldn't show up for a job.

"it’s usually possible to get a travel credit even on non-refundable tickets"  I would not mention that to the university.

@AnonymousPhysicist if the university paid for the fare, they will know it, and they (not the OP) will get the travel credit.

I know.  It would not be appropriate to mention that the university might receive a credit.

When any potential employer offers to pay for any of a job candidate's interview expenses, they accept the risk that the candidate won't accept the offer. Suppose you had gone to the interview and then declined to take the job. It's very unlikely that they would have asked you to refund your plane ticket. You're simply reducing the time delay between the time when they buy your ticket and the time when they learn that you won't be accepting the job.
In the highly unlikely scenario that they would have asked you to refund your plane ticket even if you had done the full interview process and then declined the offer, then they're being consistent in asking you to refund it in this situation. But that would be such a significant departure from the usual norms of job interviews that the onus would be on them to clearly convey that fact before they bought your plane ticket, and to then ask you whether you still wanted them to buy your ticket, knowing that you would be expected to refund it if you later declined their offer.
I think you should politely decline to refund the ticket.
Edit: After writing that answer, I came across two near-duplicates at Travel reimbursement for interview after accepting another position and Interview not reimbursed if offer is made but not accepted (UK). The answers to those questions seem to indicate that it is more common than I had previously understood to decline to reimburse interview expenses if the candidate declines the job offer, especially in the UK. So I am now a little less categorical in my answer. I still think that the university's reimbursement policy should be the same whether or not the person actually attends the interview, but now I guess it's more of an edge case as to whether it's reasonable for the university to decline to cover the travel expenses in either case. Either way, the university should have clearly conveyed to the candidate before buying their ticket that the candidate would be on the hook for travel expenses if they ended up declining the job offer.

It's perhaps worth noting that the "highly unlikely scenario" you outline is supposed to be common practice at UK universities.

@Anyon Great find - I have revised my answer accordingly. I still think that if the university is going to demand that the candidate refund them for travel expenses if the job is not accepted, then it's their responsibility to make that clear to the candidate before buying the tickets, and to then ask the candidate whether the candidate wants the university to proceed with buying the tickets, as the university did in the linked question.

I am shocked to hear that UK unis won't cover interview expenses if the applicant doesn't take the job...

@paulgarrett well, it's not bound by any labor laws, so it's part of the organization's decision-making responsibilities. If they do not care for projecting such a negative experience even during the interview, then maybe it indicates systemic issues within the organization.

@tparker Yes, it's very common practice in the UK both to take this position and to tell candidates so in advance. I doubt any university would do one but not the other.

I honestly think it's a very different case for an employer (university or not) to ASK the candidate to reimburse them for costs (as in this case) or to NOT pay travel costs if the candidate makes the trip but then declines an offer. In the first case, the employer is not actually (at the time of notification) out of pocket.

@paulgarrett well, there are certainly sensible reasons for such a policy, like wanting to give as many candidates as possible a chance to go to the interview whilst avoiding to waste money on flights for people who are barely interested in the job but only applied as a C-option (or even just to visit the city for fun). But, this should be communicated clearly and upfront then.

The university declining to reimburse a ticket that the interviewee purchased and the university asking for the interviewee to reimburse a ticket that the university purchased are actually quite different situations for a number of meaningful reasons.  The former being normal does not mean that the latter is normal or acceptable.

Succinctly

Your original acceptance of attending an interview was made in good faith.

They accepted the expenditure involved, knowing that you may not be offered the job.

Going to the interview would have cost them MORE money.

So, not going was the lowest cost option.

That addresses whether the OP acted properly to minimize costs. It doesn't address the OP's question of whether it is normal for the applicant to repay costs in this sort of situation.

@Sneftel You are reasonably correct. And/but this succinctly addresses the core issue of what's reasonable and separates it from simple no-show-no-reason instances. I suspect that it addresses "the real question" that the OP is asking - but, of course, that's a personal impression.

Certainly it is fair. The choice was yours. It wouldn't be fair if they had cancelled. They made the purchase in good faith in this situation with little opportunity to avoid it.
I suspect it is pretty normal, though maybe not universal.
What I think is more common, perhaps for exactly this reason, is to ask the candidate to make their own arrangements for travel and to promise reimbursement after the visit. Many object to that policy, I think.
And, an alternative you had, but didn't exercise (or think of, probably) is to tell them you were very unlikely to accept any offer and ask if you should still come. If they had said no, then you'd have a case that they should just absorb the cost.
I don't know, actually, whether you are bound to reimburse them. They might actually let you off the hook if you just say you are sorry, but are unable to provide the funds.

@xxxxxxxxx, probably not, but the OP made a choice, both in agreeing to the interview and cancelling it. The institution spent money in good faith. The "right thing to do" and the financial consequences are quite different things.

I would rather say that OP applied for the position in good faith, so they shouldn't be penalised for being unable to continue with the interview process due to accepting another offer. It's certainly not bad faith to go through that process with more than one potential employer simultaneously. And it also makes little sense to penalise OP for informing the university of the change of circumstances rather than attending an interview for a job they definitely won't accept. Unless the university said in advance that OP would be on the hook for the plane ticket in this circumstance, they aren't.

The comparison with being reimbursed after booking yourself is exactly on point. Nobody would expect them to reimburse the ticket in that situation. So what's the difference here?

"They might actually let you off the hook if you just say you are sorry, but are unable to provide the funds." I don't think there's any hook here at all. OP is not obligated to pay back the university in any legal sense, unless perhaps the university can prove that they were acting in bad faith.

@DonQuiKong The difference is that the university agreed to pay for the travel costs and, as far as we know, did not stipulate in advance that OP would be liable for those costs if they did not travel. Personally I would think the university ought to eat the cost either way, though, since it doesn't make any sense from their perspective to incentivise OP to travel in order to get reimbursed if OP already knows they won't accept an offer - that just wastes more university resources to conduct an interview for no reason.

@DonQuiKong One aspect that may or may not make a difference in this specific case is the timing of booking. If the university books the flights, they are incentivized to do so early to get lower prices. If an applicant books the flights (assuming the common requirement of nonrefundable tickets) but will only get reimbursed if they complete the trip, the incentives are to book only once they're absolutely sure they'll attend the interview. So it might not even have been a problem for OP in that situation, but much costlier for the university had OP traveled to the interview.

The original acceptance of interview was made in good faith. 2. Going to the interview would have cost them MORE money. 3. So, not going was the lowest cost option.

@Buffy I understand the OP as “ the university bought the ticket and want the OP to reimburse them”, not “the OP has bought the ticket and they don’t want to reimburse the OP”.  Either way I think the uni should pay but your understanding is a little different from mine.

@ZeroTheHero: As far as I can tell, Buffy understands the OP the same way that you do.

@DonQuiKong In addition to the differences others have mentioned, one key difference is that since the uni bought the ticket, it was completely out of the interviewee’s control whether the ticket is cancellable or reimbursable. If the interviewee had bought the ticket, they would either (a) have made sure they could get a full refund if cancelled, or (b) been aware of the risk of losing the money spent. For the uni to book a non-refundable ticket without the interviewee’s knowledge and then ask for reimbursement is morally very shady ground (and I don’t believe it for a second).


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What incentives can a faculty member offer to a potential lab manager?
As a new junior faculty member in life sciences, I would like to recruit a PhD lab manager/technician. The duties would include some basic administration (such as ordering reagents) but mostly carrying performing experiments and training students. I am open to the possibility of this person having their own research project. The position will be long-term, as one of the goals it to have a permanent senior lab member that can pass on experimental knowledge that we have accumulated. This means it is a critical position in the lab which requires good candidates.
I am considering how to attract strong candidates for this position. The problem is that the salary is set by the university and it is quite low compared to industry or tenure-track faculty.
My question is what kind of incentives could one offer for such a position?
The two main incentives that come to mind are the ability to do interesting research and relatively flexible hours. What are some other possibilities?

A pleasant working environment with colleagues who are respectful to one another.

10% free time where they are free to work on their own projects. (Google is actually 20% but they are a multibillion company).

Evidence you can provide long term employment.

I think their are a many PHDs that are looking for jobs and can not get a tenure track position.  However, I think your largest issue will be keeping the good person.

I've actually worked in a lot of places with paid staff scientists in permanent/semi-pemanent positions like the ones you're describing. Below are a list of things they've mentioned about their jobs that they like, or things that made me consider exactly those types of positions:

Some academic freedom. Of course they are being paid by you, so they need to work on funded projects primarily. But some ability to be working on side projects, "There's an interesting direction I'd like to take this in..." etc. are extremely valuable. This also applies to research output - being able to author the occasional paper, take some credit for things they've worked on with authorships, etc.
Respect. This is a big one, and one of the major perks that can be offered. Treat your staff like trash, and it's just another job. On the other hand, if you treat your staff like highly-trained professionals who have expertise, don't accept hot-shot new grad students acting like they're "just" technicians, etc. that goes a long way.
Job security. Hard to do as a new faculty member, but most of the more established faculty I know treated their staff as essential employees. If funding started to get hit, staff salaries were the last thing on the list to get cut before you hit "Turn off the lights and go home" stages. Make it clear to them you consider this to be true.
Support if they want to do something else. This one seems a little counter-intuitive, but supporting the professional aspirations of staff has been helpful in my experience. It means they're not looking for an escape hatch under the radar (and thus leaving with little warning), they talk to other people who are interested in replacing them, students of yours see that working for your longer term wouldn't be a career dead end, etc.
Flexible hours, the ability to work from home, etc. Essentially some of the same things that make academics value their positions over industry jobs.
Insulation from some of the petty nonsense of academia. Basically, make sure you're the shield between your staff and the things that make an academic's life hard. That includes things like not having grant writing duties fall squarely on their shoulders to keeping them out of most departmental politics.

Very useful answer. As I'm considering to apply for one of those types of positions (as opposed to a postdoc) this was extremely helpful. +1.

The prospect of enriching his or her publication list is what will make it most enticing.  Being on the author list of some of the papers that come out of your lab would help, as would having some as first author (with your mentorship, if desired).
In other words, I'm imagining a hybrid position between a hired grunt and a postdoc.

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


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What kind of publications can I submit on my own without the need of supervisors approval?
I am a geology PhD student and would like to publish some writings to academia to improve my profile, I do not aim for high-impact journals. I would like to publish by myself only because my supervisor is a perfectionist (and doesn't care about my career) and I worry that I will remain invisible in academia. I would like some suggestions on what kind of articles or papers I can publish without the approval of my supervisor and without using the data he provided. I believe, this will help me get connected to a larger community (improve networking) without the aid of my supervisor.

Is your question about publishing "without aid" or "without approval" from your supervisor?

Without his aid (a writing only written by me) and
without his approval but is ethically acceptable in academia.

Depends on whether the supervisor contributed to the ideas.

He has only provided me with a list of background research papers. Of course, i dig further and read more papers. I am looking for something short of a literature review.

Have you discussed this with your advisor?

What is the field? The options available to you depend heavily on that.

I think you need to reevaluate your stance. A perfectionist that doesn't care about your career while you just want to stack up low impact papers? Sounds like your advisor wants you to publish high quality research. Publishing a lot of worthless low impact papers for CV building is one of the things wrong with academia now. These papers add nothing other than increase the noise amongst the useful literature. Perhaps if you used your energy to conduct research towards those perfectionist level papers your advisor wants, and not low impact papers, you can build a strong CV.

You need to change advisors.  Your goals don't match their goals.

It's starting to feel like we need a CW question "How can I do thing X that I know my advisor is going to be upset about without consequences?".

How did you get to the conclusion "and doesn't care about my career"? Also, your "visibility" in academia strongly correlates with your collaboration with your advisor - "Stand on the shoulders of the giant" and not their toes.

@CaptainEmacs No, he wouldn't be contributing because it would not align with his immediate work.

@TimRias No, i dont plan to, he will step down from supervising me.

@AzorAhai-him- Geology

@R1NaNo
He doesnt care and i am strongly positive about this because he has explicitly mentioned that he has to continue supervising me because of the system, if there was an option for him to remove me, he would have opted. In our lab, we have a history of sudden discontinuations because of his behaviour.

@ R1NaNo I worry more about gaining career support and publishing a good quality paper was thought to be one of the options.

@AlexanderWoo unfortunately, i cant, i will have to give up my phd and i dont want to do that.

@tallharish He doesnt care and i am strongly positive about this because he has explicitly mentioned that he has to continue supervising me because of the system, if there was an option for him to remove me, he would have opted. In our lab, we have a history of sudden discontinuations because of his behaviour.
I am under the feet now, i want to move my way up.

@kc_nul - if you want a research career, a bad PhD is worse than no PhD.  Having a bad PhD means your research career is over, period.  With no PhD, you can still apply for another PhD.

@AlexanderWoo That is exactly what I was worried about!

@kc_nul - a PhD without work that can make it into high impact journals is a bad PhD.  Publications in low impact journals are worthless except for certain bureaucratic requirements.

@DanielHatton Thank you for understanding. I was under the thought process that these side projects should be accommodated outside of my official working hours and at the expense of a balanced life. However, the replies to my question are making me reflect on my decision and i am planning to put a halt for a while in regards to side-quests.

Ethically, you can submit any work that your supervisor had no input in whatsoever without their approval.
What you can and cannot do (legally), depends a lot on your local situation. It can be that your supervisor is effectively also your line manager, in which case they may have a say in what you spend your (working) time on. It can also be that legally you are free to exactly as you please. We cannot answer this for you.
In any case, it is a good idea to discuss this with your supervisor. Your relationship with your supervisor is important. Keeping work hidden from them (especially if you do this because you think they would disapprove) is a major break of trust, and could irreparably harm your relationship. I certainly would be severely annoyed if one of my students would work one a paper without mentioning this to me. (I wouldn't need be involved, but I'd like to at least know about it.)
If your supervisor opposes that you work on something else independently, then regardless of whether you are in the right (legally/ethically) to ignore them, you may still be better off listening to them. (Unless you are willing to burn bridges.)

Any idea discussed so far has been criticized negatively, even if other professionals agree it to be beneficial, it has been turned down so i know this is impossible to discuss.
I understand your view and i understand the importance of letting him know, thank you. Yes, I do not aim to do the opposite of his interest for sure.
I will figure it out.

Another important consideration may be any funding that you receive: if you are being paid to work on a specific topic, then (most of) your time needs to be spent working on things connected to that topic.

There are a lot of things to untangle in this question.

It seems like you and your advisor are not an ideal match. That doesn't immediately mean that the situation is unworkable, but it does mean that you need to have a conversation about expectations, responsibilities and overall work ethic (including direction of the project, who contributes what etc.). You at least need to understand where the other person is coming from. Ideally, you reach a point where your views align and you find a way forward. Alternatively, you adapt to your supervisor's view on how they run their lab, given that you are a PhD student who is still in training and who needs a coach/mentor to develop and mature as a scientist.

How publishing independently is seen differs per field. Probably the quality of an independent publication also differs per field. But don't get hung up on trying to publish a paper by yourself to proof yourself or establish a name. You are directing your energy towards a deliverable whereas the only thing that really counts in academia is your reputation and how solid your science is. Could your advisor be an over the top perfectionist who stops you from publishing? Maybe. Could they also be a seasoned scientist who knows the field and what is best for the science coming out of their lab? Probably.

Without knowing anything more, it is impossible to give spot on advise about your current situation - we don't know about your local environment, the lab (group size)/university/field, what year of your PhD you are in, whether your position is funded by your supervisor, etc.
In general though, I think you're better of with asking why you are in academia and what kind of scientist you want to be than with blindly focusing on getting a single author paper out. Try to learn from your advisor, not work against them. And ask yourself what you think of their research. Is it solid? Do you want to be associated with their work and their reputation? If not, then find a different supervisor. If you do, then work with them to build a network and a record of solid work. That will be worth more in academia than a lower quality publication. And if you leave academia nobody will be looking at or counting papers anyway.

1 I know he is a good researcher and I look up to gaining the knowledge he has, the only loop hole is that he believes to be the only person good at what he does so automatically, everyone else is wrong and No one is an ideal match.
The only way to align is to blindly do what has been asked.

Quality of publication is important so while i aim at publishing good papers, i do not aim strictly on high impact factor journals with the single author publication. however, this discussion has been helpful in reassessing the approach. I will seek other ways to build my career (it seems difficult without the guidance of supervisor)
Just one person cannot stir my choice to be in academia so i will focus on building a network with him.


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Conditions for publishing scientific articles
Does sharing part of the results of a study or scientific article affect the publication of this article in the future?
I am asking this question because I wrote a scientific article in mathematics and I want to share part of the results I reached to convince one or more mathematicians of the importance of the article. Perhaps I will find someone to help me publish it.

I don't think that's a problem. I have never heard of anyone making acceptance/rejection decisions for publications taking such things into account.

"It depends". It depends on your field, the results you're claiming, the norms of practice within your community, and the general policies of your target journal.

Sharing privately with people for feedback and/or collaboration doesn't affect publication. Putting it on a web site might, but even arXiv is mostly acceptable in mathematics (probably not all journals, though and not all fields).
But private sharing is widespread and acceptable everywhere.
And you don't need anyone to "help you publish it" unless it isn't really ready for publication.

Sharing information an article is common and will not affect the publication process with any journal in mathematics.
However, your attitude is wrong and will not help you. You seek "help to publish" an article, and its unclear what that means.
You can reasonably hope for feedback from experts in the relevant mathematical community, but don't expect too much, since everyone is busy with their own thing. The submission process is fairly straight-forward, though, and nobody can give you substantial help with that - in the worst case, you open yourself up to exploitive actors you suggest being co-authors as "publication help".
You should move ahead once your article is done and see what the referee reports say.


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I plagiarised using chatGPT in my thesis, I assume I will be caught and maybe expelled. How do I create a more lenient punishment?
Of course, the no-brainer is using chatGPT. I have done something atrocious and unjustified. I realize that I have made a massive mistake after handing in my own assignment. I wrote a thesis with one section from chatGPT copy-paste (the dumbest). In a few days, my thesis will be analyzed through Turnitin by my supervisor, and I already feel a plagiarism accusation coming. Understandably, I should be punished for my wrongdoings. I just hope my university does not punish me too hard for plagiarism. Under the board of examiners there are multiple penalties regarding a reprimand, a void grade (NG or fail) in the assignment, suspension for the upcoming period (so a one-year delay), or the worst (getting expelled).
Obviously, I cannot deny my act, and I will take full responsibility. I just want to learn from my wrongdoings and hope to obtain a second chance.  I have no control over the verdict of the board. I just want to learn from this action and plead for a more lenient sentence.
Does anyone have tips or guidance on what to do?
edit when worse comes to worst, I will consider asking a lawyer to aid me

Well, you have the following choice to make, I guess: (a) tell them in advance that you made the mistake to use ChatGPT in one section without correctly marking that you used this tool, or (b) wait until they find out. Whether (a) is favourable over (b) depends on the way your school works. From an academic integrity point of view, (a) is the way to go, but whether it's the smartest thing to do for you personally for reducing punishment (in the worst case or the mean expected punishment) is incredible hard to tell.

Does this answer your question? Should I preemptively confess after submitting work that was partially generated by ChatGPT?

Would someone care to explain to me how using ChatGPT differs from requesting the services of a professional editor?

The difference is irrelevant. The question clearly states the user copy-pasted text from another source into their thesis, without attribution. This is plagiarism, academic dishonesty, and will rightfully earn a zero grade on the thesis, at the very minimum. @DennisFrancisBlewett

This is the basic problem: the minute that there is a predictable way to avoid punishment, the deterrent effect of the punishment disappears. So there is not, and should not be, an obvious, easy and predictable way to avoid punishment.
You have two obvious choices: to 'fess up and hope for a lesser punishment, or to wait and see if they actually catch you. From the perspective of those of us who administer punishment to students who cheat, we are always inclined to be less severe with those who confess. Part of this is that by encouraging confessions, we hope to not create an environment where it's always to students' advantage to wait and see if they are caught. But if, again, it becomes predicable that we will be very lenient with those that confess, then what we encourage is cheating followed by confession with increased expectations of leniency. And maximum leniency is no disciplinary action, and that just brings us back to the basic problem of deterrence. The comparison group is not those that did not confess, but those who did not cheat. Are we being fair to those who did the work themselves? That's the question.
You mention that you are really sorry, and that you just want to learn from your lesson. The problem is that you are likely lying to yourself, not on purpose, but still. Let me assure you that 100% of the time I am lenient to a cheating student, they do it again, only that this time they assure me that they are not 100% sure, but 1,000% sure they'll never to it again. We don't want to punish students, we want them to stop cheating. Thus, the only way to reach our true goal is to administer a punishment that "hurts." Hurts in the sense that it creates enough discomfort and regret, that it prevents the act form happening again.
If you really want to stop yourself from doing this again, then confess and accept whatever disciplinary action they take against you. It has the added benefit that it might bring, albeit not guarantee, leniency.
Last, try to keep a balance between feeling bad for what you did, and overdoing the self-recrimination. Cheating is academia is rampant and widespread. Before LMLs came about, it was Chegg, and before Chegg, it was paying Internet "tutors" to do the work for you, and so on. Only the technology has made it easier to cheat, but I really doubt that students in the 80s where less inclined to cheat: they just didn't have the technology, or were never caught (look at how many theses from famous people are being found to be plagiarized now that automatic tools are available.) There's plenty of guilt to go around: from professors who never check for plagiarism or just test for things that can be answered with a quick Google search, to ever-lenient administrators never wanting to "punish" a paying customer, to a general devaluation from students about what constitutes an education. We are trying to train you here, so please, do the training exercises. Like I ask my students caught cheating: Do you also pay someone to go to the gym for you?

"the minute that there is a predictable way to avoid punishment, the deterrent effect of the punishment disappears" - this! +1

worthwhile changing the question title to a more general question about how plagiarism instead of avoiding punishment perhaps.

Now is the time for damage control as soon as possible.
If possible, withdraw your assignment immediately.  Naturally, this will result in not getting a grade, because you will have missed the assignment deadline.  This is very likely less bad than the penalty for plagiarism or cheating.


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What are reasons for which a less qualified person is hired as a lecturer?
I have worked as an adjunct at my University for 12 years, and I got my PhD (in mathematics) a few years ago. My goal, after getting my PhD, was to continue being an adjunct in my University until a Lecturer position opens up and apply for it. Recently, a Lecturer position opened up and I applied for it. I have taught pretty much my entire Universities curriculum, including all the upper level courses which are never taught by any other adjuncts. However, I was not accepted for this position.
The person who was accepted, satisfies the following properties:

Has taught less than 1/3 of all the courses that I taught, at my University.
Did not teach at my University for the past 5 years, and only recently taught one class the recent semester when the Lecturer position opened up.
Only taught lower level courses.
Does not have a PhD (though is currently working on one).

Furthermore, the job application for this Lecturer position, clearly stated, that preference would be given to the individual who has a vast array of teaching experience of courses offered in the University.
My question is:
Which reasons exist to hire the less qualified person? If someone is more qualified than I am, then surly they should get the position. But based on this person's career history, they were not more qualified. And if I believe that an incorrect decision was made, which hurts me, and is contrary to the job description, what actions can I take?

As it was, your question was much to dependent on personal factors and thus likely to be closed. I tried to edit it to make it more general.

See also: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/195976/what-are-the-main-differences-that-separate-applicants-who-get-academic-jobs-ove

Two things: (a) for career-centric positions, qualifications are not seen as absolute but in proportion to career age; (b) if you have 12 years of teaching experience you may well be seen as overqualified for an entry-level teaching position.

@xLeitix The person who got the Lecturer job also has 12 years of teaching experience. But their teaching experience is low level intro-level math. So on the basis of working-age, we have been both working at this for the same amount of time.

But their teaching experience is low level intro-level math. -- Depending on the department's needs, this may be more important than some of the seemingly stronger qualifications you have. In fact, this was my first thought when I read your question yesterday.

@AxBy My feedback is to recommend you ask the people who actually were involved in the process and are willing to talk to you. Anyone can make up stories from guesses, but how do these actually help you?

@DaveLRenfro This is a good point, and this is what I thought of also, but the job application said, "preference would be given to the candidate that a vast array of courses offered in the department". If the job description said something else, then your suggestion would be applicable, but it is contrary to the job application.

@BryanKrause The problem is, those people are not willing to talk about it. Only some faculty members (who were not directly on the hiring committee, and can offer their views to them) can tell me their thoughts on the matter. How do you suggest to find this information out?

@AxBy Then I think it's probably not worth your effort to find it out, and if you want a different job you should apply to different jobs. You'll notice the pattern here is not very productive: people offer their guesses, you tell them why their guesses are wrong. That's why the question is closed as "strongly depending on individual factors".

There could be plenty of reasons, which might be summarized as "life isn't fair".

It might be that the other person really had some key skill or some certain certification that you don't know about (eg some teaching certificate, a gender-competence certificate)

Nepotism might be involved in some way

Somebody might have had some bias

age (thanks to the commenters!)

etc...
Most likely, you will never know.
While it is good to always remember to be fair, unfortunately, there are many unfair things and lucky things going on in Academia.

add age to that list.  Moreover, there is little fear by admin of “loosing” the OP since they have been there for so long.

@ZeroTheHero Absolutely! As an adjunct, I attended a departmental faculty meeting where it was explicitly stated that they were looking for a young person for the job. Despite the position being in a state university in the US.

It's always easier for a newcomer to seem shiny, fresh and exciting, and destined for great things; in comparison to the person who's been around for a long time and therefore seems unremarkable.

@avid This new person has actually taught at this University at the same starting year as me, and is older, but they took a long break until returning back and getting a position.

@AxBy I am afraid you are overdue to let this one go. You have been an adjunct for over a decade, if the faculty wanted to bring you on full-time somebody would have made it happen by now.

@xLeitix Perhaps, that is how it works in other Universities, but in my University there are other departments that approve funding, ect, and the hiring decision consists of people outside the mathematics department. The faculty members personally told me (including the former chair) that they wanted to make me a Lecturer, but they alone do not have that ability. Furthermore, the person who got the Lecturer position has been also an adjunct for over a decade as well, as long as I have.

@AxBy  it's your decision to make. Personally I would have stopped buying the "sorry, nothing I can do" argument years ago.

@xLeitix How do you know that the "Nothing I can do" argument is not actually correct? Universities are structured differently. At my University, the faculty members cannot simply elect new faculty members without approval from other departments. Administration probably takes priority over the math faculty.

@DanielHatton Good observation, but in this University all Lecturers get paid the same.


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How are part-time studies viewed in the English-speaking countries?
In our department, we recently discussed about part-time studies in combination with occupational work. Hereby, I mean degrees where lectures take place during the evening / the weekend and where most participants / "students" already have a full degree. The discussion included full professors, post-docs and some individuals working in the industries.
During the discussion I realized that the perception of part-time studies varies widely. In fact, some people claimed that "one simply buys a degree". One professor said that candidates who undertook a part-time degree are highly interesting to him, since they manage work and studies at the same time. Further to that, said person claimed that the grades are not important to him, since it is more about completing the degree. I know this might be very country specific so I would like to ask the following question: How are part-time degrees evaluated in the English-speaking countries, such as the United States / the United Kingdom? I am specifically interested in the graduate level.
Thank you very much!

I was very fortunate, eons ago, to have both the opportunity to do a night-school masters and a supportive employer. This allowed me to bootstrap my professional situation for my own benefit and that of my young family. At a later date the stars aligned for my PhD work. Maybe there were those who thought less of someone like me on a nontraditional path, but the folks I worked with seemed to understand and appreciate it.

There is no inherent reason that part-time programs catering to employed professionals should have lower quality.  Many high-end universities offer courses with contact hours outside of normal work hours and these are high-quality courses that are comparable to standard courses in the institution.  Having said this, in some institutions there is financial pressure for the university to run a program that successfully attracts enough students to make it financially viable/beneficial to the institution, and in such cases (particularly for less prestigious universities) there may be some internal pressure to ensure that the courses are not too taxing on the students.
This means that there is some nuance and judgment involved in assessing the likely quality of part-time programs provided to full-time professionals.  Academics are generally okay with this in principle, but may be skeptical of the quality of programs in particular cases where there are "red flags".  If you wish to avoid potential negative inferences about the quality of your program, it might be best to look for established programs that have run successfully for long enough that they have an established reputation, or programs from high-prestige universities where it is less likely that course quality will be watered down in order to attract/retain busy students.

There Is Some Nuance
There's nothing generally wrong with the idea of pursuing a degree, part time, while working, from a university that is catering to professionals or otherwise non-traditional students with full schedules during the day.
One of my master's degrees (computer science) is exactly that.
I got it in the mid 00's, which was just about the time that remote learning was becoming a possibility, and that institution was an early investor in those technologies.  The tech couldn't quite do real-time streaming, but lectures with very high fidelity whiteboard captures would be made available no later than 12 hours after they were recorded in front of live students.  We were expected to show up in person for exams, had access to office hours and e-mail discussions with the professors, submitted homework, etc.  And the university was accredited, and an R2 institute.
That was as much as the tech of the day could minimize the gap between remote and in-person.  Even today, you couldn't do too much better except to add live-streaming, and replace e-mail with video chats.
So that's great, and no one should be knocking an experience like that without cause.  If people are showing up for live lectures, they shouldn't be knocked for that, either.
But here's the nuance:  It was about the same time that the University of Phoenix started blitzing the market with their own on-line long distance programs.  UoPX was (still is?) widely regarded as a diploma mill.
It is not trivially easy to distinguish between those two ends of the spectrum, so skepticism may not be completely unwarranted.   The farther you get from the remote-but-not-second-class model that I took part in, the lower the quality of the education is likely to be, and the more that skepticism will apply.
My experiences are approaching twenty years ago, and anecdotal aside from that, so I don't have a great list of do's and don'ts, here.  But I can offer two broad ideas for quality checking:

If the non-traditional curriculum is attached to a quality university, that's a good sign, subject to common sense; I don't know what Harvard offers, say, but it's unlikely to get you the fabled networking opportunities if you never meet people on a daily basis for several years.

If you work for a company that supports continuing education for their employees (my employer paid the whole thing for me) the relevant HR staffer should be able to steer you in the right direction.

I am one of these students and have been for about 15 years.  I got my teaching degree paid for by my employer (an R2), and I am currently working on two masters degrees at the night school at an R1.  These degrees are also significantly discounted because I am a staff member.  The average master's degree at my R1 will cost me less than $500 + a few fees.  In all three cases, I was looking for experience in my job or upskilling in some way.  I have also taken classes that were of interest to me and more of like a hobby (these were with the normal grad programs at the R1 and thus cost me more, like about $600/each).
The night school classes are hard.  I have taken both "regular" classes and "night" classes at the same school, and the night classes are often harder in my experience.  This is a difficult comparison because the same subject areas are not offered in both schools.  However, the focus of the night school classes are often more vocational and focus on upskilling more than theoretical information. In my case, this means instead of reflection and research papers, which I am used to and pretty skilled at, I have to make projects with my new skills (which I am less good at right now).  I may have to work about 60 hours a week and then also do at least 10 hours of school work each week.  It's a long week.  I sometimes have to make hard choices, getting a B+ can be a strategic choice for me if my workload at my job is too intense and an A is out of reach.  My job comes first.
In terms of how people view folks like me, yes there is a bias that some people have.  This came up with a Harvard Law Professor last year during the political scandals involving the president of Harvard. [Note: I am not going to discus the politics of this; this is something you can read more on.]  In the case of Harvard, there is famously a movement that their Extension school students feel like second-class citizens because of how Harvard awards the degrees in the field of "Extension Studies" no matter what you study.  I do not believe this is true at similar schools, e.g., Boston University's Metropolitan College.  It very much depends on how the "night school" is viewed within its own community.  The democratic nature of the Harvard Extension School puts it very much at odds with the Ivy League and exclusive nature of Harvard University, hence the HLS professor's comments:

“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have ‘master’s degree from Harvard,’ which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School?” Hochschild wrote on Jan. 4. “Those students are great — I teach them — but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students.”

In the end, I know that people respect the work I do in my job, and I am constantly upskilling to do better work.  The degrees I get are to perform better work for my job, not to impress other people. When people want to talk to me about my work, it's not interesting to anyone that I may have three master's degrees--it's interesting that I can put together a work product that they love.  They don't care how I learned these things.  The unfortunate reality in academia is that my staff makes more with an undergrad degree than most of the postdocs in our fancy R1 school.  Work experience matters more than education for most jobs (outside of academic pursuits).  When I hire staff (who will be providing customer service to research faculty), I value flexibility, optimism, problem-solving, reliability, and communication skills.  We recently hired someone out of the hospitality industry, and she is a high performer for these reasons.
I also should note that I tend to "stay in my lane" on academia in general.  I am very educated, went to great schools, but I have a sense of where I am educated and where I am not.  I am working on a degree focused on instructional design; that is not the same as a computer science degree, not an education degree.  It has a particular, applied purpose for my job, with elements from computer science programs and elements from education programs.  I am not going to pretend that I know computer science because I took a class from an industry guy at night school on how to make a basic SQL database.  However, in my day to day work, can I deploy a basic SQL database if it solves a problem for me?  Yes, and I am widely-respected in my field for my wide range of skills, not because I am a PhD in a given discipline.  Next week I am starting my first class in GIS--how many people do you know who get to learn these types of skills on the side?  If people look down on me for this, I can't imagine why, and it doesn't matter to me.  My life is so much better for my "less prestigious" education.

Many universities, large and small, have evening programs tailored to the needs of employed people earning masters degrees. I once taught in a doctoral level (computing) program that met face to face only periodically and was meant for part time study by people wishing to move up in their research organizations. This was made possible in part by modern communication systems.
Many people, especially those with families, can't afford to study full time and such programs meet a real need and are quite common.
Many universities try to fill local needs for educational programs. Night and weekend programs make this possible. And some (many?) employers value the fact that employees are working to advance their skills.
Moreover, as I noted in a comment to another answer, it can give faculty at non-research institutions a chance to go beyond the undergraduate program; an important element in keeping current in the field - any field, perhaps. They might be seen as a "carrot" offered to faculty to make academic life more interesting.

(originally a comment, but I decided it probably rises to the level of an answer.)
In the U.S. this is very common in some degree programs, such as MBA programs (Masters in Business Administration), Masters in Nursing programs, Departments of Education (both Masters and EdD (Doctor of Education)), and many other graduate level professional programs. This is especially prevalent in smaller universities (e.g. regional campuses of State Schools) located in more populated areas, such as in cities with population over 100,000.

I don't think it is restricted to a few fields as you may be suggesting.

@Buffy: I agree. I think in my comment (later pasted into an answer window) I was too cautious and was mainly trying to indicate that existence (even nontrivial existence) is definitely the case. Probably the vast majority of Masters programs in the U.S. in most every field have part-time students, although I'm a bit out-of-date with the current situation regarding Ph.D. programs. FYI, the university where I obtained both my undergraduate and Masters degrees offered, in the late 1970s through the 1980s, MA/MS degrees in math with graduate course offerings only in the evenings.

Yes, among other things, it gives faculty at non-research institutions a chance to go beyond the undergrad program; an important element in keeping current.

Although many Universities in the UK may offer part-time studies in various programs, one should mention the University set up here where their entire offering is part-time degrees. This is the Open University which was specifically set up by the government for the purposes you outlined.
You can read about its history on Wikipedia. There are many other similar institutions world-wide which are also listed.

Not only is OU part time, it is also focused on distance education. It does an excellent job in my experience. Among other things it has access to all (most?) of the media produced by the BBC and spends millions on development of new courses.

And to directly address the OP's original question: the OU is well-respected both inside (UK) academia and in wider society. An OU degree is probably better-regarded than one from many of the newer bricks-and-mortar institutions.


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Is it going to hurt me that my undergraduate research was conducted in a group, but not one-on-one with a professor?
I conducted summer research with my Computer Science(CS) professor last summer.
However, we were a group of three students. The end result was three papers written and all three of them contain our names in alphabetical order (so 4 names including our prof). Is this, the fact that it was more of team research and not one-on-one research with a professor, going to be looked down upon when I apply to Ph.D. programs in CS? Or does it make no difference at all?

No, it isn't going to hurt. Research that is published is not going to hurt any application in the US. It is going to help. And, collaboration is a valued skill in CS so that, too, is in your favor.
Even unpublished research mentioned by a letter writer is a plus. All such things are indicators of future success. And get the supervising professor to write a nice letter when you do apply. If that is a year or more in the future, let them know now of future plans.
This, and other questions you've asked here suggest you are overly concerned about the future. I'll predict that you will do fine and suggest you relax and stop overthinking.

Or you won't do fine, but it will be because of factors outside of your control.


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Interview question regarding current study program
I have completed my M.Sc. in mathematics in 2020. I want to do a Ph.D. in maths. After my graduation I worked as a trainee teacher at a science college. The salary was not good enough so my parents made me leave the job. Since a Ph.D. takes a lot of time my parents enrolled me in a B.Ed. program. They have allowed me to try to get admission to a Ph.D. program. So I've applied for Ph.D. programs and I am about to face the interview. My question is, if the interviewer asks me why I am doing B.Ed. if I want to do Ph.D. then what should be the appropriate answer?

Where is this happening? In much of the world "my parents enrolled me in a B.Ed. program" doesn't and can't happen. If it is a cultural issue then the people interviewing you may have the same cultural norms, or not, depending on place.

I am from India. My parents thought until I get admission in Ph.D. I should have a professional degree.  It is also partially my fault that I couldn't convince them

Are you also applying for doctoral studies in India?

Yes I am applying

You will have to interpret this as I don't know how Indian academics would react to this. But there are some cultures in which parents exert what, in the US, say, would be undue influence on the decisions of their adult children. That may be your case or not, and academics there may be used to adjusting to this or not. So, you might get some local advice on the following suggestion.
It might be possible and acceptable to just say that your parents are trying to influence your future more than is desirable and were manipulating you into another bachelors when your clear, personal, preference is for a doctorate. Get the conversation moving toward your accomplishments in math and your desire to pursue it as a career.
If you were applying other places, say EU or US, people would be likely to accept that explanation.
There are a few other questions here concerning such misplaced parental influence. It can be difficult to "go against" the wishes of domineering parents, but, at some point you need to make your life your own. They (parents) can mean well, but do things that are actually destructive. Courage.

I agree. I am from India. Here often parents tries to influence careers of students, very unfortunate. I would suggest the OP to choose career path on her own, ofcourse free to consult with right people (e.g., some academics in related field)


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How can I hire a professor to answer my advanced technical questions in a niche area?
In short, How does one go about hiring a professor or someone really well established in their field for a private tutoring session?
I tried looking online but can’t find much, mainly websites for tutors that are practitioners or “experts” as in with with n years of experience at best. This doesn’t cut it at my level as I am a researcher with a PhD and already have published papers on my topic.
However, I am very passionate about my subject and always looking to grow. So I do have questions, very technical (in my case computer science) and would happily pay a fee for consulting with a professor in the field.
Any advice?

What exactly do you want them to do for you? As it stands, your question is unclear.

If you really mean to "hire a high-level consultant", you'd need to offer them something substantial. If it's just consultation with no share in anything subsequently, you'd pay "consultant's fees", which might be 500 USD per hour, or worse. Is this what you mean?

Discuss ideas, mostly technicalities and soundness. Brainstorming...

@AnarKi Is anything you are working towards not purely theoretical?

Ok, still, "discussing ideas, technicalities, soundness, brainstorming" is not something I myself would agree to do without very considerable motivation/incentive. I suggest that you realize that many senior/established people already have lots of ideas... have super-facility with technicalities... have no problems with "soundness"... and have "brainstormed" for many decades. Seriously, what would you have to offer? Experienced/senior/old people have seen many things... Very often inexperienced people simply fail to imagine what old people have seen... don't fall prey to that fallacy.

Offer USD $1000/hour.

Find a StackExchange forum and post your questions there.  I'm sure some expert readers will respond to you.

Unless you are in a place where professors are greatly underpaid and generally abused, this seems like a quest that is bound to fail. People are busy and they aren't normally driven by money (other than large pots of grant money).
What I think you want, instead, is a collaboration. That can be started with just an email, provided that you have something to contribute yourself. This requires you to do a bit of research to find someone with common interests to form a two-way partnership.
Perhaps the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan and his relationship with Hardy will be instructive.

Write to them and ask. There's no other way about it. They might be willing to talk to you, or they might direct you to someone who can (since you did say it's technical).
Sabine Hossenfelder's "Talk to a Scientist" is the only initiative I'm aware of where the scientist publicly sells his or her time. As far as I'm aware it's aimed at members of the general public (as opposed to PhD-level researchers), but they only say they don't solve homework problems and don't review written material, so presumably they would also be willing to talk to PhD-level researchers. The rate is US$50 for 20 minutes. However, they don't cover computer science.

The rate is US$50 for 20 minutes. --- Less than two decades ago, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the cancellation of the super collider in Texas, you could probably advertise for a theoretical physicist and not pay more than this for several hours of consultation!

The price for this service is a cup of coffee and generous flattery. An introduction from a common friend wouldn't hurt, but you can get away without one.
How you do it is this;

Find a paper that is close to the topic you want to ask about.
Find out where the author of that paper works.
Plan a day trip (during the working week) to the city nearest that institute, say city X.
Write an email to the author that goes like this;

Dear Prof Coolperson,
I really enjoyed reading your paper on Y.
As it happens, I'm going to be in the city of X some time next week.
This is a bit cheeky of me, but is there any chance I could meet you for coffee? I can come out to the University.
I'd be thrilled to chat with you about Y.
Many thanks, AnarKi

They might say "no, sorry, too busy", but I've had this strategy work more often than not. I have never had specific questions I wanted answered, but it's fun to meet people you admire.