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"Dividing Points" among cheating students
My AP Computer Science teacher has somewhat of a creative way to deal with students submitting apparently identical code. Instead of handing out lots of zeros, he divides the points by the number of cheaters, phrasing his system as "if you have the same answer, you deserve to split the credit." For example, a 5-person cheating ring on a 10-point project would yield 2 points per person (it rounds down to the best precision on odd splits).
Do you think this is ethical? Is this a wise way to deal with cheating?
On one hand, it is a lot softer than most policies. On the other, it is somewhat logical, and seems maybe fairer than the standard penalty system.

Obviously related, Is it ethical/acceptable to give a lighter penalty to students who admit to cheating?

It's a creative idea, but if you know you can't do the homework and you also know that there are no disciplinary consequences for cheating, this actually encourages cheating, as you end up with a better mark than if you didn't cheat.

However, it may discourage original authors from sharing their code! Because with traditional methods, they might assume (rightly or wrongly) that if discovered they could say they were the original author - but with this method they know that their grade will be divided regardless of who copied whom.

Does this homework influence the grade for the course, or is it just a "you need to do at least 60%" rule?

@CodesInChaos It's an integral part of the grade of the course.

The funny part about this system is that there could actually be a positive gain. Two very smart students can work on a paper together, divvy up the points, and still coming ahead.

To add to the existing arguments:
The punishment for cheating should always be higher than the direct advantage gained from it. For example, if somebody cheats at one task in an exam, the penalty should not only be failing that task but at least the whole exam, if not much higher. The reason for this is simply that you cannot possibly detect all attempts at cheating and thus the punishment should aim at being sufficciently high to make the average outcome of cheating negative if the detection rate is taken into account.
Of course, it is quite difficult to even estimate the detection rates for cheating and thus to adjust the punishment accordingly, but the punishment you are describing is certainly too low.
This aspect is not only important for discouraging cheating, but also from an ethical point of view, as cheating should not yield an advantage over the honest student.

Not all universities impose such heavy penalties on academic misconduct when looked at from a single item. In a lot of academic settings there is only a single piece of course work and a zero in a class can essentially prevent you from graduating. Even a poor attempt at an assignment will often generate a substantial mark.

@StrongBad may, could... are not enough, IMHO. Cheating is an act of will, it is not just that someone didn't study enough.

Unum castigabis, centum emendabis

-1 for "the punishment should aim at being sufficciently high to make the average outcome of cheating negative if the detection rate is taken into account." It does not seem very fair to me. A punishment should be adapted only to the crime and not to the fact that you are a bad cop. One should never pay for the others. If you cannot caught a student cheated, it is like it never happened.

The difficulty is what counts as "cheating".  People working together on homework, by itself, isn't cheating unless strictly disallowed for some reason beforehand, otherwise it's just called collaborating.  Tests, I'd argue, are what should be graded on an individual basis.

@Taladris: To be precise, the punishment adapts to the detectability of the crime and not the quality of the cop (if it did, this would be very wrong indeed). Also, I am neither suggesting to punish somebody for the crimes of others or for possible undetected crimes. I am only saying that the punishment should be much higher than the direct gain from the crime in order to make a criminal approach unviable and thus deter people from committing the crime. You may still oppose that if you wish, but you cannot build a society on that.

@MarkJ: Doesn’t this belong to the question? Also note that the answer is about copied homework, not regular collaboration, and the homework being part of the grade (a system, which has been already disputed in a comment on another answer).

I don't think it is fair. Say you work very hard on your program, to get a 9. While you go to the toilet, I steal your code and submit it. I get a 4 for doing nothing, you get a 4 after a lot of successful work. If this happens the day before the deadline and I had nothing, I would have handed in nothing, and thus get a 0. So there is a clear benefit in cheating: I get more marks than even if I pull an all nighter and put together a crappy code that barely holds together.
I guess the reason to punish everybody equally is multiple:

Discourage from people lending code to classmates.
It is much easier than to try to figure out what happened and who is the original author.

But, the way I see it, there are a few objections

There are still situations where a cheater may benefit from this scheme (half good is better than nothing); a cheater is being awarded points for doing exactly nothing.
The original author may be innocent. The code could have been stolen. It is unfair to blindly punish without, at least, inquiring in the matter.
Serial cheaters may get away with it and still get enough points to pass.

Edit:
What if the homework is given voluntarely? Consider the case where there are weekly assignments, with a high work load. Part of the point is for students to work and get efficient in problem solving. But, if instead of solving all of them, we share the work, change it here and there, perhaps they will not notice, I still work half of it, and maybe I get full recognition; maybe only half.
Now, say a given week you only had time to do half of them. Gambling is beneficial: if you go the ethical way, you get half the marks. If you cheat, you can either get half the marks, or get away with it if you are skilled or the grader is low on coffee.

A lot of discussion seems to focus on the case when student A steals an assignment  from student B without B's knowledge. I have in the past handled dozens of cases of identical assignments, and I would wager that in every single case B gave A the solution to copy voluntarily. Not sure if that is just a specific of the  sample I see.

@xLeitix true, and stealing is probably a small percentage of the total, but still it is wrong to not look into what happened. But even if the assignment is given voluntarely, I don't think both cheaters deserve the same punishment.

@xLeitix I have added a paragraph on a case where the homework is given.

@xLeitix And frankly, if you changed something as simple as loop order, you would not lose the credit. We're talking about equivalence in all but whitespace (which is generally extremely rare).

@SimonKuang then why would anyone even attempt it? Just change the name of the loop variable and be done with it in 2 min! I think that is extremely soft and cheating encouraging.

in every single case B gave A the solution to copy voluntarily — I have handled cases where one student copied another's homework solutions without their knowledge/consent.  It's rare, but it does happen.

@Davidmh Okay, maybe not that trivial. But he assumes that if you copy and change it a lot, you must understand the code, and that's what counts.

@SimonKuang compilers do all sorts of transformations on the code, and they don't understand a thing. The effort required to make a non trivial transformation on a working code is usually smaller than writing it from scratch.

Lots of school have things that check for code similarity, ignoring things such as whitespace,  case of text, names of variables, etc. It rates the system on a similarity scale from 0-100% and a person is required to investigate anything over a certain threshhold of likeness. This means it doesn't matter if the reviewer is high or low on caffeine, the suspects will be flagged and the review will be of a smaller scale and easier to catch.

Having caught somebody stealing my work at 6:00am (don't know who) due to access times, I can say that stealing does exist. The question that must be addressed with this policy is how to tell the difference.

I'll only give a legal point of view on this issue for French higher education.
In French universities, even if the kind of rule you describe is enforced by some teachers, it is in theory forbidden to alter notation for cheating: one should only grade according to content, without any penalty. If cheating is suspected by the teacher, she should fill a procès-verbal form describing what she suspects happened, and giving all relevant info. This is then passed to a commission that will interview her and the suspected students, and will decide what happens next. This commission has a scale of possible action, going from nothing to five years' suspension from all French higher education institutions.
This process is seldom used for projects and evaluations among small groups (contrôle continu). However it should be strictly enforced for terminal exams, as otherwise student can easily go to court.

Just out of curiosity: What process is then used for dealing with cheating in, say, weekly worksheet questions?

Making weekly worksheets part of the final grade of course has a huge effect on cheating. I went to Oxford. There was absolutely no point cheating on weekly worksheets since they didn't count for anything. This also meant there was no problem with students helping each other out with questions: if someone says to you "use integration by parts for question 3" then they've made it easier for you but nobody has to worry whether or not it's ethical. As a consequence I see loads of questions on this site about cheating that could not have arisen in my own studies. The same may apply in France...

It's actually a fairly nice solution to a more relevant problem:  the right pedagogy for different kinds of students.
The formula is a good, but should be stated thusly:  "Students are allowed to collaborate on homework, but your scores will be divided by the number of collaborators, so pick your team well."  This is in tune with the environment that students will likely encounter after their degree, but neither enforces any policy nor penalizes any others.
Then the teacher should grade on the bell curve.  This gives a passing score to those who worked together, and a great score for those who were truly above average.  In some way this is superior to students who try to get an A by a hyper-competitive attitude towards the rest of the class.
During the test, they will still have to show that their personal level of mastery, without the help of their peers.

The goal of a policy on cheating isn't being "fair", it's to discourage cheating.
In academia we don't want to have academic papers who bend the truth a little bit, but we want to have academics who tell the whole truth and for whom cheating is not an option. As a result you don't want to do anything that encourages cheating.

This seems like a bad policy.  With this type of policy it leaves the teacher having to figure out who copied from whom and how many people were in each "group". Usually if Alice's work is copied by Bob, and Bob's "work" is copied by Carol, then Bob and Carol are penalised the same. In your policy, you would have to figure out how much to penalise Bob and Carol. It seems like it would be better to allow group work with the stipulation that the points get divided in a manner either specified by the students or the teacher.

The way I understood the OP, the system they describe is exactly what you seem to be suggesting as an alternative: if Alice, Bob and Carol all turn in the same work, they'll all receive 1/3 of the points that work would've normally earned.

@IlmariKaronen which tacitly suggests that group work is allowed, albeit at a fixed penalty and with a lot of extra work on the assessor.


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Why don't we still have a good eInk reader device for research papers?
There are so many people in academia. A lot of people who are not in academia also read research papers. And I'm not talking about the formatting part. I'm talking about just looking up research papers on journal websites and reading them on the device in if nothing else then, pdf format. Kindle is small for reading pdf. Sony's digital paper doesn't have a good browsing experience especially for research papers where you'll probably open multiple tabs/papers often. Also, these devices are considerably expensive for students.

Just download Adobe's Acrobat Reader to read PDFs...

I'm talking about an eInk based e-reader device.

I understand, but, in effect, I'd ask why you impose that restriction.

because it's not comfortable to read on a laptop/tablet screen for long and printing and managing a lot of research papers is also not very convenient.

I think there just isn't a large enough demand to produce specialized hardware for reading academic journals. Hell, there's hardly very good software.

I have kept a kindle dx alive for this purpose. It's a great device if you can find one used.

There are so many people in academia.

This is the crux: there really aren't. The kind of scale necessary to make electronic devices profitable is much larger than academia. There are about 2.5 million graduate students in the US, according to a quick google search. The sony e-reader sold about 800,000 devices and is considered a failure. About 20% of US consumers own an e-reader at all, but they might not like your specific device enough to spend $200 on it (graduate students are poorer than the average consumer, too). The likelihood that a device targeted at such a narrow market would approach anything like the necessary sales is very low.

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New to USA - Masters vs. Staying with my mentor
I'm 23, I recently immigrated to USA (legally lol) and I'm loving the amount of opportunity here and I sure want to make good use of it. However, I'm confused about a major decision and need your opinions.
I graduated from India with a Bachelors in Engineering degree (Computer Science) from an okay-ish standard University. Lots of people I run into tell me that I should get into a Master's program, as it will not only give me a great education and name of a USA school on my resume but also teach me a lot about culture and life in general.
But on the other hand, I have my uncle who is a CEO and founder of a multinational and multi-million software development company, which is where I'm working right now. Since I live with him too, we talk a lot and he is my mentor. Despite his insanely busy schedule, he is always willing to talk to me and answer my questions and teach me stuff. Its good for me since my life goal is to start a software company myself in future and learning from him can be a game changer. Its bad for me because I'm kinda immature, and staying with him keeps me on a safe side (CEO's nephew).
My question is, what would you do if you were me? Sticking with mentor vs. getting a master's degree.

Take the option that scares you more.  Your uncle will still be there in two years when you have your master's degree, but the opportunity to get a master's degree will diminish the longer you stay with your uncle.  Also, doing what scares you will help you start your company later.

Depends on what you expect to get from a master's degree.
From the sounds of it, your career path certainly isn't going to be dependent on the credentials, but could perhaps be aided by a degree.
Personally, I could see you getting benefit out of a good Masters on a couple of counts:

An introduction to where the state of the art lies. Since it sounds like you have an entrepreneurial bent, finding this state of the art could help point you in the direction of problems which have been solved, but not productized... could be a great start for a company.
Another mentor. Having multiple people to bounce ideas off of is a valuable thing, especially when they have substantially different backgrounds.
A chance to exercise your grit, away from the perhaps comfortable situation you're in now. A masters will force you outside your comfort zone.
The benefits you list are going to be there for sure; an immersion into American culture and life.

Of course, getting all of this doesn't require a Masters degree. You're already living in the USA, and you can try to stretch your research legs on your own.

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How to professionally interact with a famous scholar (e.g. asking for a photo from a Nobel laureate)
My specific question is:
Is it improper as a researcher to ask a (more famous) scientist to take a photograph together?
Longer version of question
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher and recently had the opportunity to have a private meeting with a famous scientist in my area of research (a Nobel laureate) to discuss my research. In this situation I acted like it was any other research meeting with a colleague/potential collaborator and just discussed science with the person. However, I would have liked to have asked to take a photograph with the person but was uncertain if this would have come off as unprofessional in any way.
I had similar situations when I was still a student and felt that there was already such a clear demarcation between famous scientist and student that it was appropriate behavior to ask for a photo as a student, however is this appropriate for a professional (e.g. postdoc or young faculty etc)?

I met one Nobel laureate who was very personable and comfortable with photo-ops; then I met another who excluded me (by physically closing the conversation circle) as I approached him during a conference reception. Since personal relationships have a huge impact on the success of your career, you are right to consider this matter carefully.
I often practice reading/speaking a script in front of the mirror, and then just wing it in real life.

If humor comes naturally to you, consider using a short joke. "You know, football players get way too much publicity. Would you autograph your famous fusion article after we take a picture?"
Perhaps you might prefer the direct approach, "I've appreciated you taking time to collaborate. Before leaving, would you mind taking a picture together? I want to show my grandchildren that I've worked with a Nobel laureate."

The quality of your interpersonal relationship is key. If during your collaboration you strike a balance between respectful deference to his ideas and humble pride in your own work, you will lay the foundation for a lasting professional friendship. I recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie as a guide on building buoyant, effortless relationships.
Remember, by asking for a photo-op, you will be paying him a complement. Feel good about this -- the world needs more happiness.

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Should a cover letter always be included in faculty job applications?
Should one always write a cover letter when applying for faculty positions, even when not explicitly asked for in the job post?
If it depends on the field and/or type of university, please specify. If it matters, I'm applying to Physics departments in universities which primarily emphasize research, which already require (at least) a CV, research statement, teaching statement, and letters of recommendation.

See also http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/29667/21869

The cover letter is one place in your application where you can explain why you're interested in this particular position including both professional reasons ("I'd really like to work with your library's archive of original manuscripts by P.D.Q. Bach")  and personal reasons ("My in-laws happen to live in your small town and my spouse would like to move back.")  Showing that you know something about the location, the the institution, and the particular position can be a helpful factor if you're on the borderline for an interview.
If there's really nothing special that you want to say then a generic two sentence cover letter won't greatly hurt your chances.

Short answer: yes, absolutely!
I'm in chemistry, but I have participated in a few physics searches. It's customary to include a letter for many of the reasons given in other answers. We want to know that you've taken the time to consider our department specifically and given some thought to how you'd fit, collaborators, etc. Otherwise with a generic cover letter, there's a nagging feeling that the candidate is either:

Blindly sending out masses of applications.
Applying to you, but your department is very low on their priority list.

Neither is a good first impression.
More importantly, I think is that it would look very strange to not have a cover letter.
I have been on roughly a dozen searches, each with at least 80-100 candidates each. I cannot recall someone who didn't include at least a short cover letter.
It really only needs to be 2-3 paragraphs, with maybe a few sentences on the specific department.
I can sympathize that it's yet another hoop to jump through in the application process. But I strongly recommend including one, if only because you don't want to leave an odd impression when we get to your file.
Good luck!

A cover letter can be your key to open you the door to that interview.
If you are very interested on that position, you should invest some time on doing your homework. Check the research group (each member) website and recent publications. Try to find out something you find interesting, and try to connect it with something you did, like your master's project or something like that.
Proactive candidates are always more interesting, so you could try to propose something you would like to try, about something they already did, or something you are curious about...
For example, "I found those experiments on the paper XXX very interesting... did you try to reproduce them at different temperatures to observe the effect of... ?".
You can use the cover letter to explain why they should hire you specifically, or as a very short sample of what they will get if they hire you :)

Yes!.
Because,
Let's imagine:
Commonly understood practice in a field is to submit a CV, cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, and writing sample. However, the call for the position failed to list or make it optional to submit one of these items in the announcement and you did not submit what was not required to submit. However, there will always be another candidate who is also fighting to take this position. Someone who is fighting strongly to grab this job will submit all the required, optional, and unasked documents (in your case, a cover letter which is not asked but generally expected). So, the person who submits all the documents will be able to communicate more skills and knowledge (given everyone is submitting their best version of documents) compared to one who does not. That will put the candidate in a better position because the hiring committee does not have enough time to search about you to infer your qualities from materials that are not submitted. That puts you in a less advantageous position. I hope this is helpful.

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Should a teaching statement always be included in faculty job applications, even if not required?
Should one always write a teaching statement when applying for faculty positions, even when not explicitly asked for in the job post?
If it depends on the field and/or type of university, please specify. If it matters, I'm applying to Physics departments in universities which primarily emphasize research, which already require (at least) a CV, research statement, cover letter, and letters of recommendation.

If you're unsure, just send an email to the search committee.

There was a study done on this, which i do not have on hand.  The answer is yes they are expected.

@anonymousPhysicist: was the study done in rhe us, or worldwide?

I don't think you need to include a teaching statement if one is not explicitly requested.  However, you should be very clear in your application materials about what courses you want to teach and/or are willing to teach.  That is usually the information we are looking for when we ask for that document.
Including a teaching statement when one is not requested is probably not going to be a negative (most applications we get have just been sent out in bulk, and many places require one) unless someone on the committee is exceptionally nit-picky.  But if that is the case, do you really want that person as a colleague?


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Can someone change PhD supervisor without changing research direction?
Background: My supervisor wants to quit my supervision due to reasons beyond his control. He suggested few colleagues to replace him. My only concern is that I be asked to switch my current research direction to meet that of my potential new supervisor. I have spent considerable amount of reading and review, designing simualtors and coming up with new ideas and I don't want to restart all over. I found a co-supervisor who is closely related to my field and agreed on supervision (He is not affiliated with my university anymore though), but still need a main supervisor.
Question: Am I obliged to restart over and lose all my reserach?

Seems like a good question to ask your potential new supervisors.  The one that answers "No, keep doing what you're doing" seems like the right choice, if you're far along.

This will entirely depend on your new advisor. His field, his familiarity with your research up to this point, his comfort level with your topic, and his overall demeanor are all factors in this, and no one here can really advise you what he'll say. I've seen it go both ways.

If you've done a good job so far and have prepared a nice summary of your work, I bet you could convince the suggested replacements to let you carry on along those lines (assuming they're still qualified to supervise). Perhaps you can suggest a few tweaks based on their expertise, while keeping your main research orientation as-is.

I would say too, you are not obliged (from the stand of the law). But the circumstances could be so, that you will be forced.

To get better help I suggest you tell us the country and the field. In my field and country, you would not be forced to anything as long as you make it clear at the start of the new supervision what you plan to do.

It's really simple:
If your supervisor can no longer supervise you, you can continue the same work with another (willing) supervisor.
I suppose there are some corner cases where this would not be possible (e.g. only old supervisor had the relevant equipment, or the research heavily depended on his/her involvement). But these things are not uncommon. And while the university/deparmtent may or may not help you find another advisor, they will certainly not be against it.
Caveat: I have not actually verified this is the case in many universities, this is a local experience + common sense answer.

You are not obligated to start over.  Talk to your provost or ombudsman if there isn't an immediate/good replacement.  Your school has some obligation to fulfill it`s end of the bargain.
By telling your situation to them, they might be able to help the existing professor stay, or at least suggest the right direction for you to pursue.


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When should I register for an ORCID identifier?
I plan on starting my PhD in a few years. Is there any particular time that I should register for an ORCID identifier? Can I do it now (still an undergraduate student), or should I wait for acceptance to a PhD program? Or, am I overcomplicating this and the time of registration doesn't matter?
This may seem like a basic question, but I couldn't find any information on the website.

PhD is not the requirement to get ORCID identifier. You will need it mostly when you are ready to submit your research work in journals. In my area of research (Computer Engineering) most of the journal has made mandatory to have ORCID identifier.

Is there any negative impact if I create it several years early? I'd just like to be as prepared as possible for graduate life, and this is on my TODO list.

There is no positive or negative impact if you make an ID several years earlier and if you are planing to start PhD you might need it within few months. I submitted my first SCI article in 5 months.

Since you can already enter your bachelor/master rhesis as publication in ORCID, you won't have an empty ORCID profile for too long.

@FuzzyLeapfrog & MBK, thank you for your answer and comments!

It's largely up to you when you create an ORCID identifier or even if you you do. Basically, it's a way to trace all of your future publications back to a unique identifier which is arguably very useful considering the massive number of articles available online and the likelihood of authors with similar names.
You can even register and ORCID ID after publishing and retroactively add your existing publications. However, it will be easier to keep track of them as you publish them. I created an ORCID ID after attending a library seminar recommending them at the beginning of my postgraduate studies, it didn't take very long to set up, and wasn't an issue sitting idle before I before submitted publications.
Another consideration is that some journals (e.g., BioMed Central journals) integrate with an ORCID ID in their submission portals. I'm not sure if they require them but it will at least save you considerable time entering contact information with each submission. So it will save you time when it comes to submitting publications or tracking them later but there's no harm doing in advance or leaving until you submit an manuscript (to a journal that recommends them).


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Is it ethical to require students to participate in an ongoing research study in order to graduate?
My university requires Computer Information Systems majors to complete the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) through SkillsOne (CPP online assessment system) as a part of an ongoing research study, in the university's terms "to help advise incoming freshman". Completing this assessment is mandatory for all graduating seniors - i.e. you cannot graduate unless your name appears in the list the department receives from the testing site at the end of the semester.
The paradoxical thing is that the institution requires informed consent from participants, as required by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), yet participation is a requirement, which goes against the idea of voluntary participation. IRB quote from the informed consent page (emphasis mine):

Potential participants must be provided with information about the research project that is understandable and that permits them to make an informed and voluntary decision about whether or not to participate.

So, forced participation in this research study violates IRB requirements, yet it is required in order to graduate. Is this ethical on the part of my institution?
Aside: Personally I have no problem with such an assessment, but I have no choice but to agree to participate which bothers me slightly, given that my identity (first name, last name, institutional email) is tied to my responses. I am inclined to think that others feel the same way. However, this question is not about my personal opinion, but on the ethicality of such a graduation requirement.

Another similar thing is that many (most?) psych departments in the US require that their undergrads participate in a certain number of experiments. I'm curious about this as well.

Re: IRB informed consent rules, it's possible that this effort is classified as a quality improvement project within a specific institution, rather than research that is "designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge". (Obviously I don't have enough information to say for sure that it is or isn't.) QI projects aren't legally required to follow the same guidelines. (Of course, even if it's legal, that doesn't necessarily mean it is ethical.)

@ff524 I think you may be right on that, given the wording "to help advise incoming freshman". But we could make this a generalizable question, right? As Austin said, many institutions require participation like this in the courses. I understand the practicality of it for psychology, but for computer science it's a different story.

@Austin re: required participation in research for psychology students, see answers to this question, especially mine and StrongBad's.

Related (off-site): on asking students to provide private information about themselves as part of a graduation requirement. See this, this, and this.

@ff524 All 3 articles are about the same university and its survey on sexual assault as part of Title IX compliance. Those are pretty personal questions, so I would feel that it's far more unethical than the MBTI I am required to fill out, as the MBTI is basically 50% the same question : "are you a rational, reserved type or not?". But in the general sense, students are forced to participate in a survey that could 1. Personally identify them, and 2. Potentially make them uncomfortable.

It's three different universities.

@ff524 Oh, whoops! I read them too quickly :) Definitely more widespread backlash, which makes sense given the questions.

I would note that this is so unacceptable, from a research ethics point of view, that there would be no hint of ethical duty to participate properly if coerced - IE, always answer "A" to all questions, etc, if you are not allowed to opt-out. Proposing to use the MBTI for career counseling for freshman is even more concerning, both because it's an unacceptable measure for that and because they ignored the bias from mandatory participation. Yuck. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201402/the-truth-about-myers-briggs-types

"given that my identity (...) is tied to my responses" - where does that piece of information come from?

@BrianDHall: "use the MBTI for career counseling for freshman is even more concerning" - where do you take that from? Maybe the OP has some additional information and that's indeed the case, but as it stands, I read "to help advise incoming freshmen" simply as advising them on how to conduct surveys and thus ensure they get some participants in a kind of an "intergenerational contract". (Whether it is then ethical to not allow students to choose one out of several surveys to participate in, and also, to have thrm participate in a survey that is actually about themselves, is another question.)

@O.R.Mapper What do you mean? There are fields for those pieces of information on the assessment, so that my responses are tied to my name.

@ChrisCirefice: Providing some identifying information does not automatically mean that identifying information is going to be stored together with the actual survey answers. Although I admit it's usual for surveys to state explicitly that the answers will only be kept/evaluated anonymously.

Just curious, there is no not-so-easy-to-see box that says "I don't want to participate", which then sends your name for the graduation requirement? Other than that, of course it's unethical, especially with the ambiguity that MBTI has, and depending on the country, it can also be illegal.

@George The assessment had required fields for first and last name; the statistical results are sent to our institution along with a list of names that completed the assessment. If you name isn't in that list, you opted not to take the assessment, but because your name isn't in the list, you can't graduate. That's the gist of it.

If this is a school located in the United States, then no it would not be ethical or legal for this to be a requirement in your program. You quoted from the federal rules quite accurately. Your school is breaking two rules regarding compulsion and anonymity.
Informed Consent

The HHS regulations state that “An investigator shall seek such consent only under circumstances that provide the prospective subject or the representative sufficient opportunity to consider whether or not to participate and that minimize the possibility of coercion or undue influence” (45 CFR 46.116).

Subjects cannot be compelled or feel undue influence to take a psychological test as part of their educational program:

Unless it served a clear educational reason such as a placement exam (such a placement exam would not be considered to fall within the purview of human subjects testing).
Or, an alternative given. For example, at most universities, first year psychology students are often required to be in the "testing pool" -- however, they need to be given opt out options such as doing library research or other tasks in lieu of the examination. Furthermore, as with all test participants, they can show up for a test and leave at any time without penalty - including before the test begins.

Further reading: https://www.msudenver.edu/irb/guidance/informedconsent/coercionandinfluence/
Privacy and Confidentiality

"(7) When appropriate, there are adequate provisions to protect the privacy of subjects and to maintain the confidentiality of data." (45 CFR 46.111)

Furthermore,   human subjects must be assured of the privacy and confidentiality of their data. Everyone has the right to have their psych eval score remain private and confidential. This may be a violation of not just the federal rules for IRB but HIPAA as well, since whether you took a medical test or not is in itself protected medical information.
What to do
If I were at your school, I would make a complaint (either individually or banding together with other students) to the IRB, to the ombudsperson, or to risk management / compliance.   You could also complain to your state or federal Office of Civil Rights, Department of Education,  or Health and Human Services.
And finally, because you are being to compelled against your will to take the exam and the results are not anonymous, I do not think you have any duty to answer the questions truthfully if you feel that doing so will negatively impact your career.
The issue of compulsion and corresponding bad data is one reason why psychology is currently having problems with study replication as well as being able to broaden its findings beyond their limited sample populations.

A beautiful answer.


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What to do when your entire draft paper has been plagiarized into a foreign language?
I'm somewhat at a loss. Some time ago I privately circulated an early draft of a survey paper, and now I have found a translation of most of it into Spanish, published under three authors (one a math professor) and, of course, with no reference to myself.
The format, sections, ordering, phrasing, and references (about 73) are the same, except that the last two sections have been cut (along with the acknowledgements, of course). Well, and a few of the notational parts have been collected together into a "preliminaries" section. A number of the errors from that early version remain, as well.
How should I handle this situation? I certainly don't want to promote plagiarism, and would prefer to retain credit for my own work.

Who published it? Their editors are where to start.

In such a situation, I would be interested to hear what the plagiarizing people have to say when confronted with the facts. An at least remote possibility is that they start regretting what they have done and do everything to set things right.

Undoubtedly go to the editors. But be aware that they (or to be more precise, their publisher's legal team) are going to be very careful indeed. I speak from experience.

How did you circulate your paper and to whom? To any of the plagiarizing people?

@JonCuster It was published in what seems to be a peer-reviewed math journal in Spanish. (Is it appropriate or inappropriate to mention which one?)

@Snijderfrey If I had to guess, I'd say that one of the authors took the paper lock, stock, and barrel and translated it (maybe machine translated?); the other authors may be entirely unaware.

@til_b Not to any of the plagiarizing people, but I assume one of the people I shared it with shared it with someone who shared it with one of them, or something similar. I sent PDFs (not TeX) to those with whom I shared the draft.

Do you have proof you are first?

@CaptainEmacs I have the various people I sent to document to, of course. I also have the document in Overleaf, which gives me some kind of version control. The history in that document shows that I started in paper years before it was submitted to the journal. Probably the most damming piece of evidence would be if they originally submitted it with the final sections intact and I was able to show those sections even though they haven't appeared in the published document.

Does the journal that published it appear reputable? You should still contact the editorial office, of course, but if it is really shady, you would have to seriously threat their business model for any change to happen.

@Lodinn It's hard for me to tell but at a glance it looks reputable.

You can contact the journal.

If you have Overleaf, it's a good idea to clone the repository locally to avoid tampering and to have a timeline.

First make sure you have a strong case that you are the original author, then you contact the relevant people (your academic head and/or the editors of the journal that published the plagiarizing paper) with the evidence and enlist their help.
See guide by AIS for victims of plagiarism.

Get Some Perspective

Dealing with a plagiarist may be stressful and unpleasant but the odds are on your side if you can prove your case. You need to undertake a realistic assessment of the seriousness of the plagiarism and how important redress is to you before proceeding ...

Establish the Plagiarism

As a first step, you need to prove that you have been plagiarized. Compare in detail the work of the suspected plagiarist with your own and carefully document the evidence.
Before you allege plagiarism, either publicly or privately, be absolutely certain you have a convincing case. This may pose little difficulty when an entire article or substantial chunks of your text have been used unaltered ...

Document Your Authorship

Your next step is to prove that you are the original author and not the plagiarist! Early drafts and dated messages with correspondents, editors and reviewers are particularly effective in making your case.
Remind yourself that your comparison of one article with another may only tell others that someone committed plagiarism, but it may not clearly show who. Your next step then is to focus on amassing evidence to show that you are the original author ...

Notify Your Administrative Head

Avoid direct contact with the plagiarist. Meet with your dean and present the evidence that you have been plagiarized. Ask your dean to formally contact the plagiarist’s dean and request a formal investigation or immediate resolution ...

Notify the Editors

Increase the pressure on the plagiarist by notifying the editors of the publications involved and requesting redress. Submit your evidence and urge the editors to seek an explanation from the alleged plagiarist. Indicate what restorative measures will satisfy you ...

Be patient!

If circumstances favor you, the case may be resolved quickly, which is not an uncommon outcome. But if the plagiarist denies guilt or the evidence is unclear or disputable, a resolution may take time, if it occurs at all. Academic institutions, for a variety of reasons, are often less than forthcoming with decisions relating to academic personnel. You may need to be patient!

You might also be interested in COPE guidelines for what editors should do when confronted with a plagiarism allegation. Notably these guidelines assume plagiarism is detected. The onus is on you to demonstrate that there is plagiarism.

Useful information (+1).  In addition to contacting the editors of the relevant journal, if any of the authors are academics (as in this case) you can also put in an ethics complaint to their university.  I would think that straight-up fraudulant passing off of someone else's paper would be a firing offence for any university.

@Ben I think that's in point 4, although the guide recommends not doing it yourself but rather getting your dean/head to do it.

Yes, I suppose that's one way to do it.  However, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just go straight to a formal ethics complaint in this case, with notification to all relevant Deans.  Support from your own Dean is well and good, but an outside party can file a formal ethics complaint in a university.

@Ben that's given in the guide (although I didn't quote it): "It may be unwise for you to directly contact, or agree to be contacted by the alleged plagiarist. Doing so may expose you to threats of legal action, pleadings for sympathy and understanding, or otherwise bring you into a relationship with the plagiarizer which may affect your ability to behave in your best interests."

Fair enough, and obviously you're quoting from the guide here, which is useful advice in general.  I'm not really in agreement that threats of legal action or pleadings of sympathy are a problem.  People should always see their own actions as subject to the law, and a lawsuit against OP would not succeed in this case (unless OP does something stupid).  As to pleadings of sympathy, I see no reason to impose barriers on the a priori; such a plea can be considered on its merits or ignored, according to OP preference.  Anyway, good answer (+1).

They expect you to never even be aware and, in the event you do become aware, to do nothing. Simply confronting the authors gives them the opportunity to attempt to withdraw the article without any other consequences, or for them or the journal to respond via lawyer. This is a serious problem in academia that I've heard about from others.
I recommend consulting an attorney. If you are in academia, your university may even be able to assist with this (and if they also have a law school, even better).
One must be very careful in circulating drafts. It's a good thing you have records to support your claim. In addition to the records mentioned in the notes, ensure you have copies of the e-mails in your sent mail where you sent the drafts out and check with one or two trusted colleagues with whom you shared it to see if they also have records of the e-mails when they received them and ask them to keep those.


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Syllabus change with no warning nor discussion with students worsened grade
In one of my courses, our syllabus outlined the course material and its contribution to our total grade. Daily homework constituted 10% of the grade, with other major group assignments constituting the majority of the rest.
Recently, due to time constraints, one of the major assignments was dropped; this resulted in the homework being worth 20% of our grade, rather than 10%. Unfortunately, this had a negative impact on my grade, given that my homework performance has been worse than on projects and other major assignments.
The change was sudden, and there was no discussion of the change with us (the students). As I understand the concept of the syllabus, it is supposed to be a contract between instructors and students, an agreement made about how the course material is outlined and how students will be assessed. We discussed the syllabus on the first day of class and agreed on the "terms and conditions". Thus this seems a bit unfair, as it is the last week of classes before finals and the change suddenly worsened my grade.
Should I bring this up with the professor? And if so, what should I say?

This is potentially a grievance with whatever process exists at your school. Perhaps first politely ask if the instructor won't use the original grading system in your case.

I suggest asking if you can go ahead and do the dropped assignment, and be graded according to the original weighting.

I would let the professor know that you had been deliberately putting more effort into larger assignments with the understanding that the coursework was worth 10%, and point out the pattern in your marks as evidence of this.  You could ask that the 10% of project marks be distributed over the other project marks rather than the coursework marks.  Your professor may be willing to do that as an exception for students that complain.
But I wouldn't go in angry and suggest that a contract has been violated.  There should be a mutual goal between the students and the professor to do the best they can at both education and marking / ranking.  Probably a lot of students were happy to get more credit for work they'd already done.  Spending a lot of time on something that presumably doesn't affect your GPA that much may not be that good of a strategy, or that professional of behaviour.
(How much better were your assignments than your homework?  And then this difference is only on 10% of your mark for one course?)
Of course, if you are near a borderline and this really will make a big difference to you, go talk to your professor honestly about this problem and how the decision disadvantaged you. Do this during their office hours.


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Giving students a complete set of study resources
This is a hypothetical question, as I am not currently in a teaching position :)
I am currently making flash cards for Japanese on Quizlet, a flash card service (website & app). The flash cards are for vocabulary, grammar, and additional notes that I have made for edge cases that would be expounded upon in later courses.
Personally, if an instructor had given me the material I am currently working on at the start of the semester, I would have used it to my advantage throughout the course, and it would have saved me about 8 hours of preparing the material myself. Yet, I have a feeling that it could be detrimental to some students, especially in particular subjects. That said, I see no problem in the case of foreign language courses, where the most important thing is active application of what was learned - you have to study vocabulary and grammar before you can use it in class, thus giving students a set of flash cards for such topics would not influence their application of the language.
I am wondering: were I in the position of instructor for the course, would it be pedagogically detrimental, or even inappropriate, for me to make such resources and give them to students? Would it depend on the time of the semester when I gave them the resources (e.g. would it be best to give them what I prepared only after all the material has been covered)? Would it depend on the subject?

Not enough for an answer, but I think it depends on who you ask: some faculty I've met go out of their way to help students with additional resources (like the one you described), etc., while others, like me, think these additional resources are too hand-hold-y.

Preparing your own study aids can help you in understanding, learning, and memorizing the material. However, for beginning language students, I could see flash cards (for instance) being helpful, because there's so much to learn.

@MadJack Even in upper-level courses, I personally don't think it would be hand-holding. Yes, you are giving students material they could make on their own. But you give them a book, which has all of the same information (from which they are making materials in the first place) - thus, would it be detrimental to the student to have a condensed version that they could immediately use? Of course it depends on the student. Some will take advantage of the resources, some will use it as an excuse not to fully learn the material. This is why I asked the question :)

If you intend to teach more than one round, try it out. Get experience. Find what works. Good teaching, like any other skill, depends on lots of rounds of optimisation.


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No answer from Editor
I submitted a paper to an editor of well-known journal via email. It has been almost a month I did not hear anything, even not an acknowledgement from the editor, though I sent them 2 follow up emails.
What should I do?

When did you send the last follow-up e-mail?

What do the journal submission instructions say?  I've never submitted a paper by e-mail to editor, but perhaps customs differ by field.

Following the Author's instruction, I submitted it visa email. Journal is Published by Taylors and Francis. I sent the paper on 26th April, yet I did not get any acknowledgement. I sent a follow up email on 4th May, still no acknowledgement and then another follow up email on 13th May. Still no reply.

Before doing anything else, I would recommend doing the following:

Check that the answers haven't accidentally made their way into your spam folder (if your email client has one).
Check that you sent the emails to the correct address. (If you get the domain name wrong, you might not get a response back at all!)

If neither of these are the cause of the problem, then I would recommend that you contact the publisher, rather than the editor—something has clearly gone amiss. At the very least, you should have received an email acknowledging that the submission is complete.
If, on the other hand, you are waiting for the reviews to be returned, that can certainly take much longer than a month, and a little patience is in order.


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Abstract format in a game studies conference
I will submit an "extended abstract" to a conference in game studies. This is not my primary field of study (more of a hobby), so the stakes are low and I am unaware of the conventions of the field. It is also a reasonably new field of study, so it is not clear how standardized any conventions are.
The guidelines for the abstract submission are as follows:

The papers to be presented will be chosen based on extended abstract review.
  The abstracts should be 500–1000 words (plus references). Abstracts should be
  delivered in PDF format. Please use 12 pt Times New Roman, double-spaced, for
  your text.

The description leaves some questions open.

Presumably I should add the title of the abstract/talk to the submission.
There is no mention of whether the peer review will be double-blind or not, and consequently whether I should include my name or not.
Is there a standard citation style within the field?

This is the first time this particular conference has an academic track, so it is not possible to consider earlier iterations of it. The conference in question is the academic track of Ropecon 2018.


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Electronic version of diploma in the US universities?
In a job application, I received electronic version of diploma and transcript (not scanned copy, but the official electronic file that the university prepared to be printed on official diploma and transcript papers).
Is it common in the US universities to give the electronic version of diploma and transcript to graduates?
I thought that the only version which will be released is that printed on the university official papers.
Is an electronic version of diploma and transcript as valid as a scanned copy?

I'm sorry, but what is an "official electronic file"? A transcript is only official if it is sent directly by the university to the employer.

@JeffE by official I meant what sent by the university. In this case, is it possible for a university to email the electronic version to the employer? Of course, my general question is that Do  the US universities release electronic versions of diploma and transcript?

There are now official electronic transcripts (and therefore I guess certifications of having received a degree). Parchment offers them, among others probably, http://www.parchment.com/. They claim thousands of clients, from Texas A&M to Columbia to community colleges.

In theory it is possible to have an official electronic diploma and transcript if the university publishes its public key, and then digitally signs the documents with an appropriate algorithm (RSA, DSA, etc.).

Some U.S. universities do release electronic copies of transcripts. They treat these as completely official document, and the documents are supposed to contain additional security features, which the recipient can verify.
For example, there is an information page about electronic transcripts from the University of Michigan.
However, if you are concerned about the electronic copy, you could just ask for a paper copy. It is not in any way unusual in the U.S. to ask applicants to have their university send official paper transcripts by mail directly to the potential employer. The applicant will pay the university a small fee to do this, of course, so many employers only request the official transcripts at later stages of the hiring process, and accept informal copies for the initial stages.


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How does Erasmus programme work?
I read several documents about student/staff exchange of European Union, Erasmus, but I do not fully understand how it is in practice.
When an undergraduate student go from his university to a host university, who pays the fee? Home university or host university or European Commission?
How the limits are set? Many students are interested to go to Oxford or Cambridge (generally famous university), but a few wants to go to small universities.

First of all: there should be an Erasmus coordinator in your home institution. He or she will be able to answer these questions in more detail.
I'll try to answer your questions. However, I am not an expert, so please somebody correct me if I got something wrong.

When an undergraduate student go from his university to a host university, who pays the fee?

I think the Erasmus programme, that is, essentially the European Union. That being said, for you as participant it should make little practical difference who actually pays for your grant in the end.

How the limits are set? Many students are interested to go to Oxford or Cambridge (generally famous university), but a few wants to go to small universities.

I think you misunderstand how Erasmus works. First of all, your home university needs to have a specific partnership with the host university. If your university does not have a partnership with Oxford, well, then you can't go there via Erasmus. Those partnerships are usually bi-directional, so if you are at a very bad university, there is a chance that Oxford has little interest in associating with (and, consequently, sending their students to) your place. Secondly, each of those partnership agreements defines quotas (in both directions). Not everybody can go to Oxford simply because there are only a finite number of places for Oxford available. Afaik, the host institution decides who can go if there are more interested students than places available for any given period. In most places, assignment of students to places seems to be more or less on a first-come-first-served basis. However, I heard that at least in my alma mater most partnerships had more places than interested students, so in the end everybody could go.
That being said, in reality it's not places like Oxford that end up being more popular. Generally speaking, most students don't seem to select host universities based on the esteem of their academics, but rather based on weather and perceived coolness of the country.

very informative answer, but I did not understand who pays? EU based on the contribution of participating universities? I understand that it is a bilateral action, but universities prefer to send their students or host visiting students?

@user13854: University A receives X students from university B, and university B receives Y students from A in exchange. It's not that the host "prefers" to send or receive. Both parties send and receive. My understanding is that it's meant to be essentially "revenue-neutral," so that neither side is really sending money to the other.

Although probably true, my home university has happy to make an agreement with the host university I went to so I could go there.


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What does "scientific merits" in a job application mean?
In a job application I should add a description of my "tieteellisistä ansioista", which translates to "scientific merits". (The application is only available in Finnish, in which I am fluent.)
The application also asks for information concerning my research and research interests; all of this is to be provided in the same document.
What, exactly, does "scientific merits" mean and cover in this context?

It seems the use of "scientific merits" (and obviously especially the Finnish version of it) in a CV or application is specific to Finnish academic culture.
"Scientific merits" can be applied to a study, but the meaning of it there is hard to apply to a person.
I found its use in a Finnish application, where it is used as a title for "publications, teaching and student supervision and awards". So basically it could also be called "accomplishments" or "proven experience".
The linked example was the only actual use in a CV I could find (quickly). Of course, it is a single example, so I could be very wrong about my assumption this makes it part of "Finnish academic culture" more than general use.

I'm also not able to provide a general answer, but this is exactly the context I (a native Finnish speaker) have seen it used in before. In particular skewed towards awards and grants and such.


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Is there "rampant anti-male bigotry" in academia, and if yes, how does it manifest?
In an answer to another question, a user mentioned "rampant anti-male bigotry in academia". This sounds strange to me; I am a male and in academia (mathematics), and have observed no such bigotry. In fact, I see plenty of males in positions of high authority (full professors, rectors, etc.), and the two sexual harassment cases with which I am somewhat familiar both targeted non-male researchers. So, given what I have experienced and what I know, the claim sounds implausible.
But maybe (as in much of feminist literature) there is some kind of structural issue that might be hard to see for someone who is part of the system.
Since this issue is likely to be controversial, please cite reliable sources for any factual claims in your answer.
That given: Is there "anti-male bigotry" in academia? If yes, how precisely does it affect a male researcher?
Related: How is sexism unknowingly perpetrated in academia?

People on the internet say a lot of things. It's a waste of time to follow up on random claims made by disgruntled anonymous users, especially if they are counter-intuitive and lack references to facts. You are just falling for provocation and (involuntarily) contribute to derailing the conversation. Please, dont feed the trolls.

I can already hear the stampede of people with an opinion trampling across the gate called "hot network questions".

I hope there will be a decisive answer, to which people can be pointed in future.

@TommiBrander Hoping for a decisive answer is futile. The only people who believe that there is "rampant anti-male bigotry" will not be swayed by evidence.

@TommiBrander You may point people to the source, but you can't make them read it, unless they want to. And a sensible person would not need pointers to something fairly obvious.

@TommiBrander I don't doubt your reasonable intention, but I fear your strategy is a bit dewy-eyed.

I would ask for the question to be more specific. Most men in academia will agree that no such bigotry exists, but to prove the non-existence of something with precise sources will not work. So, specifically, what is the question? Is there "rampant anti-male bias in tenure and promotion decisions"? This is a testable hypothesis and easily falsified. Is the "rampant anti-male bias in graduate school admissions"? This is also testable and easily falsified. In other words, be specific in how you define "bigotry" and its specific effects.

Also, this isn't measured on a single axis with 'anti female bigotry' on one end, and 'anti male bigotry' on the other.  It's very possible that both are rampant, but express in different ways.  Perhaps women are discriminated against in promotions, but men are more at risk from spurious allegations, and so on.  I don't think it's something we have a firm handle yet on how to objectively quantify.

Here's something I just saw: https://www.facebook.com/MarkLathamsOutsiders/photos/a.1502014859839848.1073741828.1443789595662375/2088213697886625/?type=3&theater&ifg=1  Also, there was a position open only to women in mathematics a while back: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/19/university-of-melbourne-mathematics-school-advertises-women-only-positions The researcher/former researcher who has a background closest to you that might also want to talk to is Jeffrey Ketland. Also: https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-boys-and-men-disappearing-from-psychology

@MJeffryes I could say the same thing the other way around. You claim as a matter of fact that there is no anti-male bigotry, even though women are clearly getting more degrees than men. In the same way I doubt you would be swayed by evidence.

And then there's of course recent events in the Netherlands, where a university has literally put a full hiring stop on men, and will only be hiring women in academics for the next 6 months.

@HugoZink Please do not answer in the comments. Feel free to edit the question to get it re-opened, or to ask a new question instead.


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How to document teaching experiences?
When applying for a senior academic position, teaching experiences play a critical role in the application. We list the corses we used to teach but when assuming the position, we need to deliver some official documents to the human resources?

What should be this document? a letter from the last university listing the courses or a detailed set of documents for each course/semester including evaluations?
Who should issue this document/letter? VP for Academics, Dean or Department Head?
Is it needed to get similar documents of teaching experiences from previous universities? or the last university is enough?

I am asking this question for the case of a full professor coming from Asia to Europe or North America.

possible duplicate of How to demonstrate excellent undergraduate and graduate teaching capabilities in academic position applications?

@EnthusiasticStudent I do not think this is a duplicate. The linked question is about supplying evidence of excellence (which is quite subjective). This question is asking about evidence of actually teaching a subject (which should be quite objective).

@earthling I can not understand the difference between those objective and subjective terms. Could please explain them more?

@EnthusiasticStudent How do you prove you were an excellent teacher? You may think the teacher was great and I may think the same teacher on the same day was terrible. It is subjective (open to our interpretations). However, did the teacher actually teach that class? She was either there or she was not. If you and I were both in a position to know the truth (we were in class that day) we would never have different answers to the question "Was the teacher there that day." It is the difference between opinion and fact. The teacher was great (opinion). The teacher did teach the subject (fact).

I don't think applicants in the US are ever required to prove that they taught particular courses on particular dates, so no system like official academic transcripts certified by the university has arisen. However, if there were some doubt that courses listed on a CV were not taught, it would be a simple matter of contacting the department to verify.


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What can be an exceptional record of teaching?
When an academic apply for a faculty position, the main criteria of selection are usually his record of research and teaching (and other academic affairs).
For the case of research, it is straightforward: research publications, other research outputs, funding, etc.
But how one can have an exceptional record of teaching and academic affairs?
When someone has many high impact papers, he can be confident about his research records. With what records, one can be confident about his teaching/academic records?

The following points would contribute to a good teaching record:

List of courses that someone has given. Note that this shows the quantity of teaching, but not the quality. Still, I would consider it the key part of someone's teaching record, and to some extent quality might improve with quantity in this case.
Undergraduate and graduate student theses that one has supervised. Some measure of teaching quality might be how well the theses were done (e.g. prizes/publications), even though this says more about the student than about the teacher.
Teaching evaluations from students. That's probably the best way to really assess the quality of teaching.
A formal teaching qualification and any teaching prizes will be a nice bonus, of course.

very good points, but the second and third points cannot be incorporated into the CV, which is the basis of judgement in a job application.

@user13854 This may be country-specific. Where I live, committees sometimes do ask for teaching evaluations, or applicants include them even without being asked for it. And why can't you include supervised theses? Not even anonymized?

@user13854 I very definitely incorporate a list of supervised theses in my CV (and I insist on the theses themselves being publicly available as well). Teaching evaluations are a bit more tricky - among other factors, my evaluations from my grad studies are in german, hence they are not overly helpful in most of my applications.

the second and third points cannot be incorporated into the CV — Say what?  My university requires me to list those in my (university-internal) CV.

Defining or even giving an example of an exceptional record is hard. An easier thing is to compare two things, and see which one is more exceptional. So:

you have only taught one course (perhaps multiple times) or you have taught a great number of courses.
you have taken over courses that already existed, or you have introduced a topic to your department for the first time
you have taught only undergrads, or at all levels within your university
you have taught only your own department, or throughout your university
you teach in one very narrow area, or a number of difficult topics

in all these cases, the second is more exceptional than the first. Then consider things like being nominated for (or winning) awards or commendations, and you can start to tell a story. Some rare people will have achievements like "so many students want to be in my section of this course that I lecture in a 1000-seat hall" and while this is certainly exceptional, you can construct a good tale of why you're great even if you don't have that particular anecdote.
To me, it's put important to put your claim and the evidence together in a paragraph that starts by asserting your claim ("I have an exceptional teaching record") and goes on to back that up by listing what you've taught - or just stating a number if it's too many to list - and what's exceptional about your record. Don't just include a whole pile of facts about you and hope people will realize this means you're a great teacher. Show that you are and claim that you are.

interpret exceptional as excellent.

well yes, even though the worst teacher ever would be an exception, most people would not be describing how unusually horrible their record was. But while everyone can be excellent, not everyone can be exceptional - whatever everyone is, that's normal. So it's a little unfair to demand all applicants be exceptional, yet that is what happens.


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Do American students enroll in unaccredited universities?
In countries with central governmental control over higher educations, universities normally should be accredited by a governmental body to establish a university and enroll students.
However, in the United States (name if other countries have similar system), establishment of a university is different from accreditation. Therefore, a university officially starts to enroll students (correct me if I am wrong), then apply for accreditation by local accrediting agency.
During this period (establishment and accreditation), will students enroll in a university which has not been accredited yet?

@NateEldredge students will not be bothered by unaccredited degrees? It has no effect on their chance of getting job?

It's worth noting that "accredited" could mean regionally accredited (by one of the big five accreditors) or it could mean that you're accredited by one of the newer accreditors that are recognized by the Department of Education, even though this accreditation might not mean anything to regionally accredited institutions.

@user13854, I think you are quite wrong in general. Students should be concerned. Some such colleges have poor reputations and it will definitely affect your job prospects. Some of them are just scams to load students with loan debt and deliver them nothing of value.

@BrianBorchers, you are correct. But I also worry that some institutions claim to be accredited, but in the worst case by an "agency" that is not, in fact, recognized by the Dept of Ed. Buyer beware. Note that the Regionals are independent of government and are organized by Universities and Academics themselves. The government has a few standards, including one that some universities are required to have regional accreditation. (Or at least that used to be true - some of it has become politicized, unfortunately.)

There are two very different cases that should be distinguished.
You might have a brand-new university that is seeking to become accredited, but needs to be operating (with students) for a few years before accreditation is awarded.  An example is Olin College which enrolled its first class in 2002, and received accreditation in 2006-2007.  The first few classes of students do have to consider the risk that the institution might never receive accreditation, or might not establish a good reputation, or might shut down completely before they graduate.  So the school has to do a good job of building a reputation fast.
Prospective employers of the first students could conceivably be bothered by the fact that the institution is not accredited; however, reputation typically counts for much more than accreditation per se.  Also, in the case of Olin, note that accreditation came through just shortly after the first class graduated, and after that, nobody is really going to check whether they got their degree before or after accreditation.
The other case is universities that are not accredited and do not want to be.  There is nothing illegal about this; in the US, accreditation is a purely voluntary procedure.  However, most such institutions have a poor reputation or none at all.  A few have genuine educational programs but prefer to remain independent of the accrediting process for philosophical or religious reasons.  Others are mere "diploma mills" with no real educational product whatsoever.  Students should be very cautious about choosing such non-accredited institutions, but they are free to do so if they want.  Employers are likely to view such degrees with skepticism; however, this would be based more on the institution's lack of reputation than its lack of accreditation.

You might add a bit to this to distinguish between the regional accreditors and the special purpose ones. The former are uniformly highly regarded and have high standards. The special ones have a very mixed reputation - some good, some terrible. I addition some programs (Engineering and CS) are accredited separately and independently from university (regional) accreditation. Accredited programs uphold additional required high standards. It matters.

I'll also note that Olin, in particular, had a lot of high powered sponsorship behind it and attracted a high powered faculty initially with a slightly different idea about education. I don't think there was ever much question that accreditation would come quickly. They also attracted a highly qualified student body.


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How does Faculty of Graduate Studies work?
Canadian universities have Faculty of Graduate Studies for supporting graduate programs and students. However, I do not under stand how it can operates without conflicting overlap with the technical departments/faculties.
For example, someone is a student in Department of X, Faculty of Y. His academic and official matters are normally within the Department/Faculty. Now with the presence of Faculty of Graduate Studies, how is dealing with other different academic units?

How is the role of Faculty of Graduate Studies in parallel with the technical Department/Faculty?
Is there an equivalent system in the US or UK (an other European) universities too?

I can't comment on the specifics of the Canadian system, but in general the university wishes to ensure that standards and requirements for (say) a PhD in theoretical physics are equivalent to those for a PhD in German Literature. Thus, the faculty of graduate studies will be responsible for establishing the basic structure and standards to which the various graduate programs must conform. They then delegate the detailed implementation of any given program to the department concerned.
In practice, this may indeed generate all sorts of "interesting" internal politics, as the faculty of graduate studies attempts to justify its existence, and the departments try to assert their independence.

You meant it is just an administrative unit with a kind of audit mission for quality control? and students have no direct connection with this Faculty of Graduate Studies?

I suspect the exact details are very institution-dependent. I think sometimes the graduate studies department organises general "research skills" courses, etc, which are outside traditional departmental spheres of interest. But the departmental affiliation is almost certainly the dominant one for most students (in practice, if not in theory).


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Can one get a faculty position by posting CV on job websites?
As I see faculty positions in Europe and North America is always based on applications. Is it common that a department head suggest a faculty position to a possible candidate?
I do not mean based on personal connection. Job websites (consider those devoted to academic jobs) encourage job seekers to upload their CVs.
Is it common that a department head search CVs uploaded on academic job websites and suggest a faculty possible to a job seeker?
Is there any success story? Does this system work in practice?

At my university, we are forbidden to interview anyone who has not directly and formally applied.

For entry-level junior faculty, the likelihood is almost none unless you are already a superstar.
People get invited to apply based on their prominence/brilliance in the field or through personal connections.
While it doesn't hurt to have your CV uploaded to a job website, the likelihood that a hiring department will use it to pick you up is not very high.
The reason is that for most job postings in this economic / intellectual climate is that any single job posting will get over a hundred applicants, if not more.
Even small schools can get over 200+ applicants for junior faculty postings.  They have no need to solicit additional applicants.
[Note this is the case for the humanities / social sciences in the United States based on my experience. Your mileage may vary.]

Based on my experience, this is also accurate for mathematics in the US, and from what I hear, most other fields, too.

I am not aware of any such websites, but I would still wager that the success rate will be pretty much 0. There are three main reasons for this:

As RoboKaren already states, the academic job market is very competitive. Even for not particularly attractive positions it is no uncommon to receive more than 100 applications. There simply is no need for a head of a search committee to go scouring websites with academic CVs.
It does happen that search committees actively approach candidates that they think will be very promising and invite them to apply (this is more common for more senior positions, but I have heard it happens for junior faculty positions as well, at least occasionally). However, this will only happen to you if you are eminent enough that your name comes up on its own. Search committees will not go looking for people to invite to apply, on a website or elsewhere.
"Uploading a CV" in principle sounds like a colossal waste of time. Every academic has a website (at least they really should have) that people can use to find out everything they want about a job seeker.

I would recommend to stay away.


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Is a diploma updated in new request?
When requesting the diploma/transcript for a new job, the transcript is signed by the current registrar, as transcript has issuance date. However, a diploma does not have issuance date (only the date awarded). Will the university reprint the diploma with its original signatures or generate a new diploma with signatures of current university officials?
I mean is it possible to check when a diploma has been issued from its signature or the signatures are always the same as the original print on the date awarded?

You probably have to ask the university in question.  I can imagine different institutions might handle this in different ways.  Why does it matter?

It is just for the sake of my knowledge. There should be a standard protocol.

Do universities actually reissue diplomas per se, or only proof of degree completion (as the last line on the transcript)?

@JeffE I know that The Edinburgh University does, but with the new signatures. They also print when it was awarded.

Will the university reprint the diploma with its original signatures or generate a new diploma with signatures of current university officials?

The policy depends on the university.  For example, replacement diplomas from Harvard include the names of the officials who were in office at the time the original diploma was issued, but without signatures, while those from Stanford include the names and signatures of the current officials.  Some casual web searching suggests that Stanford's policy is more common, but it's certainly not universal.

However, a diploma does not have issuance date (only the date awarded).

Reissued diplomas are typically marked as such.  For example, this is part of both Harvard and Stanford's policies, and web searching suggests it's very widespread.


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How are PhD students assigned to supervisors/professors?
In my experience, there are two types of PhD students
(1) A professor offers a PhD studentship. Then, students apply directly and know their supervisor from the first day.
In this case, how a professor secure the funding for a PhD studentship?
(2) A department offers PhD studentships. After admission, students can choose their supervisors or the department will assign them to available professors.
In this case, how the capacity of each faculty member is determined to accept PhD students from available students of the department?
I know that the system varies from university to university, but I am curious to know the most common systems for each cases in North America and Eastern Europe.

There is a third case, I know this happens in Australia though not sure about elsewhere. In Australia, sometimes you have to have the explicit support of your prospective supervisor (with whom you must establish contact by yourself), and subsequently submit a research proposal along with your application for a funded scholarship. So being accepted by a professor doesn't guarantee funding.

Fourth, you go around and ask professors whether they'd consider having you. Usually, they'll know you from lectures, projects and/or theses.

@Raphael Your fourth option is really the second option.

@JeffE: I understood (2) to be: "I apply for program at school X I like and go through a formal selection process. Once I am accepted, I choose a supervisor." My (4) would be more like "I'd like to work this person Y I like. I seal the deal with him and then we bend bureaucracy to our will."

@Raphael In my experience, there's no significant difference beteen those two options. That's often exactly how people who apply for school X are formally selected?

In at least two cases that I know of, a professor recruits a PhD student and then once the student accepts the offer, a different professor in the same department offers the student an irresistible project and steals him/her away!

@JeffE: (4) works in settings where there is no process for (2). For instance, some positions at my department are not filled via (2) but certainly by (4). Furthermore, most admissions we get for (2) are sent blindly while that almost never happens for (4). (In practice, the two options may coincide if your (2) is a masked (4)-only system. I don't know whether that's a good idea, but the two definitely admit distinct policies.)

(2) A department offers PhD studentships. After admission, students
  can choose their supervisors or the department will assign them to
  available professors.
In this case, how the capacity of each faculty member is determined to
  accept PhD students from available students of the department?

This is generally the norm in US universities. How the capacity is set depends on various funding-related factors:

Does the department support all incoming Ph.D students via fellowships ? Then there's a budget associated with this.
Does the department support all incoming students via fellowship or teaching assistant positions ? Then based on estimated enrollment of students in courses there's a rough formula estimating number of TAs needed each year, and this factors in how many students are leaving.
Does faculty funding support students (either from Day 1 or eventually) ? Then the department will solicit information from faculty on how many students they expect to support that year, and make calculations accordingly.

All of these are estimates, and can go wrong. So departments usually need some kind of cushion  when doing calculations to adjust for that.
While departments might "assign" students to faculty when they enter, this is probably for administrative purposes so students don't slip through the cracks and have someone they can approach early on. Typically students and advisors choose each other once the students arrive.

(1) A professor offers a PhD studentship. Then, students apply
  directly and know their supervisor from the first day.
In this case, how a professor secure the funding for a PhD
  studentship?

Either through departmental funding allocated to a particular faculty member (perhaps a new professor was given a 'startup package' from the department), or through external grant money (which would usually dictate that the PhD student is to work on a specific project).
Relevant:

What sources of funding do faculty in Computer Science dept. in US universities have other than NSF?
How are the personal assistants for professors usually funded?

US mathematics departments are usually a delayed variation on (2).  The department accepts applications.  The student may in their application mention an interest in working with a particular faculty member, and a faculty member could lobby for a particular student, but in neither case does this actually create a binding advising relationship.
The department don't announce a fixed number of available positions, but they decide how many students to offer admission (and funding) based on current enrollment, funding, and general faculty availability.  (Funding primarily comes from the department, not from the faculty.)  Some number of those students accept the offer and show up in the fall.  They may be assigned a pro forma advisor who helps them decide what classes to take, etc, but this person is not expected to be a research mentor.  Then, over the next 2-3 years, the student is expected to make contact with various faculty members and eventually find one who is willing to be their advisor.

In Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences departments in the United States, it seems to be a hybrid of the two; the department admissions committee must accept you even if the professor you want to work for has RA funding for you (as opposed to TA funding generated by the school/dept). They evaluate you knowing that you want to work with Professor A. It's almost a given that the student has contacted Professor A prior to the application. The influence of professor A is persuasive (I assume) but not the be all end all, since often times the departments are looking to build a diverse class of not just research interests, but personalities and experiences. This is at least how both my advisors explained the admissions process to me at my current institution. This also seems consistent to how I've been admitted to other places.

What is "EAPS"?  Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science?  East Asian and Pacific Studies?

Also, professor A's interest in student X does not mean that professor A is a good advisor for student X.  It's a really bad idea to admit students with only one potential advisor.

EAPS is indeed Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. I agree that having multiple potential advisors is favorable, though in many subfields the student would be lucky to even have found one no matter how highly regarded the department is.

Based on my experience there are actually three different cases:

A faculty members (having fund from a project with a company or a national grant or some other source) announces that there are PhD position(s) available. The topic you are going to work on is determined. Those interested, apply to the faculty member directly and s/he decides which one(s) to choose. After admission you become a student of the university of the faculty member, but the department or university don't have any say in the admission process. This method is usually used in Europe. This is similar to your "case 1". (Your answer: As I said it can be from a project with a company, a national research grant or other sources).
A university or a department in a university announces that there are some number of PhD positions available. You may correspond with some faculty members and get their approval, but the university or department has the final say. i.e. you may get the approval of a faculty member but don't be admitted by university. In this case you apply to university (or department) and they sort the applicants based on some factors and admit those number of people from top of the list that they announced. For example if they announced 15 PhD positions, then the top 15 applicants will be admitted. In this case it is usually asked from applicants to correspond with faculty members and get their approval before applying. This is similar to your "case 2". This method is usually used in Europe. (your answer: The capacity of each faculty member can be found out by corresponding with them.)
There is no official announcement from university/department. The university approves new students each semester. There is no limit on the number of positions. The applicant corresponds with a faculty member, and after getting her/his approval applies to the university(department). Since there is no limit on the number of students (in contrast with case 2), almost all students who get the faculty member's approval, will be accepted by the university/department. This method is usually used in north America.


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How to find the list of universities running a specific program?
Is there any way/resource for finding the list of universities offering a specific degree?
I want to find which universities have a specific program (both undergraduate and graduate).
My target is the US and UK universities, but other countries are also useful (though, I think it is difficult to search because of different terminologies in different languages for a discipline).

Welcome to Academia.SE. If one of the answers below fixes your issue, you should accept it (click the check mark next to the appropriate answer). That does two things. It lets everyone know your issue has been resolved, and it gives the person that helps you credit for the assist. See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work/5235#5235 for a full explanation

The UK graduate schools are officially ranked through Research Assessment Exercise (being currently phased out to be replaced by Research Excellence Framework), so you can get a full list of programs that are of any worth here.
In the US, rankings are produced from time to time by the National Research Council. The most recent set is from 2009. The methodology and reporting format are beyond weird, but at least the list of programs is useful (albeit difficult to navigate in the Excel file format; I found my area, statistics, under "Physical sciences", for instance, which is a very distant shot). The 1995 rankings were done with involvement of real statisticians, so I trust them better.

First you should decide what is your major. For universities in USA you can use websites like US News or like BigFuture. You can google for finding university offering specific courses and degrees about UK. I believe for US universities US News is the best website.


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What is the difference between "enabling", "remedial", and "developmental" courses?
In particular, what differences are there in how these three things are taught?  Is the terminology regional?

Could you provide some context, please?  In the US, the remedial courses (regardless of what they are called in a particular institution or at a particular point in time) are generally given at community (two-year) colleges.  So it would be helpful to know what level of education you are talking about.  Also, when you say regional, do you mean that it varies by country?

@BenCrowell - My impression was that a much larger proportion of the classes offered at a two-year college are for remediation than at a four-year college.  Maybe I was wrong about that?  Any idea how those proportions compare?  //  (If I needed remedial classes, I would rather take them at a two-year college, to save an arm and a leg in tuition....)

@aparente001 In what way is the question unclear?  Essentially I am asking about definitions.  There are two good answers, though they do not address the "enabling" aspect of the question.  As Ben Crowell pointed out, remedial instruction is needed at all levels of education.  I do not know what geographic scale might be part of the correct answer to the question.

"Region" might mean the midwest (within the US); it might mean Canada vs. the US; it might mean English-speaking parts of Asia vs. Northamerica, etc., etc. //  Yes, remedial instruction is needed at many levels -- but it would be really helpful to answer the terminology question to know if you're talking about first grade, graduate school, or something in between.  I hope this helps you clarify what you want to know, so you can get your question re-opened.  It would probably also help to say a little about how this question arose.

My impression is that there's a large element of euphemism and trendiness: "remedial" can sound off-putting or condescending, while "developmental" has fewer bad associations, but they really mean exactly the same thing (namely, a low-level course designed to build skills and fill in missing background in preparation for successfully taking the standard introductory course).
In my experience in the U.S., "remedial" used to be the standard term, but "developmental" has almost completely taken over.  Nowadays, anything described as "remedial" sounds worrisomely old-fashioned.  I haven't run across the term "enabling" in this context, but some quick web searches suggest it is popular in Australia.
There may be differences on average in how remedial or developmental courses are taught, but they reflect how pedagogy changes over time, correlated with but not caused by the change in terminology.  Any previously remedial course could be relabeled developmental without making any further changes.

They mean basically the same thing. I think there's a cyclical nature to this: the situation is fundamentally bad, so once people know what a particular term means (e.g., "remedial"), it becomes something like a slur that people take offense at. So, a new term (e.g., "developmental"), which not everyone knows and hence causes less offense. Likely once people know what this means there will be equivalent offense taken and some other euphemism chosen.
Compare to a similar history of words that mean below average IQ: feeble-minded, dull, idiot, moron, defective, retarded, etc. Obviously the situation is inherently not good, so there's continual churn in the phrases each becoming negatively-connotated, and then some other description is used instead by well-intentioned people.


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Who should approve changes in curriculum?
In the US and UK higher education system, who is responsible for a program curriculum?
For example, if planning to modify the curriculum by adding an uncommon course, who should approve this modification?
Consider that the change is truly uncommon. Can the department head decide about it? or needs the approval of higher officials (such as dean or VP for Academics) or there are boards and committees to decide uncommon changes (for the sake of education quality assurance).

Proposing a new course or modifying the course requirements for any degree at my university requires several layers of approval:

The department's (under)graduate study committee
The tenure-track faculty of the department, by majority vote
The department head/chair, who transmits the proposal to...
The college executive committee
The dean, who transmits the proposal to...
The campus educational policy committee
The faculty senate

The last step is usually pro forma; without a formal motion for a vote, the proposal passes automatically.  Each of the other steps (and even the last step, if so moved) requires actual discussion and voting, and the discussion at higher levels is not limited to administrative matters as Ben Crowell suggests.
For courses, there is an escape valve called "special topics" courses, which can be offered on an ad hoc basis with only department head/chair approval. Most new courses start as special-topics courses; the formal approvals are only required to give the course its own number.  But special topics courses can't be used as degree requirements.

Would these courses even count toward basic credit hour requirements?

@aeismail I assume you mean special topics courses.  It's complicated, but a good approximate answer is "Yes, up to some limit".