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Should teachers encourage good students to help weaker ones?
On the one hand, weaker students benefit greatly from studying with good students, and it's helpful for the good student to be able to explain a concept to weaker students as well. On the other hand, good students benefit from studying with other good students (example), and it's why universities strive to assemble full classes of good students.
In a class with both good students and weaker ones, should the teacher encourage good students to help weaker ones (e.g. assign them to the same group for group work)?

@DanielHatton This scheme (PASS leader) is very popular in some countries, but it is often paid by the university.

It might help to know what field you are asking about. In some fields, group work is essential, in others not so much. You also name group work as an example. Are you asking about a wider range of situations?

"...weaker students benefit greatly from studying with good students, and it's helpful for the good student to be able to explain a concept to weaker students as well... "
Why do you believe this is true? A good student might also be a charitable human that decides to teach the weaker student but if the good student wants to save their own time/effort. Then it might be MUCH easier for them to tell the weaker student "I'm just going to do all the work".

@Buffy when I asked the question, I was thinking of an interdisciplinary class where the instructor splits the students into small discussion groups for that particular class only (as opposed to long projects that require a group of students to work together). I believe this is a common means of instruction in the social sciences, as well.

"Should teachers encourage good students to help weaker ones?" Of course, they should. The real question is how classwork/assignments/projects can be organized in a manner that encourages this (instead of just kind words).

To label a student as weak and others as good, is a dated, and frankly repugnant idea. Nobody denies the differences in ability, but to see how abhorrent it is, consider if professors were to be labeled 'weak' based on their (in)ability to attract funding.

@AppliedAcademic On the other hand it does help the teacher and others know how much that they need to work with each student to ensure that they properly understand the subject. As an example a strong student can be given a handout and understand it and a weaker student can also be given some one on one time to help understand it.

@AppliedAcademic if you dislike the word 'weak', suggest a better word to use instead.

@Allure -Weak/good suggest finality (besides being tied to a general sense of well being), whereas education is an continuing process. Terms more reflective of the ongoing nature could be advanced learner/slow learner, proficient/struggling. Anything that suggests that the presently struggling student can move upwards.

Whatever you do, don't punish students for helping eachother. I loved math in school and would help my friends out and my teacher would punish me for it. It ruined math class that year for me. (other years, the teacher was fine with it. That teacher was just awful).

In an English language class, would it be wrong for the students who speak better English to help the students who speak worse English?  Would you regard it as repugnant to call the ones with better English ''strong'' and the ones with worse English ''weak'' when everyone is there to improve and try to get better?

It is beneficial for a student who is trying to learn something, to then take what they have learned and help teach another student. Whether you classify the student as "good" or "weak" is irrelevant and not productive. Good or bad, weak or strong, turning around and explaining what you have just learned will help you retain it and understand it better.

@AppliedAcademic: I fail to see how "slow learner" implies any less finality than "weak". And what exactly tells me that the "struggling" students are not in, well, an "eternal struggle"? It doesn't seem like any of the words you propose had any benefit over the original "weak"/"strong". If you really want to be explicit about it (and I don't think that's necessary here - for the purpose of the question, "weak"/"strong" can just as well refer to students' current proficiency with respect to a single topic), adding the word "presently", as you did above, seems more more promising.

"WE REMEMBER. 10% of what we read. 20% of what we hear. 30% of what we see ... 80% of what we personally experience. 95% of what we teach others."

The one thing you don't do is separate 'special' needs students. Unless everyone's paying to be there and it's not a requirement of the State, then they can go fly kites I guess. Definitely separate your ringers. Weaker students, who copy or learn by watching, can't learn anything if at least one of them isn't a ringer. But, put a group of ringers together, and one of them will just handle it and no one learns anything.

In my STEM education it was common to use 'weak' and 'strong' in a fairly judgement-free way, reflecting how much prior exposure students had to material. I was still pretty shocked when I needed a court reference and a professor wrote: "[Bug Catcher Nakata] was one of the weaker students in my class, his university having prepared him poorly for my (difficult) subject"! I like 'weak' and 'strong' because of the implication of a muscle that can be build up/exercised, but to younger (eg high school) students I would express it as "students who are (un)comfortable with the material"

@O.R.Mapper - This possibly merits a separate discussion, which I'm open to. For the present purpose, if you'd rather not use an adjective for a colleague, it's probably best not to use it for a student.

As a student, I am against this. Everything should stop at "encouragement" only. Please do not intervene as there are unintended consequences (on students).
Other people's understanding of things is their responsibility, not mine. I occasionally help "weaker" students by providing tutorial sessions. However, I only do it if it is somewhat beneficial for me (e.g. helping me reinforce my knowledge), or somehow I find a moral obligation to help them. That is my voluntary decision.
There is a high chance that by purposedly assigning weak students into groups with good students, some "weak" students will not do anything, and eventually they get the same score (fair enough?) or they somehow affect the score of others by non-participation.
I also believe that we have to learn from our own mistakes to become a better person. To help some people, maybe it is best to let them fail a few times.

If the students have good relations with each other, they're probably already doing it without any encouragement.

The old adage is that you don't really understand something until you teach it to someone else. Helping others understand something helps you as it increases your understanding. Note this is not the same as doing others work for them. In the world of work you will inevitably work in teams, and in those teams some will be stronger than others. Learning how to navigate this: how to make sure the team performs (as you will be judged on team performance), without doing everyone's job for them is an important skill to learn.

What's missing here is that if you plan to work, you can't decide who you work with or what your asked to do. If you read enough about success you'll learn that unless you are totally exceptionally outstanding a very large portion of success comes from soft skills. You'd benefit from learning to work with people you deem "weak" and from learning almost everyone has something to offer. Scores aren't important. Why would you care if a student gets a good score? As long as you get the score you deserve the rest is at most tangential to you.

@iansudbery your answer is valuable. I would add everything youre saying would have to be in the course syllabus. It would have to be a codified course expectation and not something introduced as target of opportunity.

@IanSudbery I had a professor who collected weekly reports for team projects on who on the team did what work each week, and part of the final project grade was that the work was distributed mostly fairly. I believe this was to teach exactly the skill you describe.

I agree with you @Buffy that it deserves to be an answer. Most answers here including mine only considered one aspect of the problem. I would love to hear "yes" as an answer.

@IanSudbery "The old adage is that you don't really understand something until you teach it to someone else" seems like a gross generalization. I learnt what a convolution is, I don't need to teach someone to learn it better, solving a bunch of questions usually does the trick.

Continuing my last comment - "In the world of work you will inevitably work in teams, and in those teams some will be stronger than others." this also seems like a generalization, most people don't have issues with people who are weaker the issue is there are people who are just lazy but end up disguised as weak and there is no real way to distinguish between the two without spending a lot of time. Over the course of the semesters I've teamed up with many people and found people who are just lazy and just never teamed up with them again! Nudging people into teams makes it difficult to do this

@FoundABetterName of course all these things are generalisations, ni advice on a site like this could be anything other than a generalisation. I'd still argue that you need to understand convolution better to teach them than you do to solve problems. For the second part, weak or lazy doesn't really matter, in the world of real work you will be forced to work with both.

@IanSudbery Totally agreed and rereading my comments I apologize if I came off as rude but I think intention matters. OP's intention seems to me is to leverage the Better Performing Students to help the weaker ones and not to teach the Better Performing students to work with everyone. It might be a byproduct but in some way it will pressurize the better performing students (as I point out in my answer).

I largely disagree with the forced groupwork model because the real world doesn't work like this. A manager does the "group work delegation", and it isn't up to my peers to tell me what to do. Academic group work has very little semblance to how a real-world team function.

I think it is important to make a distinction between "weak" students that are weak because they have a harder time understanding the subject (for what ever reasons, e.g. there are people with the intellectual capacity to understand things straight away and there are those who need to read through the material several times, get additional support material and talk it through before really understanding) but are hard working and willing to get better. On the other hand, there are "weak" students that are lazy and just try to get through with minimal effort, no matter the grade.
Just as edelweiss said, assigning lazy weak students to a group of "stronger" students will probably do not lead to any benefit for anyone. On the contrary, the lazy weak students might do even less than before, as they have the strong students pulling them along. The strong students will probably end up doing more work (that the lazy weak student isn't doing) as they want to get good grades.
For the willing weak, a concept like you suggest might be beneficial, but it still will take a toll on the stronger students who now have to spend extra time explaining things they already know to others.
From my own experience, the best group work came out of groups that we were able to form ourselves with people that we knew had a similar work ethic. Forcing people to work together is almost never a good idea.

No matter where you go in life you are going to going to forced to work with someone you'd prefer not to. If you don't learn how to deal with that and be successful you're doomed to fail.

@jonlink Yes, I knew this kind of comment would come, but: The kind of work you have to do in school is very different than the kind of work you have to do in almost any job. And you get paid for it and don't have to find time for it between you uni courses and working on the side (which is what many people that study have to do). So group work in uni has a completely different framework and is not 1:1 transferable to "real life". When I was juggling uni, work and a kid I could not have graduated in the same amount of time if I had not had my group of people that I could work efficiently ...

@jonlink (part 2) ... and harmoniously with. Don't make uni life harder than it has to be. People will spend far more time working than studying and will have ample time to get along with all sorts of coworkers.

Depends on other circumstances I suppose, first two years in my uni were brutal and barely anyone was working on the side, and after that those who did commonly picked private tutor jobs, which is somewhat ironic given the question. I also have counterexamples of people having no work experience whatsoever before graduation and struggling mightily because of soft skills lagging behind a lot. Although I'd imagine under more common circumstances forcing team work on students would be uncalled for indeed.

For a contrary perspective, There Is No Such Thing As Laziness: https://humanparts.medium.com/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01 (note, 'member-only' medium link)

@Sursula-they- Depending on what you’re studying, little or none of what you’re doing in a project is used in the field. Just about the only skill that is used regardless of subject of study are soft skills. That’s the point you’re missing. Being able to work with people, and frankly check your ego to a degree, is the one skill universally required, so it’s essential you learn to do it well. As for payment, what do you think your grades and degree are if not compensation?

This is a false dichotomy. Some students don't have a harder time understanding, but are limited in the amount of effort they are able to invest due to personal circumstances - such as having to work a part-time job to support themselves through school.

@einpoklum that is not true. There are people with the intellectual capacity to understand things straight away and there are those who need to read through the material several times, get additional support material and talk it through before really understanding. Having limited time to invest will make it harder for the latter, for sure.

@Sursula-they- Perhaps you should use the text in your last comment instead of the dichotomy description in the body of your answer.

There are a few questions layered here:

can (some) weak students benefit from help from stronger students?
is this beneficial for the stronger students, and if not, is it justified for the benefit it offers to the weaker students?
should the teacher actively/explicitly encourage this, and if so, how?
should the teacher passively encourage this, for example by designing work groups with a specific aim to mix different levels of ability?

Sadly the answer to every one of this questions is "it depends". Some strong students are used to working on their own and will just barrel through group projects as if they were solo projects, perhaps increasing the group's grade but pretty much obliterating everyone else's learning experience. Others really thrive in explaining things to others and, as Ian Sudbery comments, really cement their own knowledge in the process. Some weak students are just struggling with the pace and/or style of explanation, and can get a lot out of going over the same concepts again with a peer. Others are just out of their depth, disengaged, or overwhelmed.
More than group projects, I personally found that self-organised study groups were a good way to bring together people who find this type of interaction beneficial (I was one of those students who learns by explaining to others, and I like to think I managed to help some of my fellow students this way), but they're not something you can have a great influence over as an instructor. They can also be hard to access for students who are shy or just less interested in socialising.
I'd be interested in hearing people's experiences of actively influencing group composition in group projects and whether that had and discernible effect.

In higher education and in general circumstance, no. Naturally there may be exceptions, but my answer is a hard no.
Edit. You might create an environment where that is possible, but you cant actually direct that encouragingly.
All the students are of employment age. The stronger students are under no obligation to "pick up your slack" as a paid educator.
In addition, by pursuing this course of action, you explicitly set different expectations for different students.
Most people have strong opinions about group work. Those opinions tend to be less than positive.
Me personally, im in that class to learn. Not help some stranger.  his problems are his problems. Not mine. I certainly didnt sign up for thermodynamics to help someone with english as a second language. Sorry. Ive got my own problems.
Smaller children or educational classes or humanities that answer might soften of course, but that would be outlined inbthe syllabus. Not a problem solving opportunity.

hmmm. Why do you think those opinions about group work are valid or helpful to their own education? Later employment in most fields will require effective group work. People aren't silos, nor should we encourage it. Does the skill needed to work together come by magic at some point?

@buffy if your described goals are the goal of the class, then thats the goal of the class and should be explicit in course material. I didn't sign up for advanced algorithms development to become a better person. I signed up to learn advanced algorithms. The situation you describe is just a targeted approach. "Welcome to advanced algorithms. For groups!"

@Buffy the way your comment reads, all courses and all activities should have a group component. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with committing and focusing on a task that puts the entirety of the human experience on hold for 90 minutes while we learn about a university level topic. If this was a 2nd grade class, then sure. Maybe. But these students are 20 years old.

Hm, I would agree if I had faith in all 20 year olds acting as responsible adults. A thermodynamics class might not be a good place for discussing the nuance of human existence, but mandated electives in humanities or foreign languages might be. Which is why I think the first clause in your answer is too broad - group work totally has place in higher education (IMHO), but, indeed, enforcing it in some of the most advanced classes is a bad idea.

And the question isnt even about groups. Its about hierarchies. Is this TA qualified to manage group hierarchies of high school graduates off the cuff?? Unlikely.

Universities are communitees of scholars, and, as with any community, joining involves sharing, or at least, agreeing to respect, the values of that communitee. All students at my university sign a statement about what the university considers to be the aims of a university education, which very much include "becomeing a better person". This isn't some wishy-washy liberal arts college, but a university famous as one of the country's best engineering schools. When I graudated by own UG, I was cerfified, in so many words to be "of sound moral, religious and academic character" (in that order).

These days, the religion has been removed, and the "formula" is now:
"Most worthy Vice-Chancellor and the whole University, I present to you this man (this woman) whom I know to be suitable as much by character as by learning to proceed to the degree of (name of degree); for which I pledge my faith to you and to the whole University"

@IanSudbery wow. If that doesnt make me want to make me puke in my own shoes i dont know what does. My most recent university was a cesspool.

You have a responsibility as a teacher to make sure everything you do for a student is for their benefit; so if you do this, you need to do it for a pedagogical reason for that student, not just for the weaker students' benefit.  I'd argue that the test is: would you have every student take on the role of teacher/mentor?  If not, then it's not being done for that reason.
At younger levels (say, elementary school), there is often quite a strong pedagogical reason for having students teach other students: teaching them how to teach, or more generally how to communicate with others.  It also reinforces the material, and makes sure they know all of the material and aren't just able to shortcut to the answer.
However, the key that's present there is that you don't only have the stronger students teach, but you have all students teach each other. Look at a Montessori classroom for example - every student teaches another as part of what they do.  There's always younger students for older students to help teach, no matter their individual ability.
At the university level, classes are specialized and expected to focus on one specific thing.  You don't go to Calculus 101 and expect to learn how to teach!  As such, it's much harder to have a legitimate pedagogical reason for involving other students.  Yes, if it is something that helps reinforce the material, then it's worth doing perhaps; but again, if you're doing it only for the stronger students, it's probably not for that reason - the weaker students need that reinforcement more.

This answer might not apply to some fields, but it does in something like CS where group work is valued and needed in both academia and the workplace. Your field seems to be physics, with which I have no experience, though I think that lab work is often (typically?) done in groups, not by individuals. I'm not so convinced it would apply in math, however. I think it would in true math research, though, and mathematicians are collaborating more widely in recent years than in the long-ago past.
I would, when still teaching, make group work a fundamental part of the course and of the grading. Projects were typically about 70% of the grade with most of that group projects. The courses were pretty technical, say database theory or compiler construction.
I used two strategies for forming groups; self selected and random. But, I also learned that I had to teach students proper behavior in group work. It wasn't appropriate for the "top" student to just do all the work and carry the others. It wasn't appropriate for anyone to slack. But this doesn't come naturally to them. They need instruction about group meetings, consensus, working together rather than just trying to divide the work and then, in an extra, difficult, task, integrate the parts into a whole. Pairing on all tasks was encouraged and even demonstrated in classroom situations. I'd even do this with some grad students. I also used peer evaluation (not peer grading) so that students could give me information about who participated and contributed and what those contributions were.
The effect of self selected groups was, I think, less beneficial to them. The "hot shots" could get together and mostly coast to a decent grade, learning less than they might have done. The "weak kittens" might be lost without external direction, though I had one massively successful experience with two "weak" students working together and outperforming the hot-shots, though they basically lived in my office for the semester asking and reasking the same questions. Finally, they got it and did well, explaining complex things to me by the end of the term. Not a common experience, but it can happen.
My experience with random selection was generally better, though instruction in group behavior was needed. It isn't part of the gene pool. A random group has, usually, some stronger and some weaker students, but if they work together all can benefit. One key, however, is that not everyone has the same skills and not everyone needs to contribute to the group in the same way. Suppose a ten person group has to write a ten page report. Lets divide the work so that everyone writes one page? How about everyone write every tenth line? Ain't gonna work so gud.
But some students can focus on the library searching, some on the coding, some on the writeup, one or two on the actual management of the group and making sure that the parts will fit together. Everyone contributes something valuable; equal if not the same.
I had another success in such a random group. There was one student who seemed to be a bit dull in class and I worried about him. He was put into a group of mostly "stronger" (my guess) students. When I asked them for for peer evaluations at the end of the course, this "dull" student was the one they all described as the main contributor to the project since he was able to keep everyone else "doing the right thing". Everyone in that group was happy with the result as was I.
I've also had the situation where students who were in a long lasting program and knew they were going to be part of several projects with the same team, would use a "pay it forward" technique in which some of the students would do the bulk of the work (together) on the current project and let one of their peer "off the hook" to deal with other things, even family emergencies. That student would then have extra responsibility to contribute to the next round or project. In effect, they built a collaborative community in which they helped other in the group learn the important lessons. They were mutually supportive but it wasn't that the hot-shots took over and left others out.

Detail on "peer evaluation". In a group of five ask two questions of each student, answers submitted privately but not anonymously.

Who were the three top contributors to the group and describe why you have listed them?

What was your own main contribution to the group?

These were seldom used to affect the grades, though they might. In the case above, the student mentioned got a boost. But a person not mentioned at all by anyone as a "main contributor" won't share in any bonuses and might be singled out for some intervention. But students didn't actually "grade" one another, just give positive comments when needed. A person refusing to answer the first question is just as much a problem as a student never mentioned as a contributor.
In a group of two, the first question would need to be something like "What was your partner's main contribution?"

To follow the point about these being workplace skills, perhaps what this answer is demonstrating is that if you are going to do this, every group needs a team leader/manager who is experienced in helping teams organize like this? Not just a student picked arbitrarily but someone with additional experience?

As a student my simple answer is No. Nothing should be forced; you might make it, say, a voluntary activity, but then don't give out credits for it or seem to favour students who participate in the activity. I help out my peers and they help me, plain and simple—but I do that at my discretion and with my friends. We're all adults who have other responsibilities beyond our courses, and if your assignment takes up my time beyond the course-assigned time commitment then it is unfair for me.
Secondly I strongly resonate with some of the other answers, especially the examples where students who are not actually "weak" but just lazy get carried by the other team mates. In my first semester of college, since most people were not acquainted with others one of the courses allocated groups randomly. I vividly remember in our group of five one member rarely showed up to meetings. But really no one wants to go complain to the instructor and waste their time; instead they just pass along the other person's name as well.
Finally I see the same kind of comment on every post and was planning to respond but Sursula -they- does a great job responding to one of those and I would recommend anyone planning to comment please read that before making the same point.

The OP doesn't seem to be suggesting "forcing" anything. The word was "encourage".

@Buffy I don't know if this is a culture thing but suggestions such as these and then explicitly assigning groups would seem almost forcing to me as now the students who are academically well performing will usually think of it as a task and not a mere suggestion. Ofcourse opinions vary but as a student right now and knowing many of my peers who perform well academically I think this is true. Even the simple act of assigning groups directly brings in an authority figure into the picture and people don't really want to standup against those or are able to speak freely either

@Buffy an authority figure "forcing" and "encouraging" is exactly the same thing. Its just passive aggressive BS making the problem WORSE.

@Buffy Assigning them to the same group for group work is not "encouragement" it is fiat.

This answer is independent of my other one here and may be more general, perhaps applying where group work isn't the norm.
Yes, I believe that students should help one another within bounds. Like the other answer, I think that they also need to be taught how to do this effectively so that both can benefit. This one is more applicable to learning things like math and other fields. Note that I didn't cast it as the "strong" helping the "weak" but as students helping one another.
First, this requires the permission of the instructor and some guidance. In fields like math, insight is hard won. Reading an answer to an exercise isn't the same and hasn't the same educational effect as doing the exercise yourself.
When a student asks the professor a question, the wise instructor will try to give the minimal guidance needed to get the student moving again, rather than providing a full answer. Asking questions when questions are asked can be effective. "Have you looked at ...?" as a response to "How do I ...?" for example. But, students don't naturally know how to do this. They need some instruction in it.
But any student will benefit from having to explain a difficult concept to others. "Teach it to the rubber ducky" is a common pattern, actually. As an undergrad we were sometimes assigned to give a lecture to the class on a small math concept. We then fielded questions. The instructor would later give feedback. Anyone who wants a career in academia will benefit from occasionally working with others on difficult concepts.
Mathematicians in large departments often have seminars that meet weekly with a few professors and a few grad students. Everyone can mention what they are working on and any blocks they currently have. Anyone can make suggestions. They do the same at conferences in a larger realm.
Students in law schools often do the same thing. The movie The Paper Chase describes this, sometimes painful, process.
But, the good students can't just do the work of the not as good ones, or no one benefits. Learning needs to take place, but it should be learning on both sides.
So, I'd suggest encouraging students to ask one another questions about the current material, but discourage them from revealing exercise hints (discourage = forbid). If your scale is small enough and you recognize those students with the most potential, you can, perhaps guide them in the art of guidance. Mass education in huge groups makes this difficult/impossible, I'd guess.
Students, strong and weak, need a place to get appropriate assistance. Other students can be part of that. But not without some sensible bounds.
As Ian Sudbery says in a comment, one can learn a lot by teaching.

Upvoted, for being the only answer that is mindful of not casting students into silos based on their present ability. Education is a transformative process and fixing a label defeats that purpose.

I wasn't going to post this as an answer, rather leaving it as an underdeveloped comment. But I was persuaded that perhaps it should be an answer.
Ultimately this question is actually three questions:

Do students struggling with a specific concept benefit from help from students who do understand.?
What is the cost or benefit to the student doing the helping?
Under what circumstances should we, as educators encourage or mandate this?

Lots of the answers focus on two, and that is what my original comment focused on:
The old adage is that you don't really understand something until you teach it to someone else. Helping others understand something helps you as it increases your understanding. Note this is not the same as doing others' work for them. In the world of work you will inevitably work in teams, and in those teams some will be stronger than others. Learning how to navigate this: how to make sure the team performs (as you will be judged on team performance), without doing everyone's job for them is an important skill to learn.
It was been commented that it isn't always the case that helping others understand increases your own understanding. I have to say, I'm skeptical (whether its the only/most efficient is a different matter). Someone commented that its better just to work through problems, but I think you can often use a concept to solve a problem with only a surface understanding, but to teach someone else who is struggling, you need to genuinely grok the idea in its fullest.
Take standard error of the mean as an example. One can easily calculate SEM by following a simple formula. One can use SEM to make judgements easily without really understanding what it is by following a set of rules. But to really understand SEM, and the difference between SEM and SD, one needs to understand all sorts of things about the central limit theorem, the connection between distributions of random variables and the distributions of the statistics of samples of those distributions etc. And not just parrot definitions, but be able to come up with the definitions (and novel wordings of the definitions, novel metaphors for them etc) yourself, ab initio.
Now, given how well you have to understand something to teach it effectively to someone else, we have to ask if it is likely a "weaker" student will benefit from the teaching attempts of the "stronger" student (we might ask the same of the average professor as well).
The same goes for group work. As I pointed out, all of us need to work in groups from time to time. Even if you are to be an academic mathematician, you will need to work with others on administrative committees etc. Being able to work with others who may be "weaker" or "lazier" this way without just doing the work for them is a tricky skill, but important skills. But just putting people in groups and telling them to do group work is not teaching the skill. It should be an express learning outcome, recorded in the syllabus/curriculum (it is a stated learning outcome of all our degree programs, but not all our modules - students most have demonstrated it one way or another by the end of their degree, but not in every course). Just shoving people into groups may lead to the stronger student just doing all the work, because that is often the lowest effort way to get a good grade: leading and encouraging and mentoring the others is more work.

I have taken many Mathematics and Physics classes.  Sometimes there were things I struggled to understand or had a mental block on and other students helped me, probably benefitting in the process.  Sometimes other people struggled with things and I helped them.  Explaining concepts helped me to understand them as well.
In an English language class, would it be wrong for the students who speak better English to help the students who speak worse English?
Would you regard it as somewhat repugnant and elitist to call the ones with better English ''strong'' and the ones with worse English ''weak'' when everyone is there to improve and try to get better?

A lot hinges on how you're defining "good" and "weak" students. Is this based solely on their performance in your course(s)? What constitutes "performance"— course grade, level of class participation, an general assessment of some other set of skills, etc.? Is their categorization as good/weak based on their GPA or some other metric beyond your course alone?
An equally important consideration is what sort of group work you're thinking of creating these groups for. Is this a long-term group assignment, or just quick breakout groups during a short in-class exercise?
Finally, what form would your "encouragement" take? Would it be assigning groups with mixes of "good" and "weak" students? Or would you be somehow identifying the "good" students and the "weak" students and encouraging them in some way to pair up and work together on some assigned task?

The crucial thing to my mind is that, if you decide to proceed with the good/weak pairings, you refrain from identifying to your students which group they fall into. This would be, at best, potentially embarrassing to students (of either group).
That being said, if the pairing of "good" and "weak" students is for something like short-term, in-class exercises, then the stakes are low enough that any potential benefit would come with little risk (e.g. freeloading, stigmatization, inaccurate assessment as to who's "good" vs. "weak").
If your pairing is for longer-term assignments, there is the risk, as others have noted, that the students perceived as "weak" are simply not interested in doing more than the bare minimum, which would put more work on the shoulders of the "good" students, in effect punishing them for their better-than-average performance. Then again, no matter how groups are formed for long-term group assignments, there are almost always students who don't pull their weight, so this isn't really a downside of your proposed method of grouping students.
Most important to your proposal, though, is the criteria. If these are students you've worked with mainly or exclusively for one particular course, it seems very difficult to be certain of the accuracy of your assessment as to whom is "good" and whom is "weak". Could it be that the "weak" students just aren't engaged in the material for whatever reason? Or that undergrads these days are encouraged to take staggering course loads and your course falls at a time in their schedule that leaves them the least amount of time for the assignments? Or they're taking care of a sick parent/grandparent/sibling/child/partner? It's commendable to want to enact a strategy that will help the most students possible be successful in your course and elsewhere, but at the same time cases like this present so many unknown unknowns that erring on the side of restraint may be the best strategy.
To that end, a brief anecdote: a senior faculty member once reminded me that, as people who have chosen to progress through the highest levels of the educational system, we professors are likely to have been students who, at all levels, strove to excel (some might even say overachieve) in our coursework, for whatever reasons—but at the very least because we placed high valued on academic achievement in its own right (in particular achievements assessed through letter grades or otherwise highly prized in the very environments in which we now work). But not all our students have the same experience. Some may be interested in doing the bare minimum to pass their classes and get their undergraduate degrees as a means to increasing their earning power in the workforce. In this case, a student's particular performance in any given course might be of little consequence to them—but this doesn't make them "weak" students, it just means their priorities lie elsewhere. I teach at a school where many students are first-generation immigrants and the first in their families to attend college. It took me some time to get used to the fact that some of them aren't remotely interested in the nuances of the subject matter, they're trying to pass their classes because a degree means they can be a manager rather than an entry-level employee at, say, Target.* For some students, education is means to a material end, not necessarily something valuable in and of itself. And this is a perfectly valid reason to be a student. I relate this because I've found it useful to keep in mind as I continually attempt to contextualize what my potential role is, and how my courses and teaching methods fit, within the broader context of my students as individual, competent adult people navigating invariably complex lives in which, for the vast majority of students, my courses and I inevitably play only a tiny part.
*A specific example conveyed to me by a student.

It depends - both on the level and on the context.
Naturally, it has to be done in a way where "everyone wins".
I don't think it is ever a good idea to teach fast and slow students together if the content of one lesson depends on that of the previous.  The faster students get bored and/or the slow ones fall y the wayside.  However, it can be OK where you can usefully pick up part of the lesson).
What can be useful is for the fastest students to duck out of a proportion of their group's repetition and to coach slower - and/or younger - students from other groups.  The fastest students have to learn to think in different ways, and (done right) the slow/young ones benefit from the guidance towards approaches that work.
Of course in a high-school context this requires significant teacher suppoert, so doesn't save much (if any) teacher time. However, it improves cohesion between the student groups, and it produces better-rounded students.  I feel that it also helps apparently less able students to achieve more of their potential, but I have not seen evidence for this.
At a higher level, many of the great universities use PhD students to give tutorials to small groups of undergraduates.  The PhDs maintain their breadth and (sometimes) challenges*, the undergrads at minimum get a different perspective.  The proof of this pudding is (as they say) in the eating.
*To say nothing of a useful income supplement


text:
Does it cost universities less to teach online?
As more colleges stay online, students demand tuition cuts
The article talks about students demanding tuition cuts because online classes are less effective, and because lots of things they pay for are no longer relevant (such as campus transport). It notably doesn't say if it is actually cheaper for the university to teach online. If it isn't cheaper, then if the university cuts tuition fees it would have to make up the shortfall from somewhere.
Is it cheaper for universities to teach online than in-person?

Only on a long term, when they can sell the lecture halls. What they save now on heating and cleaning and postponing renovations, they spend on digital infrastructure and licenses.

Yes, when they can get rid of all the faculty and use AI to create, control and grade all assessments. Unless they don’t have any assessments so once you pay the fee you get the qualification.

Research anyone? What happened to my cyclotron? My chem lab?

@Buffy now you start to highlight the real issues to the question... Unless research is only to be done by companies who can afford it who then control the results for those who can pay or those they “like” - sounds like a film...

I am not sure it is clear what is the actual cost of teaching as universities have many more functions than just giving lectures. Also, since the pandemic is a temporary situation, most of the cost is still there: they will not sell or rent out the buildings, libraries are still there even if they not open, people have to cut the grass on campus, administration will not be automatically fired just because originally they were assigned task related to physical presence of students. These are costs directly related to teaching at the university

The student's arguments seem to focus on the lesser quality of education, not what it costs. From their point-of-view: "students want a 25% tuition cut. Is on-line learning 25% less effective?"

@Buffy: Much, if not most, research is paid for by outside grants.  When you (typically a professor who's principal investigator on the grant application) receive a research grant, the university takes a share (30% at mine) for overhead.  The rest may go for equipment (which is typically used for other things as well), salaries & tuition grants for your student employees, and to cover part of your salary.

@jamesqf, I don't understand. How does that make online chem or physics labs possible? People need to be present for some things to happen at all. And if facilities are sold off, how do those things happen?

@Buffy: Perhaps I misunderstood your comment.  I thought you were asking about who pays for the research facilities.  It's not student tuition, at least not to any great extent.  As for many of the research facilities, most people using them don't actually need to be present.  A lot of the work can be done remotely, and was even prior to COVID.

How could it not? At the most basic level, a hall has to be lit and heated and a teacher has to be paid to lecture, every time… On-line even if lighting and heating the video studio costs more than the hall, those are one-off costs.
Short-term, the teachers still have to be paid full salary and what happens when the college recognises that a straight lecture need never be repeated?
Sure, a follow-up Q&A needs the prof's presence and in your experience, what roughly are the proportions of "talk and chalk" and "Q&A" in an average lecture session?

@jamesqf The hard sciences can hardly be done remotely. No sensible education in chemistry, physics, biology is possible without hands-on work, and 90% (my own guess) of the scientists must be able to spend a significant part of their time in the lab, getting their hands dirty. The situation is not much different with many of the engineering species.

Khan Academy services significantly more students for significantly less cost.

@Buffy How does that make online chem or physics labs possible? People have been trying to create computer-simulations for and of undergrad lab activities for 25 years now... But the question/link is about moving towards online-only, in which case there are no in-person labs needed by definition and those resources could in principle be sold (or at least mothballed). Of course, the resulting degree may lose some accreditation...

@LouKnee, I'm sure there are attempts, but fear they will fail. There is something about "hands on" in a physics lab, for example, that lets you develop and refine a technique. Some learn to be better at experimentation through the touch and feel (and refinement of adjustment) that I doubt you can recreate online. There is more to such things than just understanding the theory.

@Buffy, indeed: note my use of "trying" and " lose some accreditation"! My point is that "on-line only" removes the need for on-site teaching labs by definition. "Can you run a valid Physics (say) degree purely online?" is a different (and valuable) question. IIRC the Open University used to run intensive (one week?) on-site teaching lab sessions for its science degrees. OTOH I'm unconvinced by Karl's "90%" - I'd guess at 50% and falling given how many how many PG/postdocs I see just sitting at a computer doing simulation and/or analysis (but I'm clueless re. chemistry/biology).

@Karl: I have to disagree.  I got my physics BS without a whole lot of lab time.  (Other than computer lab, and since I have roughly 1000 times as much computing power in my home system as the entire physics department had back then, I don't see it as a major issue.)  Besides, I don't believe anyone's suggesting giving up physical labs entirely, just postponing them until the current pandemic situation is dealt with.

@jamesqf My "90%" statement does perhaps contain a bit of observer bias. ;-) In chemistry (Germany), you log about 2k hours of lab time before you start on your diploma/master thesis, 1.5k if you go for all theoretical chemistry options available. And you need to sync up the lab time and theoretical education. Firstly because they are (or should be!) strongly interdependent, and secondly you wreck students if you cram all the labs for a bachelor degree into 25 10h/d weeks. Which would be the inevitable result of closing the labs for a year.

There are two possible interpretation of your question, which lead to different answers.

Consider a University, which made a strategic choice to teach all/most of their courses fully/mostly online. Assuming they had a good team to properly consider the administrative and academic issues and to prepare high quality courses. A prominent example in the UK is Open University.  There are no/small costs for Estates. The costs for salaries is roughly the same or slightly smaller (staff still benefits from saving commute costs and opportunity to live in cheaper more distant areas). As a consequence, their bills are smaller and they can charge less for their courses. Today, a BSc in Maths at the Open University costs £6k per full-time year while a similar course at U Essex costs £9k. The answer is yes.
Now, suppose a normal University like the University of Essex is suddenly forced to move teaching online. Their Estates bill remains more or less the same (Estates remain on the balance and require maintenance). The salaries remain the same. Additional funds are required to develop the necessary IT infrastructure for online delivery, equip academics with all they need for teaching from home, train staff and/or recruit extra specialists to re-develop courses for online delivery (e.g. develop substitutions for labs, etc). In this situation, the urgent switch to online teaching actually costs more, so the answer is no.

I think you have left out many of the costs at OU. For example, they use BBC to produce materials and that is unlikely to be free, though it might be subsidized. Also, they provide a robust distributed system of TA/tutors for students. There may be differences in government subsidies between OU and Essex as the whole UK system is still heavily subsidized though no longer free to students.

According to our University administration, the subsidies from government are mostly negligible. However, with or without subsidies, I believe my main point still stands -- urgent switch to online delivery is much more expensive than a planned development.

Yes, your main message is certainly valid.

It might also be worth adding that most providers of remote tuition will tell you that preparing high quality, effective, remote tuition take more time than in person delivery because more effort and creativity needs to be spend on encouraging and assessing engagement.

@IanSudbery and the institutions don’t pay for one to rewrite the material so it works online - they just say get it done... then hammer you when the students are not happy.

Indeed. In recognition of the extra work associated with rewriting materials, we are getting some recognition in our work load monitoring system for the extra effort, but given that we already average 120% workload, and no work is being taken away from us, it doesn't seem very helpful.

The OU will be offering far less in terms of contact time online. And I mean FAR less. You've also missed out the fact that UK Universities (which do not operate at a profit) have lost valuable income streams which subsidised the teaching - namely income from conferences, hospitality and accommodation.

Consider the University of California system as an example: of its core funds expenditures, three quarters goes to employees, and most of the rest is student financial aid. Only 6% of the costs go to equipment, utilities, and similar.
Now, some portion of those employees would also become unnecessary if they did away with a physical campus entirely, but most are still needed to operate the organization. In the case of an institution like the UC system, remember also that much of the physical campus is also not devoted to instruction, but to research and other non-instructional activities, and these have continued in many cases (albeit with reduced capacity) through the pandemic.
In short: in the near term, most universities' costs are almost entirely identical while teaching online.  In the long term, even if they shed every physical aspect of instruction, the costs would not go down all that much unless the institution was radically restructured to greatly increase the numbers of students per instructor.

"Only 6% of the costs go to equipment, utilities, and similar."  That's super misleadling because it does not include the $193,000,000 for debt service (p. 17), which mostly pays for buildings.

You've also neglected the additional software, computer hardware, and technical support costs for online teaching (one university threw out a number in the millions).  In addition, UC is a very privileged university, not a typical one.

@AnonymousPhysicist the answer says it is an example, that does not mean it has to be typical or the most common.

@DmitrySavostyanov if it is true then how is that misleading? Did it say it was the only perfect solution anywhere? Did I miss that bit?

@Solar Mike I think it's implicit that the example is meant to be somewhat typical. What's the point of discussing a general question using a complete outlier?

@Anonymous Physicist but the debt still has to be served until the buildings are sold, which isn't going to happen soon.

@henning--reinstateMonica a complete outlier? based on what? they may have more students alone than 4 or 5 other places combined and could therefore a better example... But that is not the point of the question...

Hmmm. What would an online R1 look like? Math would probably work. High Energy Physics? BioChem? My guess that this is an infeasible structure.

@Buffy Many high energy experimental physicists would not notice a difference in their research if their campuses ceased to exist.  Many have not had on campus labs for over a decade.  Plenty of other experimental physicists would have issues.

@AnonymousPhysicist Yes, university accounting is complex. For example, buildings typically get tied to capital campaigns, which decrease their effective cost, and universities incorporating medical school generally have the medical campus in its own entirely separate budget system.  But the dominant cost remains the people: that $193B of debt service is less than 3% of the core funds, and the per-professor additional IT resources necessary for teaching online are likewise trivial compared to the cost of that professor.

@AnonymousPhysicist Many high energy experimental physicists would not notice a difference in their research if their campuses ceased to exist.  The graduate students and other staff with both feet on the ground (i.e. not 30k feet up) would notice.

This answers is hard to interpret without knowing what are "core funds", what other funds are there, and how are those others spent?

@usul The core funds are the ones associated with the core educational mission of the university. They are a minority of total funds, but most of the rest are largely independent financial entities with restricted funding such the hospital system, auxiliary operations like theaters, museums, and extension schools, government contracts, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California_finances#Annual_budget

It probably depends on the course
A major cost of offering an undergraduate Biology course (and presumably other science and engineering courses I have less experience of) is practicals. These consume expensive materials, and require substantial additional support in the form of PhD students who are paid to assist in the laboratory, as well as taking multiple technicians and academic staff to deliver the classes.
There is no online equivalent to these practical elements, and so their absence likely represents a substantial saving to the university, and their loss is a significant deficit in the education such students are receiving.
For other courses, such as Mathematics, teaching is likely no cheaper and probably actually requires additional time from the teaching staff compared to in-person teaching. Since these staff are salaried they probably aren't being paid by the hour anyway, I leave debating whether this is really a "cost" to other people who are fond of arguing.
But any analysis of the cost of teaching is missing the point
The amount universities charge for a degree is down either to government regulation (as in the UK) or the market value of a degree to the student but either way the university is not totting up a value for the education delivered and charging the student an itemised bill for that; it is deciding what income it need, or can get, and is charging accordingly.
(Note: since these seems directed at the current situation rather than Online in general, I am considering only the costs of a traditional university providing temporary online teaching not the comparison to full distance learning as a long term decision.)

I was at a university that cancelled the physics department completely as it was so expensive compared to offering a management degree course - cost of labs, hi-tech equipment and space. Students that can be crammed into a 400 seat lecture theatre for 2 hours and then left with reading until the lecture next week are a cheaper source of money compared to 20 physics or engineering students that spend 23 or 24 hours per week in lectures, labs and supervised project work.

Can you support the claim that consumables for labs are a “major cost” in a biology department?  It certainly is a cost but I’ll bet this is dwarfed by faculty salary.

@SolarMike presumably the funding formula from government to universities should reflect this difference in costs..

In my biology department at least, the biggest two costs of teaching practicals is 1) The rent we pay to the university for the lab space. This nominally covers not just the cost of maintinance, but also the cost of replacement at end-of-life 2) The salaries of the full-time, permanent, teaching-lab technicians 3) The depreciation on the equipment. All these costs continue whether you are using them or not. The cost of consumables is actaully only a very small part.

I believe that strictly speaking, the UK government only sets a maximum tuition fee (for England and Wales), and universities are free to ask less if they want.

@gerrit: In theory, yes, in practice almost every degree is charged at £9k.

Of course it is cheaper. You don't have to pay for facilities, you don't have to pay for staff to service those facilities, you don't have to pay for utilities and maintenance on the same. You can pay some instructors less because they work from home. Students don't need to live on campus so you don't need to build dorms and offer scholarships for them. Generally cost of living is cheaper for students, so even off-campus students require less financial support.
But this stuff only applies if you are a remote university to begin with. If you already have facilities and staff geared towards on-campus learning, you're not going to magically save money because nobody is using them. Instead you'll be wasting money on expensive facilities nobody can use. Sure you can turn off power and save a few dollars there, but the bank will still come to collect interest on the loan. And generally there's all the money you invested before, with the expectation that you will be able to get use out of it, which now becomes a sunk cost.
As far as lowering tuition though, this is an indirect factor at best. Elite universities are not the kind of industry where the market efficiently competes for a few percentage points of profit above cost. Many students do not consider elite universities a commodity, and would not switch simply to save a few dollars, in the same way way people won't stop buying Apple product just because there are cheaper competitors. There is tremendous brand value. This isn't true for all students, and some surely will rethink their education path, but elite universities have highly competitive admissions with many more times people applying than get in. So you could say there is a huge artificial shortage of spots at elite universities, and slightly shrinking the market will not reduce demand much.
On the contrary, no-name universities are usually treated as generic commodities, and we may see prices come down. These universities have already had cheaper tuition before Covid, as their students shop around more and even consider (gasp) not going to university altogether. Their admissions are also not that competitive. But many of these universities already have been doing distance learning, and others might not find it easy to switch over just for a year only to switch back again after.

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text:
Does funding past research also qualify as conflict of interest?
An article in The Telegraph claims that 26 of the 27 scientists who wrote a letter in The Lancet last year, dismissing the idea that COVID could have come from a lab in Wuhan, actually have a conflict of interest.
One of the claimed conflict of interest is:

A further three of the signatories were from Britain’s Wellcome Trust, which has funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the past.

Does this usually qualify as a conflict of interest that should be declared? I can easily see myself not declaring this connection as well, which is unsettling.

In this situation, I think it would be very important to make a distinction between  conflict of interest and appearance of a conflict of interest.

I can clearly see, that there might be an appearence of a conflict of interest in the aforementioned situation. Which can be summarized and paraphrased for this specific use as:

...the impression that a reasonable person might have, after full disclosure of the facts, that an [individuals'] judgment might be significantly influenced by outside interests, even though there may be no actual Conflict of Interest.

So, simple facts that scientists are in some shape or form "linked to Chinese researchers" does not lead to a conflict of interest right away. Is it enough to justify the appearance of the conflict of interest according to to some definition? Probably, yes.
Given enough good\bad firepower of information research, data compilation, presentation of facts with a different focus, it might be possible to create an appearance of a conflict for very far-fetched theories. Notice, there is an ongoing debate about the good and bad of the ethics prohibiting engagement in the situations that might result in the appearance of the conflict of interest (see this, for example). So, in some situations, even the appearance of a conflict might lead to bad consequences for the people involved.
I would attribute a lot here to the desire of media to create a more scandalous header and attract the reader. However, one would need to use more legal grounds to determine whether in this case, the conflict of interest indeed exists. And the standards and guidelines for conflict of interests differ from country to country, organization to organization, and jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

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text:
Is it true that almost everyone who starts a PhD and sticks around long enough can get one?
Not referring to degree mills here, but genuine PhDs.
This claim comes from this blog post by Cardiff University psychologist and neuroscientist Chris Chambers:

A PhD is essentially a test. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you pass this test by passing your PhD. Wrong. The fact is that passing a PhD is like getting a certificate of participation. Why? Because almost everyone who starts a PhD and sticks around long enough ends up getting one. No, the real test is what happens after your PhD. That's when you’ll know whether you’ve really passed. Do well and it will open the door to a career of unparalleled intellectual freedom.

(emphasis mine)
The claim sounds fantastic to me. Is it true? Are there any statistics that indicate it to be so? Chris Chamber's post links to a source, but unfortunately it appears to no longer be available.

What do you mean by "long enough"?  It is axiomatic that anyone who starts a Ph.D. and "sticks around" until they have one will get one!

A simple alternative way of reading it: People don't fail a PhD if they can't do one; they drop out instead

It's uncommon that a person without the skills to complete a PhD is even accepted into the program.  The quote shouldn't be taken to mean that anyone can succeed in a PhD program - those who can't will typically not be successful in making an application.  The test you need to pass largely happens before you start the PhD, not after.  People who start but don't complete a PhD usually have reasons other than a lack of ability for abandoning the pursuit before completion.

Note that this claim is out of date at Cardiff University and at many other UK universities. Most UK universities (at least in theory) now impose strict time limits on the length of enrollment (at Cardiff, this time limit is 4 years - see section 7 here). If you don't submit within the time limit, you automatically fail. The option to "stick around indefinitely" no longer exists.

@user247327 I'd say it is tautological. Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/703/

If your question is what this blogger meant, you are probably being too literal-minded since this statement is just rhetoric towards his main point. If the question is whether nearly everyone who doesn't finish a PhD leaves voluntarily, of course this is false.

@J... Everybody knows well that it is exactly the opposite of your claims. For example in the US it is trivial to enter in a PhD program. You only need to choose "well".

When I did my masters in the mid 90's in New Zealand I was aware of several PhD candidates who basically did stick around until they eventally got their PhD (7-8 years). Now that I'm doing a PhD in Australia however I don't beleive that's possible. It's much more structured, you must do a BPhil/MPhil first, then the PhD program is 3 years with 1 year extension (form what I understand that's a formality) and then 1 final extension (must have extenuating circumstances). So under some programs I don't think you can slog it out and eventually expect to pass

Does "do nothing just stick around" qualify?

@JohnB Wouldn't quite call it "trivial" ...

From what I have seen, this is pretty much the case for PhD programs in Europe. PhD programs in Europe tend to work a bit differently than in the US. It is typically expected that you have already completed a Master's degree before starting a PhD. The PhD program itself tends to have little or no coursework requirements, and no examinations other than the thesis defense at the end.
A lot of filtering that is done in US programs through exams during the program, is instead done at the selection stage. Consequently, landing a PhD position in Europe can be more difficult than in the US. But once you got the position, it is very rare for people not to get their PhD in the end. People on occasion may drop out of the program. Much more rarely, a program may decide to drop a candidate if things are really not working out. If that happens, it typical happens in the first year. But overall in the various locations I have been, at least 80% of people who start PhDs in Europe end up with a PhD.
Some actual data:

According to this article in the Times Higher Education, PhD completions rates in the UK are about 73% after 7 years, grow up to just over 80% eventually.
This post by the Dutch association of Universities shows similar numbers.

In Sweden (Europe), an advisor cannot really deny a student to continue to work towards completion (but funding might of course run out). I was taught this when taking a course in advising PhD students. So, a student can in theory stick around indefinitely - there is no time limit (only monetary constraints)

Not to say your answer is wrong, but just to add a caveat: Europe is diverse. When it comes to PhD completion rates, my impression is that there can be noticeable differences across countries and quite some variation within countries, too.

@RichardHardy I completely agree, hence the frequent hedging with "tends" etc. There can also be significant differences between different fields, in particular between the "Sciences" and the "Humanities"

In Germany, there may be additional exams (as in coursework - but traditionally, you don't have to attend courses, you "only" have to pass exams) that one has to pass, e.g. if the Master is in another field than the PhD (say, biologist signs up for PhD in physics or mathematician for PhD in chemistry. The university decides this on a case-to-case basis) but again, this is usually done at the beginning of the PhD. Also, I've seen quite a number of STEM PhD students not complete because they were hired basically as if they had completed and after that never bothered to hand in.

80% is not "almost everybody". A one in five failure rate in a subset of people who already has successfully completed a masters is actually quite high.

"The PhD program itself tends to have little or no coursework requirements, and no examinations other than the thesis defense at the end" - this answer makes it sound as if without exams, you just had to wait around until your PhD comes along after some time. That is rather misleading IMHO, given that one has to be actively researching (depending on the field, publishing, or at least writing something down).

"Little or no coursework requirements" LoL! A PhD thesis is a pretty big coursework requirement. Also, your own figures disprove your point. 20% eventual failure rate is extremely high, particularly given the generally stringent entry requirements.

Or very rarely never get round to doing your final revisions, but get a post-doc position anyway. Supervisor occasionally nudges you every few years until they retire/die.

"The PhD program itself tends to have little or no coursework requirements" -- I don't know how to define little coursework. Of those degrees I've seen in STEM fields (Europe) there's usually one or two semesters of courses (30 to 60 ECTS) plus 2–3 years of research work. Teaching and other duties may or may not be mandatory depending on university and degree.

But, be careful not to read what he writes out of context. The two points before this statement are:

The first is that, like a career in science, a PhD is not for everyone. It requires a peculiar mix of intelligence, discipline, creativity, rationalism, stubbornness – and sheer nerdiness. Different people have these in different measure, but a successful PhD student has a healthy dose of all.
The second is that a PhD is hard. It’s meant to be hard, not because inflicting pain is necessarily fun, nor because some scientists are ‘dementors’ (see this interesting post by Zuska on that subject), and not because your PhD is expected to solve the mysteries of the universe. It’s hard because it is an apprenticeship in science: a frustrating, triumphant, exhausting, and ultimately Darwinian career that will require everything you can muster.

In the context of "a PhD is hard" and having the right mix of "intelligence, discipline, creativity, rationalism, stubbornness" it is probably true that "almost everyone who starts a PhD and sticks around long enough ends up getting one". But, sticking around means passing classes, passing qualifiers, and passing numerous other barriers that are put there to ensure that you have the ability to finish your PhD while maintaining the quality standards of the university.
Anecdotally I know of very few people who stuck and around didn't get their PhD in the end. But, I do know of exceptions - people who stuck around and tried to get their PhD but failed.
This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education from 2013 claims that only 50% of students finish their PhD, and gives an anecdote that only 10% of one class finished.
So, in the context of what Chris Chambers writes it's more or less true, but in the broader context of people doing PhD's it's probably not.

Hmm, this sounds like the No True Scotsman argument though - it implies if someone sticks around long enough and doesn't get a PhD then he/she doesn't have the right mix of intelligence, discipline, creativity, etc.

@Allure Very true - but I think that falls more on Chris Chambers' argument than my explanation of his argument. Under all this there is also likely some argument being made about Imposters Syndrome - and perhaps he is encouraging PhD student to keep at it in this context.

@Allure I read the argument more as saying that not every candidate is able to 'stick around' for long enough. Doing that already requires a lot of the skills needed for getting a PhD, so people who are able to do that will usually get a PhD eventually.

In my (albeit) humble experience - stick-to-it-iveness is probably the most critical skill. Those I know who did not finish their PhDs, quit rather willingly, because something else came along - and the arduous task of assembling the work itself no longer had any motivating factors at all. Those who all "stuck with it" (and i know some 9-10 years PhDs) all got there in the end, with more or less assistance from peers and professors... I have not heard of anyone getting tossed out for any other reason than direct malpractice or behaviour. (Both descriptions taken from the one example I have...)

This is a case of inverse causation. They don't eventually get PhDs because they hang around, but rather that they hang around because they are likely to eventually get their PhDs.
Those who really have no chance to graduate (which may turn out to be the case - admissions processes have imperfect prediction) will eventually be cut off funding and (need to) go elsewhere without PhDs. Those will continue to receive funding to hang around do so because they do sufficiently good work to make eventual graduation look likely.
Then again, it really depends on the country, the university's rules and even on on the research groups themselves.

NO.
It definitely depends on the location, at least in the U.S. And it hasn't been true anywhere I've gone.
I was in a PhD program at a Medical College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where the majority of students did not make it beyond their second year, much less get a PhD. I knew it starting the program, as did all of us. That was ten years ago.
Before that, getting my Masters Degree in Columbus, Ohio, at Ohio State University, we also all knew that not everyone would make it. And many did not even finish their Master's degrees. Many who stuck around for years never got PhDs.

This is true for many fields in the U.S. When I passed the qualifying exams, there were 15 people taking the exams and only 5 passed, and this does not include several other people who decided to bail and not take the exams after some experience in graduate level courses (and the realization they would likely not pass the exams). Two additional people passed on their second attempt. However, all 7 subsequently passed their "Part B exams", wrote an acceptable Ph.D. dissertation, passed their final oral exam, and received their Ph.D. degree.

This may vary a lot depending on the field, university, and advisor you end up with, but I'll answer according to what I've seen (in Applied Math, in the U.S.).
No, this is not at all true. Even once you get accepted to a PhD program, you usually have qualifying/preliminary exams you need to pass within your first few years (with a limited number of attempts). If you don't pass these, you are gone from the program (though you are often allowed to leave with a Master's; I would say that is often a consolation prize).
Once you pass the qualifying exams, you have to find an advisor willing to work with you, a research topic, and pass some sort of comprehensive exam that is related to your topic. Some advisors are picky about who they work with, so it is possible to not find an advisor. It is also possible to fail the comprehensive exam (you usually do not get a second attempt).
Once you have completed those hurdles, you have to actually write a thesis, and have your advisor basically approve it as being ready to defend. And then you have to defend it. I have seen people who, despite years of work, never get their thesis to a point where their advisor approves them to defend. I think there is typically some sort of time limit on your thesis from when you start the program, but this is according to university regulations. I have also seen unsuccessful thesis defenses; these are rare (since usually you just will not be allowed to defend if the thesis is bad), but if it happens you are gone without a PhD.
I suppose that being persistent could include applying to a different PhD program after being kicked out of a first (or a second). Maybe if it is a low enough ranked program they will give out a PhD to anyone who sticks it out, but I don't really know about this.

If you need to pass quals it is not a PhD program, but a pre-PhD program. (Your qualification exam is what gives you entry to the PhD program proper.)

@mmeent: Terminology varies, I suppose.  But in my US-based graduate program, students were definitely considered to be in the PhD program as soon as they entered, and took exams that were officially called "qualifying exams" in their first and second year.  After passing these exams and completing some other requirements (e.g. selection of a dissertation topic), they were said to have "advanced to candidacy".  But there was no change as to which program they were in.

Nate Eldridge's comment agrees with my experience, both as a graduate student  (at Harvard) and as a faculty  member (at Michigan).

Nate Eldridge's comment agrees with my experience ... --- Mine too, at more than twice as many (but less prestigious) places than @Andreas Blass.

Just being there is not enough. I usually tell my students when they are worried about their progress: "If and because you work hard, you will definitely obtain enough high quality results to write an excellent thesis afterwards." And my experience has confirmed this most of the time.
The trouble with research is that you do not necessarily have to reach a specific goal formulated in the beginning of a PhD work to end up with a good thesis. Sometimes little to no progress is made with the specific hypotheses from the beginning, but new hypotheses are found and answered during the work. PhD students themselves sometimes fail to understand this transition and then also come to the (false) conclusion that they only stuck around and finally got their degree. This might help to explain why this impression is out there. But I would call it a myth.
Statistics would be interesting. However, reliable data might be difficult to get. At my university for instance each faculty has their own ways to handle a PhD student and in many cases where students drop out they never were PhD students officially, just an ordinary university employee.

"never were PhD students officially" ?

@TejasShetty it’s common to not apply for the program officially before you started work on the thesis. (So the work ks only payed as research helper not doctoral candidate)

@Tejas Shetty: Yes, indeed. I am talking about Germany. Often PhD work is not paid directly but PhD students are employed and paid for teaching and research on third party funded projects. If it is well organized there is a big overlap between project work and PhD work, but it is not a necessity. Working on your PhD is in this sense your hobby. Of course usually there is an agreement between advisor and student that obtaining a PhD degree is the goal. But this is often made official by applying to the faculty only shortly before the thesis is handed in.

From my experience in Poland it looks like that:

Get Masters degree done
Apply for PHD, this includes exam
Now we arrive to a fork, you can quit, you can be kicked out by not passing an exam/lecture, you can have helpful professor that will get you through no matter what, you can have a terrible professor but be smart enough to pull PHD off basically on your own or you can have a terrible professor and fail, and be forced to leave.
After you published enough, wrote your work, there is PHD exam you have to pass.

So, if you are lucky, have a good professor/advisor it might seem like a breeze, for average person it is honest tough work and always some percent will quit/fail for various reasons.

Maybe you could be more specific than "in Europe"? I also did a PhD in Europe (Germany, more specifically) and this isn't remotely similar to how mine went. Step 1 is the only part that was the same, and I know at least one person who didn't even do that (went straight to PhD programme from a bachelors degree).

Edited to add the info, I am from Poland and I don't think I have ever seen anyone starting PhD at the University without masters.

@internetofmine it is quite common in the UK where you can apply for a PhD straight after your Bsc and, may be accepted or not. But there is no requirement for a Masters. I got my PhD in Spain, after getting a Bsc in the UK, and went straight from my Bsc to my PhD with no Masters. But, in Spain, the first year or two of your PhD are spent getting what they call a "DEA" which is the equivalent of a Masters. I believe it's the same in France too.

I checked my old Universities PhD recruitation - it is official requirement to have masters or equivalent, my guess always was that 3-year long Bsc is no equivalent to 5yo Masters

What kind of exams you need to pass in a PhD program in Poland?

@eckes guess it varies from place to place, I went through whole univ page and could not find it anywhere - guess they host it closer to recruitement times.

That's probably true, but it might not be "worth it."
When I was in my mid-20s, I started a PhD program at Carnegie Mellon University. Now in my early 60s, I finally "get" the real analysis and other math that I needed for the program. So perhaps I could perhaps get my PhD after four decades. No reasonable person would suggest working that long to get a PhD. I once knew of someone who took 16 years to get a PhD.
The issue is not whether or not someone can get a PhD, but whether or not they can do so within a reasonable period of time. Four years is standard, as for undergraduates, five or six is ok, allowing for time "overruns," but very few people would accept 16 years or 40.

If we define PhD along the lines of learning how to do research, I don't think it matters the length of the road as long as you get there successfully.


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Do authors prefer to see reviewer reports before a decision?
Suppose there is a paper with 3 promised reviews, 2 of which have been submitted. In this scenario there will usually be no decision while the editor waits for the third review. Will the author want to see the submitted reviews before a formal decision is made?
Intuitively I'd guess "yes", especially if the decision turns out to be "revise", but I am not so sure if the decision turns out to be accept/reject. It could be jarring for the authors to see reviews with minor comments, and then receive a scathing 3rd review & a reject decision, for example.
Another possible issue is if the 3rd promised review never arrives, which from the editor's perspective will inevitably happen for some papers, but this seems less likely to aggravate the authors.

The only scenario that I could think of where this would not be beneficial (or at least not causing any negative consequences) is if the third reviewer raises issues that directly conflict with the other reviews, as this might lead to work having to be redone.

@Snijderfrey The time would be spent better by actually looking at the manuscripts From my perspective, that would be yet another reason to have full-time journal staff. Also, I'm not sure how other editors feel about it, but I like to read reviews as they come in (especially since sometimes the review is very poor and we might need to invite more reviewers). From there, one could configure the Editorial Management System to send reviews to authors in automated fashion.

@Allure, I converted my comment into an answer, therefore deleted the comment.

Makes no difference whether authors would prefer it or not, as it isn't likely to happen.  Among other reasons, it presents authors with too much opportunity to interfere in the review process.

@ScottSeidman how would the authors interfere in the review process if they are shown the currently-received reviews?

@Allure. They could try to figure out who the reviews they see came from, and pressure them to change it,   they could then try to figure out who the reviewer who hasn't responded yet is (if the field is small enough), and pressure them.  They could also start whining to the editor about the quality of the reviews before a decision in made, which is something editors don't  need.

There is little disadvantage in having information earlier rather than later, so I doubt many authors would object to getting some reviews earlier (though I don't think editors usually give this option).  Certainly some academics might want to hold off starting any revisions until they have all the reviews, just in case they end up changing something based on incomplete information and making their paper worse!  (E.g., in the case where two referees ask for inconsistent things.)  I don't think it matters too much if the last review is a rejection, since you will usually want to incorporate the suggested revisions anyway before resubmitting elsewhere.
In regard to the possibility of a jarring rejection in the presence of other positive reviews, I think most experienced academics are aware that referee reports are pot-luck and they are prepared for wild inconsistency in opinions on their paper.  Most academics who have submitted a lot of papers have probably encountered the situation you describe, where one referee loves your paper and another rejects it entirely (sometimes the latter is just a scope decision even if the quality of the paper is good, so that is also reasonably common).  As to the possibility that the final review never arrives, I guess eventually you have to prod the editor for a decision.

also, if the third never hands in their report, the editor will either decide that 2 reports are sufficient, or find a replacement reviewer, none of which really changes the situation.

I don't think editors usually give this option That's actually kind of why I asked the question - maybe editors should start doing it? For third review never arriving, I was thinking of e.g. if the two reviews received are negative, the editor sends them and informs the authors that there is a third review due in X days, and then the third review never arrives. Maybe the authors will say there is a third [positive] review that is being withheld from them, that the journal isn't being transparent, etc.

Yes, I think it could be reasonable to provide staggered reviews (especially in cases where one review is unreasonably delayed), so I'm not averse to editors changing their process to do this.  I imagine that many editors/authors might decide it's too much hassle, but personally I wouldn't mind.

Getting one review per week instead of all 3 after 3 week wait (yeah, we can hope), would only make me, as an author, start fretting about response to the reviewer, wondering whether the paper is getting accepted or not, or starting to fix the paper according to wishes and whims of the first reviewer.
Assuming I did start acting on the first review, then, another week fixing stuff for the second reviewer, then yet another week to try accommodating the third reviewer. In the final week I also have to make sure I didn't now overwrite the first reviewer's opinions (it would be mightily unfair to have his opinion count the least because he submitted it first), but also that I didn't slight the third one which only got a week of my attention instead of 3 the first reviewer did.
And, even if I didn't bother fixing anything, I also don't gain much by getting those 2 reviews sooner. In the best case I would probably only think more about the just submitted paper, instead of forgetting it for a while and starting to work on the fresh new thing - so, in effect I would waste 3-4 weeks on review instead of 1-2, no matter how I approach this.
But, IF I am given the option to read the reviews as they come, would I say thanks but no? Hell no. Even knowing it will be quite possibly counter-productive waste of time, I would still love to read those reviews as soon as possible. Because, on the bright side, they might even help shape future research if they found some flaw in the current paper.

The way you ask the question, the answer inevitably is: Some authors will prefer early sharing of referee reports, some won't. I personally would not care too much about it. However, I am not sure if early sharing would improve the overall process, and therefore would indeed be in the authors' interest.
Generally, it is in the authors' interest to have a smoothly working publication process. That includes a transparent review process. You may argue that by early sharing you would increase transparency, and would enable the authors to start revising early. In my view, this would be a marginal improvement at best because also currently authors eventually see the referee reports.
However, of similar importance in the publication process is a responsive editorial office. Every message you send to the authors (automated or not) has a certain probability to generate a response, and I predict that you would end up with a lot of additional (unnecessary?) communication between editor and authors. Such responses may be, among others:

Asking when you will come to a decision, given that one referee report is already received.
Asking to use the two received referee reports to come to a decision due to some external pressure to publish rapidly (thesis defense, project reports etc.)
Already submitting a revised version taking into account what the first referees said.

Therefore, early sharing would have to go hand in hand with a strategy how to deal with such responses (I don't mean chat bots...) without imposing too much extra workload on the editors (who may even work on a voluntary basis). This is to ensure that the responsiveness of the editorial office for really relevant issues is as good as it should be. Editors also should be able to spend some time to actually look at the manuscripts.

As an author, I would appreciate this. One reason is simply that it would give me some sort of progress report. It's usual for me to have several papers under consideration by various journals and to have no idea how any of them are progressing until I get a decision. It would be nice to know "we have received two of three promised reports, based on which we want to wait for the third", even without getting to see the first two. (As well as simply "nice" it may be useful, if I can see early on that a particular journal is behind schedule and should be gently reminded.)
The additional advantage of actually seeing the first two would typically come if major revisions are required, particularly if a reviewer has identified some gap that needs fixing. It may be that it will be more convenient to think about how to solve the issue now, compared to after the third report comes in, either because one of the authors has more time available or because it is possible for authors to meet in person.

I’m sure some authors will want to but most editors will not.  The reason is simple enough: the editor can choose to ignore some of the reviews.
Editors don’t necessarily keep track in real time of the referee reports and any report transmitted to the author should be scanned so it does not contain objectionable comments that would jeopardize the refereeing process.   An obvious example would be a report that contains insults but some reports might need to be invalidated for a number of reasons: they could be unclear, reveal information about the referee, be clearly biased (positively or negatively), *etc.
Ultimately, the referee reports are only recommendation given to the editor by (presumed) experts in the field, so the editor is well within their right to edit or not to transmit reports that they judge inappropriate.

Presumably, the editors would need to vet the reports & remove egregiously bad comments before showing them to the authors. I think it's common editors already do this, come final decision time.

@Allure precisely!  But this is rarely done in real time, i.e. I don’t know of an editor who reads referee reports one at the time, as they come in.   Never mind the frequent interruption this would be, it would also generate redundant tasks since most editors read all reports at the same time before taking a decision.  Moreover, what if the editor decides to ask another opinion because the current reports are split in their recommendation?


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Do MDPI reviewers have access to each other's reviews?
Follow-up question to discussion in comments of this question.
Summary is that in 2015, there was a MDPI reviewer who was unhappy because their recommendation wasn't followed. The reviewer complained in the blogosphere claiming that the paper was published in spite of his serious objections, and that MDPI refused to let him see the other reviewers' reports or their contact information.
It's normal to not provide contact information of the other reviewers (since it breaks anonymity), but providing the other reviewer reports seems fine. I asked an MDPI employee about this last week and they claimed that it's already possible as a matter of course - their editorial management system allows each reviewer to see the other reviewer reports.
Something is contradictory here. I can think of many possible explanations, e.g. the reviewer didn't know how to operate the editorial management system, MDPI changed their review process between 2015 and 2021, or even the MDPI employee is lying/mistaken. I don't have any firsthand experience of MDPI's review process, hence I'm asking if anyone who has reviewed for (or has experience operating their editorial management system) can confirm if MDPI reviewers can see each other's reports.

If anyone has reviewed for MDPI before 2015, I would still be interested in the answer.

I confirm that you can see all the reviewers’ comments. I review for them since January 2020.

It appears you must make an account to see them.

I can see others’ comments even without logging in (only for the paper to which the link refers, of course). Once you log you can see every review.