text:
The GRE: Why does this still exist?
I did my undergraduate degree in the US and am heading to graduate school here in less than a month, so I myself have taken the Graduate Record Examinations (the general as well as two subjects tests) and I guess it always just seemed as a sort of un-avoidable formality that nothing could be done about, and so I just took it and got it over with.
In the intervening year between undergrad and the start of my Ph.D. work, however, I traveled overseas to Cambridge where I found that I was quite mistaken:  the GRE is very, very avoidable.  The solution is simple:  don't apply to universities in the US.
By the time I had arrived there, I had already gotten it over with myself, but for most of my peers there, this was not the case, and quite a few of them had simply decided to not even bother applying to the US because of the inconvenience that comes along with that in the form of the GRE.
This made me wonder:  are admissions committees at US universities aware of the number of highly qualified candidates they miss out on because of the GRE?
I could understand being willing to miss out on the potential recruitment of these students if the GRE were a significant part of one's application, but I have yet to find any US professor tell me that the GRE scores are weighted highly when it comes to making admissions decisions (perhaps I just haven't asked around enough?).  In fact, I've often been told it's the least important factor when deciding whether someone should be admitted.  (Indeed, my impression is that the general GRE is more or less a joke and only serves as a convenient way of tossing out applicants who would have been found un-qualified for other reasons.)
Putting aside for a moment the issue of those who decide not to apply to US universities, let's consider the inconvenience faced by those who do.  Once again, if you're from the US, I can imagine simply not being aware of this (I know I wasn't), but I now know of several people who have had to fly (sometimes the flights have even been inter-continental!) in order to sit to take a GRE test.  And even for those who don't (like probably most of us in the US), there is the ridiculous price:  almost $200 for the general and an extra $150 per subject test. I was under the impression that admissions committees encourage people from all backgrounds to apply, rich or poor, but how can they honestly expect this to happen if even those who don't have to fly have to shell out anywhere from $300-$500 in addition to the application fee? (I personally find it a bit nuts that these tests cost several times more than the application itself.)
So, could somebody please explain to me why we still require students to take these things? Do they really add information about the applicant and their abilities that could not be found out any other way?

Now that I think about it, perhaps a more appropriate sub-title would have been:  "Why did this ever exist?" =P

There is also the situation where one has to wonder whether to shell out an extra $180 to squeeze a couple extra percentile from the first time. I loathe giving the ETS more money for a test that predicts success in graduate school by only testing the ability to do elementary calculus quickly.

The solution is simple: don't apply to universities in the US. — Or apply to departments in the US, like mine, that don't require GRE scores.

@JeffE That is a reasonable suggestion. However, I imagine for many applicants from the US, the problems mentioned above for the GRE is an annoyance, not a big problem. Limiting oneself to schools in a foreign country or schools that don't require the GRE is a bigger price than just shelling out the ~$400-500 total, considering the cost of an undergraduate education. (I don't know about other fields, but like paul garrett mentions, in math, the higher you go up the ladder of graduate schools, the more likely GRE scores are required.)

@JonathanGleason The most probable answer to that question is likely "Someone thought it was a good idea at the time"

Computer Science seems to be the opposite of math in that respect (despite the relative difficulty of the CS subject GRE).

@JeffE, this may not be your department's decision, this may be a university-wide Graduate School policy.

The GRE "only serves as a convenient way of tossing out applicants who would have been found un-qualified for other reasons": That may be.  But well-known departments get lots of applications, and the admissions committee is made up of faculty who are very busy already.  So it's understandable that they'd grasp at a quick way to weed out the least qualified applicants.  I'm not necessarily defending the GRE, but perhaps you can see why departments might use it.

@StasK: In fact, it was a departmental decision.  Other departments on my campus, like math, do require GRE scores.

GRE still exists because someone is making profit out of it.

From The Atlantic: The Problem With the GRE

Empirical evidence on the relationship between GRE scores and post-graduate performance
There is a massive meta-analysis by Kuncel et al (2001) that empirically evaluates the correlations between various aspects of the GRE with multiple post-graduate performance criteria.
Based on hundreds of studies and thousands of participants, GRE shows  reasonable correlations with post-graduate GPA (i.e., around observed r = .21 to r=.43). Similar correlations emerged between GRE and faculty ratings of the student.
Correlations of GRE with research productivity and publication citation counts were smaller, but still positive. This is not surprising given that these are more distal outcomes and there are many non-academic reasons why people may or may not pursue an academic career or have publishable results.
The authors thus concluded that GRE was a valid predictor of a wide range of graduate outcomes. They also noted that "subject tests tended to be better predictors than the verbal, quantitative, and analytical tests."
In general, selection decisions are assisted by standardisation, and a big part of academic achievement involves measuring baseline ability. Thus, the GRE combines both standardisation and competence measurement.
Update 2023:
A new meta-analysis was published by Feldon et al (2023) that reviews GRE correlates with academic outcomes. They report correlations between GRE and GPA of .24 (total), .20 (verbal), .17 (quantitative), and .21 (analytical).
Response to comments
There have been a few points made in other answers and in comments, which I'll comment on here:

Conflict of interest:  @msw wrote that they "consider the cited paper to be junk because ETS provided all available data". In general, I don't find the results in the meta-analysis surprising. Most tests like the GRE tend to have fairly strong correlations with general cognitive ability. It is well established through thousands of independent studies that IQ scores correlate fairly well with both school grades and job performance (i.e., in the r=.50 range; see Neisser et al 1996 for a field consensus review). The results show correlations less than .50, but that's not surprising given some of the issues around standardisation, practice, range restriction, domain specificity and so on.
Belief there is no correlation based on personal observation: Note that if the correlation is around .20, that means that 4% of variance has been explained. That leaves a huge amount of variance in performance to still be explained. It would not be surprising to meet many people that did well on GRE and poor in graduate school or vice versa. Thus, it is problematic to rely on personal experience when it comes to evaluating the validity of tests where such correlations are likely to be only modest.
Small correlations are useful: While a .20 correlation is small, it can still help make selection decisions. In particular, when evaluating the suitability of selection tools, you need to contrast the validity of a given tool with other available tools (e.g., interviews, GPA, references, and so on). I'm not as familiar with results in the graduate selection domain, but certainly in the employee selection domain, which is quite analogous, cognitive ability tests tend to correlate more highly than interviews, references and so on (for a comprehensive meta analysis of employee selection, see Schmidt and Hunter, 1998). That said, the best selection decisions are typically obtained by integrating multiple selection tools. Furthermore, the small correlation also should highlight to individuals who score poorly on the GRE that it is not that predictive, and therefore it shouldn't discourage an individual from pursing post-graduate study.
Does training invalidate the GRE?: @user8134 wrote "many people significantly improve their GRE scores by taking courses with prepping companies like Kaplan. So it seems GRE test does not measure any intrinsic ability/talent necessary for grad. school." I agree that individual differences in training and preparation for the GRE may influence test scores. That said, if you characterise test scores to be determined by true ability, training, and error variance, then I would expect that true ability would remain the much larger source of explanation in test scores. This is based on general observations about testing for ability based assessment. In general, the degree to which training is an issue would depend on how much the test materials teach to the specific test. Overall, I would assume that this would reduce the potential validity of GRE, but that the GRE would still be useful. Furthermore, training and nuisance factors can be used to do better on many selection instruments. For example, people can be coached on how to frame their CV or how to answer questions in interviews. Such training is potentially a source of error variance, but it doesn't invalidate CVs and interviews completely.
Why would anyone care about post-graduate GPA? (@JeffE) @JeffE further notes " in PhD programs, the only thing that really matters is the student's research output.".  Some post-graduate courses include meaningful graded coursework and others don't. For the courses that do include meaningful coursework, then such coursework provides a more standardised way of measuring post-graduate performance. So the validity of GRE  in predicting  such outcomes is not surprising. And thus, presumably we could generalise this to being indicative of how people perform in less standardised aspects of post-graduate performance. Of course, there's an inferential leap here, but in general, performance in related domains tend to correlate (e.g., coursework in mathematics with research performance in mathematics); it's not perfect, but it's still a positive correlation. Furthermore, if the validation study includes some post-graduate coursework where everyone gets top marks and such data is mixed with studies where grades are valid measures of performance, this would only serve to attenuate the observed correlation. Thus, this would suggest that the correlation between GRE and post-graduate GPA is higher than reported by the meta-analysis. Also, the meta-analysis does report correlations with research output and they are weaker but still positive. It also reports correlations with supervisor ratings.
Better alternatives to GRE: None of my comments above are necessarily advocating the use of the GRE. Developing an effective selection and recruitment system whether it be for employment or post-graduate admission is a complex task. That said, most post-graduate selection systems would want to get a reliable and valid measure of academic aptitude. GRE, IQ tests, other ability tests, undergraduate GPA, all have reasonably validity evidence. And in general standardisation and efficiency are important. So, for example, administering your own selection tools takes more time, whereas taking pre-existing measures like GPA and GRE is more efficient.
Ethics of requiring applicants pay money to complete GRE: Several people are critical of the GRE on the basis that it costs several hundred dollars to complete. I think that this is a perfectly legitimate question, but that the question of predictive validity can be answered separately. Such a fee could potentially discriminate against low income applicants. That said, presumably the fee in comparison to forgone wages associated with completing a post-graduate degree is fairly small.

References

Kuncel, N. R., Hezlett, S. A., & Ones, D. S. (2001). A comprehensive meta-analysis of the predictive validity of the graduate record examinations: implications for graduate student selection and performance. Psychological bulletin, 127(1), 162. PDF
Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard Jr, T. J., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J., ... & Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American psychologist, 51(2), 77. PDF
Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological bulletin, 124(2), 262. PDF
David F. Feldon, Kaylee Litson, Brinleigh Cahoon, Zhang Feng, Andrew Walker & Colby Tofel-Grehl (2023) The Predictive Validity of the GRE Across Graduate Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis of Trends Over Time, The Journal of Higher Education, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2023.2187177

Why would anyone care about "post-graduate GPA"?

In my grad program, the correlation with post-graduate GPA would have necessarily been zero.

@JeffE In post-graduate courses that include course work  then post-graduate GPA would be indicative of a student who is understanding well the material in the course. Of course, it wouldn't come close to capturing everything that is important, but then again it would be hard to craft any single variable that reliably measured everything that a post-graduate course aims to develop.

Indeed, after my first year of grad school, I remember talking with my father about this. He was shocked. "You mean you get an A just for attendance?!" I stopped to ponder how many of my friends reliably attended their classes. "Well, actually, ..."

In the post-graduate subjects that I am familiar with, grades appear  no less valid in discriminating between students than undergraduate subjects. That said, it makes sense that the degree to which grades are valid would vary across post-graduate programs, universities, and so on.

Do you actually get grades from courses taken during PhD? For us, it pass or fail, i.e. no grades and thus no GPA...

@posdef I assumed (perhaps incorrectly, I'm based in Australia, where we don't really use GRE) the GRE is used for admission into a wide range of post-graduate programs. I agree some PhD programs have none or only a small amount of graded coursework.

I consider the cited paper to be junk because "ETS provided all available data on GRE validity to us in unaggregated
form." and the notoriously closed ETS doesn't give data often. The second author's long-time commercial affiliations further darken this paper's intellectual independence.

post-graduate GPA would be indicative of a student who is understanding well the material in the course. — So what? At least in PhD programs, the only thing that really matters is the student's research output.  If you do good research, you obviously understand the material.  And if you don't do good research, then it doesn't matter whether you understand the material.

@JeromyAnglim BTW: And do you have correlations of e.g. number of prior publications of applicant vs performance metrics? .2 seems to be very low (and given that it reduces number of applicants (and there are other metrics), it may effectively select worse PhD students).

No doubt there is going to be some correlation between GRE scores and success in graduate school (just like there will be some correlation between success in graduate school and timed arithmetic tests). The question is if it's worth the price. It isn't possible to implement this, but one way to test would be if the students took the tests for free, and the graduate schools had to pay in order to see the scores (without just increasing the application fee, and suppose they could decide whether to pay after reading the rest of the application).

There is a restriction of range here (the correlation was done only on successful applicants), so the true correlation is likely higher. In theory, even NO correlation between GRE scores of successful applicants and some measure of their academic success doesn't mean that GRE is a bad selection tool, because we didn't look at the outcomes of the nonselected applicants.

That being said, I'd love to see some data on how foreign applicants fare relative to domestic ones. I, for one, had never taken a test at a computer before the GRE experience. I'd bet that the distribution is shifted.

Has there been a comparison of this correlation to the  correlation between post-grad performance and other simpler predictors?

And thus, presumably we could generalise this to being indicative of how people perform in less standardised aspects — "Presumably"? You're presenting a statistical meta-analysis; you don't get to presume. (And my objection has nothing to do with whether graduate courses have meaningful grades, or everyone gets an A. Rather, my objection is the reason many graduate courses only give out As.)

Note that this may just be an example of self-fulfilling prophecy. You can probably make (m)any a measurement correlate with a-posteriori quality by convincing everybody to select based on that measurement. Better schools pick those with better values and, on average, produce better output -- surprise.

Even if GRE is a good predictor of academic performance, that wouldn't answer why admission committees effectively restrict the pool of suitable candidates by requiring a prohibitively burdensome test - or more precisely it would imply that they strike an odd balance.

why IQ though? see NNT aka Nero, Dweck and salman khan

So, here's a big problem with that latest study: you're looking at outcomes for people admitted to graduate school. That is an entirely different question from asking about the original population, because those are the candidates who were admitted to graduate school. Admissions may be a bit of a dice roll, but it's unlikely that many candidates who apply successfully to graduate school and then struggle will struggle because of something predictable on their GRE. You don't have included in the study the applicants who were not admitted because their GRE scores were poor.

And they use graduate GPA as an outcome! Who cares about GPA for PhD students?

@Bryan There seems to be a bit of critical discussion of the latest meta-analysis. I haven't done a deep dive, but at least they provide their data on the osf to inform that critical evaluation https://osf.io/awu7c/ . Regarding your point about only sampling successful applicants. This would generally be thought of in terms of range restriction (i.e., a process which would typically attenuate observed correlations between GRE and outcomes).

@JeromyAnglim It's not even just a typical range restriction, it's that the sample is filtered. Someone with a relatively poor GRE who is nonetheless admitted to graduate school probably had other things on their application that looked good, for example.

This is a good question. I have not been a fan of the GRE for 20+ years, although (through whatever luck I had a good-enough number on it myself that it didn't harm me...) many are. Having been on admissions committees and very much involved with graduate programs for 30+ years, I've had ample opportunity to see the (non-) correlation of success in graduate mathematics with GRE subject-test scores. (The other parts are often useful as tests of English fluency, mainly.)
Of course, the world would be a simpler place if GRE subject-test scores really could show talent for higher mathematics. We note that the Educational Testing Service (in NJ, that makes the GRE and other stuff) is a for-profit that has a vested interest in maintaining its products' apparent importance.
The cost is unfortunate, and certainly discriminates against people whose currency doesn't compete well with USD.
The vaguely useful bit of information provided by GRE is that, well, yes, it is the only thing that most applicants will have done, thus, if one insists on "simple comparisons", it is the only thing that allows that. It is clear that comparison of GPAs is even more pointless.
I have known admissions committees that simply ranked applicants by GRE subject test score. There! Done! :)
No, I do not care very much about GRE numbers, but in a way I am glad that some admissions committees do, in a fashion to the way that under-valued stocks are good investment values.
I do think that the elite graduate programs use GRE subject test as a convenient filter, because it selects somewhat for "quickness/cleverness", and they can afford to "lose" some prospects, because they have so many who are "quick/clever".
In the U.S., having a GRE subject test score is also a sign of awareness that people expect you to take it. Thus, it doesn't matter so much what one's score is, but that one _is_aware_ ... even if it is only of "expectations".
But, in summary, no, I see no point in it. But there are economic incentives for ETS to keep making money. And a great number of admissions committees in math have personal predilections that lead them to be fond of (over-) simple numerical quantification, so... there-we-are.
Edit: As @msw observes in a comment, indeed, if GRE measured significant academic achievement cumulative over several years... it would be odd that one could usefully do the "prep" courses ETS provides. :)
Yes, performance on GRE probably is a good indicator of how well a kid can do on a multi-hour, timed, multiple-choice test, etc. Yes, if we make subsequent coursework resemble this (!?) then we give the GRE predictive power. No, I do not recommend making everything multiple-choice! But, amazingly, some people do believe that this could be done, and purportedly save us all a lot of work.
Sure, these things measure something, and produce numbers that can be manipulated. There are people who are inexorably drawn to the possibility of making final decisions in those terms, even when the significance of the numbers is unclear. Meanwhile, reading letters of recommendation and personal statements is obviously not easily quantifiable. Of course!
If it were really the case that "standardized testing" could tell what its promoters like to insinuate, it would be convenient, indeed. But, again, some decades of experience indicate that these tests do not indicate whether or not people can sustain interest over 4+ years, work hard for 4+ years, continue to develop scientific sensibility, and so on. And the latter issues prove to be vastly more important for completion of a PhD. In direct observation of about 700+ grad students, I'd estimate that fewer than 20 dropped out or failed due to lack of intellectual capacity or lack of prior knowledge. Rather, loss of interest in the subject, or personal issues (mental/physical health) dominate. This "sample" of mine includes a very wide range of GRE scores and even GPA.
More anecdotally, several specific examples stick in my mind, of very low percentile on GRE subject test (bottom 10 percent or smaller...) but exceptional achievement in coursework, prelims, and thesis work. These peoples' potential was easily visible in letters of recommendation and personal statement.

More bluntly, it's a self-perpetuating racket by ETS who makes a bloody fortune on useless testing and selling "preparation materials" to train the subjects of their supposedly valid testing methods. Deductive logic test: if the GRE is a measure of inherent qualities, then preparation should not significantly affect a subject's score. Ⓐ True Ⓑ False Ⓒ Either way, ETS makes more money.

If it matters, I did just fine on my GRE with no preparation, tyvm.

You say the GRE is a very poor indicator of completion of graduate programs, which I will believe. But how bad of an indicator is it of the ability to become a prominent researcher? Maximizing the probability of completion in your program may or may not maximize the probability of high levels of success. Giving an example from undergraduate admissions: you have two math major applicants, one has a 600 SAT math and the other has a 760. The first has a 3.6 GPA in high school and the second has a 3.0. The first one has a higher probability of graduation, but the second one might be a star.

@anon, Oh, yes, indeed, might be. Or not. SAT scores certainly indicate even less than GRE subject test. All these multiple-choice tests do substantially test test-taking ability, speed, and especially the math parts are very speed-puzzle-oriented. It's not a bad thing to be quick, to have the capacity to be undeterred by puzzles and tricks, but that capacity itself is not much related to serious mathematics, from my perspective.

@paulgarrett, I would like to say that I agree that the GRE shouldn't be very significant. But you also have to realize that at some schools duds (at the research level!) can get through an entire undergraduate curriculum with high grades. No other current method could faithfully eliminate these people.

@anon, believe me, I know what can happen. High grades in the usual curriculum, which itself is somewhat antithetical to genuine mathematics, do not move me particularly either. The standard undergrad courses based on standard texts are quite often ghastly. Thus, e.g., students who are attracted to that raise suspicion in my mind that they'll not like genuine mathematics so much.

When I was on my department's graduate admissions committee, I found GRE scores to be somewhat useful in the case of students from obscure (often foreign) schools where we didn't know the standards well enough to extract useful information from the grades and where the letters of recommendation all look (to westerners like me) isomorphic.

In my department, GRE scores are used mostly as calibration for students who have good grades but are from universities/programs that we are not familiar with and whose quality we are therefore not sure about.  For students with good credentials from strong programs the GRE is pretty much irrelevant.

So, GRE shouldn't be compulsory for all schools but only for those schools which are unknown.

@user774025: I'm sure a policy like that would violate all sorts of equal opportunity rules. Requiring GRE only for those from unknown schools is effectively putting up an economic barrier to students from those schools.

I suspect that many schools which list the GRE as compulsory are willing to take applications without it ... write to the admissions office with this question.

Moreover, @user774025 suggestion would not help calibrate judgements on students from unknown schools with those from known schools.

A couple of issues:
Re Mr. Anglim's comment, a suspect issue re. any correlation between GRE scores and success in grad. school is that many people significantly improve their GRE scores by taking courses with prepping companies like Kaplan. So it seems GRE test does not measure any intrinsic ability/talent necessary for grad. school.
Another issue is that the GRE is a form of forced labor: ETS uses one of the sections in the exam (just which section is unknown to the test-taker) as data for future exams, i.e., the section is not counted for the score of the test. So one is expected , basically, to work for ETS for free, producing high-quality data they would have to pay a lot for, or may not be able to produce themselves. GRE also puts out books to prepare for the exams, which cost above $20 each.
Now, ETS could find a way around this by asking, say, "There may be a section in this test which we use as data for future exams: if there is one, would you be willing to take it, or do you prefer to skip it?". This - asking you to work for them for free - is unethical, IMO, if not illegal. And ETS' BS response to this (I called them) is to tell you: "Well, if you disagree, don't take the test." The problem is some programs require you to take it in order to apply for their grad. programs; ETS is the Frank Burns of testing.

They also demand of you that you will say nothing about what was on the test afterwards, which IMHO is even worse.

Interesting answer. I was not aware about ETS using part of the exam for data. Could I trouble you to add a relevant link about this? Thanks. Also, I like the Frank Burns metaphor too, but which aspect of Frank are you specifically alluding to here? Or are using him generically as a well known (in American popular culture) scuzzball?

One could use "Montgomery Burns" instead, and I think the metaphor holds just as well.

@Jonathan, if you were to ever come to the other side, you will see a great number of glowing applications from top students of the top university in Bolivia or Madagascar. How do they fare compared to the top student of the top university of Idaho? Or a top student from a mediocre university in Massachusetts? If you admit grad students planning to use them as TAs, how do you know that this student from Nepal will be understood by your students in Tennessee, who heartily laugh at both New York and Californian accents?
The GRE fills the role of such a filter, and as such is the cheapest, easiest to use tool available to graduate schools in the US. If you can get any UNESCO money to design and implement a version of it that would be free to international applicants, maybe you can get a Nobels fredspris for your efforts. (This is not such an unrealistic idea as it sounds: an alternative, freely available operating system known as Linux has been developed by enthusiasts, and in many dimensions has replaced UNIX.)

My department's strategy for applicants from unknown schools (either foreign or domestic) is to admit one student with an apparently glowing record and then watch how well they do.  After that, we have some basis for calibrating their grades and letters.  Sadly, often the result is that we no longer consider applicants from that school, but sometimes it's the opposite.  As for the accent, we use the TOEFL to judge English fluency, despite its similar problems.

Also, I grew up just south of Nashville; I've never heard anyone laugh at either New York or California accents.

@JeffE After that, we have some basis for calibrating their grades and letters. Your department is using person A's performance to figure out person B's potential.

@scaahu: Yes, that's right. We're using the performance of student A from school X to judge the potential of student B from school X (along with B's statement, letters, and grades, of course).

@scaahu: in statistics terms, JeffE (and MANY, MANY other departments) try to gauge the conditional distribution of student B's ability given what they know about the grade distribution of the home university Z common to both students A and B, and basically are applying Bayes theorem to gauge the probability of student B's success in the program. (Bayes theorem underlies most of the data-driven decision making, from spam detection to terrorist identification in the airports.)

What you described is a problem, but I don't think GRE is the solution to that problem. Because GRE doesn't test anything related to research capability.

In a word, standardization.
I once asked this question to a colleague, and I appreciated the response I received.
Essentially, the faculty member told me, "What I like about the GRE is that it's the only way I can compare apples to apples."
He went on to explain, "How can I compare a 3.2 GPA at University X with a 3.7 GPA at University Y? I can't. But, at least with GRE scores, I can compare the two students on an even playing field."
My retort was that a high GRE score isn't necessarily a good indicator of potential in graduate school, although it might be a good indicator to determine the amount of time a prospective student spent preparing for the test. (I got a lot of milage out of my How to Ace the GRE practice book.)
He readily agreed, and assured me that it's just one piece of the puzzle. An admissions office only has so much to go on: a transcript, a GRE score, and perhaps a "Why I want to go to graduate school" cover letter.
We could throw out the GRE, but then there would be that much less information to base admissions decisions on.
My gut tells me that the negatives include the expense and hassle for the applicant, and a limited ability to predict how the student will actually perform. But I must admit my colleague had a point with his "apples to apples" perspective.

I can compare the two students on an even playing field — Except, of course, that you can't, especially for international students.  At least in my experience, baseline performance on the GRE (and other standardized tests) varies significantly from country to country (and from social class to social class) because of the relative availability and expense of test-training.

@JeffE: You and I agree on that point, although I will say that, insofar as "expense" goes, I only invested $20 or so at Barnes and Noble, and that did the trick. It's possible for most folks to give themselves a pretty good prep experience on a relatively low budget, provided they're willing to invest the time.

Explains the quality of our PhDs, doesn't it. I have personally found the American education system far more wrapped up in silly and actually dangerous formalities than schools in Europe, generally speaking. I was surprised to find this out first hand because the common consensus is that Europe suffers from a great deal of pointless formality that the US does not. The problem is that it's a category mistake: elaborate bureaucratic formalities: yes; greater social formality:  sometimes, depends; educational formality, not necessarily. Also, there is a difference between formality and rigidity. While titles are more important in Europe when addressing one another, they actually can enforce a very healthy relationship between the student and the professor which enables a healthy flexibility and informality to emerge. The casual "buddy" culture of the US is actually too chummy which encourages disrespect and I think the reaction to it is a certain kind of seething rigidity that manifests in the student-professor relationship which is unhealthy and domineering many times. But I digress. When I experienced American education first hand, it seemed infantile in its execution and the GREs belong to this set of things which contribute to the culture of pettiness (other things include the "publish or perish" doctrine which has resulted in the explosion of BS and CV padding nonsense and the "career academic" (hopefully that translates into English properly). While there are entrance exams in Europe, graduate school acceptance is according to other criteria. It's not always optimal, but certainly less irritating than this test taking nonsense.
Btw, I find the correlations mentioned above to be exactly the problem. They make the same mistake of drawing rigid and often erroneous inferences from a very poor selection of data.
I find that university education everywhere have been ruined by the pressure to put everyone through it. What you have are glorified trade schools in most cases with millions of applicants pushing through as if through a military entrance exam where narrow indicators sacrifice complexity for measures of simple routine. It's highly corporate and prone to the rat race. Graduate school should be the last place where this kind of pettiness manifests, and yet...
Summary: GREs are a result of the culture, of modern (American) university culture like the silly innovations of the German university which sought to label and shelve every person for particular slots in the machine of the the Reich.

-1: Godwin's Law.

@NateEldredge Heh! Good point, but, nevertheless, this answer does make some good points about culture-centric deconstruction.

Flagged.  There might be some good points here, but I can't see them through the rant.

Upvoted. Personally, I enjoy a good rant, and there is much to rant about wrt university systems. Robert forgot to mention that PhD was a German invention (originating at Humboldt University of Berlin) and spread like a disease across the world. Researchers got along just fine before it. The point about US universities becoming a mass system is also well taken.

Good answer. The Nazi comparison is a little unnecessary, but you make some very good points.


text:
Is it wise to develop skills that do not immediately benefit short-term research productivity?
I have a master in physics and philosophy and have a keen interest in mathematics. Currently I am doing a PhD in philosophy. On a personal level, however, I cherish the interdisciplinary ideal of combining mathematics, physics and philosophy. I am well aware that realizing this ideal requires an enormous amount of work and talent – and that very likely I cannot 'completely' realize it.
On a structural level, I suppose this is an unfortunate side-effect of the level of specialization in academia today. On a subjective level, however, I feel the need to “revolt” against such over-specialization. It a shame that some "philosophers of science" in my branch haven't solved one differential equation in their life; yet they intend to reflect on what physicists do. I am convinced that combining different disciplines is a worthy thing to do. I suspect many people would agree with me, but the competitive reality of academia makes it very hard to realize.
The time one invests in a secondary area of interest (i.e. mathematics, physics) takes away time to do research in one's main area (i.e. philosophy). The reduced time would (on the short-term) make me less productive and successful. However, in the long-term, it might allow me to produce work of more value and depth.

(1) Is it wise for a PhD student, somewhere below on the academic ladder, to gamble already on long-term investments, or should one give in to the short-term safety and (over)specialize in one area?
(2) Is there some middle-way between the two extremes?
(3) Is it more useful in later stages of one's career to have a broad skill-set or have more publications in one (limited) area?

Philosophy of Math and Philosophy of Science are both valid subfields of philosophy, though I don't know how active they are. You certainly can find universities with interdisciplinary committees related to those topics. You may not be the guy running the experiments or doing the proofs, but you can be a component in something broader. As an undergrad I worked on a project with a philosophy prof, a psych prof, and a computer science prof (cognitive science committee) once. Look around a bit.

I think this is a good question, but I have only a brief, partial answer: you may have to accept that, in pursuing the interdisciplinary topics that interest you, the time and energy you spend will not be repaid with any kind of academic currency, but only in less tangible forms.  In other words, you may never get a better job, get an extra paper published, or even get an extra pat on the back from a colleague; but you may nonetheless, in a subtle and unsung way, advance the anti-specialization principles you espouse simply by doggedly producing quality work that embodies them.  This may sound cynical, but I mean it seriously.  Of course, you need enough tangible reward to keep your career going, but it sounds like you're asking about how or whether to invest the energy to go the extra mile above and beyond that.  It's possible to derive internal comfort from believing that you're doing your best to produce the kind of work you think needs to be produced, even if doing so doesn't earn you any praise or advance your career in any concrete way.  In the end, whether you continue to do this work will depend on whether you can be happy and sane doing it, and drawing strength from your inner conviction, rather than from external validation, can help with that.

I would upvote this answer ten times if I could :-)

Re: "happy and sane": I do not have any proof for it, only my (and not only mine) belief, but doing anything beyond one's narrow specialized field is a good way to preserve sanity in academia.

Good question, but likely to be closed as "opinion-based" or "too broad". My (opinion-based) take below.
Career-wise, you can likely luck out or strike out with either approach. You can turn into the world's foremost expert on a teensy, tiny special sub-sub-sub-field. If this turns out to be an important field for the next decades and your reviewers like it, then you are in luck. However, every subfield will likely be sucked dry at some point in time, so even the most specialized specialist will need to switch fields, methods or something else at least at some point in their career. Suppose you were the world's top expert on some obscure topic sexy in 1985, as a freshly-minted Ph.D. - I don't think this will still be quite as hot today. So a one-trick pony will need to switch tricks now and then.
Note that you need some consensus in your field that your one trick at the moment is actually hot. It's bad if you write a grant application and your reviewers groan "not again; he's been milking this particular technique for ten years now, when will he finally stop?"
Alternatively, you can do what you seem to prefer: become proficient in multiple connected fields. This will mean that you won't be the mother of all experts in any of them. But you may just become the person who can actually see, explain and analyze the connections between these fields. Given that there is more and more emphasis on interdisciplinary research these days (which I'd say makes a lot of sense and likely is here to stay), you are well placed to become the linchpin getting disparate single-topic experts together to write grants or papers.
Of course, you still need to pick fields that actually have some connection with each other. You may be interested in all of Shakespeare's plays, high-dimensional complex geometry and parallelized software development, but it will be hard to bring these disparate strands together into a coherent whole.
So you will again need to impress reviewers that your combination makes sense. If your interdisciplinary approach is reviewed by focused experts, these may not appreciate what they perceive as "no expertise" in your research.
(Incidentally, by beautiful wife goes the second route. She is likely not the world's greatest geneticist, nor the world's greatest clinical psychologist or therapist, but she does pretty good interdisciplinary research on the genetics of certain psychological conditions and their therapy. Among other things. She started this type of jack-of-multiple-trades approach after her Ph.D.)
I have seen the metaphor of "T-shaped people": people who have a limited understanding of a lot of things (the horizontal bar of the T), but are experts in depth in at least some particular topic (the vertical bar). This is the ideal my employer wants us to strive for - we should neither be "I-shaped" (all expertise, no general knowledge) nor "minus sign-shaped" (all general knowledge, no expertise). This makes sense to me.

Thanks for your excellent answer. But I get the feeling that OP would be interested in whether it is practical/valued to be a π-shaped person. And if not, I would :)

I have found that a middle-of-the-road approach works best. Scientifically minded individuals tend to be perfectionists.  While it is important to pay attention to details, perfection does not exist and life is short.  Keep your eye on the prize and make your mark on the world but don't forget to have a life.
Read some of the books about Richard Feynman. By all accounts a genius but by his own admissions said he was mostly like others but had developed a few special "tools" or ways of looking at a problem.  So yes, explore avenues that may not have immediate rewards but may have value for the future.  Great discoveries are often overlooked by the unprepared mind...

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Short papers at computer science conferences
What is the purpose of short papers at computer science conferences?
I’m a first year PhD student. I spent a few months working with my supervisor on a long paper that we submitted to a conference. I then spent two weeks working on a short paper for the same conference. My supervisor said that it is fine to submit.
Would it have been better working on four or five short papers instead of one long paper? Or are short papers not well regarded at all—should I not consider working on them in the future?

"Would it of been better working on 4-5 short papers instead of 1 long paper?" Very likely not.

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text:
When to give up seeking justice after you've been plagiarized?
I found that a Ph.D. student, recently graduated, plagiarized over a dozen passages from a book I based on my own Ph.D. dissertation of some years ago.
Their dissertation is on the Internet, which is how I became aware of the plagiarism. I am in the US, I should say, while the student’s university is in another country (not a third-world country, as someone asked, and it is one with rules similar to those in the US about plagiarism).
In most instances the student cited me as a source at the end of sometimes long, closely paraphrased passages. I believe this still constitutes plagiarism in the form of "excessive paraphrasing."
As UNC-Chapel Hill notes, for example:

Even if you cite your source, paraphrasing can still be plagiarism if all you do is rearrange the author's words, delete a phrase or two, or insert a few synonyms and claim the passage as your own.

When I reported the student to their dissertation committee chairperson, nothing happened.  The chairperson did not even report the matter as required to the administration.
Dissatisfied, I took the matter to the university's director of student ethics, who told me I had a strong case not only for plagiarism, but for unprofessional conduct. The director assigned a random professor to investigate, who to my surprise absolved the student of wrongdoing. The only reason given was lack of evidence of intent to deceive.
Again dissatisfied, I took the matter to the president of the university, who agreed to hear my concern.  Once I revealed the nature of that concern, however, the president no longer responded to me. Even the president's assistant, whom the president had included in the discussion, no longer responded.
I have been careful not to come across as a loon (between the president and his assistant, for example, I sent a mere four emails, only two of which were follow-ups saying "I haven't heard from you: can you confirm receipt?") In short, I think I have responded as any rational person might in such a situation.
I should add I am an experienced scholar widely known in my field. (Granted, it's a narrow field.) But because I am no longer affiliated with a university, I have no one to represent me. (My publisher did contact the student formally and threaten legal action, but, again, only if the student should publish the plagiarized text.)
I was told by an attorney friend there is no point involving attorneys because there is no material loss on my part. If, however, the student publishes the dissertation as a book, then an attorney could be involved, even if the loss involved is negligible. (We aren't talking Harry Potter, after all, but obscure academic works.)
My question is: at what point should I give up seeking justice? (I would have been content with the student merely rewriting the paraphrased material – but discussions never reached the subject of remediation. That's all I really want to achieve, and I think having been caught and having to revise the text would have been punitive enough for the student.)

Realted, possibly helpful: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/121181/my-advisors-new-student-copied-parts-of-my-phd-thesis-advisor-doesnt-care-wh/121211#121211

Answers in comments and mostly obsolete requests have been moved to chat. Please post new comments only if you expect them to result in the question being improved or if they contain relevant references (see this FAQ). If you want to suggest alternative channels to seek justice, please do so in chat.

Let it go, dude.  You're going to ruin some kid's life over a few sentences?  Totally deranged moral priorities.

@ Parseltongue  I have let it go, as I noted last week below to einpoklum. And I do concur with you that the response need not be extreme. This being said, should we never entertain the idea of reporting a transgression because we might "ruin some kid's life"?  Actually, the person in question is decades into adulthood and they didn't borrow "a few sentences," but passage after passage after passage - enough to fill four printed pages single-spaced. Also, my goal is not to ruin the student's life: I merely wanted the affected passages to be rewritten. I don't think that would be asking much.

@Grinnell "my goal is not to ruin the student's life" are you sure?! By contacting president of the university and an attorney perhaps your goal is not to ruin the student's life?! I mean I don't wanna say student was right in his/her action but I mean make sure your actions at least are in the level of alleged misconduct...

@ Alone Programmer  "By contacting president ... and an attorney perhaps your goal is not to ruin the student's life?"  It does not affect the student for me to informally ask an attorney friend about my options. As for contacting the president, I did so not to complain about the student per se but to question the outcome of the investigation, which I found suspect. "make sure your actions at least are in the level of alleged misconduct" Likewise, the university should respond in proportion to the level of alleged misconduct. If the student did no or little wrong, the result will stand.

As you know, there are two separate issues with plagiarism:

Claiming ideas as one's own
Claiming words as one's own

You have a legitimate concern about the second -- if this student is going to directly use your words, he needs to use quotes. Attempts to get around this by making one or two insignificant changes are not appropriate.
That said, I can understand why the president of the university didn't want to get involved -- as academic crimes go, this one is quite minor. I agree that the "lack of intent to deceive" ruling was erroneous, which is unfortunate; getting the student to re-write the content, with no other penalty, would have been a far more appropriate outcome.

At what point should I give up seeking justice?

I think it would be appropriate to reach out to the student (I would have started here, personally), their advisor, and the university's ombudsperson (in that order), just asking them to rewrite those sections and to not do it again. If they refuse, it would probably take a lawyer to get them to listen -- but you don't have any damages (not even to your reputation), so that seems a bit excessive in this case.

Actually, paraphrasing is a legitimate way to cite, in which case quotes aren't needed. But quoting without indicating it is a quote is wrong, And, again, if it is cited, then it isn't an attempt to claim it as your own.

Paraphrasing is fine, but this student seems to have copied a long passage word-for-word, made one or two trivial changes, and then said "oh, I made some insignificant changes, so I don't need the quotation marks anymore." This would not be appropriate -- paraphrasing entails a non-trivial re-write of the material, ideally to place it in a novel context.  By not using quotes, the student is (inadvertently) claiming to have done this. But yeah, if the student did make non-trivial changes to the text, then there is no issue at all.

@Buffy There are acceptable and unacceptable forms of paraphrasing.  Clearly, many universities feel it is possible to excessively paraphrase.  One need only google excessive paraphrasing or paraphrase excessively plus the suffix .edu to see what I mean.

You seem to be confusing two things. Copyright is about words. Plagiarism is about ideas. If you have something copyrighted (almost anything you write and publish) copying your words is possibly a violation. The other paper may be have overstepped the bounds of copyright here.
But if they credit you with the underlying ideas behind the words, then it isn't plagiarism and is probably why people stop responding when you explain what happened. If the other person says or implies "these are my ideas" when, in fact, they are yours, they have plagiarized and that is true even if they use none of your words to express the idea.
But if you are credited, it just isn't plagiarism. A reader of the other work seem to be able to go to your work to find a more complete context of the idea and the original words.
You may, however, have a copyright claim or not, but it is a completely different issue. It is possible, also, that in publishing a book, you gave your copyright to your publisher. In that case it is up to them to make the claim.

Note that I'm not saying that what was done was ok, just that it better to be accurate in a claim of wrongdoing than to be inaccurate and confuse things.
And to be honest, I'm not close enough to the problem nor do I know enough to be able to say definitively that there is wrongdoing here or not. So I reserve judgement on that.

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@Buffy For instance, imagine you wrote a proof that the Halting problem is undecidable. Then in my paper I also write a proof that the Halting problem is undecidable. This is not plagiarism, because this proof is so well-known and taught and studied in every computer science class that nobody will worry about misappropriation of the proof's idea. But now imagine that in my paper I include this poem, and claim it as my own: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/loopsnoop.html . Now this would be plagiarism because of the words used in the proof (the ideas are still the same as when it wasn't plagia)

Since my comments were not addressed and have now been deleted, I will post an answer.
I don't really know what you are hoping to achieve here. I suspect the university also doesn't know what you are hoping to achieve and that explains why they aren't responding.
You say you are seeking "justice", which is a vague and ominous term. You later clarify that your goal is just to have the student rewrite the offending passages, but that you never discussed this with the university.
Generally, once something has been archived (such as a thesis being accepted by the university library), it cannot be edited. To do so would undermine the integrity of the archive. Errata can be published, but the original item remains. My own PhD thesis contains some typos that I would like to fix, but I am not allowed to.
I have heard of a story of a PhD thesis that became crucial evidence in a large lawsuit. Even the typos were scrutinized in court. A librarian was flown around the world to swear to the integrity and availability of the archive. This stuff matters.
Hence I think your desire to have the passages rewritten is not realistic.
It may be physically possible for this to be done, but that does not mean it is allowed.
Thus I can only interpret your quest for justice as a desire to see the student's degree revoked. I don't see what other action the university could take. That is a very drastic step and not one the university would take lightly.
It sounds like the university conducted an investigation and concluded that there was insufficient grounds for degree revocation. That does not mean that they absolved the student of wrongdoing, only that the wrongdoing was not sufficient to merit that punishment.
While I do not know the details, it sounds like the plagiarism was on the minor end of the scale. The original source was cited. The passages were paraphrased, rather than direct quotes. Your original question stated it was "over a dozen passages", which sounds like it is only a small part of the thesis.
Potentially the student didn't know that this is not allowed. Such misunderstandings of academic ethics are not uncommon.
For a degree to be revoked, there needs to be much more than a minor mistake or misunderstanding.

Perhaps I should have said upfront what I wanted the end result of my complaint to be (revising the pertinent text) - but that is the sort of determination easier seen in hindsight or with experience in such issues -- neither of which I had the luxury of drawing on.  I reported the transgression, as I thought proper, and while I wish I could show examples of the plagiarism, I cannot: I can only assure you the instances of plagiarism are extensive and blatant . . . and yet the only reason given for exoneration of the student was lack of evidence for intent to deceive.

You've unfortunately equated justice with a conviction rather than with recognition of wrong
There are two issues with that PhD candidate (call him X)'s thesis:

Did it contain inappropriate excessive paraphrasing?
If so, is X culpable (legally/in a disciplinary sense)?

It seems you've demanded that (2.) be answered positively, and mostly ignored (1.) - so much so that you haven't even mentioned whether the investigator found that the thesis did include excessive paraphrasing.

I have been careful not to come across as a loon (between the president and his assistant, for example, I sent a mere four emails, only two of which were follow-ups saying "I haven't heard from you: can you confirm receipt?")

Perhaps, but it seems you may have come off as a revenge-seeker.

In short, I think I have responded as any rational person might in such a situation.

People are not rational; or rather, it's a problematic concept.
Many "rational" people would have behaved differently; some would not care about the excessive paraphrasing at all.

I should add I am an experienced scholar widely known in my field.

Then it reflects poorly on you to pursue this too far - regardless of whether you've been wronged or not. This, as opposed to someone whose sole significant contribution has been thus plagiarized.

My publisher did contact the student formally and threaten legal action, but, again, only if the student should publish the plagiarized text.

(Balk.)

I was told by an attorney friend there is no point involving attorneys because there is no material loss on my part.

You needed an attorney friend to tell you that?

Bottom line:

My question is: at what point should I give up seeking justice?

At this point.
You've not damaged your reputation so far, except perhaps mildly with the president and his assistant. But if you continue pursuing this - you probably will.

Your points are well taken. Before taking action I showed the passages in question to several academic colleagues in various disciplines at various US universities, and with one exception they concurred the plagiarism was serious.  Then the director of ethics at the student's university said the matter was (quote) "serious" and that I had a "strong case" for proving plagiarism and unprofessional conduct. I filed a formal complaint and, inexplicably, lost.  Up to that point I merely followed the school's procedure.  Only the appeal to the university president went beyond standard procedure.

"except perhaps mildly with the president and his assistant. But if you continue pursuing this - you probably will." I think you're right, and based on the aggregate of the replies here I think there is nothing more I can or should do.

@Grinnell: I sympathize with your predicament. There are certain offenses which are very easy to carry out, but very difficult to have the perpetrator of which made to face any consequences. While I don't see how the plagiarism is that serious, I know that if I had, I'd be extremely exasperated.

There are two kinds of plagiarism:

of ideas / scientific plagiarism (fully solved by a citation of the original work).  Buffy's answers here and on a followup question have some good insight into why this is such a big deal (e.g. for future scholars wanting to know the scientific context in which something was written).

of the wording.  Taking credit for the wording doesn't hurt the scientific value of the work (and thus is less serious), but still makes the author look like a more skilled wordsmith than they are.  (Unless they do it badly/clumsily; see @Ben's answer on the followup.)
Aside from plagiarism (taking false credit), this also violates the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights of the creator, specifically the right of attribution of your wording.   Some countries give legal weight to the moral rights of the creator beyond just the usual fixed-term / dollar-value copyright.  (And if the work was published, could also be traditional economic copyright infringement)

Citing and then slightly paraphrasing instead of quoting with quote marks implies that the idea is from the cited work, but the wording is fully original.  If that's not the case, it's a violation of the moral right of attribution of the original author for the wording, as well as plagiarism.
And if published, also becomes an issue of traditional copyright violation and suing for damages.  If that's not the case, and only the moral right of the author have been violated, I'm not clear on what if any legal penalties there might actually be.  And it's still plagiarism, which is a separate thing.
The student has violated your moral right of attribution for your wording of the explanation.  This is probably a large part of what's bothering you so much, not (just) the plagiarism.
Perhaps you didn't get anywhere when contacting people if they weren't clear you were not talking about "scientific plagiarism" (lack of citation), which is the much more serious issue that would definitely warrant contacting people up to and including the head of the university.
In hindsight you might have had better luck if you could start fresh after reading these answers, but at this point I think the ship has sailed on getting the passages actually quoted, or more fully rewritten (at least as an erratum).  Or at least an apology, which might have been all that was feasible given the restrictions on (not) modifying university archives after the fact, even to fix errors.
(I wrote the rest of this answer before looking into moral rights as something separate from copyright and plagiarism.)

Plagiarism of wording is a different kind of offence from copyright infringement: the victims are people that are tricked into being impressed by the person's ability to express ideas with words, when in fact it wasn't actually their word-crafting ability that resulted in the clear explanation found in the work they wrote.
In copyright infringement, you would be the victim, and suffer damages from someone else profiting from your creative work.  (Presumably instead of you, this is the main point of copyright law.)
Since they cite the work they're paraphrasing, they're not trying to hide the source.  Anyone who looks will see that their wording looks like yours, but yours must be the original because they cite you.

The student has done something wrong, but it's hard to find any way to say that they've wronged you directly.  Their writing doesn't diminish your reputation, it just makes you unhappy with them for trying to take advantage of your work to achieve their goal (getting a degree?) with less effort than they should have needed.  i.e. trying to cheat the system, not cheat you.
Keep that in mind when pursuing "justice".  It's obviously more personal to you when someone passes off your words as their own, with only minor rephrasing, but in terms of any academic or legal consequences this is probably not too different from pursuing a random stranger for littering in a public park.  Or maybe for running slightly inside the lines in a race (which you weren't competing in) at a sporting even.  Or pick any minor offense where society / the public is the victim.

I'm talking about plagiarism of wording like you discuss, not of ideas / scientific data / results.  Again that's similar in that the original source isn't damaged in a legal sense by the plagiarizer, but it does much more damage to science as a whole than passing off someone else's wording as your own.

To help separate plagiarism from copyright infringement, consider a case of someone trying to pass off a piece of old public-domain work as their own.
It's still plagiarism even if nobody knows who wrote the original passage.  e.g. an anonymous work, or something like a folk tale / oral tradition.
Let's take Shakespeare's writing as an example (and pretend that it wouldn't be recognized right away by someone).  They aren't harming the bard.  (Well you could imagine slight indirect harm if they end up associating Shakespeare's phrasing of something with clumsy un-enjoyable work, so people enjoy the original less when they read / hear it.)
But even if they directly harming Shakespeare's reputation, that's not what plagiarism is about: it's about taking undeserved credit.  It's not solely up to the person who's words were copied to enforce anything, it's up to anyone who notices or is made aware to call out the plagiarizer.  If the plagiarizer is working on behalf of anyone (e.g. a speechwriter), they might be fired for making the person giving the speech look bad.
(Or before publishing, up to their editors or anyone else to stop them from trying to commit accidental or intentional plagiarism.)
In your case, the people you contacted should have got the student to rewrite or actually quote the passages.  I think you've done your part by calling attention to the plagiarism.  If you want to publicly call attention to it in some way, that would be the last step that would be worth taking.  But honestly it does sound like pretty minor plagiarism, and making too much of a stink would (unfortunately) be more likely to make you look petty and vindictive in some people's eyes.

To answer your question:  "now".
You've been thoughtful in the process.  And your question is well written-rings true.  I buy that the plagiarism was blatant.
Unfortunately, it is a fact that academic "policing" can be weak in many aspects. You've done the responsible thing to bring it up.  This is better than just turning the other cheek (would bug you if you hadn't done it).  But obsessing on it, given a process has run is not worth it either.  At this point, will just distract you.
Hopefully just having the process run on the miscreant has put a scare in him.
Unless there is some serious ongoing situation of continued theft (future behavior versus you), I would not pursue it further.
The obvious ways to pursue it further are legal (expensive) or social (e.g. blog posts, Youtube videos with you reading the passages, etc.).  Personally I wouldn't bother.  Think you have done enough and the ongoing danger (of new thefts) seems low.  Also the impacts are really not that serious financially--not like plagiarism in personal training and nutrition writing.  It's not like the guy is becoming a rival to you based on his writing.  Not even in a journal.  (Note, I'm not excusing the sin.)

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text:
In what cases are you able to start a postdoc without a "conferred" PhD?
Many PhD programs only confer their degrees one, two or three times per year. If you  successfully defend and submit your dissertation after the scheduled conferral date, you must wait until the next one to get the PhD. At many of these schools you can ask for an official document that basically states that all requirements for the PhD have been successfully completed and the degree will be conferred on the next conferral date.
Do postdoctoral research positions accept this type of official document in lieu of a PhD, to begin work, if a PhD is required? Is this specific from position to position or country to country? I will be receiving a PhD in the US and looking for postdocs in either the US, Canada, Europe, Japan or Australia.
Note this question is less about applying to postdocs and more about officially starting them. In other words, assume you have accepted a post doc offer, and the job requires a PhD, would having an official letter from the University stating the dissertation is done and everyone has signed off suffice to start?

I don't think there's a general answer; it will depend on whether you impress them enough that they're willing to waive that requirement. How much will be needed to impress them will vary by school(s), by program(s), by who you have been working with and who you will be working with and what your recommendations look like and...

This also depends on what legally constitutes the end of the study in your country. Just now I am after my defense, but I will get my diploma in May. Nevertheless my study is legally finished and I am entitled to use the title by the law. Therefore the certificate from the university does not say "all requirements are completed" it really says that I finished the study and received the title "PhD".

My university offered that if I needed the PhD before the next ceremony (or couldn't attend), I could a) have certified copies or b) get it without ceremony. On the other hand, I have been on postdoc positions (both regarding responsibilities and salary) for several years before. Depends quite a bit on negotiations and whether the institute is convinced they want you, and that you will nicely do the job etc, last but not least also on the local culture (whether negotiations are possible at all).

I agree that you would have to ask each individual department to know for sure.  However, I would say that if you have completed all the requirements (including a successful dissertation defense), you have an official letter to that effect, and the delay before the conferral of the degree is beyond your control, then it would be pretty unreasonable for a department to refuse to let you start a postdoc on those grounds.  Of course, unreasonable policies do exist.

One slightly more likely possibility is that you might have to start with a different job title, and lower salary, until your degree is officially conferred.

I defended in June, started my postdoc in August, and my degree was issued in October.  My PhD advisor told me, due to scheduling, he didn't even defend until after he'd started his postdoc.  As others have said, contact the postdoctoral institution.  I suspect the most important detail for them is that you will have defended your thesis (successfully) before showing up.

Most postdoc offers come with the condition that the candidate will have a PhD by the time that they start the job.  In many cases showing the PhD is part of the initial paperwork.
If you want to start a postdoc with a document saying that all requirements have been met and the degree will be formally conferred at such and such a date, I think the only way to proceed is to ask the institution whether this will be acceptable.  I don't think you can predict the answer by looking through the nuances of the job ad.
I was once asked by someone who had accepted a postdoc offer at my university (UGA) whether or not she could start the position with such a document.  She came from an institution that only formally conferred degrees once a year.  From my perspective, the key point is that I had no idea what the answer was, but I brought it up with my colleagues and the department head, it went further up in the university, and the answer came back: OK, so long as all requirements have been met.  (In the end the candidate decided to push harder and actually get the degree awarded in the summer before arrival.)
I have also seen a postdoc -- at a very prestigious American university -- started by someone who had not written her thesis by the time of arrival.  The next semester she accepted a second, semester-long postdoctoral position and only around the end of the spring semester did I learn that she was still writing up her thesis.  (It worked out fine for her, and today she is a well-known strong person in the field.)  The idea of starting a postdoc before completing your thesis is one of those things that would simply never have occurred to me, but apparently it happens.  As with most things, having a very influential advisor couldn't hurt.
(My understanding is that in the humanities, it is relatively common for someone to start a tenure-track job without a PhD.  They are then given a certain amount of time to complete their PhD while simultaneously navigating all the difficulties of their new job.  This practice -- which is almost begging for trouble, in my opinion, and most of the stories I have heard that start this way end badly -- is all but unheard of in mathematics, because there is usually a postdoc done in between.  You should probably have a PhD by the time you finish your postdoc!)
Moral: you really need to ask.
Let me end with a remark which leans towards the obvious: nothing is for sure until it happens, but if you have some specific reason to doubt that you'll have a PhD by the start time of a postdoc, you should bring that up ASAP and ideally before you accept the position in the first place.  In the current job market, there is no lack of qualified candidates with PhD in hand.

Agreed. There are many people in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who start TT jobs without finishing their dissertations. This puts them at a severe disadvantage at tenure-time because they essentially have less time on the clock compared to their peers who came dissertation on hand.

"In mathematics... there is usually a postdoc done in between": at least, for those going to R1 tenure-track positions.  Math departments at institutions with lower research activity very often make tenure-track hires straight out of grad school.

If the postdoc requires "degree in hand" by a certain date, then there's little flexibility. The actual degree must be conferred by the university.
That being said, a good number of postdocs instead require that all of the requirements for the PhD be completed before a certain date. This usually means that that the dissertation has been deposited, if not defended.  On the extreme end of flexibility, some will simply take the word of the dissertation advisor that the dissertation will be finished by the start date.
Some postdocs will even allow you to start without a degree in hand if all of the requirements for the degree have been satisfied. Some will be satisfied with a letter from the advisor, others will require a letter from the registrar. How strict they will be may be correlated to how many times they've been burned in the past with non-completers.
I don't think there are stats are on how many postdocs (and in which fields) are strict vs. flexible. What I think you'll find is that once a flexible department has been burned by a "postdoc" who never finished their PhD, then they shift to being more strict.
tl;dr: Ask the postdoc program if they are willing to be flexible and if so, which documentation they require.

The "all requirements have been completed" letter should be pretty solid burn insurance, as the candidate doesn't actually have to do anything else to receive the degree. I think such a letter would normally imply that the thesis is completed, defended, and approved by everyone.

The problem is that committees usually evaluate postdoc proposals in March so we get "all requirements will be completed by June/July/August" letters. Unfortunately, they aren't always. Sometimes the advisor is being optimistic, sometimes the student suffers a major fail and just can't finish the last 10% of the dissertation.

Certainly, but I don't think that is what this question is asking (an edit has clarified it). The applicant here is already past the point you describe - the committee has decided and the applicant has an offer in hand, contingent on finishing the degree by the start date. The question is whether the "have been completed" letter is enough by the start date.

@NateEldredge No one can answer that question except for the folks managing that specific postdoc. I added material to my answer noting various contingencies.

@RoboKaren Yep, I can't imagine a department has ever been burned with a letter from the registrar. However, I can imagine departments being burned with a letter from the advisor/committee/department. In case you are interested in the outcome you can see my answer +1 btw.

"Some postdocs will even allow you to start without a degree"  I suspect it is actually "nearly all"

I, the question asker, ended up accepting a postdoc in Australia. The University offered me to start the postdoc without the degree, but at a slightly lower salary (which would then be raised once I had the official degree). I countered by saying that I was willing to wait a couple of months to start the postdoc with the degree, to get two years at the advertised salary and have some time off. The job ad said the start date was negotiable. The University then gave in; they let me start right away anyway, at the advertised salary, without the degree, as the PI really wanted me to start ASAP. Later I found out the rules which hold pretty much universally in Australia. At Australian Universities, you are allowed to start a postdoc without the degree in hand. Australian Universities have a minimum wage for someone with an official PhD. Therefore, Australian universities are allowed to pay you less than the advertised postdoc wage if you don't officially have the degree, and some PIs/Universities will try to get away with this if they can, to save money. However, they are not forced to pay you a lower wage, so you can negotiate to get the advertised wage. Just thought I'd post a follow-up answer in my specific context.
You might wonder, why do Australian Universities allow you to start without the degree. One of the big reasons is that Australian dissertations go through a form of peer-review by people external to the University (rather than just the thesis committee and a department chair/impartial rep). You can imagine all the delays this could create. Therefore, to avoid having all PhD candidates being unemployed for months/years while their theses go through peer review (and foreign students immediately being deported!) it is generally seen as fine by PIs to start a postdoc as long as the thesis has been submitted for external peer-review. Most PIs will want the thesis written so they aren't working too much on their thesis while doing their postdoc.

"Australian Universities have a minimum wage for someone with an official PhD." Is that an Award wage, or something they negotiated with unions? (For non-Australians, Award wages are the legal minimum wage, and vary depending on industry, job, and level of education and experience.)

@nick012000 yes I believe it is National Tertiary Education Union negotiated, but there are only 30 or so universities in Australia so they all cooperate with the national union.

In the UK it is common to begin a "post-doc" while still working on your PhD  - my funding stopped after 3.5 years. I then did a 6-month 'postdoc', and began a second 'postdoc' while finishing my PhD and submitting it.
There is an expectation that you are still working towards your PhD, and you will often receive a lower salary until you have your PhD.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

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


text:
How to motivate speakers to give less specialized talks at a "colloquium?"
Our applied math department is beginning to have a serious attendance problem at our colloquium. The appropriate level for our colloquium is that any person with an undergraduate degree in a quantitative/theoretical field should be able to follow the talk as long as they are paying close attention.
In an invitation letter to our speakers, who are mostly faculty members at other Universities in a variety of fields but also include some faculty at our university, we say

"Your talk should be entirely self contained. You can assume the audience is mathematically mature and has a solid understanding of undergraduate real analysis and linear algebra but do not assume any prior knowledge in physics, biology or more specialized mathematics. Of course feel free to talk about such topics, just be sure to explain all basic concepts needed to follow the rest of the presentation as soon as they come up."

Despite this warning, speakers go on, as usual, giving seminar level talks. Graduate students and the few advanced undergraduates that used to attend have basically stopped attending, which looks bad on our department, and lowers graduate student morale. Note the target audience is not undergrads. The target audience is first year grad students (and up) and faculty from many different quantitative fields.
I think part of the problem is that speakers assume applied math means "The math done in my field of research". They don't understand despite us linking to our graduate student's list of research interests in the email that applied math is extremely broad. Some researchers will have never taken probability theory or optimization and some who work in theoretical computer science haven't studied a differential equation since their sophomore years of college. And science backgrounds outside of math will be even broader.
Besides adding the request in our email, that the talk not be too technical, is there anyway to prevent speakers from giving talks that are too specialized or advanced?

Maybe part of the problem is calling it a "colloquium", which generally implies that the intended audience is faculty and advanced grad students.  You say you want the intended audience to be someone with an undergrad degree; your quoted passage sounds more like it describes third- or fourth-year undergraduates.  So maybe you should begin pitching it as an undergraduate colloquium.  Of course, it's possible you will find fewer speakers willing to try to describe their work to an (effectively) undergraduate audience.

But what I'm saying is, the knowledge that you want your speakers to assume is the knowledge that a good third-year undergraduate in mathematics (not yet graduated) would have, or less.

@NateEldredge that is not "generally implied." It is common that a colloquium means the audience is "the whole department," at least in theory, not just advanced grads and faculty. Typically this means a few very advanced undergrads, most of the grad students, and most of the faculty. Of course, due to the problem I describe colloquia often "turn into" only being for faculty and advanced grad students. Perhaps what you mean by generally implies is "in practice". Of course in pure mathematics the letter would have stronger math prerequisites, but this is not a math department.

I don't even understand the title for some of the colloquium talks in our physics department, which covers theoretical astrophysics, particle physics, biophysics, atmospheric physics, and climate science.

One important thing to do is to be more choosey about inviting speakers who you know are capable of presenting to a broad audience.  Some people will never give an accessible talk, no matter what you do.  Others are good at speaking to a broad audience.  Some good ways to find such speakers:

People who do cross-disciplinary work are often really good at this, since they are generally used to speaking to non-specialists (i.e., people who are specialists in the other disciplines that they work with).
Look for people who have recent survey publications which are broadly accessible, or who have had recent articles or other publications in the popular media.
If you go to conferences and workshops, look for people who give accessible talks, even to a specialist audience.  The best speakers will always frame their work accessibly, even when the meat of it is extremely specialized.

Once you have invited a speaker, make the speaker give you a full abstract, as well as a title.  If the abstract is getting too technical, it's a bad sign for the talk.  Send it back with request for revision to attract a broader audience.  This can help people adjust expectations, though you can never prevent a speaker from speaking badly once they've begun.
If you feel brave, you might even explicitly challenge your speakers more in the information that you send them.  My favorite series that I have ever been involved in organizing was the "Seminar on Dangerous Ideas" that I helped create when I was a graduate student, and which ran for about five years.  This seminar was really trying to push people outside the box, and one of the ways we did it was to ask the speakers to address "the five questions",  which included things like "Why should I fear your research?" and "What should I tell my mom about it?"  Many of the best talks that I have ever heard were in this series, because the challenges that we gave were able to create an atmosphere in which academics felt safe to say things they otherwise would not.
You'll also need to work to revive your existing seminar series.  A good way to do that is to line up several speakers in a row who you are certain will have broad appeal and be able to give a good talk.

Dangerous ideas is superb! I will try to steal it, let's see if it condenses.
So, the format is, a speaker presents a talk answering the five questions, and then there is a free discussion?

@Davidmh Please do!  As for the format: it was pretty free-form.  We gave that as a starting point, encouraged people to view that as inspiration rather than requirements, and speakers took it in a lot of different directions.  Some talks had a lot of discussion - others not so much.  We also encouraged the audience to ask questions during the talk, rather than waiting to the end.

I think there are a couple of layers to the problem:

The wording of your request to the speaker could be more clear. You should be very specific that you encourage graduate students to attend the department talks, so please keep the talk accessible for non-experts.
Some of the speakers may not be prepared or able to give a (I presume 30 to 50 minute long) "popular science" style talk on their current research. Some things are much more difficult to distil than others. Either that, or (donning my Hat of Cynicism) they're ignoring your request because they don't want to write a whole new presentation or they didn't read the email properly.

Perhaps you could ask the guest directly if they are able to distil their research down to a talk that is appropriate for a grad student not familiar with the field. If they decline, make it clear in the talk invitation that it is a specialized presentation. If the speaker agrees to do this, you should explicitly tell your grad students that the talk should be accessible for them. This will avoid them feeling as if they wasted their time attending high-level talks, thus they'll be more likely to attend the others.

My question may have been originally unclear. Can you edit your answer so it matches the fact that the target audience is not undergrads.

I would suggest saying in the invitation "The appropriate level for our colloquium is that any person with an undergraduate degree in a quantitative/theoretical field should be able to follow the talk as long as they are paying close attention. The target audience is first year grad students (and up) and academics in many different quantitative fields". I don't know what it means for a talk to be entirely self-contained, and that kind of wording encourages the inference that this is supposed to be a general public lecture -- then the remainder of the guideline shows how that's not so. Therefore I would expand on what the first sentence means.
I take it the problem is not that the talks are at too low a level, but rather they are at too high a level. Saying that "the audience is mathematically mature" may encourage reaching too high -- I tend to think of ABD grads and faculty as being "mature" in a discipline. If the problem is that speakers are interjecting arcana from physics or biology or unrelated areas of math, then you need to strengthen the "do not assume" clause. Make it a sentence on its own, and elaborate.

In this case, Wiki's characterization of "mathematical maturity" is very naive. (I'm not only being cute...) It's more about things like the pre-rigorous/rigorous/post-rigorous phases popularized by Terry Tao, for example.

@paulgarrett I really love Terry Tao's phrases "pre-rigorous/rigorous/post-rigorous", however, wikipedia's definition, of mathematical maturity paraphrased as comfortable with abstraction is how it is most commonly used. For example, see this matheducators.stackaexchange question http://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/1403/how-to-convey-the-meaning-of-mathematical-maturity

@WetLabStudent, I agree, that's how the phrase is often used, but my point is that it misses the mark, especially RE peoples' self-assessments. And, anyway, declaring that the prereqs are this-or-that doesn't magically make it so, either.

@paulgarrett yes, I think we agree on that.


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What should I do if I want to withdraw my paper from a journal but they ignore my request?
I submitted my paper seven months ago and it is still under review. I sent several emails to the handling editor but I didn't get any response except every time I sent an email the status date was changed. So I decided to withdraw my paper from journal and I have written a letter to the editor-in-chief  but he didn't reply except the status date was changed again! What should I do now?

One possibility to put this to an end would be to submit to another journal by an e-mail where you would explain the situation (the paper has been submitted elsewhere, you withdrew it when you realized it was not handled properly, and you got no acknowledgment of this withdrawal), and with a CC to the editor-in-chief of the first journal. That way, the editors of the new journal would know for certain that you withdrew before submitting again, and you would be covered from possible accusations by the first journal. However this corners the first journal in a difficult situation, so it might make them react violently; I would warn them before hand, and only use this as a last recourse.
You can also try to get advice and help from a senior in your field, who will know the editors and might help smooth things out.
A third possibility would be to contact a relevant committee in an academic society (EMS has an ethics committee that could be contacted about a publication in a math journal for example).

I should add we resubmitted the paper to the journal. the first time the process of reviewing the paper was less than 2 months and then editor advised us to revise  our paper according the reviewers comment and then submit to the journal. we did all that staff but  after more than 7 months we have not got any response.

If you have resubmitted after review, then the paper is going back to the original reviewers. I would hesitate to submit it elsewhere. Have you checked your spam folder for possible replies? Have you called the editor-in-chief at his or her institution during posted office hours? I would still contact Elsevier, documenting all attempts to contact the editor-in-chief. They need to put pressure on the editor-in-chief, or install a new one.

Debora,  I  have checked my spam folder too. Indeed they replied me only by changing the status date. No I haven' called the editor- in -chief yet. yesterday I sent an email to  the Editorial office  in which I explained  all stuffs.  As you know ,  many of Elsevier journals have an option as a  "send e-mail". So I used this option to contact with editors as a result  I don't have any  sent email!

Among your three possibilities, I think the second may work to me  ! As I said, I've resubmitted the paper and so I know  the first  handling  editor  who advised me to resubmit the paper. But I was wondering whether it is good to contact him. Since I am pretty sure the current handling editor is not him!

The handling editor is the wrong person to chase about this - if they want to withdraw your paper they can, of course, but if they are inactive (which would also explain why your paper is not getting reviewed) then chasing them doesn't do anything. Nobody else will notice, either. The best person to ask is the editorial office. The editorial office 1) works full time 2) sees all activity by all editors, thereby knowing who is active and who is not and 3) knows who to redirect your query to.
If the editorial office is inactive too I'd suggest writing something like "If I don't hear from you by X date, I will assume my paper is withdrawn". Then if X date comes and goes, you can just submit the paper somewhere else.