text:
Is it ethical to force graduate applicants to decide before they hear back from all schools?
I have applied to and been offered admissions to a masters program in a U.S. university, but I'm still waiting to hear back from some other places. The deadline to accept is before the 4/15 national deadline for funded graduate programs (as the program I've been accepted to is not funded).
I've expressed my situation and my concerns, and my intent to enroll in the program unless I am offered admission to a funded program. However, the admissions staff claims that what I'm suggesting (withdrawing my acceptance at a later date) is unethical, and that I must commit to or decline the offer from their program by their deadline. There were also unwilling to give an extension.
While I understand that it's not good to cancel on anyone in any case, I feel that I am not acting unethically this way, and that actually they're acting unethically on their part! If I understand correctly, they likely do have a waitlist of some kind and still can offer my place to another students even if I withdraw. However, if I decline their offer, there is no way for me to change my mind!
So, is it ethical to make students make a decision before they've even heard back from all places they have applied to? If the admissions staff are not willing to change their mind, what can I do besides withdrawing from their acceptance at a later date anyway?

Ethics aside, there may be financial complications for you if accept the offer of admission and then decline.  In particular, you may have to pay a deposit upon accepting admission into the program or you may have to enter into an agreement under which you could be billed later for tuition even if you withdrew before the start of classes.  You should very carefully read the acceptance letter to look for such issues.

Was information about when offers would go out and the time limit to accept offers available to you before you applied to the program?

I think this is going into opinion-based territory, which is discouraged on Stack Exchange: the goal is questions and answers that can in some sense be "objectively" correct.  For [tag:ethics] questions, I think we usually address this by answering based on the consensus of the academic community, if any, rather than on the poster's personal ethics.  But in this case, since the practice you describe is pretty much universal, it's already clear where the community consensus is.

Just for perspective, I'd note that on the regular job market, you get an offer and a (short) deadline to take it or leave it.  You wouldn't expect a prospective employer to help make sure you have the chance to consider every other possible opportunity; indeed, it's likely better for the employer if you don't.  Nobody bats an eye at this.

@BrianBorchers No, and that's partly why I felt a bit outraged...

Have you communicated your deadline conflict with the funded program?  At this point, at least a few of their admission offers have been declined; they may be willing to either offer you admission now, or let you know that your chances are slim.

I am always confused about this "ethical" in such questions. Administration runs via (published and ideally logically consistent) laws and then rules (based on the laws). There is no space for ethical considerations in administrative issues.

@R_Berger There is ample space for ethical consideration in setting up the rules/policies.  In particular, at least in the US, the people who set policy about admission deadlines are faculty.  (Also: laws can require unethical behavior.)

@NateEldredge In the job market case, top universities do band together to protect their students: no employer with a booth at the Yale job fair, for instance, can have "exploding" (time-limited) offers or force people to accept before a certain date. This is probably how the national deadline for accepting places in funded graduate programs was created, as well. I think this poster's problem might be a reasonable one for schools to band together and create a policy on, as well.

Don't overthink this. Accept the position. Then ditch if you get something else. You are talking 4 years of your life. You only get one life. They have new students like yearly mayflies. Obviously, they know there is a bit of a matching dance going on (in some systems like med schools, it's even systematized). If you bail, they will find someone else. It won't get noticed or affect your future reputation or anything like that.

@NateEldredge: I've also seen people join a workplace, and then leave after three days or a week when a better offer came though.

The April 15 Resolution technically applies only to offers of financial support, not to offers of admission. There’s no clear-cut rule saying a school can’t require an early answer for admissions, saying it’s unethical to do so is a difficult claim to make. To my mind, it’s definitely poor form and suggests that the program is either (a) quite prestigious and doesn’t need to worry too much about yield or (b) rather noncompetitive and desperate for enrollees, but they’re risking rejections as well with the hardline approach they’re taking. (Funny how extreme cases in different directions can take the same approach!)
However, given that the program in question is unfunded, it's completely unreasonable for them to expect you to commit irrevocably to an offer of admission, particularly since they are effectively not committing any additional resources to offer you admission. I would thus feel no moral qualms whatsoever in withdrawing my acceptance if another, funded program were to make an offer before the April 15 deadline.

This does not answer the question, which was about the ethics of the school's actions, not the student's actions.

@Magicsowon - That would make an interesting question, if it hasn't been asked yet.

@Magicsowon Perhaps in the US, but that’s certainly not the case in Europe, for instance.

@AnonymousPhysicist I disagree. I completed my masters by paying my own tuition while I took 1 class a semester because I worked full-time at a well-paid job.  I was probably helping to fund other grad-students who had a much higher need for that support.

Ethical for them to have this deadline. Also ethical for you to cancel the acceptance of an unsupported position if you later get an offer for a supported position elsewhere. Doing this would burn bridges only between you and the admissions folks (not professors) but keep in mind they have backup students waitlisted to account for cancellations.

... or at least they say they do....

@aparente001 My medical school even kept the wait list active after classes started, and when we had one person drop out within the first 24 hours of the start of the semester they filled that spot by the end of the week with the person who became our class president. I'm sure other graduate schools have similar contingency plans since the loss of even one student can be a significant financial hit to the school, but this financial justification raises numerous other ethical issues.

@RudyB - I'm not following.  Are you talking about numerous other ethical issues in the case of a coordinated decision deadline?  Or in the uncoordinated case, which OP is facing?  Or in the case of the example of your medical school which invited a back-up person on Day 2 of the semester? // I'll explain my comment:  I've noticed that sometimes the most aggressive behavior is just a front.

I'm not even sure this would burn bridges, given the reason for cancellation.

I have another perspective on this. They are well aware of what they are asking for and the implications for the students. In fact it seems obvious that they are deliberatly forcing an early decision for that very reason. My question then becomes, if they are acting this way now how will they act after the students have enrolled? Is that really a school that seems like they are putting the quality of the education first or are they more likely to squeeze as much money from you as possible? If you have to ask if your prospective school behaves ethically at the first contact I would be very sceptical to their entire business. Granted, I'm from a country where all education are free so YMMV.

Interesting point, sbi.  Welcome to the site!

Yes, I agree that this sounds like the program is coercive. The other possibility is that this program rarely has people applying to both their program and funded programs, which would signal it is perhaps of different quality than expected. (Or this is just how they've always done it and they still get enough students enrolling that no one has bothered to change it.)

To your surprise perhaps, the program in question is pretty famous & prestigious in my field (although, having asked this question, I would rather not reveal what my field is).

Hmm... At top universities, Masters programs are often treated like cash cows, I believe. They often provide revenue that helps fund doctoral programs. And I doubt a faculty member would hold it against you that you did something rational for your academic career.

This does not answer the question, which was about whether the school's actions are ethical, not whether it is advisable to enroll in their program or general advice about what the poster should do.

I concur with the other answers that for an unfunded program there is no ethical issue for you withdrawing if you obtain a funded position, although you will definitely burn bridges as noted. However, there may be complicating circumstances.
In my case, I applied to schools A, B, and C. All three were a part of the same university system but different locations and aside from the overarching administrative structure the schools considered themselves relatively independent of each other. My first choice was school A. I interviewed at all three and first received an acceptance from school C, my last choice. I had seven days to respond, and accepting their offer of admission would automatically withdraw my applications at schools A and B. Within that time period I received an acceptance from school B and an offer of a small scholarship from the overarching university, transferable to any of the schools to which I had applied. I politely declined school C, but again I had only seven days to accept or reject school B's offer. As before, accepting the offer would have withdrawn my application to school A, my first choice. In the end, I declined school B also, prior to receiving an acceptance from school A, but I definitely do not recommend that strategy without thorough analysis of the risks.

I'm not sure how your second paragraph is relevant to the question.

It is relevant if the person is applying to multiple schools within one state university system. I'm just trying to illustrate that the strategy of accepting your first offer may limit your ability to gain admission to your preferred program.

This does not answer the question, which was about the ethics of the school's actions, not the student's actions.

I am not saying that my answer is the answer to the question, but I am saying that it is relevant to consider the student's perspective in different circumstances, that actions by the school may severely limit future choices by the prospective student. I gambled, won, and earned my doctoral degree, but there was a possibility that I would have proverbially shot myself in the foot by my actions. You have the ability to agree with me and upvote "this answer is useful" or disagree and downvote "this answer is not useful".

@RudyB - Actually, OP's question appears to be whether the school is behaving ethically.  Many answers got sucked into a related but unasked question of what would be the ethical thing for OP to do....

There are no rules or standards, so they can set their deadlines however they like.
However, they cannot tell you that accepting and then withdrawing is unethical---the lack of established rules applies the same way. This is especially true if, as I suspect, they are discouraging that behavior for their own convenience.
If that statement was driven primarily by their own interests, it is disingenuous or deceitful---and therefore unethical.
So, overall, I would say that the deadline itself is not a problem, but they crossed the line when they insisted that you cannot withdraw.

I have nothing to add to the ethical discussion of other commentators.  However, if you want to get a better understanding of why these short-deadlines occur, and the 'game theory' behind them, it is worth reading some of the works of the mathematical-economist Prof Alvin Roth.  He has written a book about this, and there is also a video of him talking about the subject.

TL;DR: "What else can you do...?" Ask admissions officers at schools you're waiting on so you might get more information. There may also be value in asking faculty you know well.
I make the assumption that faculty at that masters program would have little power/incentive to change the commitment deadline for the OP in this case; any comments with evidence for or against this assumption would be useful.

You have two pressing questions: is what they are doing ethical, and what can you do? (I now address the ethical question at the end.)
Since that program does not want to budge, you could politely inquire of one of the programs you are waiting to hear from. If you explain this situation, saying that you take a commitment to a school seriously, they may be able to address whether you still have a reasonable chance of admission to their school this year and/or whether you are likely to hear a decision by the masters program's deadline.
Because of the April 15 Resolution, the other admissions offices are probably not bombarded with these questions (I assume). An administrator would probably feel free to say that they cannot answer the question if they do not want to or cannot answer. This approach is unlikely to yield a definitive answer unless there is a yes or a no they are about to send out, but it might give you more information before you send a deposit.
If you have a good relationship with a faculty contact at a school you're waiting to hear from (e.g. a recommender or someone you have extensively talked with about potentially working with them), you could explain the situation and ask if they have any advice. You may get no response (faculty are busy), generic advice (such as you're getting on this site), or advice with inside info ("Well, you're near the top of our list..." or "This was a strong class of applicants this year, so it would take a lot of luck for this to happen..." or "We're really not sure yet what our class will look like, and we don't usually know further until much closer to April 15.").
Unless you have an extremely good relationship with a faculty contact at this unfunded masters program (for instance, they were your undergrad advisor as well), it would probably do little good to ask advice of a faculty member there. You'd be questioning your commitment to their program (which would not be a great way to start a relationship with someone there if you do attend). Faculty may have little control over the present workings of the administrative process, and/or changing the rules for you might set a precedent that harms their program.

Ethics:
I believe I'm in agreement with the other posters on what your course of action should be, though everyone phrases it slightly differently. If you do not have all your information, it is OK to accept the offer but back out later. It's within the school's rights to demand whatever they want, as they are not bound by the agreement for funded graduate programs, but that their demands are somewhat coercive toward someone in your position and that it would be best (though beyond what is ethically required of them) to give you more time. (Especially so because they did not make this timing conflict clear when you applied.) Given the existence of a deposit payment, you are not obligated to remain enrolled if a far more beneficial offer comes along: they have made this a financial obligation on top of/rather than one of honor. (In the U.S. mortgage crisis, the people who were worst off were those who felt morally obligated to continue payments on their "underwater" mortgages, while more financially savvy people cut their losses and walked away.)


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What incentives do academics have to write text books?
As noted in this question, academics should write research articles. In many fields, these are way more important than books. It's original research that counts for getting a PhD position, a post-doc, a tenure-track position, grants, etcetera. Writing a good textbook about an advanced subject is very difficult and very time-consuming. Its advanced nature means it won't sell many copies, so the money can't be much. Then why is anybody writing advanced scientific textbooks at all? What are the incentives?

cough vanity.

There are very very different motivations for publishing monographs, or editing collections, to publishing textbooks.  Monographs are the mode of choice for the publication of a considerable volume of scholarly humanities work, for example.  In fields like History, Continental Philosophy, Literary or Film criticism, the monograph is capable of sharing major original contributions to scholarly knowledge in the way that a braided chain of papers can't.  In these fields the monograph (or equivalent) is the publication requirement for appointment.

Another reason to write an advanced text is that you have developed a body of research around a topic, and it's stabilized enough that you can present the material in a structured form. The incentive here is that the distilled understanding helps you understand your field, and it helps others work in the area as well. In addition, a well-written book can get you lots of citations, impact, and recognition (the same kinds of things you get with papers, but possibly even more).

As Gian-Carlo Rota put it, "You Are More Likely to Be Remembered by Your Expository Work" http://www.math.osu.edu/~nevai.1/MYMATH/rota_ams_notices_01_97.html

I think only very few people become famous through their textbooks.

Who said anything about fame :) ? But seriously, I said recognition, not fame. In large fields (math and bio come to mind), surveys/monographs play a very important role in synthesizing literature and presenting it to a wider audience.

As someone who is working on an advanced textbook, I've had to ask myself that question. It's certainly not for the money (which I expect will be not nearly enough recompense for the time spent working on it). Here are the answers:

Citations: Not a big factor for me, since I expect citations to my book will displace a lot of citations for my older papers and shorter expository work on the subject, but as other people have noted, for a lot of people it is an important factor.  A book that becomes the "standard reference" for a topic can garner huge numbers of citations.  (Also true of review articles.)
Creating a textbook: It can serve as a textbook for a class I have taught before and may well teach again.  This is a class for which there is no existing good textbook.  In this sense, for a big investment of time now I make my life easier in the future by creating a good resource for students taking my class.
New research ideas: Writing it presents an opportunity to organize my thoughts about the field, and to go through and find and fill holes -- or just things I think haven't been done the right way -- in the existing literature.  In this respect, it is an extension of my existing research program and inspires new research to fill the holes that I find.
Understanding existing literature: Writing the book also provides a good incentive for me to go back and understand other peoples' results that I think should be included in the book.  There's one paper in particular which is important, but very difficult to understand, and I've put off making the effort to figure it out for many years.  The book provides an additional motivation to actually do it, and furthermore make it accessible to others as well.
Teaching new people about my field: This is partially altruism and partially self-interested. The altruism part is probably self-explanatory.  The self-interest part is that if I can provide a good introduction to the field, I may convince more people to work on an area I am interested in, and furthermore can get them to think about it in the ways I like.

Just one or two of these reasons would probably not be enough by itself, but the combination makes it, I think, a good use of my time.  I've written these answers as they apply to me, but I think the same mix of reasons, with different weightings, apply to other people who write advanced textbooks.

People around me that wrote a textbook almost always do that because they want to share the course material they developed for, say, an introduction to hydrology course. They are proud of the material, and feel that the specific approach their material takes is not yet represented in the current textbooks. So, I think for a lot of people they feel it is a significant addition to their field. Mind that these almost always already have tenure.
In addition, in the German system there is an additional reason to write a book. Writing a book  (or monograph) is one option to get your habilitation. This is an additional step to take in addition to a PhD thesis, often written with at least 10 years of experience.

AFAIK, no, a book is not strictly required for habilitation in Germany. Maybe in humanities, but not in fields, such as computer science, at least not everywhere. Unless you mean that publication of the Habilitationsschrift must be as a book with an ISBN, etc. But that is the case also for any dissertation. You definitely do not have to author a monograph, or a textbook to pass the habilitation procedure.

In Serbia it is certainly necessary to write two books to go all the way up the academic ladder. Mostly people write one textbook and one monograph. In any case, the concept of writing a book as a necessity exists, and a textbook is the natural solution for many.

@Ana: yes, you are right. Such requirements exist for instance also in Slovakia. But how useless most of those books are... For a country with 5M residents, there might be 10 people to be interested in such a monograph - and most of them really are published in the local language. What a waste.

@walkmanyi - a waste indeed.

In the Wiki page for Richard Feynman,

Feynman has been called the "Great Explainer". He gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. His guiding principle was that, if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not yet fully understood. Feynman gained great pleasure from coming up with such a "freshman-level" explanation.

My undergrad major is math. Among all the mathematicians, the ones I remember most (good and bad) are the authors of the math textbooks I used in college.
As for the more advanced scientific textbooks, I believe that the efforts putting all the research results together and organizing them are no less valuable than the individual articles.

One case is where you already have the material (course notes, material you gathered from organizing a tutorial on a topic, etc): publishing it as a book used to make it widely available, a lot more than photocopies. Now, with the advent of the WWW, printed books might be less relevant for diffusion, however.
Another incentive, in case you don't have the material ready, might be the same as for writing reviews: if your book is successful, it will be highly cited and enhances your status in your field. Also, you can try to imprint your own ideas and vision for the field in the next generation of researchers.

While this SE website mostly attracts people from more technical and scientific fields which progress through research articles, there are whole areas of academia where the first question that comes up to junior faculty is, "So, what is your book about?". In social sciences (at least in the less technical programs) and humanities, you are expected to publish your dissertation work as a book, so by the time you go for tenure, you need to have at least one, better two -- another one based on your more recent work (which, by the way, is called scholarship, rather then research). You can easily tell by looking at the CVs of professors in say sociology whether they are in a research department or scholarship department: the former list papers first on their CVs, while the latter put books first (and may not have any papers at all).
Having said that, in the technical fields, it is often valuable to have the material summarized in one source, sometimes even for your own reference. That's how some of the advanced textbooks are formed. Some books are produced as edited collections of invited papers from a specialized topic conference, and it may have been a part of the grant funding that you, as the conference organizer, promised to the funding agency, so that your results are disseminated as widely as possible to the people who could not make it to the conference. (Other people mentioned other obvious ways for the books to shape up, mostly from lecture notes.)
A lot of books are written on sabbaticals, when top folks move away from the daily routine and can concentrate on what they enjoy most: playing in their dirt, moving around their Greek letters and integral signs around, etc. Publishers often approach high profile people and suggest to send their books to them; even I get these generic emails from Wiley or CRC or Springer from time to time. Of course, for publishers that's their business and a way to generate money; I don't think the authors are compensated even remotely enough for the trouble of writing a book. At my consulting rate, writing a book is an undertaking worth a new BMW X5; if somebody else is paying for that, as is the case with sabbatical professors, then this may be an entirely different business :).
If your own field moves through research papers, then you simply won't have the time to work on any books, unless this has been discussed with your chair and faculty, and everybody unanimously agreed that you are so good and so famous in your subfield as to afford spending a whole year away from the programmatic research writing a stupid book.

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Six-month post-doc on J-1 Research scholar visa, can one apply for another J-1 if physically departing before end of contract?
Someone I know (nationality French) has accepted a six-month post-doctoral fellowship in the United States. The hosting institute will sponsor a J-1 visa; my understanding is that J-1 visas are much quicker to process than H-1B visas, and since she should start as soon as possible, they opt for J-1. A J-1 Research Scholar visa has the following limitations:

Professor and Research Scholars must:
(...)
Not have participated in a J-Visa program for all or part of the 12-month period immediately preceding the start date of a professor or research scholar program unless they meet one of the following exceptions:
(...)
The participant's prior physical presence in the U.S. on a J-visa program was less than six months in duration

If she physically leaves the United States one week before the end of her contract (having been in the US for 5 months, 3 weeks), for example to attend a conference in Europe or for working from home, can she still apply for a new post-doctoral fellowship (NB: I'm not talking about an extension of the existing post-doc) at a new J-1 research scholar visa, or will a H-1B visa be the only route still accessible for a new post-doc?

As a person who have gone through enough visa paperwork, I have to say that the only valid answer to that question is what the person in question will get from the non-immigrant visa department of the U.S. Embassy. Any other answer will most likely be irrelevant when/if it turns out that the embassy thinks different from whatever answer(s) you might get here (or anywhere else for that matter).

Yale University has a very nice explanatory page for those 12 and 24-month rules, which are more complicated than the excerpts you quote:

This seems to contradict your quote. Note that it says specifically “for any amount of time (one day to five years)”.

Oh, right; I missed to quote an earlier part Not have participated in and completed a professor or research scholar program within the last 24 months preceding the beginning date of their new program’s commencement. I guess my quote relates to J-1 visas that are not Research Scholar visas...

I have been in that situation with a short-term visiting scholar and I could get a new J-1 but I had to leave the country and apply for a new visa. Maybe it might have been possible to transfer the SEVIS fee to the new visa without paying it again.

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How hard do early-career academics in the United States work, really?
I'm finishing a PhD in Sweden this year and seeking a post-doc in the United States (atmospheric remote sensing).  It is clear that a job in academia is not a nine to five job; nor do I want it to be.  I often work late in the evening when I'm on a productive spur.  When an important dead-line is coming up, one needs to work harder, and there is no overtime paid.  I accept that.  However, no matter how much I'm interested in my research, I do enjoy and need a reasonable amount of spare time, too; relaxing on the weekends, occasionally a long weekend away, and sometimes a longer trip, such as three weeks in the wilderness.
Regarding the normal work ethos for early-career academics in the United States, I have a hard time judging what is normal and what is excessive.  Some examples:

Erick Carreira letter warning post-docs that he expects all of the members of the group to work evenings and weekends.
My apparent naïveté in believing that a sabbatical means not working, despite Wikipedia describing it as a rest from work, or a hiatus, often lasting from two months to a year.  I was thinking of my friend, who spent a year between his PhD and his first post-doc travelling from France to Mongolia mostly on foot.
Someone commenting I am not a good role model, but when I don't work on a Sunday, I count that as a vacation day.
NASA postdocs having no employment-related benefits such as paid vacations, sick leave, or unemployment compensation.
Question How do we end the culture of “endless hours at work”?

We don't have such a work-ethos where I'm at.  I belief that working too hard risks stress and burn-out, and does not increase productivity in the long run, nor human well-being.  I want to do science.  Doing science makes me happy, but having time to relax while not doing science is important for me.
Does the selection of examples I gave above represent a normal situation in U.S. early-career academia?  Should I expect an attitude where asking for a 3-week holiday during the summer is considered as being not serious, or is the situation in practice usually not as bad as the examples above make it sound?  How hard to early-career academics in the United States work, really?

+1. While it may be tempting to answer that question with anecdotal evidence, testimonials and remembrances, it can actually be answered based on statistical data (and analysis of said data). I humbly advise us all to try to avoid “easy” answers…

Hej! I have first hand experience of this issue from working in Eng. Dept in a top technical school in Sweden and then moving to other places but refrain from answering the question given @F'x's advice. Lets see what sort of statistical data emerges...

Another interesting perspective to this question is how hard should early career researchers work. I agree that a list of anecdotes is interesting but not very meaningful, but the notion that hours worked = productivity really ought to be squashed.

As a fellow grad student in Sweden considering to move abroad eventually, I feel your pain. I really think it's a fundamental difference in how people are managed. Numbers mean less on this side of the Atlantic, I think, and I am very happy about that. I really doubt that counting hours and keeping the "Democles' sword" over people will make them produce more in the long run. I realize that this is not the place for it but I would love to discuss this issue with people at some point, for instance on the AC.SE chat

To make the opposite point of @F'x comment: you should not make a decision about your postdoc based on statistics, because you may fall anywhere in the distribution. The expectations you have to meet will depend almost entirely on your postdoc advisor, so ask him/her. I recommend stating your own expectations clearly and firmly in the interview; if you sense resistance, then you already know what you're getting into.

"Three weeks in the wilderness" ... you only do that during scheduled breaks in the academic calendar.  Unless you can arrange to work on atmospheric remote sensing in some wilderness location.

Are you asking about all, or those who survive to be later-career  academics?

@keshlam That's a very interesting distinction to make, and it would be interesting to see an answer address that distinction.  When I asked the question, I was asking about all.

Working conditions (hours, paid holidays, benefits) in the US, in academia and not, are generally atrocious from a European perspective.

TL; DR: 51 work hours a week with 12 vacation days a year
It is very difficult to assess how hard someone works. It is relatively easy to quantify the input (number of hours worked and the number of vacation days taken) and the output (papers and grants). In 2003 the Sigma Xi post doc society in the US began collecting data from 7600 post docs across 46 different US institutes about a number of issues including hours worked, vacation days taken, papers published and grants submitted. A summary report Doctors without Orders is available. Aggregate data is available via the Wayback Machine. I believe this is the best data set available to answer questions regarding the input and output.
The self reports suggest 12 days of vacation a year and 51 hours a week on average with 25% taking less than 7 days and working over 60 hours. The self report of the publication rate is around 3 with one grant application.
While self reports of hours work and publications are potentially biased, they might be a better measure of the perceived "hardness" of work than the actual hours worked. Obviously it would be nice if the publication and work rates were objectively verified. Obviously, publication rate and hours worked may not be the best metrics of how hard someone is working. This study found that alcohol consumption was negatively correlated with output. It is not clear if high alcohol consumption is positively or negatively correlated with how hard one works, but it might be relevant. Finally, Forbes has a report that University professors have the least stressful job, so maybe despite the hours, we don't actually work that "hard".
The comments to the questions suggest that understanding the input/output function would be desirable. This should be possible from the raw data of the Sigma Xi study, but not from the aggregate data, to determine if the inputs (hours worked) predict the outputs (papers and grants). I would be surprised if there was not a strong correlation, but also wouldn't be surprised if there were a number of outliers (i.e., lots of input and little output and little input and lots of output). Now, publication rate may not be the best measure of output as it doesn't consider quality. A psychology study found that impact factor is not correlated with publication rate suggesting that quantity and quality, as dubiously assessed by impact factor, are not correlated.

Did they try to get a sample of all postdocs, or only their members?  I wonder if members of such a society are representative, or if they may be disproptionally ambitious.

@gerrit the survey was conducted at a wide range of universities and open to all biomedical post docs. They looked for bias. See the second link I provided for an overview.

Of course the serious source of bias is in the self-reporting.

I don't see how you can call this 'the answers', when it only covers a single area of research.

@TaraB I just looked at the report some more (and edited my answer). I think the Sigma Xi report actually includes all fields and the biomedical field just dominates the numbers. In the absence of contrary data I default to believing that how hard academics work is field independent

@DanielE.Shub: That's a fairly strong null hypothesis you've got there.  I prefer to admit, in the absence of data, that I just don't know.

@JeffE my prior is based on my interpretation of Occam's razor.

I just looked at the report.  "All fields" apparently means "All fields of experimental science".  Computer science and mathematics are not represented at all.  (Yes, math and CS postdocs are too true Scotsmen!)

Does anyone know what the workload of a succesful Math postdoc is? Here, Math postdoc means teaching+research, workload means number of vacation days/year and number of working hours per week,successful means one who after 1 or 2 postdocs will get a TT offer.

A few questions on this very interesting and nicely done answer: 1) many of the links from Sigma Xi have gone dead, and with only the link and no formal name I can't seem to locate the summary, data, or study. It isn't prominently featured on the website that I saw under their publications. Perhaps a more clear citation, with title? 2) It is said that a study positively correlates alcohol consumption with output - but the study summary itself reports a negative correlation (more booze is associated with less output). Am I missing something, or is this just a wording error?

@BrianDHall I fixed the links the best I can. I could only find the aggregated data on the Wayback Machine. I fixed the error on the direction of correlation.

Is there anything like the above studies for graduate students?

Why is this question being singled out for a higher standard of "statistical" reasoning than any other post on this site? I offer my experiences as an early career engineering professor in the US as "anecdotal" evidence, and do so with at least as much credibility as respondents on an anonymous survey.
In my experience, it's not at all about how "hard" you work (i.e., the number of hours per week) - it is about what you accomplish. In my first year as an academic I attended 7 conferences, authored or coauthored 4 journal articles, wrote three NSF grants (one of them successful), began projects with 2 grad students (both of whom eventually graduated with PhDs), taught three classes (two of them new to me) and served on the curriculum committee. That's the kind of involvement you should be expecting. With that said, nobody is going to look at how many days of vacation you take, how many hikes you take in the mountains, or how many times you spend an extra day or two at a conference location exploring the area. It is about managing your time effectively and accomplishing things (that will appear on your CV). Finally, the day of truth arrives at the tenure decision, and no one will care about weekends or vacations: but about your contributions to the field (papers, conferences, grants) and academic reputation (as evidenced in your letters of recommendation).
As for the sabbatical question, it is not a vacation. Most academics who take sabbatical go to another institution (industry or University or lab) and work with new people in an effort to learn about new things. Sure, there are fewer responsibilities (no teaching, no committees) and fewer distractions, but this is why it works! The last sabbatical I had, I finished writing a book and entered a new research field (helped by my new colleague-friends). At my school we have a laughable method of oversight: at the start of a sabbatical one writes a two or three page description of what the planned activities are and why they are beneficial to the researcher and the school. At the end of the sabbatical, one writes a two or three page summary of what has been accomplished. As a whole, professors are self-motivated, love their work, and care about the intellectual legacy (the works, students, and influence) that they leave behind. Sabbatical is an effective way of getting out of ruts, of opening new doors, and of expanding knowledge.

It's not “singled out”: I saw a potentially high profile question, in which I had a lot of interest, and wanted to avoid it turning into a discussion… but you're free to disagree! And yes, your anecdotal evidence has as much credibility as any one respondent of the anonymous survey… now go gather 6805 friends and we can talk :)

It seems to me that if we want to read the results of surveys, we all know how to use google. The point of most questions on SE is to encourage people to answer. In this case, your comment asked people to not speak up (unless their answer was "based on statistical data." So yes, it was "singled out" -- this is the only SE question I have ever seen where answers were requested to pass a threshold of statistical rigor.

@bill: Only by a single user, not the OP, who you are perfectly free to ignore as you did. =]

@bills but the question is about "how hard you work" and not "what you accomplish". By stating your outputs and job responsibilities, I don't believe you have answered the question and am down voting.

I cannot know how efficiently or how quickly the OP can work -- but the OP does. By answering as I did (about what is expected) the OP can try to gauge whether the job is worth attempting. How hard must the OP work? "Hard enough to accomplish the things that need doing" is my answer. But I cannot answer this in terms of hours/days, nor will anyone else care how many hours/days it takes.

I would like to put StrongBad's instructive answer somewhat into perspective.
In a survey*, 55 percent of newly hired faculty (tenure-track) at a large regional university in the U.S. called the present year the busiest of their life. These faculty members were also asked to self-assess their weekly working time. They estimated a mean of almost 60 hours per week, not very much above the finding reported in StrongBad's answer.
However, when the same persons were asked to keep record every fifteen minutes of whether or not they were doing productive work, they recorded a mean of some 30 hours per week. (This probably excluded things like writing emails or taking phone-calls, but it expressly included teaching with preparation and grading, office hours, committee meetings, scholarly reading and writing.)
This is not to suggest that these scientist were hypocritical; they probably felt overworked most of the time. The divergence between reported and actual working-time could be due to the social expectation, possibly more entrenched in the US than in Sweden, that scientists must be "hardworking", or due to biased self-perception grounded in a high stress-level, or both.
From this, one may take the practical lesson that it is extremely important both for sanity and productivity to separate work from recreation and "having a life". As to the OP's primary question, early career academics in the U.S. do work hard, but there is a difference between working hard, working long hours, and working productively; moreover, at some point, the former and the latter may be inversely correlated.

*Boyce, R (1989). Procrastination, busyness and bingeing, in: Behaviour Research Therapy 27(6), 605-611. (PubMed link)

I don't think these two figures are inconsistent at all: postdocs are generally required to mostly just do scientific work.  New faculty suddenly have added to that: undergraduate advising, teaching, faculty meetings, departmental service committee, graduate student advising, etc.  None of that is "productive work" by postdoctoral standards, and it takes a lot of time per week.

@jakebeal some of that extra work is included in the 29 hours, but the article does not make clear what is "productive" work and what is "other".

I think that any measure of "productive work" that categorically excludes writing emails is too stringent.  If I didn't write emails, I couldn't do any of the required parts of my academic job: teaching, research, administration, service.

@jakebeal I have edited the answer to clarify which tasks were included.

@PeteL.Clark In my interpretation, the respondents themselves decided what they did or did not count as actual work; however, teaching etc. were counted.

@henning I just looked at the study you linked, and I simply do not believe the data.  This claims that the faculty spent only 1.5 hours/week on research-related tasks and zero supervision of graduate students.  This is so out of whack with my observations of faculty in research-oriented universities that I simply do not believe it.  The study says nothing about where the faculty were or what fields they were in, so it's also problematic to evaluate from that perspective.

@jakebeal I must admit that I somewhat am puzzled by this small amount of what was counted as research too.

@jakebeal if I read it correctly, the data are from first year TT faculty teaching a 3-3 load. Most faculty do not have graduate students their first year and with a 3-3 load they are not getting any research done either.

So, not in research-oriented posts at all then: a 3-3 load and no opportunity for students supported on startup funds is not consistent with any R1 engineering or life-sciences department I know.

This answer reminds my on one of the more memorable talks I've heard. https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/104868/87129

A lot of work you need to do is not "productive work". Not to mention overhead of walking around, waiting for people to become available or events to being etc., which is not work at all but is part of your work hours. -1.

I wanted to follow the @F'x's advice on avoiding easy answer, but I had to add some points:

There is no constant working style across the United States. In academia, the working fashion significantly varies from university to university, from department to department.
IMO, there is much more emphasis on effectiveness in Sweden. Instead, in the United States, there is more focus on timeframes.
To my knowledge, it is rare to force post-doc and other researchers to work during weekends, though many of them normally work during off-hours to be successful in the forthcoming competition (in continuing their career).
Duties during sabbatical (simple teaching and lecturing) is much less than official duties at home. In other words, an academician needs a long refreshment leave far from heavy duties, but not completely off. It is similar to working holidays (in immigration terminology).

In conclusion, if it is a post-doc position, the working rules are mainly defined by the group leader, and for assistant professors, this is the university atmosphere, Dean, and department chair controlling the working fashion.
Note: Once again, this answer is based on personal experiences rather than statistical data.

there is much more emphasis on effectiveness in Sweden. Instead, in the United States, there is more focus on timeframes — can you elaborate on that?

@gerrit Labor system in Scandinavian countries is more result-oriented. Even the education system does not care about routines but the result. In Finland schools, students have freedom what time they want to go to school. Finland universities needs less courses for graduation, as compared with the US universities.

I've downvoted this comment because, again, the question is about "How hard do you work?" and not "What do you accomplish?" I believe the value of the question is in the "how hard" because presumably, everyone wants to accomplish a lot, but varying people have varying thresholds for what their work tolerance is. Everyone believes, for example, that there's an expectation that early-career professors work 60-80 hours a week for tenure (i.e. to be successful). Is that an actual number of straight working hours, or do we have a lot of "down time" in between?

@Irwin the OP asked how much time an early-career academician must spend in the United States by referring to a rule that post-doc researchers must work during weekends too. I commented that a US professor normally pay more attention to the working hours comparing an Scandinavian one. This is not about accomplishment. In any case, I do not understand your negative attitude for downvote. I clearly stated that I want to add some points (rather than a definite answer) on different issues raised by the OP, but it was too long to be quoted in comment. Though this is common all over the SE sites.

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text:
Can students finish much of their PhD thesis before applying to a PhD program?
Are students allowed to complete a large portion of their research independently, then enroll in a PhD program, apply for a defense panel within the first semester, and quickly finish the thesis? Has this been done before?
Update: Question trimmed. I'm looking for an answer whether students can be admitted with much prior work on the thesis already complete, to finish in a short time (perhaps one year fix and improve the work), and whether there are real examples of people who did this. I not asking whether I myself am personally capable of completing this prior work to sufficient quality.

Naturally, rules will vary between institutions. As a data point, where I did my PhD, students couldn't submit their thesis until they had been enrolled for 8 terms. My guess is that such rules are pretty common. Off-topic: aside from any question of humour, I find "PhD Comics" completely unrepresentative of my experience as a student. Others may disagree.

I think some universities have an alternative route that enables the award of a PhD to an established researcher, based (mainly) on a substantial body of published work. This is intended for, e.g., researchers who have spent their career in industry. I'm not sure this is likely to be applicable to your situation.

Adding to what Artie said, PhD comics is a parody. It mirrors reality: sometimes supervisors demand unreasonable things, funding is scarce, and research is a pile of frustration. But only sometimes. If you like research, by all means, apply for one.

I'm confused: you seem to equate "did a lot of research" with "read everything in the topic and wrote a 200 page literature review". These are very different things: the latter is not research as much as it is review.

In Germany there is a thing called "externe Doktoranden" (external doctorate student). They work and are doing a PhD part time. I do not know if something like that is possible in your country. However, I do not see the point in doing it, as your chances at the academic job market are usually horrible and your thesis will probably not be good (in Germany most of the people are doing it for the fancy title). @Suresh also has a good point. What you are calling research is just literature review. Knowing what was done in the field is a requirement to start with research in that area.

@TheAlmightyBob What the OP proposes is like an   "externer Doktorand" at all. Even externals need to apply before starting to do their research, and have their academic supervisor involved during the entire process.

Reader Dilbert.com, and then you won't want to work in the private sector either. Xkcd might want to make you work at NASA, YMMV. Also, depending on your field, literature reviews are often only sufficient to start independent research, rather than being 90% of a thesis...but I do suppose fields vary widely on this, I can't say for sure.

@xLeitix That is true. The involvement of the supervisor however depends on the supervisor (and probably the research area). But it prevents being a "real" PhD student (there is no required coursework and you still work (and get paid) while doing that).

This is quite odd--PhD comics has actually encouraged me to pursue graduate education.  Something tells me I'm not typical, though.

@avid: here in the UK it's called a "PhD by publication", which requires that you have published work considered (by a mess of citeria) equivalent to a thesis. This can be applied for after the work was done, as you say it's intended for people who have done research outside academia. But probably doesn't help the questioner since even if that 200 page review is publishable, actually getting it published is one hurdle, and getting it accepted equivalent to a thesis is another!

@SteveJessop I think that's essentially what I was thinking of...

What do you wish to do with the PhD once you have it?

This is even funnier than PhD comics! :-)

@TheAlmightyBob: wrt. "real" PhD students and coursework. In my field (chemistry; in Germany) it is untypical to require coursework for PhD students. Typically, attending a research seminar is required, but not courses. And not so long ago, doing PhD research was considered your private fun, i.e. nothing you're paid for. The typical PhD student in my institute was paid for being TA (plus a few by scholarship). Enrolling as in formally signing up as a student also is not a typical requirement here. Doing research is the requirement.

Late comment: Reading Academia SE itself could put someone off the idea of getting a PhD as an apparent nightmare situation. It's not an unbiased sampling.

I can't speak to whether this is possible, but I can advise as to why I think it's a bad idea.
Firstly, PhD Comics is a largely satirical and humourous representation of life in academia. Some of those comics can be scarily true, but you can probably find a comic that parodies any job you care to imagine. It doesn't mean they all suck.
Even if you could do this, for most people and disciplines it's not a good way to get a PhD. You really should find an advisor to help you guide your research. Colleagues are great to bounce ideas off of. Having an office to work in and access to a good library is a huge advantage. You will have access to high-performance computing and lab facilities, if needed. If you're lucky, you'll find someone to pay you to do your research.
At the end, you will graduate being well-absorbed into academic life. You'll have networking skills, have been to and presented at conferences, your research will be of a higher quality, and you will overall be a much more well-rounded and knowledgeable researcher than had you stuck at it alone. The skills you learn as a PhD student are essential if you wish to have a career in academia. If you wish to go on into an industry job, they're still pretty darn useful.

"The skills you learn as a PhD student are essential if you wish to have a career in academia." You can also add the publications that would greatly help if academia is the target.

@PatW In most cases you should have an advisor or collaborators to help co-author the paper, but being affiliated with a university is not a requirement to publish. Though you're much more likely to publish more and better papers if you have an advisor and/or collaborators.

What I meant was that if OP is going for an academic career, publishing during his PhD would be very profitable. The situation OP wants to get in does not give him much time to do so and will probably hurt his chances in getting a position in academia.

-1 It does not answer the question. Plus, it contains a lot of wishful thinking.

@PiotrMigdal The question has been edited somewhat in the meantime. But be that as it may, I still stand by my answer. In questions like this, I think an evaluation of the pros and cons is extremely useful - not every yes/no question warrants a yes/no response as the singular answer.  What component of my answer do you think constitutes "wishful thinking"?

@Moriarty He does not asks for pros and cons. He asks for possibility of an 'external' PhD. (At least in the current version.) You don't even address such possibility (or lack of thereof). Wishful thinking - most of PhDs I know are not a big boost for research for a self-driven person (either doing someone's else work OR ones own but in isolation). Perhaps for most people doing research on one's own is not suitable, but if OP explicitly ask about this possibility, it is like "Q: Where I can get good burgers?", "A: Don't it them, vegetables are healthier.".

In principle, this may be possible at some universities, but not in all. My current employer, for instance, requires students to be inscribed as PhD students for a certain minimum number of semesters before handing in their thesis.
However, I would assume it an almost impossible task to find an advisor that would roll with this model. Doing a doctoral study is as much about the process as it is about the end result, and finding an advisor that would just accept your final thesis without having seen you doing the research (and without being able to provide input on the general direction) will be difficult. From a practical point of view, I would honestly also be surprised if you would be able to actually produce an acceptable dissertation from scratch without any input from senior researchers, or at least other PhD students.
Finally, and I am aware that this is field-dependent, but in many fields, doing your literature survey is really only the very first step to doing research (and really not the hard part). Hence, I would reckon that you are still far away from the 90% completed dissertation that you mentioned.
EDIT: to answer your concrete question:
I am sure somebody somewhere has already done this, but I am not aware of anybody, and, as I said, it would formally be entirely impossible in my current university. I would also assume that it would be very much frowned upon by the rest of the faculty should a professor agree to this model.

You have no interest in becoming a PhD student just because you read some comics? It so, it just indicates that you didn’t do your research (about what being a PhD Student means) properly.
If you are doing independent research because you find it interesting, it might be beneficial for a PhD project. Find an academic who works in that area, contact them, present your research and see if they are willing to become your supervisor. They can advise you what the rules of their university are regarding the minimal period between enrolling in a PhD programme and submitting a thesis. This period might be different for full time and part time students. In one of the UK universities I used to work, part-time students (university employees) were required to be enrolled for at least 12 months.
If you want to do as much work as possible before enrolling into the programme, I would advise against writing the literature review (or at least against writing its full version), as it might turn out to be waste of time. Read “everything” in the topic, do some experiments or develop a prototype (or do whatever practical work can be done in your area), come with an idea about your research and speak with a potential supervisor. If you manage to persuade them that the idea is good, this is great, but the discussion might give you a different direction, you might want to modify the idea.
Another thing to consider – some universities (in UK) have 2-stagies process – the students are supposed to submit a transfer report after an year/an year and a half and have a viva, which usually leads to a MPhil degree, if it is successful they can proceed further to the final thesis. A transfer report typically consists of description of the problem, short literature and an overview of your ideas about the research/experiments/methodology, etc. with a schedule for conducting it. You can write in advance the bigger part of it but don’t do it before speaking with a potential supervisor.
If you are going for a full-time PhD, you might need funding. Check first what funding is available, the specific requirements of the funding bodies might mean that your idea has to me modified to fit them.
Last but not least – chose your supervisor carefully. The importance of having a good work relationship with them can’t be overestimated. Your overall experience as a PhD students hugely depends on it.

I know it is a cartoon, but the cartoon taught me these things: (a) PhDs are very stressful for most students, (b) students must often focus on advisor's interests, not own interests, and (c) students must live on a shoe-string budget. Did I get those wrong?

a) mine wasn't stressful. IMHO, most of the stress is due to lack of research experience. The students who I know were stressed (one actually left the programme), had this bad time due to not had done research before and lack of supervision. Their supervisor just threw them in the deep water - "find a topic for your thesis and persuade me that it is a good one", followed by numerous meetings when he simply rejected the ideas. (b) see the last paragraph of my answer, (c) it depends. Speak with the supervisor (I did and was offered a part-time job in the uni) Have you considered a part time PhD?

According to my experience, you've got all three wrong. Our work environment is the least stressful I've ever experienced (excepting the week before a paper deadline, but that's really our own fault for always starting a bit too late). I'm spending most of my time pursuing my own research interests (which of course overlap quite a bit with my supervisor's, as it should unless you really screw up), and while I did take a 14% paycut coming from industry, my salary is still well above the median income in my country (Sweden). YMMV.

@village it's not stressful it's frustrating, I'd say that any situation where you hold responsibility but not freedom is frustrating. A PhD is a prime example.

I'd actually add that it is mostly stressful not because of PhD experience itself, but because of a certain period in life it coincides with - all people in their mid-20's are starting things out and as soon as something goes wrong start questioning their choices and depressing over things. That concerns most of the people of this age and doesn't have much to do with academia in particular.

Answers to a,b,c and d depends a lot on the supervisor. Good supervisors are friendly, helpful and make the PhD stress free, and they won't force their agenda to you, and have good funding source. I was lucky to have not one, but two very nice supervisors, and my PhD was my best experience in life. As counter example, I know quite a few Chinese students who normally look for Chinese professors for supervision due to language convenience, but Chinese professors are used to stealing student's research by putting themselves as first author (that's what they're used to do in China).

So, I think it's important to talk to the supervisor and his/her students beforehand to see if he/she is right for you and also whether you are right for him/her.

I agree that choosing the right supervisor is key. If the stress gets to me, a chat with my supervisor calms me down. I can trust my supervisor to look after my interests, even ahead of his own. Whenever I lose confidence in myself, I remember that my supervisor has been through this before, knows my capabilities, and is confident I can do it. As for the shoe-string budget, that depends on your funding.

Since you've changed the question, my comment transforms to an answer. There are many people far more qualified than I am to talk about this, but none of them have answered in this way, so here goes:
In some UK universities (I happen to be in the UK) and also elsewhere in the world, there is an alternative route to a PhD called a "PhD by publication", which you can find out about under that name in the UK and presumably other names in other countries / languages. There's also a rarer "PhD by practice", which I believe is intended to cover work that isn't as such "published" at all, such as fine arts, architecture, theatre and whatnot.
I sort of doubt that a paper that "should" be peer-review published but that you haven't published, or in general work that you keep entirely to yourself prior to submitting for the PhD, would qualify even for "by practice". But it's largely down to the regulations of the individual institution, so if you're interested then you should contact specific institutions for further information. The general theme, though, is that you don't get a PhD just for working in a field. Your work should have enhanced the field, in the same way that a traditional PhD is an original contribution to the progress of its field.
Either route requires that you have already produced work that is deemed worthy to contribute to a PhD. You will demonstrate this work as part of the application. Of course there's quite a lot of detail and judgement as to what's deemed worthy. It may also be deemed necessary to submit new written work to bring together multiple separate publications into a coherent thesis. There is no guarantee at all that work you think is good, will be considered good by the institution when you apply. That, after all, is one of the roles of a PhD supervisor, to assess the academic value of your work before you do it as well as afterwards.
This is the way to quickly be awarded a PhD based on past work. It is intended for a professional in some field that does research outside academia, or someone within academia but who for some reason has not been enrolled in a PhD program while publishing. It's suitable for example for research scientists in industry, or authors whose work contributes to some field even though they aren't employed as academics. It is not construed as a means to avoid the main part of a PhD program, and indeed it doesn't work by enrolling you in the program and immediately examining you. It's a distinct, designed route to a PhD.
In the same way that people might weigh the value of your PhD based on where you got it from, people might weigh the value of your PhD based on the route you got it. Which is a diplomatic way of saying that a PhD by publication is not universally accepted to be as good as a conventional PhD. In particular it makes no attempt to prepare you for professional academia, and academics will know this.

To give you examples of short PhDs, there are instances for some prodigies in mathematics that they got their PhDs in about two years, e.g., Noam Elkies. Elkies also published in (one of the) top math journals in the world when he graduated, so it made sense for them to graduate him.  There are some one-year PhDs in the history of mathematics, though these are typically nominal PhDs given to Russian mathematicians that needed one to leave Russia, to come to the US, and to find a new academic position.
Clearly, these are exceptions to the typical rules and these were only done at top tier universities for top tier talents. I believe the intent for these short PhDs seems a lot different from what your intent is.
FWIW: The five years I spent in grad school are the best five years of my life. You may be not allowing yourself to have the experience of a lifetime.

Most US and Canadian universities require four semesters worth of coursework, and passing candidacy and/or comprehensive exams before you can propose a thesis. Some of this is different in other places, e.g., in the UK, where you would typically come in with a MSc degree.  Doing a PhD while working elsewhere is much more common there.  One university there ("The Open University") specializes in distance learning.  What you suggest is also more common at German universities, where you can find top-notch professors, and won't have to pay much in the way of tuition.  But, be warned, it often takes a very long time, and you would first enroll and then work with your advisor on developing your thesis work.  Plenty of people never graduate.
As someone has pointed out - doing a literature review is not research.  It's the beginning of it, particularly in the sciences and engineering.
In my experience (I am tenure-track faculty at a US institution), people outside of academia call a lot of work "research",  and beginning graduate students confuse programming, prototyping, reading with the contribution that is inherent in successful and publishable research.
Second, keep in mind that doing a PhD is about so much more than handing in a thesis. It is about laying the foundation for a career in research.  A PhD involves going to conferences, meeting people, publishing, hearing guest speakers at your institution, critiquing your lab mates' work in lab meetings, writing a proposal or two with your supervisor, and so on.

In many places (e.g., here in Finland) the following two things are largely independent from each other:

Doctoral student status (i.e., being enrolled as a doctoral student). You have got the right to take courses, there is a professor who is willing to advise you, etc. There are of course high expectations but very few formal obligations — you are your own boss and you can do whatever you want, at your own pace.
A job as a doctoral student or a similar position (i.e., having a working contract with the university). You receive salary, and you are also expected to do something in return. Formally, your advisor is your boss and tells you what to do during your working hours.

Of course 2 usually implies 1. However, it is perfectly well possible to take 1 without 2. In that case you can get your salary from whatever source you want. Typical examples include:

working part time elsewhere and doing your studies part time
working full time elsewhere and doing your studies part time (and having no free time or holidays)
working full time in a job that somehow also supports your PhD studies
getting a personal research grant and doing your studies full time.

I do not recommend this for a typical student, but in atypical cases all of these are possible. And yes, you can certainly defend your thesis as soon as you, your advisor, your university, and the external reviewers are happy with it (whether you finished it 6 monts or 6 years after formally starting your studies).

In a slightly different version this was even more typical in Germany: PhD students were often paid for TA jobs, while their research is theirs. Changed much now towards having a research working contract (which IMHO has drawbacks on how much you can actually do what you think should be done). And actually there is another independence: having an advisor is largely independent of being enrolled to university as PhD student.

At least in Jyväskylä there was, a couple of years ago, a requirement of 60 ECTS credits of coursework.

Short answer: life is short, reduce the risks of wasting your time.
Long answer:
You are free to do as much as you please before starting a PhD. There are usually requirements about some minimums, but the good thing is that you are likely to stay close to those minimums and not get to the maximums (sometimes infinite) if you start your PhD from scratch.
You may also enjoy some spare time if all you have to do during your PhD is waiting for the minimum time to pass.
However, you should be aware that if you do independent research this may be neglected by your supervisor or simply everyone in the world. That is potentially possible and for a number of reasons:

bad quality, e.g. being unscientific or ignoring an important part of the state of the art.
it's on an irrelevant topic about which nobody cares about.
it's not aligned with their interests
it's independent and they don't like people trying to bypass them (oligopolistic practices, they have the key to research, if you don't go through them, you are not doing research)
the fragment of your thesis that you do at the university is on a different topic and becomes a whole thesis on its own
it's already done
whatever

The point is, all the time that you invest before starting the PhD may be wasted, actually a large chunk of the time that you invest during the PhD (at some university) will most probably be wasted as well. This is what happens with investments.

The main part of a thesis is publishable and published research
There are "PhD by publication" options that others have mentioned. If you have a number of solid peer reviewed publications, then that is an option that you can take to get a degree quicker. If you don't have such publications, then your thesis can't be mostly completed, it has all of the nontrivial work yet to be done.
Unpublishable things can't be "much of a PhD thesis"
No matter how much work you've put into 'research'-as-in-reading-and-reviewing, data gathering, etc, all of that is just preliminary background work, even if you have put it in a nicely structured 200-page document and label it a "thesis". The main and time consuming part of a PhD is obtaining novel, relevant and thus publishable results; if you don't have them, then that's not a PhD thesis, and not even a half-done thesis.

In general, it is not a good idea to do a whole lot of work on a PhD thesis before taking the PhD program. The reason is because your earlier research/exposition will likely not be up to the PhD standards that you will learn by taking the required courses.
That said, there are some topics that are very data intensive, and if you do a lot of the data gathering before taking the PhD program, and most of the data "processing" and interpretation after you're in the program, that's a different story. Here, the ratio might be 50-50, not the 90-10 that you hypothesized in your question.

I don't agree that gathering (useful) data requires less skill/training than other aspects of research.

@ff524: There are people who left corporations to take PhD programs in say, marketing, and their best source of day came from their former companies and day jobs.My former economics professor, for one.

PhD student who never completed here (so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt). I would advise against what you're describing because I do not believe it is in the spirit of the system and it raises issues for all who know what you are trying to do.
Like life itself you can choose to shortcut the system but if people find out what you've done they can punish you for it.
If you completed a significant amount of your research before doing your PhD then published it as part of your PhD thesis what on earth was your supervisor doing? What would your PhD examiner(s) say if they found out - do another year of new research then submit again? What are the ethics involved of what you have done? How does that look for those who are involved in what you did? What does it look like for the University and what will academics in other departments say?
A further issue crops up if the University is funding you. If I give you funding for three years and you said you were done in less than two as your supervisor/funder I would simply turn round and say do additional research for another year so you have a greater body of work published.
Another wrinkle is that in certain Universities it is not possible to submit a final dissertation for a PhD before two years ("thems the rules").
It is possible for people to finish PhDs early compared to the average of that university/country (I knew a talented faculty member who did this) but I do not personally know of anyone who managed to do this in under two years.
To answer your questions directly:

Are you allowed to do your research before your PhD enrolment and be viva'd after one year?

Theoretically you can do anything so long as you will find people who will agree to it. Practically it's very unlikely you would find a well regarded department who would want to this in anything but the most exceptional circumstances (proposed PhD student is already held in high esteem by the department and the entire field of academics in the field they wish to publish in (because your external will come from there)). If you withhold the fact that the work was done prior to the PhD you step into ethical issues.

Has this been done before?

I don't personally know of it happening in field I was researching. You can finish faster than average (three and a half years where I was) without prior work and I know part time students who have done so (but...).
One extra note: you had better make sure that your work is novel and hasn't been published anywhere else before before you submit it or there's another can of worms waiting for you...

This is possible in Germany, where enrolling as PhD student is usually not necessary (but possible on a volountary basis) - but it has nothing whatsoever to do with "finishing quickly" since you anyways have to do the usual amount of research work.
However, formally all that is really needed for a PhD over here is a professor who will "take" the thesis. In theory, you may arrive there with your thesis written, have that professor read and approve it, and then start the formal process of submitting and defending.
While arriving "out of the blue" with a written thesis is unusual (and would be risky in terms of whether the thesis does fulfil the required standard), there are some situations that are formally similar but are far more common:

PhD student does normal PhD research & publications at "their" institute, but does not enroll as PhD student since that is volountary. Also, a supervision agreement is typically not a formal requirement (unless the funding asks for it). So the first point where formal university burocracy meets the candidate is when they ask for the forms to hand in.
Similar: PhD students who do their research at a non-university research institute or in industry. Those institutes cannot grant a PhD, so the thesis is handed in at a university. Again, in practice, such a PhD student typically had the normal amount of supervision, but may not be known to the university until just before handing in.
This applies also (with less supervision) to people who after years of industrial research decide to put those results together to get a PhD.
I've done something like this as well: started a normal PhD without enrolling, got some jobs (full time research) before handing in*. Years later, I handed in at another university closeby to the non-university research institute where I was working at the time (and with the professor who is also director of that research institute), taking my "original PhD work" from the 1st university plus some bits and pieces from the ongoing full-time research jobs that thematically fitted in.

* getting a full time job as "almost finished" PhD student happened to about half the PhD students in that group.
Some of them finished years later, others never as the importance of the PhD often lies in the work rather than the formal certificate ("we see from your publications that you do have the proficiency required for the PhD, and that's what we really care about") and further diminishes with ongoing professional experience in the field.


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How to indicate when quotation marks are not used to quote someone in APA?
I am careful about placing attribution to quotes in assignments. Occasionally, in assignments, I must use quote marks for purposes other than quoting, but my instructor misinterprets this as a "quote missing a citation".
In the Wikipedia article on Quotation Marks, one can find a list of examples of other uses of quotation marks. Suppose I need to use quotation marks to "signal unusual usage" ("Quotation Marks", 2014) or show some "distinction" in "usage" ("Quotation Marks", 2014) or even scare quotes. Is there any way in which I can indicate this, in APA style?

Providing an example or two would help a lot here.

I meant an example in situ: show as an actual example sentence or two containing such a use of quotation marks.

APA does not provide a distinction. It is assumed that all thinks enclosed in quotation makes are either quotes, and therefore attributed, or something "special". The hope is that your text clarifies the reason for the quotation mark. In most well written papers, the reason for the quotation marks is pretty obvious. Therefore APA style does not mandate a difference in usage.
As to why your instructor is flagging them up, it is possible your instructor is using some sort of automated system to find the missing citations or that your usage of quotation marks is excessive or improper. It is probably best to talk to the instructor to figure out what is going on.

Normally referencing styles (APA, Harvard, etc.) address the issue of referencing the work of others. The "example" you have given is not an issue of using someone else's work and, therefore, I do not believe it would be addressed in any referencing system.
Your instructor should certainly understand the idea that quotes are commonly used for many reasons, including indicating a turn of phrase which might not be obvious to some. For example, I would not badmouth my boss because I "know which side my bread is buttered on." Clearly this is not a quote but rather a turn of phase, a saying, or an "idiom."
All that said, I do see a lot of student who forget to cite direct quotes and, as an instructor, it is very frustrating to me.
If you are using idiomatic expressions, with which your instructor is unfamiliar, you might add a footnote explaining it to "lend a helping hand."

APA style is much much more that just a referencing style. It is a 250+ page book covering all aspects of manuscript presentation style of which referencing is 2 chapters. It is much more similar to Chicago and MLA.


text:
Do I need to define all forms of cheating in the syllabus?
Every year, students seem to find new ways to "cheat" on the work. Every year, my course policies section grows longer and longer (a full page now) to match the newfound methods. I list all forms of plagiarism and exam rules and penalties. I additionally post similar rules on assignment instructions, particularly defining areas where I found students "cut corners" while still literally following the instructions. I teach many freshmen and foreign students who are not familiar with college expectations.
Do I need to define all forms of cheating on the syllabus? Is there some way to apply and enforce a blanket, "no other cheating permitted"?
Some examples include:

Copying and pasting text from Web sites.
Submitting classmate's returned assignment as late assignment with own name.
Foreign students using machine translation exclusively to write essays for writing courses.
Using TTS for speeches.
Peering at other papers during exams.
Copying from phone during exams.
Submitting work they made in other courses.
Adding names of extra non-contributors to group work.
Doing work for a classmate.
Pretending to be another student during an exam.
Attending different sections during exams to preview the exam or try different versions.

From (11) it seems like you are giving the same questions to different students at different times, in a classroom exam text. That seems bad practice in my view.

Many colleges and universities have an 'academic integrity' policy or standards. I would reference this policy and indicate all violations will be referred to whatever judiciary committee or structure is in place with your institution. It is the responsibility of the student to know what is and is not a violation of academic integrity standards.

In The Netherlands we like to joke that in Germany, they apply that Alles übrige, daß hier nicht gestattet ist, ist verboten, which means Everything else, that is not (explicitly) permitted, is prohibited.

And, in France, everything that is not [explicitly] prohibited, is permitted.

If you consider 3, 7 and 11 (or do you mean the answers, too?) cheating, you seem to need a list, yes. :)

Thanks mister! I never even knew there were this many awesome ways to cheat. You broadened my horizons. Before I was thinking of quitting school but now I feel confident again and very motivated to get my diploma instead of starting a gang. With this edumacation maybe I can even become the presodent!

To be honest, I do not consider (7) and (11) cheating and wouldn’t follow these rules even after you’ve stated them (different rules apply for thesis work – but even there it’s not a blanket prohibition on reuse). The rest, however, is so blindingly obvious that whether you stated it or not makes no difference.

Sounds like a huge amount of this would be covered by "All work must be your own."

Some offenses might not constitute academic dishonesty under your university's policies but might also count as not doing the assigned work and thus worth no credit.  For example, if a student used TTS to give a presentation in my class, I'd assign no credit because the student didn't complete the assigned work, even though this wouldn't be "academic dishonesty" according to policy.

If you list all forms of cheating (or actually only try to - because that's impossible), your students will resort to loopholes to circumvent your rules ("I was not copying from a phone, it was a (smart)watch").

I think your problem quite literally is that you specify too much. If you provide a long list of things students are not allowed to do, it is natural that students assume that the list is comprehensive (that is, everything that is not on the list has to be legal). If you do what chubakueno proposes and have a single rule Plagiarising == fail, most people would be fully aware what that means.
EDIT: clearly, this does not mean that you should never go into more detail. Of course, if one has unusual or unexpected rules which other comparable lectures in the same university do not have, then of course they need to be explained. However, most of the examples given by Village are IMHO pretty obvious.
Frankly, many of the items on your list cannot reasonably be assumed to be ok, no matter the rules. For instance, did you really have a student tell you with a straight face he thought it was ok if he pretended to be somebody else to write the other guy's exam?

Can we safely assume that a first-year student knows the definition of plagiarism? Some of the points are quite nuanced (e.g., (3) and (7) in Village's list), and it is quite possible that a foreign student has never heard that word in their life.

@FedericoPoloni By and large, I am all in favor of treading students (even freshmen and foreign students) as adults. This also includes that, if e.g., an assignment text uses a word that you are not sure what it means, you clarify.

I agree with this but I think it's worth specifying that self-plagiarism is also out (that may well be a new concept to them), and maybe giving some examples, being explicit that they're examples.

The OP did state(in a comment) "submitting work completed in other courses". This is not exactly an obvious rule. But is often(was with me anyway) part of the university policy itself.

I agree that trying to define a comprehensive (exhaustive) list is pointless, as someone will always find a new way to cheat. I would tell students that cheating is not permitted, point them to some standard school academic ethics code as a starting point, leave enough wiggle room that you can catch and punish new methods of cheating, and invite anyone who's not sure if something crosses the line (e.g., collaborating on graded homework [but not a take-home project]) to ask you (or the provost, or whoever appropriate) about it.

I do have many foreign students who are completely unfamiliar with not just the word "plagiarism", but also the concept. It is possible that in some countries different behaviors are accepted by teachers. For e.g., some students claimed that their former teachers always let them "work together", i.e. submit identical work. In some countries, students are encouraged to write the words of famous authors and scholars from memory and citations are not required.

@Village ok, I am afraid I cannot help you then. I have certainly never met students to which the entire concept was genuinely alien (and I have taught people from pretty much all continents by now).

Does your school not have an academic code of conduct? Usually schools have very comprehensive (but succinct) definitions of "cheating" and "academic honesty" simply so nobody has to roll their own. Every syllabus I've ever had or used in any school I've ever been to found it sufficient to say "in addition to the syllabus of this course, you are also required to follow the school's code of academic honesty. Failure to abide by this code will result in immediate failure and referral to the appropriate administration."
This is even easier with the advent of web resources where you can explicitly link to the academic code of conduct in the syllabus (or some mirror of it if it's not online for whatever reason).
If not, I definitely agree with xLetix. Providing a comprehensive list of "bads" subtly implies that everything else is valid. Certain you can say "among other things...", but you should not have pages of examples. Certainly you can give one or two examples of blatant plagiarism, but otherwise give a succinct definition that's broad enough to allow you to catch all cases and leave it at that.

If your university doesn't publish its own academic integrity policy, you can always adopt another school's policy in your syllabus. "This course will follow MIT's academic integrity policies; see https://integrity.mit.edu/ for full details."

@JeffE I'm not sure I like that. MIT can change their policies at any time, and you in your school, should not be willing to immediately adapt whatever it is that they're doing.

@Cruncher MIT can change their policies at any time between semesters, but their definitions of "cheating" and "plagiarism" are unlikely to materially change.  And of course you shouldn't adopt any policies that you haven't read thoroughly—every semester—and actually agree with.

These basic ideas should be prominent:

Your work must be your own.
Your ideas must be your own - you must identify and give credit for any ideas which are not yours.
You must be honest and ethical in all behavior related to assessment.

You might want to provide some separate information about exams. For example, you are/are not allowed to have your book/notes in the exam. Suppose someone for instance has information on their phone (and they are not allowed to have notes or the book), but they claim that phones were not excluded. You can, when discussing it with them, ask them whether they think this was honest and ethical behavior.
Part of the point of this is that it is their responsibility to identify if work or ideas are not their own. If someone claims, for instance, that copying from a website does not mean that their work is not their own, you can ask them where and how they acknowledged the use of the ideas.

As suggested by a commenter, I am expanding my comment to that of an answer.  Many colleges and universities have an 'academic integrity' policy or standards. For example, here is one such policy at the University of Michigan:  http://www.lsa.umich.edu/academicintegrity/.  You can find many other policies and standards regarding academic integrity.
I would include the exact language of any such policy in the syllabus.  When you review your syllabus, you should draw explicit attention to this policy and indicate that all violations will be taken seriously and referred to any judiciary committee if necessary. You can also take it one step further by having students actually sign a statement that they have read and understood the policy.  Once you have done this, students assume the burden of ensuring their academic behaviors are entirely consistent with the policy.
The other part of the process is actually following through on violations.  I don't have problems with this issue in my class because students are very much aware of exactly what will happen if violations are observed.  Of course, some students will claim that they "didn't know."  Ignorance of violations of academic integrity are simply unacceptable among college / university students who should be treated like adults.  You don't want to give the impression that you are lenient on any such policy.

Don't include the exact language in your syllabus - otherwise there will be inconsistencies when the policy gets updated and your syllabus still includes the old version.

@user1915639 So, if you don't have the exact language, then what do you recommend.  If the policy changes, so should your syllabus, right?

Just say "You must comply with the university's policy on X", with a link to the URL for the policy (assuming there is a URL which will always point to the latest version - otherwise just link to some page higher up in the hierarchy e.g. all current university policies or something).

I do think it's important to discuss academic integrity in the context of a specific class.  But the students already agreed to abide by the university's policies, including academic integrity, when they matriculated.  So I doubt it's necessary to go the extra step and sign your syllabus's statement.

The comments so far all seem to come from the perspective of the educator. Having recently made the transition from undergraduate completing exams and assessments, to postgraduate setting and marking them, I offer the following advice based on my experience.
My university requires every single student to complete an online "Plagiarism and Academic Honesty" course each year. This course takes the form of a few dozen slides detailing many complex rules and examples, attempting to cover every form of assessment in every academic department. No-one ever actually reads the content of this course; the old concept of "TL;DR" is true even when your academic or professional future is at stake. Based on this experience, I rule out the "exhaustive restrictive list" approach.
We also have the polar opposite as a University-wide policy: a very short, to-the-point statement about always behaving with complete academic honesty and integrity. This is always qualified, however, with a link to the full "legalese" policy. Again, no-one reads this. There are also numerous loopholes. For example, the policy states that you must not use another student's work without attribution. Copying an entire report and then scribbling "I copied all this from Dave" in the margin would therefore appear to be fine. This further leads me to the conclusion that a restrictive list is not the way forward.
So what do I see as the best option from both sides of the assessment process? Assume nothing of your students. They will have come from a wide variety of cultures where "academic honesty", "plagiarism", "cheating" and all related terms have very different definitions. Public exam processes used in schools also vary across the globe, so you cannot rely on "it's the same as it was before university". I would therefore advocate a "permissive list" as the best policy:

You are only permitted to take pens, calculators, and rulers into the examination room.
All work must consist solely of the thoughts, ideas and work of the named candidate (or group, where applicable).
Using the thoughts, ideas or work of others is permitted only where it is attributed and clearly marked as not your own.
All work must be original and created for the purpose of this assessment.

I believe those four rules cover everything in the eleven points above, plus other methods of cheating.

"Copying an entire report and then scribbling "I copied all this from Dave" in the margin" - this may not be plagiarism, but that does not make it a good classroom paper. Not plagiarising is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for a good grade.

It seems like in your case, you might just list what is allowed.

Imagine you have entered a room for the first time. You did not bring anything or anyone with you. This room has only a desk, a chair, a few blank sheets of paper, and a pencil. Anything that you would not be able to do in this room is not allowed in the exam.

Generally, you could just point out a few non-obvious things to adequately illustrate the spirit of the rule, and then say:

This list is not comprehensive. I will punish anything that gives you an unfair advantage. Use your own judgement to decide what would be acceptable, and if in doubt, ask.

After all, you are not required to have every decision you make in class to have been written in exacting detail beforehand (at least in most schools). You can just say, "even though I didn't explicitly say copying from your friend is not allowed, it should have been obvious to you that I would consider it cheating". Also, some things on your list should not even be mentioned. Whatever excuse the student who tried to take an exam for someone else came up with, I guarantee that they knew full well they shouldn't have done it, and they knew you knew they knew. I don't see how

No cooperating, no open book, no cheating

Doesn't cover everything except 7 and 8 on your list. Do your students honestly think that they're allowed to copy from a phone during an exam that isn't even open-book?

This is bound to be country specific, but like most people here from US institutions, I refer to the University code of conduct. However, I highlight gray areas. This means I don't list obvious things like (2) or (6) on your list. I would say something like this
"In this class you must follow the academic code of conduct [link to code], all violations will be reported to the judiciary committee. Note, in college academic dishonesty extends a bit further than you might be used to, so read the code carefully. For example the following things are not allowed [insert a list of two or three non-obvious things - I include 1. not understanding something you write, 2. Turning in basically the same assignment as a collaborator, even when collaboration is permitted].
Don't make it sound like you are giving an exhaustive list, but it is good to highlight some gray areas.