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How should I consider a possibly rude reply from a potential PhD advisor?
I am in my first semester of my applied math PhD program in the United States. The professor (potential PhD advisor) of the course I am auditing has replied to my question about the schedule for the final project:

I mentioned several times in the chat box in class. Did not you attend or did not you listen?

I had honestly not remembered that this was done and so it is my fault for not listening properly. However, I am interpreting this reply to be quite aggressive or rude. Should I no longer consider this person to possibly be my research advisor? How does one handle such a reply?

Thank you all for your advice and general comments. They have very much helped me.

Were you reasonably polite when asking? I can see someone being annoyed otherwise.

The English is not natural. Is the prof. fluent? Do they have trouble expressing themselves? Have you perceived such rudeness before?

Are you in a different culture than your own?  Earlier this year I arrived at a train station in Germany and didn't see my train, I asked and the member of staff about it and he replied that he had already announced it three times (and then gave me written instructions).  Point being: potential advisor may not consider their reply rude.

Please don’t write answers in comments. It bypasses our quality measures by not having voting (both up and down) available on comments, as well as having other problems detailed on meta. Comments are for clarifying and improving the question; please don’t use them for other purposes. Existing answers-in-comments have been moved to chat.

He/she is probably very busy, and has repeated the same message probably N times.  Also, we all assume students will find the required information by themselves.  Nowadays, I find that students simply don't spend the time to look for information.  Their first instinct is to simply to message me, and hope that I will solve their problems for them; this is very similar to a kid asking their parents, can you please clean up after me? It is ok if you are 2 year old, but not OK after a certain age.
As for whether the professor should be a supervisor, you should look at whether he/she is successful in supervising students.  Yes, he/she may not entertain trivial questions and tell you off, but that may mean you need to work independently and at a high level.

The last paragraph is really good advice. Look around. Make a choice. Know the consequences.

@TheoreticalMinimum Definitely depends on the university... At mine, professors were the ones organizing and teaching the class. Big classes might have teaching assistants to help with homework questions and grading, but they didn't know anything about the schedule beyond what was available to the students. (In this case pretty much anyone should have known the answer, but if you had an administrative question where the answer genuinely wasn't known then the TAs weren't going to know it, either.)

Yes, but RTFM (in real life or online) is never necessary to say (think it and don't say it). It is not constructive. Instead, the response could be "Please see X and come back if you have some questions." (where X could be some (canned) response with sufficient detail or a reference to a (real) FAQ document).

Regardless of the magnitude of N, this message is inappropriate. Imagine such a response being sent by a boss to an employee. If said information were so easy to find, say on a course webpage, then a boilerplate link to there would be less hostile and quicker to send than the response given. We all have bad days, but being busy is not an excuse for interacting with a student in this way, a degree of professionalism is expected. As to their suitability as a supervisor, I don't think this says much about their approach to mathematical questions, but I'd infer something about their personality

If N is large, that seems indicative of a communication problem on the professor’s end.

Neither the quoted statement nor the question imply that the information is available somewhere else. The RTFM part of this answer is simply conjecture.

@Dave: Yeah, this is basically my opinion. Obviously we don't know the tone of the querent's message to the professor, but the "Did not you attend or did not you listen?" line of the professor's response seems rude and somewhat patronizing regardless. It also presents a false dichotomy; there are any number of other factors that may have caused a person to miss that information (such as ADHD - I can try to listen as closely as possible, but there's always the possibility I'll miss some key information anyway).

@Celos Given that the information was mentioned multiple times in class, there's one obvious source that should have been used beforehand: other students. Particularly in this day and age that's easier than ever before and we managed to do so just fine even in the good old days. Sure it'd be nice if the professor was less abrasive, but he might just not suffer people who can't help themselves.

As an external observer, what strikes me here is:
A) yes, the answer is unnecessarily rude. Everybody can have bad days, but if this person routinely reacts aggressively and loses their temper whenever dealing with perceived "failures" from others, then they seem a poor match as an advisor for you, as they probably would continuously drag you down emotionally.
So the bigger question here is: is this a pattern of behaviour, or is this person usually supportive? Do they encourage other people, or constantly put them down? Basically: are they a bully? Open your eyes and ears and look for further clues. And maybe talk to some of their current or former students.
B) Poor organisation/communication skills. Important information like a schedule shouldn't be communicated through a chat box, or require attendance to a specific event. You would expect it to feature very clearly in some easily accessible reference written material (a web page for the course, and/or the course's introduction slides, etc.)
That's another red flag. Again, does this person seem generally well organised, do they communicate their thoughts clearly, or do they generate an aura of confusion around them, and expect other people to just read their minds? (and blame them when they fail to do so). Again, try and talk to some of their current and former students...
That second point would be the biggest red flag for me. You can grow a thick skin against insensitive comments, but you can't really work around a disorganised advisor who can't communicate.

+1 This may be pattern. The quoted line just sounds quite harsh. Not paying attention and asking for the schedule via email may be a mistake, as noted above. But as a PhD student you will also make mistakes and discuss them with the supervisor -- is this the kind of reaction you want to deal with in that situation, too?

The student didn't "make mistake". Either they were too clueless to understand how their university system works, or they were too idle to do what they were supposed to do.

"Heed doubts about potential supervisors" is pre-PhD advice #1, wherever the blame lies. Maybe it's on you for just not liking their style; then you're still best off not pursuing them. Personally I see a lot of excusing of academic supervisor behaviour, often for what would be deemed unprofessional (or worse) elsewhere. Often the student got some bad vibes but blamed their own perception and did not want to pass up a career opportunity etc. Great supervisors are definitely out there to be found, but nothing except yourself will protect you from the bad whom the system unfortunately sustains

Sadly, it is far from obvious for many faculty that important information like assignments and deadlines should be communicated asynchronously. OP should have been able to answer their question with a Google search.

There is a difference between being a bully and being abrasive.

@PeterMortensen There is a very wide ambiguous grey-area which too many take advantage of

of the course I am auditing

One possibility is that you have (a) an overworked professor, (b) who gets asked little questions like this over & over enough to get annoyed and who (c) appreciates these questions even less from someone who is only auditing the course.
As I understand it (having been out of college for a very long time, but Google'd it to be sure it is still at least basically what it meant 35 years ago), auditing means you are not getting credit for the course. If the professor recognizes that you are only auditing the course, then they may well treat your questions, especially about things like project scheduling, as almost pointless since you don't have to actually do the projects!
Your intention in auditing may be to do everything in the course at a top level, as if you were taking the course for credit. But at least some people audit so they can learn the subject matter without being under any pressure and, therefore, not bother with exams and projects.
If indeed that is the case, I would expect the professor to (time permitting) respond well to a subject-matter question from you, just not to the administrative questions.

I'm moving this from comment section.
You seem to feel that your only fault was not listening properly, but actually,  asking the professor was rude, immature and unprofessional. Did you really think they did not announce the final project schedule because they'd rather reply to an e-mail by every student in the class?
The only acceptable way of asking such a question is (a) make sure the answer is not in available sources: course page/syllabus/chat history search; (b) make sure other students in the class don't know either; (c) make sure it's past the time this info should have been available (d) write a very polite message indicating you went through steps (a)-(c).
If you didn't do that, and especially if your message was not really polite, they were justifiably annoyed. Their reaction to rudeness may have been not ideal, but we are all humans.

The definition of rude is "offensively impolite" we don't know how politely the question was worded. Immature, not really, this isn't about maturity, a lot of mature people are inconsiderate of other people's time. Unprofessional, possibly, I'll give you this one, but it is still a rather odd use of the word. I'd go with inconsiderate or selfish over the word choices in this answer.

@WetlabStudent, to me, politeness is not necessarily about choice of wording - it is possible to be rude even if you mind your Ps and Qs. But I agree "inconsiderate" is a good fit.

@Kostya_I I disagree.  We have enough information in OP to discern that the professor decided to promulgate this information in a perishable and ephemeral medium.  Class or project schedule information should be in a permanent document of some kind - a syllabus, an email to all students in the class, a .PDF at the class webpage if any, etc. Chat doesn't count.  If the professor hadn't been unprofessional about communication, OP wouldn't have had to contact them in the first place.

The life of a professor, as their career progresses is never getting easier, at least if they are serious about their research. There is a neverending stream of academic chores (grant writing, teaching, faculty meetings, conferences) and in between there is a little time left for research. But progress in research is critical since everything else depends on it.
Needless to say, there is sometimes a bit of frustration, and professors, in their relationships with people, may appear brusque or rude. When you have 45 seconds to respond to a mail, you may write something like:
It's in the chat.
J.

as an answer to a carefully worded and polite question about some missing assignment or syllabus, or whatever one of the students didn't understand. If you have a minute and 45 seconds, you might think that this is your third student who wrote you about this, when everyone else didn't need additional clarification. Given the additional time, you may write more, and you might be rude. Especially rude if your wife is calling you for the third time to remind you her friends are coming to dinner, so you better not be late.
Actually, you may come across as rude when answering to your own friends, whom you actually like. They call you to congratulate you on your birthday, and you cut them short saying you're running late to a class where students are not getting the syllabus, or whatever, because you're too overwhelmed with other things. Again, the other things, may be a million and they all need your time.
There are research-first professors and there are professors who put teaching in the first place. The first usually get to teach the graduate students, exactly because they tend to skimp on niceties. The second (at least in US universities) get to teach undergraduates, and they are usually nicer, and teach better.
Unfortunately, when you chose an academic adviser, you choose from the first category. Some are rude, some are just exasperated that deadlines are approaching and their postdocs/students aren't making progress. What I'm trying to say is that your perception of their email should not be the basis for your choice of an adviser.
Some others advised to check their publication record, talk to their students, and see where the group alumni continued their careers. If the atmosphere in the group is not good (too competitive environment, abusive behavior, etc.) that's a much more serious red flag than a seemingly rude email. As a general rule, look at what that guy is doing, rather than judge what they say. Think about this. Your post makes you appear entitled. But, I don't know you, and it's very possible you've only dealt with very nice teachers up to this point. "Nice" is what I was when I was teaching introductory classes. "Nice" doubles your workload, without necessarily providing significant extra value to your students.

You need to find the right advisor for You
This not only means learning about how the advisor behaves but also about how you react emotionally and academically to different advisor styles.

I mentioned several times in the chat box in class. Did not you attend or did not you listen?

There are people for which this type of comment will get under their skin, it will fester in their brain, and take time away from their research. It will fester well beyond what the advisor intended, leading to feelings of self-doubt (does my advisor still like me?), rather than the student noting the error for future improvements, and moving on. This isn't a "bad" or "wrong" way to react, it just is who a lot of us are. If this is you, and I would guess it is, based on the fact that you spent all this time to ask a question about it - it does suggest that a highly critical and judgmental advisor would not be a good fit for your learning style. Advisors sit on a spectrum, they can be critical (some students respond well to blunt corrections) or encouraging (some students respond better to pointing out what's right, and inferring what's wrong), hands-on (some like lots of support, but some might find it controlling) or hands-off (some don't like the lack of support, but some might find the freedom exhilarating), etc.
It's possible this advisor just had a bad day, but learn from past students what this advisor is like, and take your feelings now, as a clue to how you might react to him in the future when you screw up some aspect of your research (and you will, we all do, it's how to recover from these mistakes that define our dissertations). So pick an advisor that is going to breed success, make you productive, and not cause you too much stress.

Personally that would make me think twice about having them as an advisor. Sure it would have been good for you to see their answer in the chat, but as a grad student you are committing ~5 years of your life to help them in research as you become a full fledged math PhD - that's a big deal and they need to have some level of respect for you that I don't think their response is displaying. Grad school is hard and you're going to hit a lot of bumps along the way and need your advisor to have your back. If this is how they responded to a mildly annoying question, how will they react when you mess up an experiment (or whatever it is you math folks do ;) ).
I'm an electrical engineering grad student and I've certainly made my fair share of small mistakes and my advisor has been very supportive. When I worked as a professional for a year before starting my PhD program I got the same level of respect and support I'm getting now. In short, what they sent seems unprofessional to me and like they have a very authoritative view of the advisor/student relationship.

I'm going to be just as brusque as your professor.
Did you attempt to obtain this information from one of the many other sources that I would assume exist for a student to know the schedule for their class' final project? For instance, class materials and web sites, the class chat log, or other students.
If you didn't, you're showing disrespect for your professor's time. You're a PhD candidate, not a middle-schooler. By now in your life, you should be expected to have initiative, resourcefulness, and above all, consideration for other people's time in what is effectively your workplace.
If I'm honest with you, then yes, I do think you should consider this person as an advisor. As someone who is not willing to coddle his students, he may be able to break you of some lingering bad habits, so long as you're willing to consider his feedback as tough love, rather than just being needlessly rude.

Its pretty clear from the original post and comments that this info was unavailable from anything besides a temporary chat on zoom/or equivalent. The chat isn't even shown by default in zoom and there is no easy way to access it after the lecture is over unless the professor specifically instructed the class how to do this. I put the blame here on the professor for not having this info on a more permanent resource such as a syllabus or course website.

@WetlabStudent On the contrary, it is not at all clear that this information was unavailable elsewhere. I don't know where you're seeing that, but I checked to be sure before I wrote this answer and it wasn't (and still isn't) stated that the information was unavailable elsewhere.

I think there is an opportunity here for you to learn something about the environment you are considering to go into. Your question shows that you are not completely aware of the academic life and the environment you may end up spending significant time in. I strongly recommend to make good use of this opportunity before you consider starting a PhD.
What situation is your potential advisor in that would trigger such a response?
Any person in an academic setting (that is not a permanently employed technical staff) has one main objective: to publish high-ranking papers. This will add to their track record. And basically everything in their work life depends on this track record. Their finance, the finance of their groups, the size of their groups, their position in the decision making processes at their institution, the reputation among their peers, the chance of invitation to high-ranking conferences, promotions and job opportunities, everything. All other factors in academics rate way lower than this single factor.
How does one achieve a high track record?
There are cases where academics build a high track record by pure luck, by making a great discovery that leads to one or more highly cited papers. There are also cases where academics are such bright minds that with little work, they can make such relevant contributions to their field that they can build a strong track record. But for most people, building a good track record involves an immense amount of very hard work. And in modern times, even all the hard work may not be sufficient for an individual to achieve really high ranking publications. In many fields its nowadays more common that larger groups of people need to work together to make significant contributions.
Mind you that in addition to their research, most academics need to spend time with teaching, reviewing papers, following new contributions in their field, attending conferences, organizing conferences, administrative work, etc.
How does this relate to you?
Since you have been surprised by the answer of your potential supervisor, it shows that you are not expecting the "normality" academic life. You are seeing the great adventure that a PhD poses for you, and very well so. But take a chance to look behind the curtain: What does your PhD mean for your advisor and their group?
Any academic group leader is well advised to enrich their group with people that add to the track record of the group. Everyone in the group depends on it, with their academic career. There is no second place for publishing late - either you are the first, or you missed your chance. So everyone must try to constantly give their best to achieve this. All academic life is built around this competition.
With your mistake, you showed that you did not do your research about the course in time and self-dependent. Before starting a PhD I strongly suggest to re-consider if you are prepared for the academic life. Its an environment where there are no second places. If you're not willing and prepared to constantly and tirelessly give your best, or if you are brilliant or lucky, it can be a very hard life.

If a superior replies to me like that I would first try to determine wrong doing on my part, if you are in the wrong the best course of action is first an apology and second a written commitment from you to do better next time. If your investigation shows no wrongdoing on your part, very briefly explain that back and express your regret that a miscommunication has occurred and also express how moving forward you will endeavour to try and minimise these incidents as you understand his/her time is precious and in short supply.  If you still get a negative response this person is probably not for you.  In short, treat this like a test for them

Do not take the professor as a supervisor.
The constructive way to deal with irritating circumstances is to go ahead, not to waste time on recrimination and attribution of blame for the past.
Why did they spend time on complaining and belittling you when it could have been spent on answering the question and mentioning neutrally the normal sources of information that has been missed?
You may have acted inappropriately as some answers suggest, or the prof may have been overworked, busy and stressed, as others argue, but the incident reveals this person’s personality as recriminatory and backward-looking when pressured. Avoid them.

"Why did they spend time on complaining and belittling" -
The person said: "Why did you not read the chat? This is where I posted your requested information several times and told you about it. If you want to become successful, pay attention to important information, for ducks sake." And the prof is right. Don't cuddle students but remind them to pay attention to important things, when they obviously did not. If they miss some important lab security information, this could become quite dangerous for everyone.

@stupidstudent To ask "did you not listen?" is belittling. I omits the simple possibility that the student did not hear for some reason (poor hearing, noise nearby). It unjustifiably assumes incompetence and is simply rude. It would have been polite to give the information and say where the information is normally found.

If you attend an university (online) course, you should be in a quite place where you can hear well. Even if you failed to hear it once, it was "mentioned several times in the chat box in class". If you have problems to hear something important, which was mentioned several times, you should get some hearing aid. If you have no hearing impairments, it is a good idea of a prof to tell the student, to pay attention to imporant informations.

@stupidstudent "Should"? Who are you to judge what should or should not be? It is a mistake to be condemnatory in this way; what is the point? There is no excuse for a professor's being rude, for putting down and for being querulous with a student. A professor is in a position of power and influence and must treat their students with respect and consideration. In my university, such behaviour would be condemned and, if the student complained, their complaint would probably be upheld because a simple request for information had been met by rudeness without even answering the student's need.

' "Should"? Who are you to judge what should [...] be ' - I think it is a mistake to make universities adult daycare centers. Yes, a learning environment should be a quite place, so you can concentrate and listen your tutor. And you should pay attention the tutor, so you will notice important information, which is repeated several times. If you can't make sure both conditions are fulfilled, you will not pass university. And this is a good thing, because people who miss important parts of lectures, should not become doctors or engineers. A good teacher makes this clear to its students.

I have re-read this correspondence and come to the conclusion that you will never be happy in this world until you become tolerant.


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Is it legal to accept this type of scholarship while on an F-1 visa?
So here's my situation: I am a student on F-1 visa who has been offered a scholarship from another university (not the one where I am studying) for a week long workshop in a subject that I research. This scholarship is not classified as employment, and it is just a scholarship / reimbursement money. Is it legal to accept this scholarship?

Questions about visa compliance should be directed to your university's international student services office.  Don't take advice from internet strangers if your visa is at risk.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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Are there potential consequences for not paying a college fee after I graduated?
I just graduated last semester and I just received a bill from my college claiming $125 in "room damages". I contacted the office of res life about it and they claimed that I "turned in the wrong key" and so they needed to replace the lock.  Their claim is blatantly false as I did turn in the key that I was given.  I emailed back and forth with the office pointing out it doesn't even make sense where I could have gotten the "wrong key" from. They basically dug their heels in and said they are not going to drop the charge as they have already replaced the lock.
My question is are there serious consequences to ignoring the charge as I have already graduated?
Should I just relent and pay the fee?  I called the business office directly and they said they would only drop the charge with the approval of res life.

Presumably the same consequences as not paying any other fine/fee. Impact on credit score, taking you to court for breach of contract, collection agencies chasing you, etc. They could prevent you graduating, but you said that you have already graduated. What they will do is up to the university. It may be worth looking into an appeals process if you believe they are wrong.

Do you happen to have a proof that "Their claim is blatantly false"?

I mean it was the key that I used for the entire year but at this point I have already returned it to them and they have changed the locks claiming it didn't work.  So no, I don't have any physical proof.  I only have the fact that it makes no sense as to where I would get the "wrong key" in the first place.

@sleepy Maybe the question to ask here is "do they have a proof that you turned in the wrong key".

@FedericoPoloni this is a valid question as well, but I'd expect their proof to be a piece of paper filled in (correctly or incorrectly) by a secretary where it is indicated that the original key has not been returned.

I would continue escalating until you talk to someone you can reason with. It sounds like unless you pay the fee whoever made the mistake will. Presumably keys are labelled and they should've checked this the moment you returned it, in which case they're also at fault.

The locality is quite important here.  In many places, the locks must be rekeyed after the previous occupant moves out, because even if they returned the official key you have no way of knowing how many copies they had.  In such a case the rekeying is a normal expense to the property owner and cannot be blamed on the occupant.

If I were you, I'd talk to the dean of students, I'm guessing they are the one person that might have both the power and the inclination to help you. You could also talk to the student ombuds first, their role is just to give advice and they won't intervene directly. I wouldn't fight this endlessly, but in your shoes I'd be pissed off enough to try another step or two. Good luck.

University key offices are notoriously insane.  When I left grad school, I tried to turn in my building key.  The idiot in the key office took the key, checked his records and then gave it back to me and told me that I didn't have that key, so I couldn't get my $10 back.  "But I'm holding this key in my hand."  "All I know is what's on this card, and it says you already turned it in."   This was a key to the outside door.  So I gave it to a homeless guy.   For $10, they could have avoided a lot of trouble.

If this is the US, I think you should contact the Dean of Student Life.  Threatening to dispute the fee in small claims court would also be quite reasonable.  This assumes the information in the question is correct.

@B.Goddard and then next week they called you and wanting your key....

@lalala That's when you email them the video of the conversation with the guy in the key office.

@J... you tape conversations???

Did you get a receipt for returning the key?

@lalala Either that or insist on a signed, written statement from the key guy, but yeah, you always want documented evidence in cases that have legal ramifications (ie: a key you were entrusted with is refused when you try to give it back).

@B.Goddard similarly absurd situation: https://twitter.com/touchfaith/status/1407746092830167041

At my old school, we made a horrifying discovery one year, which was that there were only about 10 different keys in the whole dorm building (for about 200 rooms).  Any given key could open approximately 10% of the doors in the building in addition to the one it was supposed to open.  (This included maintenance closets and administrative offices, etc.)  So, kind of the opposite of your problem...

Should I just relent and pay the fee?

At least from US perspective, you may need a transcript or other official correspondence from your university at some point. Therefore, resolving the problem is probably in your best interest.
If you fight long enough and hard enough, the university will likely eventually relent and remove the charge. You might need to escalate the issue to multiple deans, pressure the university on social media, contact members of the press, or even file your own lawsuit against the university.
So then the real question becomes, is all that effort and time worth it? Imagine such a process taking you 20 hours. Is your time worth more than $6.25 an hour? It might even take much longer. Sometimes the principle of the issue has intrinsic value. Enter this into your calculation.
If it were me, I'd just pay to make the problem go away.

I don't understand why the press would be interested in this story.

@MaartenBuis Perhaps the school newspaper would be interested in a story about the administration recklessly/unfairly applying fees to students. Perhaps it's part of a larger trend? Maybe the school is publicly funded. Perhaps you'd prefer your tax revenue was not used to unfairly charge students that may be economically disadvantaged.

I don't think I ever needed a transcript or other correspondence from my college after I graduated. But if you're planning on graduate school, you probably would.

@MaartenBuis: "One alum says they got charged an improper fee" is not a story. "Five hundred alums filed a class action lawsuit over improper fees" is absolutely a story.

I would pay considerably more than $125 to defend myself against a false claim on principle and to dissuade (even by a little bit) the university from trying similar shenanigans down the line. Not everyone is so able or inclined, but just my two cents.

@Barmar We always ask for transcripts when hiring anyone less than 3 years out of school.  Surely not everywhere does this, but if OP is job hunting there's a strong probability that someone will ask for it.

@AlexReinking I can relate to your approach, since it's what I would like to do when that kind of shit happens. Truth is, sometimes you don't have the time or money to do that. Moreover, sometimes the bureaucracy is an headless monster, so even if you "win", you end up with no-one learning a lesson. The net result is you wasted more money and time than you gained and no-one really paid for their mistake. Sometimes it's even worse: the money they used to refund you may be taxpayer's money, so your money. This is called Pyrrhic victory.

Hey Ian, you owe me $500. Stopping me from claiming this will take you at least 100 hours as I won't stop claiming this. Is your time worth more than $5 an hour? I guess so, so where do I give you my bank account?

@DonQuiKong Jokes aside, the problem with your "claim" is that it is not "actionable". You have no proof whatsoever to support your claim. In many countries your "claim" can be safely ignored, because you can't go to a lawyer or a court to force Ian to pay, since the court will ask you to provide some kind of proof, which you don't have (unless you forge one). ...

@DonQuiKong ...  In some countries a false "claim" can also constitute a criminal offense, somewhat similar to an extortion, or they can charge you a fine for abusing the legal system or, if you really get to drag Ian in court, they could rule against you and make you pay Ian all his legal expenses. And just nagging Ian for money you claim he owes you could be deemed a crime of stalking. I would be surprised if you could pull off that trick on Ian in any democracy with a functioning legal system.

Then why the hell is this answer saying to pay such an extortionist claim? You see what I'm getting at?

@DonQuiKong That's already been addressed in the answer. You don't have the power to deny the OP their transcript and other official documentation. The college does.

Some colleges won't send out official transcripts (to employers and such) unless all fees have been paid.
You might get "sued" in small claims court in some jurisdictions, which makes it a legal matter.
Neither of the above is necessarily going to happen.

Study fee is also different from rooming fee, they may have different penalty cascades.

In the U.S. there are laws controlling debt collection.  If an amount is in dispute, the collector can't start "collection activities".  I don't know exactly what activities this covers and it probably varies by state, but withholding transcripts might fall under "unfair collection practices." I found this article:
https://www.consumerfinancemonitor.com/2019/10/10/ca-enacts-law-prohibiting-postsecondary-schools-from-withholding-transcripts-as-debt-collection-tool/
which says that California has prohibited the practice.

Due to the restricted/controlled number of "blank" degree that can be printed on each year, the last degree I obtained can only be issued around June (the printing is controlled by the government I guess, on each degree there's a code so that anyone who wants to verify it can go to a site to check the number, no notary of any kind is needed for the photocopies). So if you graduate in September for example, you can have ceremonies, parties, etc. but you'll have to wait until next June to receive the "real" diploma (in the meantime the school will give you a certificate).
In my college before that (in another country), the degree could be given on the spot, just a day or two after my defense, but I needed to turn in a form signed by all relevant offices (library, admin, accountant, etc.) showing that there were no unresolved debt or issue with them.
For the amount you mention in your question I think they won't press charge or escalate it to the legal department, but think about situations when you still need official documents from the school.

Your first sentence seems very country-specific; most parts of the world have no such limit.

@BenVoigt so what? I don't understand the point. The situation of the OP is also very country-specific, even "state-specific". Those who answer cannot know his country's, his school's procedure after graduation. So one can only share his (rather subjective) assessment of the possible consequences, based on his (again, subjective) experience so that the OP can "prepare for the worst", just like his question. (PS a downvote only shows a toxic behavior from that downvoter).

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text:
Where does one get the funding to participate in a conference as a student?
I received a few invitations to conferences on physics. In Australia, in Japan, in France, and others. I am finishing graduate school. But how can I take part in these conferences, if I need 1,000 Euros for participation in Sweden and I also need to get there? Are there are funds to promote?

Please fix your caps key and title.

I would discuss with your advisor -- some conferences are well worth attending and your advisor may be able to help you find funds. Others are predatory. But we don't match people to funding sources here.

What facilities are you considering taking?

Ask your advisor, who's likely to know more than anyone here. It's possible that the university/department allocates some funding for graduate students to attend conferences, in which case you would qualify. It's possible that the professor has a grant that provides such a component, and he's willing to fund you. Finally, it's possible that the conference itself provides some funds for people who need travel support.
You will need to look to know the answer.


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What marks do academics normally get at undergraduate level?
I only know four people who have definite plans for academic careers and I doubt they're a representative sample, so I was wondering what kind of marks people here who are in academia (or plan on having careers in academia) received in their undergraduate degrees.
Note: I'm in the UK where we are awarded percentages that fall under classifications (e.g. 70%+ is a first) - not sure how familiar people outside of the UK are with our system, but this page explains. https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/content.php?r=15857-degree-classifications I'm not really familiar with systems outside of the UK beyond knowing that a GPA of 4 at university is rare.

I'm a PhD student who got a 2:1 in undergrad. I asked a few people about this, most academic staff I knew had 1st or 2:1 for their undergrad. I was surprised at the number of academic staff at my old university who had 2:1 from undergrad! Certainly not as many as the ones who had first classes, but it was still more than I expected. /anecdote

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Publication bias in evaluations of assessments
It is widely considered that there exists a publication bias whereby it is more difficult to get null results published than it is to get positive results published in peer-reviewed journals. As a result, we might expect it to be more difficult to publish the results of a study which failed to find evidence in support of a hypothesis than one which did.
In many of the health and social sciences, an important area of work involves evaluating assessments (e.g., of mental abilities/traits, physical ability, properties of a social context, etc.) to establish that they are reliable and valid measures of whatever we intend to assess. In at least quantitative studies, this typically involves evaluating the assessment against a bar (say, that a correlation coefficient measuring inter-rater reliability should be >.7), and if it passes this bar then we take this as evidence of the reliability or validity of the assessment.
What I'm wondering is whether there is a publication bias here as well? If I evaluate an assessment and fail to find evidence that it's reliable or valid (say, the correlation was .2), am I likely to find it harder to get it published, much in the same way as I might expect to if I was to fail to find evidence of some hypothesised effect?
In particular, I would be interested to know whether anyone has had experiences of such a publication bias, or knows of any writing on the topic.
It seems very rare to find studies which report on how poor an assessment is, but obviously I can't rule out the possibility of another publication bias being at play here (such as the file-drawer effect).

@virmaior Updated question on the basis of the help page on asking questions

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Changing my legal name for research
I'm in the process of applying to graduate school.
Previous to this, I published an article under the name "Usama B. Ayasrah". At the moment, I'm working on my second article. My MSc supervisor told me to use my legal name instead of my preferred name.
The problem here is that my full name is "Osama Bassam Mohammad Qasim Omar Ayasrah" and my legal name is "Osama Bassam Mohammad Omar". As it is the name of my extended family, I prefer to use "Ayasrah". This is a matter of personal preference.
I know I wasn't consistent, but I want to fix this right now. Should I use my legal name with a twist, like "Osama Omar (Ayasrah)"? What will I say if someone asks me about my first article?
The case is further complicated by the fact that my email address is (usama.qasim@..) and I refer to it in the last publication.
I'm trying to finish the in-press process for my publication as soon as I can.
I'd appreciate any suggestions that relate the previous article to the current one - taking into account how I feel about the name of my family.
Thanks

Is there any reason why you can't just tell your MSc supervisor that "Usama B. Ayasrah" is your professional name, and that you intend to keep it that way?

I told him that figuratively, but he said, how can you prove that this is your name when it's not your legal name? I was killed this way by him.

I read some questions, but they discussed hiring issues. Due to my immaturity in research, I wish to confirm my name early so that any unchangeable mistakes may be avoided. I intend to submit this article at my university, but I am concerned that they will not accept it due to my research name. It's missing up here in Jordan.

Unfortunately this is a question in which the lack of diversity on this SE site may prevent you from getting good answers. I am afraid that we have very few regular users here that are familiar with the conventions for middle-eastern names in academia.

Related: Official name on paper and Choosing my name as an author when publishing a scientific paper, can I use my "unofficial" first name?

@FedericoPoloni : this has nothing to do with "diversity", the question of both pseudonyms and using maiden names for authorship even after marriage have a long established tradition.

@vsz It has a lot to do with diversity, and I doubt the supervisor would have the same objection if a female student got married and kept using their maiden name for publications, because as you point out, that is quite common. But more fundamentally, the very concept of a "legal name" is culture-specific, and it has different meanings even in places where "legal names" exist. For example, in Canada a legal name can only be changed by official registration, whereas in most US states any name that you use for non-fraudulent purposes can be considered a "legal name".

The name that people know me by is my legal name, but not the name in my passport. (And if you think that's not possible, my government told me that I can't change the name in my passport because I have the choice to make one of four names my legal name. One of them is the name in my passport). Ask your supervisor how you could prove it's you if your name was John Smith and you published as John Smith. There are thousands and thousands of them in the world.

Does your university or institution provide a way to "register" your preferred name?

@vsz It may surprise you to learn that conventions with dealing with things are different in different parts of the world!

Why figuratively? Can you speak openly and directly?

There is no need to use your legal name for publication. You can use pretty much any name you like as long as you don't impersonate someone else. It isn't good to fight with your advisor, of course, but you want a long term "name" that will make it easy for people to find your work consistently.
The name you use here and in your first publication is fine. But if you want to use another, make it happen soon so that there is a minimum of confusion. You can put a note on a personal website if there are early publications under a different name, but some confusion is likely no matter what you do.
There have been scholars who have published under a name with no relation at all to their personal or legal name.
Don't be concerned about the email you use. It isn't the same as your "Professional Name".

I can't believe it. My stress is conveyed in your words. Thanks.
I don't have anything to discuss with my supervisor, it's just advice. Nevertheless, I need to prove that this research was published by (Osama Omar), also known as (Usama B. Ayasrah) in research. My university will reward me for publishing my article, which is derived from my thesis, if I show this. I don't know how to prove this. Usama B. Ayasrah is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Researchgate, Googlescholar, ORCID, etc.

You can register your preferred name with ORCID and, IIRC, connect it to you personally. You can also inform any editor of your real identity when you submit papers, establishing suitable evidence if anyone should question you, which is unlikely.

Indeed, I have already linked my articles to my ORCID profile. It is a great idea that you have given me. It would be great if the journal sent me an acceptance letter that had my legal and research names on it. It is my hope that this order will not be rejected

@UsamaB.Ayasrah Orcid has a very detailed "name" section with several fields meant exactly  to clarify information on multiple names and variations. Have you edited your page so that all your different name variations appear on it?

Yes I have been editing the name section to include both names. Thanks

that will make it easy for people to find your work consistently This. Besides the problem of long names, do not use any diacritics, it is not worth the trouble. For one, you never know if they will fit into the system, and then you do not know if they can be processed on the output. Just stick to plain ASCII (yes I know that in many languages a diacritic is a completely unrelated letter, everyone is free to choose but one the choice is made there is no way back)

@WoJ Relevant: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/. People can get very upset about not having their names properly handled, but this very much a reality we still live in, and will likely be living in for foreseeable future. Sticking to ASCII is simply the safest. One can always decide it is worth it to ensure that their proper name can be used in every system, but uhhhhh... This would take a lot of fighting and a nontrivial amount of service denials.

@WoJ That's actually a very sad state of affairs, restricting yourself to an AMERICAN standard, and a primitive one at that. I know a young British lady named Chloë, and refusing her to use her own name is more than just rude. And then of course many more in Germany, France, Czechia etc.

@gnasher729: I am French so you can imagine the suffering. The reality of the world is that a lot of systems, including legacy ones, are coded in English (and limited to English glyphs) and you get two choices: either go for safety and moral unpleasure, or fight for your rights and end up like I did once and had a super important publication going to the toilet flush because my name was mid-processed. Anything I did after to reverse the issue was simply too late. Everyone is free to do what they want, but having some warning helps to make a conscious decision.

There are famous examples of people getting spectacular results attributed to their pen name: see, for example, that of William Sealy Gosset. In academia, the default level of trust is, perhaps paradoxically, fairly high, and unless there are serious reasons to doubt one has authored an article, it would not be put under extreme scrutiny.
Most certainly, I do not wander around conferences demanding people present me their IDs to verify that their badges are not deceitful (and conference organizers usually comply with requests about the names/affiliations on the badges, within reason!). This comes from the understanding that we all work towards a shared goal of advancing human knowledge. Providing a fake name when publishing your own result does not benefit one much, and more impactful fraud is severely punished, usually being career-ending.
Also, from your comments - you might need to explain why the name under which you are filing the documents is different from the name on the articles when you apply for funding, but this does not seem impossible in your case. It depends on the agencies you are dealing with. However, I do not see them outright denying your claims to those papers, but it can get annoying very quickly. What universities and funding agencies care about the most is a proper listing of affiliations and funding details.

And then there was Nicolas Barbouki... Not just a pen name.

At a conference indeed nobody will care, but the immigration officials on the way there might, in particular if they decide to have a bad day. However that should be easily circumvented by asking the organizers for an invitation letter which includes the pen name as well as the one in the passport if both are not easily recognizable as the same.

In addition to all the other remarks that have been made about the use of one name, or another, it is worth noting that many of the citation databases (for example Scopus) allow one to link more than one name to the same identity.
If, for example you have published as Aunt Sally, Sally Anne Worldwanderer and Anne Worldwanderer, Scopus will allow you to link these names together so that a person who searches for you under one name will also be directed to the articles that you have published under a different name ... and the calculation of h-index will also reflect the totality of your publications.

These days people get rated based on scores that have been compiled by bots. These bots struggle to put together all the credit that you are due if your name appears in various forms and spellings.
With ORCID or similar unique identifier this problem should be alleviated and in time dissipate. So making sure you are recognisable to the bots as one and the same person should be your priority.
In the mean time, it remains important that your name appears in exactly the same form on all your publications.
So Usama B. Ayasrah it is, going forward!
If your MSc supervisor has a problem with this, I don't know what that might be. I did MSc supervision at a top uni for decades and I can't really imagine that I would have denied a student the use of their preferred name.


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Why are many universities are eliminating the requirement for standardized tests that measure academic achievement?
Why are many universities eliminating the requirement for standardized tests that measure academic achievement?

Do you mean SAT or GRE? And how many is many? And you should probably specify the country (the US).

Because things like the SAT and ACT really suck at their stated purpose?

In the case of better universities that mostly attract better students I suspect that the applicants have other test information in the form of AP classes and exams. If a student has taken several of these and even if the university does not grant AP credit those test scores are useful and might even be better. Many universities now have placement tests for recently matriculated students, eg, for math, that are probably more informative than the standard, basic tests.

There are several contributing reasons, among them are the following

COVID made test taking risky,

The tests are seen as less predictive than they once were,

There are some barriers to entry for some students (poor, for example, or weak schooling),

Other predictors are seen to be sufficient to find able students.

There are probably others.

Is "weak schooling" not a part of what the tests are supposed to measure? If so, does that mean that if the school system has a problem, universities are the ones that will have to deal with it?

@Lodinn, in the US, many colleges and universities can compensate for this in the early program. I had to "make up" for not having had a secondary school trigonometry course as a math major due to schooling issues.

@Lodinn the most commonly used tests in this category in the US are the SAT, ACT, and GRE represent themselves as testing aptitudes not knowledge of course content. They rely on reading short passages and answering analytical questions about those passages, and solving mathematical problems that don't involve math beyond simple algebra. This is in contrast to traditional college exams before WWII that would test for knowledge of Latin, history, science, trig, and calculus. Those tests were based on what students were learning in "good" secondary schools and high status prep schools.

(cont) This meant that students who who didn't have access to this sort of education wouldn't have access to college, even if the they had the "intellectual horsepower" (whatever that means) to succeed in college. The goal was to open up colleges to students who were bright but not necessarily from well-to-do families. The aptitude tests have fallen into disrepute because it turns out they too have strong correlations to economic status and are not purely measures of aptitude. Coaching and tutoring programs available to those with the economic resources can significantly raise scores.


text:
Is a tree/graph visualization of methods literature a useful addition to lit review?
My PhD proposal includes a short lit review (3-4 pages).
Some of the finest Proposal lit review examples I have been given have made good use of tables and plots to summarize the development of methods in the area over time.
I can not produce a plot showing how various methods clearly improve on the last, as each new method in my subfield used as different evaluation method or is for a slightly different task (Though If I really wanted, most do evaluate old methods on their new task).
I already have a large table, describing the methods, which paper they are from and what their evaluation method was.
I was thinking I could construct a Tree for which methods spawned which other methods. Technically a graph, since some methods
Something along the lines of:

This could be enhanced with numbered references to the papers in my reference list wich define the models, and which line up with the table giving more detail. It could also perhaps have years added if I wanted to show how the field developed overtime. (and could be made more complete)
I'm not certain how useful showing this relationship between methods is though.
Just looking at that chart which I put together in 5 minutes to ask this question does fill me with some satisfaction. That chart (were it correct, and enhanced with paper links) basically shows the development of my field up to its roots.
Is something like this worth having in a lit review?
It would take <1/2 page.  and fixing it up in TIKZ would prob take a few hours.
My research is about proposing new methods,
thus when complete it would fit somewhere in the tree. (Near the bottom since it would be building on a lot of work).
So I think it would be valuable.
However I have never seen a chart like this anywhere before.

Is something like this worth having in a lit review? I don't think anyone can answer how useful it is in your particular case. It depends on the specifics of your research.

I personally would like to see something like this and appreciate it. I find this much easier to understand than the standard wall of text (which you should still have to explain how the different methods built on each other). However, that's really a personal opinion, and as @ff524 notes, whether or not this is useful will likely depend heavily on your field, its conventions and the type of people you encounter there.

I'd suggest you show your draft to some professor in your field you have a good relationship with. They should be able to judge the specifics of this case.

I'm a little bit cautious about diagrams like this. The reason is that often the relationship between different pieces of work is much more messy and partial than is readily captured by such a diagram, and systematizing onto a diagram can cause one to unintentionally leave out or "neaten up" some of the most interesting pieces of hybrid work.
That said, sometimes diagrams are appropriate---consider, for example, some of the wonderful diagrams for relationships between computational complexity classes.  In this case, a diagram is a wonderful aid to comprehension, and as such, if the work in your field really does organize so nicely, I think that using a diagram is a good use of space, particularly in a document like a thesis or thesis proposal where you are not facing tight space constraints.


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Putting Semiformal "Nonpublications" on your website
Is there any good reason not for me to put semiformal publications on my website?
I have all my published works under publications (well actually just in a list on my front page, but it should be apparent that they are publications.
It also has my PhD project proposal, because that is a formal document.
Contrasting this, sometime I find myself producing less formal documents.
For example, after I was given access to some expensive software under a free license, on of the parties involved in negotiating, requested that I do a "short case study, once I have preliminary results."
So I have this, a document that took me a few hours to write up, and which I think is quiet nice. Its not a formal document and is more approachable to people outside my field, than any paper I would write.
I also sometimes find myself writing some very detailed notes, perhaps a mathematical, or a metaphorical description of something i need to explain to my supervisors.
It seems a bit of a waste to let these just collect dust after just a few people have seen them. But they are not generally worthy of publication. I feel like they might be interesting to others.
I thought perhaps I could make part of my website labeled "Non-publications", and put the pdfs there.
What would the cons/risks be?
So far my main concern that I have thought is that it might make me look bad by making available, less than perfect work. Some of these may lack suitable referencing for example.
I expect the pitfalls would in someway be similar to academic blogging. But perhaps different, as a blog post is a very well-known format, and are written for the audience that reads them. Where as I'm talking about documents that are presented without context. Google will still find them. Google scholar will (based on past experience) find them and attempt to affiliate them to me.

I see very little danger in putting those documents onto your website, and indeed I encourage my students to upload everything they produce and that may be of any value. My line of thinking is that we are after all paid by taxpayer money, so it seems only fair to make as much of what we do available in some way if possible.
Of course, the elephant in the room is how those "others interested in this work" will actually find your notes if you just upload them to your website as PDFs ...

What would the cons/risks be?
  So far my main concern that I have thought is that it might make me look bad by making available, less than perfect work. Some of these may lack suitable referencing for example.

I do not think that there is a real danger in "looking bad" as long as it is clear that whatever you upload there is just quick, informal work (and, of course, as long as the work does not contain, e.g., hate speech, but I guess this goes without saying). Lacking suitable referencing may be a more real problem, and I would likely put in the few extra minutes to add appropriate attributions for every text that I put online somewhere. However, even if you decide not to do this, it is very unlikely that somebody down the road would get agitated over not being properly cited in a document called "Some Informal Notes on [A]". The key here is that you make clear that this is not a preprint of a paper or even a technical report in the traditional sense, but "only" an informal note. Hence, it should be clear that the content isn't meant as a scientific publication. This should alleviate most concerns that you are passing off other's work as your own.

Google indexes PDFs. So presumably someone will find my "A case study on the virtues of bicycles contrasted with aircraft" pdf, by entering it in google "Bikes vs Planes". That said PDFs are unfiendly on PC, and often its not too hard to convert them to Markdown for putting on my site. Do you think it is worth it?

@Oxinabox How often do you read random PDFs when googling things? Yes, it is indexed, but I would not overestimate the discoverability of your PDF notes via Google ...


text:
Is there any ethical problem with a tiered grading system?
I am currently teaching undergraduate level courses in mathematics and engineering in a university in the United States.
My university requires us to go through some training on how to make our classroom more welcoming to a broader student body.
Whether this is a worthwhile goal is another topic for another day.
I want to ask about something more concrete.
From our discussion, we came up with a "tiered grading system" where students decide the level of difficulty they'll be assessed at. In this system, each tier represents a varying depth or complexity of the course content, potentially meaning more in-depth study, harder examination questions, or more complex assignments.
By choosing a higher tier, students may face higher difficulties or workloads, but they also stand the chance to demonstrate a higher level of understanding and mastery of the subject area. Conversely, a lower tier might involve less advanced study but would also offer less opportunity to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the topic. Students could switch tiers at any time.
However, regardless of the tier chosen, the top grade (e.g. an 'A') could be achieved within each tier, according to the individual expectations and assessment criteria of that tier. It's a system that can individualize the learning pathway and assessment, according to the abilities, aspirations, and learning strategies of each student. Outside of the classroom, there will be no indication (e.g., on transcripts) of which tier a particular student chose.
This approach can be beneficial as it allows students to learn at a pace and depth that best suits their abilities and/or career goals.
My question is, ignoring the extra time and effort required from the instructors, is there any ethical (or even legal) issue with this approach?

"From our discussion..." -- What discussion, specifically? Exactly where and who was involved? Does this discussion require specific deliverables? Are you a brand-new instructor (probably)? Are you full or part-time? Do you have other duties (e.g., in administrative staff)?

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion or containing answers / opinions will be removed.

Can you add whether the university is accredited and if so, has there been any discussion on whether tiered grading would affect accreditation?

Why is this different from having multiple alternative courses for the same topic? (Most commonly, with 1st/2nd year calculus/analysis and linear algebra.) In many universities, there are probably 4-5 at least variations of courses on the same topic and students are allowed to use more advanced variants to substitute the less advanced ones.

@ToddWilcox Yes, the university is accredited, which I should have mentioned. But my question is unrelated to accreditation. Our local accreditor SACSCOC is not concerned with classroom grading methods. They focus on the faculty's responsibility for the curriculum (they states this explicitly in their handbook). Different colleges in our region have various grading systems, from traditional exams to "ungrading" (which means no grading).

@DanielR.Collins  I am a tenured professor myself, and I am involved in a semester-long training/discussion group in which I'm bringing in faculty's viewpoint. The goal of the discussion is too silly and boring to mention here. But one point that that we have the sharpest disagreement is related to grading. Hence the question.
While the discussions here are informal, our informal discussion will inform a formal process which may affect many classes in the future. That's why I want to collect some sharp criticisms from a big population of critics who never hold back.

@Argyll It's most similar to having Calculus and Honors Calculus students sit in the same classroom. For many reasons that are too specific to our local situations, the regular/honors distinction is going away for us.  No more Honors Calculus, Linear Algebra, Analysis,......

@Bilbo: That's unfortunate. To me, it seems having separate course codes, even if they sit in the same classroom in practice, really help clarifying why you are doing everything you mentioned in your post.

@Argyll  Agreed. I wouldn't vote to eliminate the regular/honors distinction. However, it is disappearing for us, and likely for others too. In mathematics, any concept resembling a "mathematical secret menu" accessible to only a select few will likely face more scrutiny.

@Bilbo: That's unfortunate given that usually the more advanced a math class is, the more freedom students have in accessing them. It seems to me that, given that the instructors are capable, it is quite a disservice to the system and the students when you take away the tiered approach, which tailors to different students with different needs. Without the grading differences, students would be penalized for pursuing more learning -- their grades can matter in their future livelihood. In that vein, if there are issues in your proposed approach, I'd think of them as issues to solve,

@Bilbo:  and the approach an imperative.

In this system, each tier represents a varying depth or complexity of the course content, potentially meaning more in-depth study, harder examination questions, or more complex assignments.

It's a system that can individualize the learning pathway and assessment, according to the abilities, aspirations, and learning strategies of each student.

This shouldn't be accomplished by having different grading tiers within the same class. This is what 100, 200, 300, and 400 level courses offerings are for. Students that want less complex course content on a course should be taking the introductory 100/200 level courses. Students that want in-depth, harder questions to get complete mastery over a course should be taking 300/400 level courses. People who are evaluating student transcripts for, e.g., grad school or entry level jobs are not going to look into a your custom grading scheme and see that Alice's "B" is actually worth more than Bob's "A" because she took the harder track in the same course.
This would also be very difficult from an in-class perspective to accomplish this. Which of these tiers are the in-class conversations/lectures/discussions going to tailor to? Are you expecting the "deep" track students to be doing a bunch of extra work outside the classroom, while the "surface level" students are able to get what they need just during the class period? If so, that seems really unfair and potentially unethical that both of these tiers are getting the same course credit.
I think there are a lot of problems with this approach that are, again, already solved by having 100-400 level classes.

I think these are different problems. Take basic calculus, for example, we cannot have a 100-level calculus course coexist with a 300-level calculus course. We can only have one calculus course. So having different levels is not an option, at least in my university.

Could you please elaborate on the "really unfair and potentially unethical" aspect in the last sentence of the 2nd paragraph? The in-class conversation/lectures/discussions is not a big problem. I mainly want to poke holes from the ethical direction.

I think it's really unfair to have a system for a class in which two students can do the exact same quality of work and obtain the exact same level of mastery, but because one of them chose poorly at the beginning of class to be in the "hard tier" they are now penalized for it and get a lower grade than the person who chose the easy tier.
It's also potentially unethical because you're messing with understood and established amounts of work for the course credit requirements for this course - depending on which tier of student your in-class lectures are catering to, the other tier is going

to have to do a lot more work outside of class than the other tier, be judged on a different standard, and all for the exact same course credit.

What if students can change tier any time, i.e., the tier is attached to, say a unit in the course content, rather than the entire course. Will that solve part of the problem?

Also, I think it will be unlikely students reach the exact same level of mastery on different tier.  They will be doing slightly different assignments. Moreover, if we allow students to change tiers once in a while, the thinking is, maybe they will self-select into different tiers based on their preparedness.

Perhaps a standard/honors split would work. Or you have engineering or math major calculus courses plus more general calculus course: one of my local universities: https://math.osu.edu/undergrad/new-students/calculus-sequences

@Bilbo of they can change it at any time, then lean in to that and have them only choose it at the end of the semester.... But, ethics aside, the practicalities around the idea lead to an absurd level of doubt that it will achieve the intended outcomes. I'm surprised you're not seeing that, especially after the tangential feedback gleaned from this Q&A.

@Bilbo if the students can change at any time, what exactly is the point of this whole exercise? Why don't you just offer supplemental material that students who are interested can check out, without any penalty if they fail?

If students can change tier any time, the best strategy will be to pick lowest tier, then nearing the end when you know roughly what grade you will get if you were in each tier, pick the highest tier with the grade that you're still comfortable with.

@justhalf If there's absolutely no benefit to the student whatsoever for finishing in the "upper tier" beyond enhanced mastery of the subject or whatever, then why should they bother in the first place?

@WhatTheDuck bragging purpose of course :D

@justhalf I've actually had quite a lot of success with stickers.

@WhatTheDuck The same reason some students go to difficult schools like Harvard or MIT rather than a community college -- they want to master the material and be more proficient in their careers. Grades aren't everything. I could have been an A student at an average college, but I was a C student at MIT, and I think I'm better for it.

@WhatTheDuck exactly. So this system, if students are allowed to change anytime, is the same as sticker system.

@Barmar Cool, I guess? That's not really analogous to this situation. Going to "difficult" schools comes with the added benefit of having "I graduated from an Ivy League school" on the resume. Your MIT 'C' may be worth far more than an average college's 'A' to future employers. The system proposed here doesn't have any such benefit to the student. The students in this class that want mastery of the subject for intrinsic reasons are likely already going to be looking into that topic on their own time. There's no reason for them to risk getting a lower grade in this situation.

@Barmar This is plain false. Harvard and MIT come inherently with credit due to their status, this is why anyone who went there makes sure to make this fact known when looking for a job. On top, whether the quality of education is actually better at these universities is debatable.

I've seen a combined 300/400 level class before. The lecture was the same; the coursework was substantially different.

@fectin I assume that the different courseworks were also being denoted differently on the transcripts, with the harder coursework getting the 400 designation, and the easier getting the 300? That's not the case for this proposed system.

@WhatTheDuck exactly. If I recall right, it was topics in electronics fab: the 300 series got it as an overview; the 400 series had to do actual design work based on it. But yes; that is different from what is proposed here, but appears to me to be a more correct way to accomplish the same goal.

Yes, there are potentially both ethical and legal issues with this proposal. As already mentioned it completely ignores the existing course numbering standard used by practically all other US institutions to indicate level of subject difficulty (and therefore mastery). That unusual decision aside, this creates some serious problems for your students, and therefore the institution as well. Even if this proposed scheme were to work perfectly internally, every single student completely motivated and honest, and the bespoke grading scheme somehow conveyed clearly on transcripts.
Focus just on engineering students as an example, since these are engineering courses. A few high-level examples immediately come to mind:

Course credits could be deemed invalid or lower level when students transfer to other academic institutions.
The institution's technical degrees may not be recognized by employers or regulatory boards, making your graduates less desirable or even unemployable in their field of study.
Your students would not be held to the same level of mastery as their peers at other institutions, resulting in:

an unfair advantage over their peers on paper, from inflated GPAs.
reduced ability to perform their duties in real-world industry positions.
reduced quality and safety of work performed, to the detriment of the public.

I am not overstating these problems - employment (let alone advancement) in many engineering fields legally requires a degree from an program accredited by ABET, which outlines the importance and consequences pretty clearly (emphasis mine):

In the United States, for example, where professional licensure for the engineering and surveying professions is regulated at the state level, graduation from an ABET-accredited program is almost universally required to validate the educational experience of applicants. In states where non-ABET graduates are permitted to be licensed, an additional four to eight years of work experience may be required.
Many jurisdictions require graduation from an ABET-accredited program as a minimum qualification for registration to practice because it signifies preparation for entry into the profession. For example, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) requires applicants in computing to have graduated from an ABET-accredited program before they are eligible to sit for the Examination for Registration to Practice in Patent Cases.
To promote the global career mobility of technical professionals, we participate in a number of Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRA). Graduates of programs accredited by an agency that is a signatory to these MRAs may be recognized for the purposes of licensure, registration or certification.

That last paragraph, by inductive reasoning, means that non-accredited engineering degrees carry the same legal and professional weight in the US as one printed on the side of a cereal box. If this is a concern, your STEM program directors should at the very least reach out to ABET well in advance of adoption to get an official written opinion on whether this grading scheme meets the ABET program accreditation criteria.

Excellent response, with professional-level details and arguments.

@brichins Thanks for the detailed references!  My question has no direct connection to accreditation. Our accreditation agency is being very explicit about it. They have no say in how grading can/should be done.

Our accreditation agency [has] no say in how grading can/should be done. Internally no, but surely they will consider it when they are evaluating whether to begin/continue putting their stamp of approval on the programs. I know from experience that as part of their recurring institutional reviews, ABET reps will review individual course syllabi and even attend sessions in person. I would expect reading "choose your own evaluation scale" to be a red flag for any accreditation org, as it's in fundamental opposition to their purpose.

@brichins  We are accredited by SACS. For SACS, it's the other way around. The institution has to conduct detailed "Self study". So internally, these kind of practice has to be evaluated. But SACS does not have a say on this level of detail. They explicitly leave this kind of decision to the faculty.
Of course, "choose your own evaluation scale" would sound strange to anyone. And I certainly don't mean that. Each instructor still choose the evaluation scales. It's just there may be several.

@Bilbo  Yes, you do a self-study for SACS, but then SACS evaluators visit to verify the self-study.  If you explain the tiered system in the self-study, expect many questions.  If you don't explain it and the evaluators find out about it, expect big trouble.

If you are grading different students based on different criteria without the students agreeing to this scheme, surely that would be both unethical and illegal.
Here you are giving students the choice of which level of difficulty they want to be assessed at. In that case I don’t see an ethical issue (at least if this weird concept is explained to the students clearly enough), but the only possible outcome of such an experiment is that all students will choose the easiest tier.
I’m not saying some students don’t want to work harder or go more in depth with the material. But grades have significant real-life implications, and no sane student will voluntarily choose to be graded more harshly than other students.

Illegal seems a bit strong, no? Prone to investigation by an accrediting body, maybe, but I can't imagine a court of law being involved.

Yeah, basically the "perverse incentives" I mention in my comment. To be honest, there is an element of ethical skewing here, as the course may be advertised as having different tiers does not make it entirely obvious to an external recipient of the transcript that the mark likely reflects the performance in the lowest tier. Vice versa, should a student still choose a difficult tier, a perceptive reader of the transcript might mistakenly consider them a low-achiever because of the incentive structure. Students agreeing to the scheme may not be aware of that. This makes the scheme questionable.

In short, much depends on the knowledge and insight state of student and external reader, which automatically creates intransparent, and therefore problematic situations. The best Nash move for a student is to pick the lowest tier, the best Nash move for someone reading the transcript is to assume the student has taken the lowest tier and high marks are thus not worth much. Nash misery. If one interprets the grade that a school awards as the "currency" of the school, the school is offering low-value currency when it had the choice to do better. I feel this is ethically problematic.

@CaptainEmacs let’s not overthink things. I’d say it’s more accurate to say it’s a dumb idea, but the problem with it has little to do with ethics.

@DanRomik Dumb can be worse than unethical. See Cipolla's laws. :-) But I agree, the Dumbness is strong with this idea; stronger than the Evil.

No, because you do not understand the basic concept of grading
Grading based on effort is lovely. In an ideal world, that would be all you wanted, with education happening for its own sake, and every student simply measuring themselves against their own potential.
In the real world though, that's not the case. Grades at all levels of education are explicitly required to give direct comparison of achievement with other students - and not even just students in that cohort, but all students who have ever taken that course. And in many countries, that extends to giving direct comparison with all students who have ever taken that course at every institution in that country.
We need this to be the case because education is not an ivory tower operating in beautiful isolation. It is a process for producing people who are more able to do work that requires a certain level of skill. That may sound "industrial" - and it absolutely is! You are not employed to make your students happy little humans now, you're employed to prepare them for work in 3 years time. And the grades you give are how future employers know who to select.
In an ideal world, of course we would merely be pursuing education for the sake of education. That's how it used to work, back when education was restricted to the children of the ultra-wealthy. They could do whatever they wanted, secure in the knowledge that their life of privilege would never require their education to be applied, and looking down on anyone who had to do anything as menial as actually work for a living.
I'm concerned that as an educator you're still stuck in this antique concept of what education should be, because that entire concept is inherently discriminatory and elitist. If you even see this as desirable then I can tell you right now that you are already disadvantaging your students. Please stop and look at what you're employed to do, and what your students are paying large amounts of money for. This really and truly isn't it.

"And in many countries, that extends to giving direct comparison with all students who have ever taken that course at every institution in that country."  Is there an example of such a country?  I work in the US, this is a rather alien concept to me.

Grades are required to give comparision with all other students who have ever taken the course? If there are more than 1 grader involved, anyone who really believes that has probably never set a foot into higher education.

"Grades at all levels of education are explicitly required to give direct comparison of achievement with other students" - In the US, public K-8 schools are required to give individualized education plans to students that need it.  In contrast to ADA-based accomodations, IEPs may be such that students on an IEP have grades that, unbeknownst to third parties, cannot be compared to other students.  In some cases, this distinction cannot be marked on the student's transcript (see "transcripts" section).

@Timmy Ironically enough, the USA could be your example. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_the_United_States, "With the adoption of standards-based education, most states have created examinations in which students are compared to a standard of what educators, employers, parents, and other stakeholders have determined to be what every student should know and be able to do. Students are graded as exceeding, meeting, or falling below the standard. The advantage is that students are not compared against each other, and all have the opportunity to pass the standard."

@Timmy ... The UK has had this since the start of O-level and A-level school grades, which standardized teaching curricula and grading nationwide (at least to some extent). Modern school assessment systems, whilst broken in many ways, do try to hold teaching quality across the country to the same standards, and exams and marking schemes are very highly standardized.

@user111388 Which is why exam boards have detailed marking criteria to try to get graders assessing the same way, plus cross-checks on graders, amongst many other strategies.

@Graham  Maybe you have misread the question?  OP is talking about university level courses.  Not middle school and high school.  These are very different worlds.
In US, the closest thing to what you are talking about are SAT , ACT, GRE tests (and etc). And these have nothing to do with what the OP is talking about.
Also, did you notice the last sentence you quoted? "...the advantage is that students are not compared against each other..."

@Graham: I can't see how this can work. This is my experience as student and teacher: everybody grades differently - also everybody has different criteria what is important enough to be in an exam.

I've seen this in practice -- the same class had both students taking the 600 level version (first-rung graduate level) and the 400 level version (senior undergraduate level.)
Both groups attended the same lectures and took the same exams, but the assignments and grading scales were different.
This neatly solves the "race to the bottom" problem as students who wanted graduate credit had to put in graduate level effort and attain graduate-level understanding.
Another possibility I have seen is a classroom with both letter grade students and pass/fail students; students taking the class pass/fail would not generally put in much more effort than a low level pass.
On a far more ad hoc level, my high school had very few students studying German, so my German I classroom also had German II and IV students in the same room.  Lessons were usually separate, but there were a few inclusive exercises and the higher level students were held to a much higher standard.
But again, this wasn't the same as giving students the option to take a class "on easy mode" for the same credit.

I will note that the OPs proposal is already in effect at every University:  when Linear Algebra I is being offered in 5 sections by 5 different professors, everyone will look at Rate My Professor.  They will self select into a section according to whether the professor is rated hard or easy. A grade of A in one section could mean "the student is capable of computing columns space, row space, inverses, etc using our one tool:  Gaussian Elimination".  A grade of A in another section could mean "the student can prove all of the basic theorems in the setting of a general abstract vector space and perform all of the calculations in a variety of ways".
To pretend that grades in courses have an objective meaning when even in a single University the meaning can change so radically from one section to another is intellectually dishonest.
For this reason, I think that OPs proposal is ethical.

My experience is that when multiple sections are held for early courses, there is a common final exam, graded uniformly, usually by TAs. A TA grades a question for all sections, not all questions for one section. This assures some uniformity. Moreover, not everyone will fit in the same section.

@Buffy Certainly OP would not be able to implement their proposal in a course with tight coordination.  It presupposes that we are in a course where each instructor has considerable freedom in course design and evaluation (as is typical in mid to upper level courses).  In such a situation I cannot see why implementing "levels" in one course is so different from having different instructors produce radically different difficulty levels for different sections.

My former department also offer two different linear algebra course. One emphasis on proofs, which also serves as the gateway course for higher level math path way and is therefore quite difficult. The other one is MATLAB based and focus on the practical aspect. The two courses have the exact same course number and title. They are usually taught by the same instructor/TA teams. One wouldn't be able to tell the difference just by looking at the transcript.

In my current department at a smaller university, we also offer two very different linear algebra courses with course numbers that differ by just one digit. It's hard for outsiders to distinguish between them.
It's unfortunate that this answer, the only one so far that considers actual reality, got downvotes.

Just because current institutions can get away with this doesn't make it ethical. But perhaps being explicit about it would make it easier for accrediting agencies to regulate it. If it leads to increased transparency, it might be more ethical.

@jpaugh I no longer work in academia, but I would certainly have hated it if someone tried to tell me that I wasn't allowed to teach differential forms in my complex analysis class.  My point is that we have something called "academic freedom". This is a feature not a bug.  However, it does result in a situation where transcripts ultimately mean very little.

Tiered grading systems are not a new concept in universities, but from experience tiers are given separate course numbers and are taught separately. For example, most freshman level classes at my college can be taken with various levels of difficulty. With respect to GPA, an A in the "easy" class had the exact value as in the "hard" class. Similarly at the other end, undergraduates can take some graduate level classes but the grading scale may vary depending on the class and instructor.
Also keep in mind that instructors in non-tiered classes may give optional work for which there is no indication in the GPA or class number or any other record.
I do not see an ethical dilemma for tiered classes, per se, so long as graders do not bring personal biases and try to punish the "easy" tier as a means of rewarding students in the "hard" tier. Clear grading rubrics for each should help, but personal preference would be for different graders for each tier.
Regarding grad school and employers, there is virtually no way to know whether two schools have the same difficulty or same grading scale for the same class. Grades are not some absolute metric. It is best not to concern yourself with what others may do with the grade and just focus on teaching your students. In my opinion, grades are for the student.
Two top universities which each draw students from the same pool WRT  grades, SATs, etc post their freshman calc grades.  One has almost all As and Bs. The other ranges from F to A. Which school has the better students?

Other answers have noted the difficulty of clearly communicating the grading scheme to e.g. grad school admission officials or employers. The same applies here, but the grading and class work may be easier to conduct and the ethical concerns about the fairness of grading may be diminished under the following scheme.
At one highschool I attended, some classes could be taken with an optional AC (advanced credit IIRC) qualifier. In doing so, the student agreed to take on a certain number of extra projects, some of which might have to be presented in class for the benefit of all. Non-completion of these projects would result in grade deduction (with the AC qualifier still present on the transcript). All other grading and class work was the same for all students.

Does the optional AC qualifier show up in transcripts?  Are you aware of similar practice in colleges?

Yes, shown on transcript, presumably with explanatory text. Unaware of practice in college, except at undergraduate admissions, presumably.


text:
Are there particular areas of mathematical research that attract universities to consider someone over another?
I thought of my question when considering if I wanted to be a math professor.
Background: Currently I’m an undergraduate studying math with a concentration in computer science, and I am interested in subjects like algebraic geometry, specifically derived geometry and stuff like combinatorial algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory, and complex algebraic geometry, more specifically with complex manifolds.
I’m an undergraduate so I have a way to go, and I definitely want to earn my PhD and do research. Of course that does include the possibility of a job in academia.
But then I wondered when postdocs/ post phds apply to assistant professorships, especially major research universities:-
Question: does an applicant with a specific area of research give them an edge over others?
For example, would someone who does research in Ergodic Analysis have preference than those who do research in General Topology?

Depends on their needs and wants.

... which can be related to national research funding directions.

@The edit: Thanks. It looks way better.

There is some effect, certainly, but it is probably a poor strategy to depend too much on it. If you look at what the American Mathematical Society, for example, has published in the past three or so years you will get a sense of where the current action is. It won't include my old specialty, hard classical analysis, as the number of open problems there as decreased relative to those available in newer fields.
However, a given university will usually have a specific need when they put out an announcement. It might be a hot area or maybe not, since there is value in having a broad range of specialties on a faculty if it is possible. So, if I were 35 years younger, I might have a few openings available.
But there are two negatives that I can think of. First, things change. You are unlikely to be a serious contender for a faculty position for more than five years (I'm assuming you are asking about the US, actually). A lot can happen in a field in that time if those "essential to answer" questions actually get answered. The currently hot field may cool appreciably, to be replaced by the next big thing.
The other, and this is even more serious. It is hard to say where your mathematical insights will come. Mathematical insight is specific to a field (or even a small subfield), not general. You can have (as I did) tremendous insight into real analysis and almost none in abstract algebra (especially Ring Theory). I could solve the necessary problems in a course, but lacked the insight to push against the frontiers in algebra. You can seek insight and it may come, but it is an elusive thing. So, if you pick a hot field, a priori, just because it is flaming at the moment you may find the necessary insight impossible to attain while that area cools.
Rather, I suggest at your current level of development, that you seek a broad understanding of many mathematical areas and choose later, based on your insights and the then current evidence about the academic market, what you want to do. And the market is now very tight.
Finally, there is an old saying: You don't choose mathematics. Mathematics Chooses you.
But, I think the same can be said, almost as validly, for the various subfields within mathematics. I was "chosen" by classical real analysis.

Is this applicable to the Computer Science field as well?

@Aymuos, it is true to some extent, especially in highly theoretical CS, but those subfields have a lot of similarity to math. Most of CS isn't quite like that and creativity is different in much of CS.

Oh okay, thank you!