text:
Does partnering with institutions that don’t offer graduate degrees meet NSF's broader impact criteria to work with “underrepresented groups”?
A way to fulfill the broader impacts requirement of the NSF merit criteria is to integrate groups that are historically underrepresented in STEM fields into your research and outreach.  (I’ve listed the most frequently referenced groups below).  NSF indicates that one way to practically achieve this goal is to partner with academic and other organizations that serve these groups, i.e., by  “reaching out to Institutions with diverse research and instructional goals and practices, including community colleges, minority serving institutions, women’s colleges, and institutions for people with disabilities. “
In older literature circa 2008 there are also references to a role for partnering with “non-Ph.D.-granting institutions”, likely b/c schools that don’t offer advanced degrees give their students less exposure to advanced STEM research, and also can't expose students to the dynamics of graduate study.
I’m wondering if NSF has phased out this emphasis on collaboration with teaching-focused college or if it still exists.
Specific Underrepresented groups mentioned in NSF literature

Alaska Natives, Native Americans
Blacks or African Americans
Hispanics
Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders
Persons with Disabilities

Misc Notes:

There is evidence that Broader impacts related to underrepresented groups are one of the least common types of activities proposed: [How broad are our broader impacts? An analysis of the National Science Foundation's Ecosystem Studies Program and the Broader Impacts requirement].  (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/110106/abstract).
Blog commentary on the above paper:Broader impacts ≠ reaching underrepresented groups
An interesting blog post on how students from smaller college might be disadvantaged when competing for NSF pre-doctoral fellowships: "NSF Graduate Fellowships are a part of the problem"

Rule 0 on all NSF questions: ASK YOUR PROGRAM OFFICER.

I believe the full text of "Rule 0" is "call your program officer; don't email, don't leave a voice mail - ASK THEM ON THE PHONE"

I think the reason we want to increase representation of underrepresented groups is that they have the inherent potential for higher representation and achievement and just need some help getting going.
You can't say

I decided to do recruit theatre majors to our math PhD program, because theatre majors are underrepresented in our program compared to math and science majors.

Theatre majors don't, as such, have inherent potential to do well in math. (Or if they do, some other example will serve to illustrate the point.)
So you'd want to make the case (or have the case already be clear*) that the institution not offering a graduate degree was serving students with inherent potential to do better.
*Regarding that, see @ElizabethHenning's comment below.

This misses the point. I don't know what the NSF is doing these days in this regard, but the intention is that partnering with non-PhD granting institutions is an indirect way to increase participation of underrepresented groups because they are more likely to attend such institutions.

@ElizabethHenning Ah okay that's subtly different from what I wrote although I like to think it complements what I wrote


text:
Leaving PhD in the 6th year and apply for a new PhD program
I am a 6-year PhD student in computer engineering in an Asian country. My research field is Bioinformatics which was really hard to me in the beginning, but now, I love it and I have much experience at it.
Last year I was an intern in the bioinformatics department at a high-quality university in the United States. Since then, I have become disinterested in pursuing my PhD in computer engineering. Actually, most of the times I think of leaving my PhD and applying to a bioinformatics PhD program in the United States.
However, I am worried if leaving my current PhD program in the 6th year will appear as a negative point on my CV when I am applying for a new PhD in bioinformatics.
If I leave my PhD, do I have any chance of getting admitted to a new PhD program in bioinformatics?
EDIT: Also, I am worried about the letters of recommendation. If I leave my current PhD program, of course I can't get any recommendation from my PhD supervisor.

How far are you from getting the PhD from your current university? Six years is a long period of time to throw away.

Maybe two years! My university has tough rules for graduating from PhD. They expect me to publish quality papers in the field of computer science not multidisciplinary field, and this is why my PhD has taken a long time. And also, I am not with my supervisor!

Wow. Did you mean you're applying for a 2nd PhD degree after completing first one or are you planning to drop out of the 1st one and go for the second one?

I am thinking of dropping out my PhD program which now I am studying.

Why "of course I can't have recommendation of my PhD supervisor"?

Because leaving PhD, makes her angry.

Are you sure leaving for your reason would make her angry? You developing an increased interest in bioinformatics is in no way a negative reflection on her.

I'd suggest to hang on for two years, and maybe apply for a postdoc in the US.

Please hang on for two years. Don't throw away 6 years of hard work.

8 years sounds like an unusually long time to do a PhD in STEM.
My gut feeling is that you may find everything easier if you finish your current PhD first. It sounds strange that you've been doing bioinformatics work but somehow it hasn't counted towards your current PhD. Are you having other issues with your current PhD or problems with your current adviser which particularly make you want to make the switch sooner rather than later? it it likely that your current PhD would drag on far more than 2 more years?

@Murphy - How many PhD students does it take to screw in a light bulb?  One, but it takes him nine years.

You will soon be free of this advisor.  See if you can find some area of intersection between you and your advisor, and just finish up the darn degree.  Then you can go do a postdoc and follow your own interests.

Why not finishing it and going for a postdoc in bioinformatics?

Two years ago I asked this question and some persons tried to help me.
Now, I would like to share that what happened to me and where I am now. Maybe this story can help someone that feels like me in previous.
As I had written in my first post, I did not like the position that I had and I knew that I would not make any progress when I do not like the situation.
Thus, I dropped out the school and then started to find a job position in Canada, USA, and even Europe, with my master's degree.
I got several interviews and one of them that was in a prestigious university did well. The professor accepted me as a researcher in his lab and also offered a PhD position to me. At the time, I was tired of being a PhD student and I did not accept his PhD offer. A few weeks later, it turned out that the university does not allow the professor to hire a person with MSc degree from out of the university, so the professor again offered a PhD position to me. In that point, since everything seemed good to me, I accepted his offer. Now, there you go, I am again a PhD student!
I just wrote my story maybe it can inspire someone to pursue own dream and do not stay in a position that does not like.

You don't give us much to go with. What you are proposing sounds pretty dramatic, and it potentially has a lot of factors going against you: Based on your description, it seems that 1) you are abandoning a Ph.D. very deeply into it; 2) you are parting ways with your adviser unamicably; 3) you are applying to a highly competitive program in the United States; 4) you may not have publications. The one thing potentially weighing in your favor is the fact that you've interned at that university: If your adviser-to-be is willing to commit to advising you and supporting you financially, it may override the other concerns in the eyes of the department.
Someone above suggests applying yourself to completing your Ph.D. and then seeking a postdoc in your dream area; that could well have better odds of success in the long term. Ultimately, of course, there's no way we can predict what the outcome will be. I'd suggest that you be sure you are being completely honest with yourself about the reasons for the situation you find yourself in, and what it is you are trying to accomplish by starting anew.

Thank you. "I am not with my supervisor!" must be "I am not good with my supervisor!", it was a typos mistake, sorry. I meant our interests are not similar anymore, she does not like the trend of my research in publications and I do not like what she likes!

It should be noted that I have published 2 journal papers and 1 conference paper in PhD duration and also I have 3 under review papers. My main problem is about the rules in my university which expect us to publish pure computer science papers while all of my papers are in bioinformatics field. Indeed, I am just desperate about publishing pure computer science papers!! Unfortunately, in this situation, my advisor does not support me and just blames me!!

Tough predicament... Have you approached the potential adviser-to-be about this? He/she should be able to give you some guidance. If you're indeed being productive in the area you are hoping to move into, you may be in a better position.

Sorry, I do not know what is the meaning of "adviser-to-be". However, unfortunately, after my general exam I have not got any guidance from her. It has two reasons: 1) Bioinformatics is a new field for her and she has not enough knowledge/experience, 2) she is so busy, so she has not enough time to study. And must be noted, she was who encouraged me to work in bioinformatics field!

I've been involved in interviewing students applying for PhD positions (though In the EU) and having held a PhD position elsewhere usually is a red flag. It will almost certainly trigger a question during the interview about the reason for applying elsewhere. If there is a good reason for changing within the first two years it wouldn't be much of an issue (actually in one interview this candidate was ranked highest). However six years into one program is a very different situation, that would certainly be perceived as negative.

By adviser-to-be I mean the person that would be likely your adviser at the US institution. Would that not be the same person that is writing a "strong letter" for you?

Prof. Martínez, if a student like me, 1) left his/her PhD program in the 6th year, 2) with good CV, 3) without recommendation from his/her advisor in previous PhD program, 4) with a strong recommendation from his/her mentor in internship program who is the faculty member of top-ranked department in the US, applies to get a PhD position in your lab, what do you do? Do you take a look at his/her case or just ignore his/her request because of his/her abandoned PhD program? Honestly, this answer is important for me, I wanna know how professors in the US think about my case.

@Prof.JoséF.Martínez No, I do not think so b/c his department has requirements on taking some biology courses in master. I have not taken any biology course, yet. All of my knowledge in biology is the result of my self-study. However, I have never asked such question from him.

I would say go with your gut feeling.  If you always feel like leaving then leave sooner rather than later.  Do another phd; you can always quit if you don't like it.

You think I can be admitted for another PhD?

Doesn't answer the question, moreover the answer is lacks objective analysis without the answered giving any evidence for his claim. I think this is highly misleading.

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text:
How do you release a previously published, copyrighted work as open access?
I am working on an open-access textbook.  I have the permission of an author to use material from a previously published book from 20 years ago which the publisher returned the rights to digital publication.  Is there a best practice for establishing that something has been released under an open-access license?  I am using excerpts from the book and citing all of them and indicating the CC-BY-etc status we've agreed upon by the authors.  They are near retirement and their website could someday disappear so I am putting up PDF copies of their original book on a data repository (Open Science Framework) and adding citation information and CC-BY-... info.
UPDATE:
Some relevant additional information

I'm currently integrating the material into a CC-BY project and using the material based on an agreement via email.  The authors and I want to make a definitive release of the material under the license we discussed, separate from its appearance in my project.
The original authors are emeritus/near retirement, so I'm looking for a way to establish that the materials are CC-BY-... for myself and the broader community
Related to the above point, the web presence of the original authors may decay/go away when they fully retire

I don't understand what you mean by the sentence in bold (i.e. the question). "Best practice for establishing" makes little sense to me. Sorry. Can you clarify?

@Buffy I believe OP is asking how to properly document that the content they are posting was released under the license that they say it is. (OP: would still be good to clarify this, if indeed this is what you are looking for) I worry this is drifting into the legal advice realm a bit, though.

Release in a repository seems the right thing to do. Arxiv is another option. When submitting to Arxiv, you have to indicate a license.

The answers to your question are in
https://creativecommons.org/faq/#who-gives-permission-to-use-material-offered-under-creative-commons-licenses
https://creativecommons.org/faq/#how-do-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-my-material

I have voted to close because this is not about academia.  The answer would be the same if you were creating a work of popular fiction or a meme or a film.

If all you mean is how do you make it clear that it is proper to republish the work, then just put a notice at the beginning of it to that effect, naming the original publisher and noting that rights to digital publication were returned to the authors.
Probably, but not necessarily, the original publisher still holds the fundamental copyright so you should also make that clear. Or make clear what the copyright status is.
But a statement in the work itself is the way to "advertise" the facts. Keep any paperwork in case you are ever questioned about it.

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text:
Term for the opposite of salami publishing
Question
Salami publishing refers to the practice of splitting scientific work into overly small pieces (least publishable units) and publishing a separate paper about each.
I am looking for a term for the opposite practice, i.e., lumping together a lot of or too much scientific work into one paper.

I prefer terms that can be understood (by a suitable audience) without further explanation. Essentially, I want something less cumbersome than opposite of salami publishing.
I have no strong preference regarding the tone of the term. E.g., it can be derogatory (but doesn’t need to be).
I am open to neologisms, but please consider the first point.

Background
This term would be useful for me to talk about the publishing culture in biology (or certain subfields thereof), where new relevant methods often do not get papers on their own, but are only published as the appendix to some paper that is primarily about findings achieved with that method.

"Hot mess" as in everything is chucked in and cooked...

@NajibIdrissi Right. The reason for the term in use here is that it was originally "salami slicing", referring to slicing the research into as tiny pieces as possible.

@DSVA: This is not a good place to have a debate about whether this is actually a good or a bad thing (I will ping you in chat). However, in some other fields, papers which focus on a method (which doesn’t mean no application) are pretty common and nobody would accuse them of salami publishing.

The term used (at least in Germany) for combining a PhD thesis from multiple papers is a cumulative thesis.

If "salami-slicing" is cutting work into many small papers, perhaps "sausage-making" is the opposite? ;-)

In many fields, I believe the appropriate term is “book”.

“Gaussian”, as per his personal motto: pauca sed matura ("few, but ripe").

I call it "kitchen sink publishing."  I apply the term to papers which contain redundant methods for determining the result.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/everything_but_the_kitchen_sink

I had a mentor who did this a lot and I referred to it as "Magnum Opus Publishing", where the objective is to have a singular publication of such heartbreaking insight and magnitude that it encapsulates an entire research question in a single work.

Arguably, a "salami" publication can encapsulate an entire research question, too. The research question might be narrower in scope.

I propose smorgasbord publishing.
Merriam-Webster defines smorgasbord as:

a luncheon or supper buffet offering a variety of foods and dishes (such as hors d'oeuvres, hot and cold meats, smoked and pickled fish, cheeses, salads, and relishes)

an often large heterogeneous mixture : mélange

Seems appropriate.

Or of course the more "original" smörgåsbord (waiting for audio samples of people trying to pronounce it...).

Disclaimer: This answer is full of tongue-in-cheek neologisms ;-)
I would like to stay in the context of food and suggest
Gluttony publishing (more derogatory)
or
Banquet publishing (less derogatory).
You could even go as far as labeling the publication itself as banquet as in the following sentence.

He has just written a banquet paper of 40 pages. He could have easily salami sliced it into 5 papers. Doesn't he know that for most grants only the number of publications counts?

A slightly different term would be a buffet paper denoting a paper that is a collection of not necessarily tightly coupled topics where everyone can pick what he likes. It can also refer to a paper that is written to suit everybody.

I left mine as a comment :) but yes there are relevant terms...

This depends on what you mean by "opposite". If you treat "salami publishing" as an extreme, then the more ordinary case (by far) is just "publishing". It needs no adjective.
However, if you mean the opposite extreme, consider the following. Sometimes a field will have a period of intense work with a large number of (possibly) relatively small results. After that period ends or at least the rate of advancement slows, someone may decide to "consolidate" what has been recently learned in a summative paper that will have many references and a new top-level view of the field as it is then known. "Consolidation" and "Unification" are good terms for that sort of publication. Such a publication is a great resource for new researchers in the field (say, new PhD students).
However, if you require a food metaphor, try paella. Of course it is best savored in Andalusia. And I guess that if you need an explanation about why this is a good metaphor you haven't tried to make (or eat) it.

A term with the positive connotation of completeness: All-in-one-publication.
A term with a slightly negative connotation of "good, but too much": The paper is an embarrassment of riches.
A term with a negative connotation: Overkill publication.

I usually call these papers "book" or "tome", which conveys that they are way too long (at least when you look at the page count when the supplement(s) are included). The more technical criticism that too many things were lumped together there is kind of implicit, though. (These terms also apply only to the papers themselves, and not the publishing style.)
Edit: if you want to stay in the culinary realm, maybe "casserole publishing"?

Almost all of the other answers are better than mine, but while holistic approach doesn't work grammatically for this purpose, could holistic publishing work?
For holistric Google returns:

characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

If holistic publishing is the style that a person with a holistic approach to their research and their way of communicating and teaching and writing works for publication, then perhaps they can be said to be a holistic publisher.

There is a non-zero chance you have a German cultural background. While holistic in german is seen as the google result you get, in the anglo-saxon culture holistic generally means homeopathic treatment, lunar cycles in agriculture and to cut your hair and so on...

@EarlGrey that might be the first thing that pops into their minds if presented with the word holistic in some word association game, but used in a specific context don't you think most English speaking folk will be aware that the word has more than one meaning (as words so often do) and that they should refer to the sentence in which it was used? That's how I learned English back when I was in the mid-single digits.

I am quite sure that in a specific context there are other words than holistic to describe a complete overview of the complex system/topic under analysis and this is the reason why holistic has such a bad reputation.
See for example the abstract of this paper, related to biology
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3067528/
I am saying all this because a language is not what you studied in mid-single digits, it is what and how it is used by the median of the population today.

@EarlGrey being profoundly median myself, I feel I have a good finger on the pulse of the median population, unlike those with advanced knowledge of etymology who look down on it like so many ants the same way that entomologists look down on a colony of  ents.

You are as much median as much as humble!

@EarlGrey basically I don't think we should be afraid of using a word because there exist some biologists that get it wrong some of the time. Imagine if physicians fled patients who were sick rather than rallied to their side for assistance and revitalization. The word fits. It works. Let's defend the languafe! We shouldn't let a few malapropicists kill it!

O the contrary, languages are fluid, if the perceived meaning of a word is constantly different than the one advocated by a single person, that single person will soon be Miss Malaprop. The physician will be more helpful if he/she/it uses non-ambiguous technical worlds, rather than words having a certain meaning in the dictionary and another in daily life (which most likely will end in the dictionary in one decade or so).

@EarlGrey as a fluid, I think we should encourage language to emulate water, as in Bruce Lee's Be like water 1, 2 rather than become simply wishy-washy and let the  malapropicists  have their way with it.

Would 'syncretic publishing' come close? Syncretic is generally used in religious studies to denote a mixture of different faiths/traditions in an unstructured manner. The structured version of this would be 'synthesis'.
Religious connotation aside, syncretic is a legitimate philosophical idea by itself. I haven't found an instance of it being used to describe academic publishing though.

Thank you for your answer, but I do not think that syncretic or synthetic would be easily understood as you intend. Without any context, the first thought that comes to my mind is that this is about an interdisciplinary paper.

Hmm, interdisciplinary is a fair interpretation. Hope you find something less ambiguous :)

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text:
Students self-assess which exercises they attempted – how can I make this more homogeneous?
Background
I am organising and conducting the exercises for a graduate course.
The exercises mainly exist to give the students the opportunity to learn by doing.
However, the students also need to participate to some extent to be admitted to a final exam.
Exercises are given out as homework one week before the class.
During the class, students present their solutions to the exercises, which are discussed by other students and me.
We evaluate this as follows (which is mostly standard at my university):

At the beginning of each exercise class, a paper containing student names and the numbers of the exercises is passed around and each student checks those those tasks for which they feel that they can present a reasonable attempt to solve it.
This attempt does not need to be complete or correct; they should just be able to show what they tried and, if they failed, elaborate where they are stuck.
During the exercise class, the student presenting a given task is selected at random from those who checked it.
Tasks are so small that most of them cannot be reasonably divided into subtasks.
(This should reduce the uncertainty how to report when only half of a task was attempted.)
To be admitted to the final exam, a student has to have checked at least half of all tasks.
There is no benefit for students who have checked more exercises.

Mainly, the system seems to be working well:
I haven’t spotted an overly optimistic self-report yet and I currently expect that 0.3 students will fail the exercise criterion.
Actual Question
My biggest issue with this system is that there is a huge variation amongst students regarding how optimistic or pessimistic their self-assessment is.
In particular the system can make life more difficult for pessimistic students.
For example it happened that a student who (legitimately) checked a task and was chosen to present her attempt was stuck at some point, and another student volunteered to help out even though he did not check the task.
Hence I am asking: Is there anything I can do to effect less variability in these self-reports? In particular, I would like to flatten the pessimistic side of the spectrum.
And just because somebody is bound to remark that life is harsh and the pessimistic students need to be more optimistic anyway: Yes, but I may be able to help them learn this.

I have some ideas but first -- would you mind giving us some key words and phrases in the original language, and/or explaining the terms in English?  I'd like to understand better what you mean by Check the task, exercise class, rightfully.  I think "check the task" and "rightfully" might be being used in a nonstandard way, and "exercise class" might be a British term.  "Present" doesn't give me that feeling, but it's such a broad term that that would also be helpful to see expanded.  Most importantly, could I please see the exact question that the students are asked in their...

... self-eval?  Is it multiple choice, or free answer?  Paper format, verbal, or web form?  When does the student get asked this question?  How many students present per class?  Do they use a chalk board?

Have you ever experimented with letting the students know ahead of time which problem(s) they're supposed to present?  I suspect that even half an hour in advance of class would be helpful for students who are on the low end of the arrogance spectrum.  Have you experimented with small groups working simultaneously at different chalkboards in the room? Am I right in thinking that you're there, leading the session?  Why don't you just keep a grade book, and put check marks next to students' names each time they present an attempt?

@aparente001: Please see my edit.

If the problem (being too pessimistic) is not too common, let the student check the exercises not only in the usual way, but also with "?".
Announce at the beginning that if students are totally unsure whether or not the may check an exercise, they may check it with "?". Then, whenever a student checked an exercise with "?", let them present this exercise (with no negative consequence whatsoever) and then say, if the attempt was resonable enough to warrant a checkmark. Announce when explaining "?", that students with "?" will have to present. (This has also the advantage that students see a not-so-perfect solution which is often more helpful and more intuitive then a perfect solution.) However, this only works if exercises do not get too often marked with "?" (as otherwise, this system could be gamed).
Some additional thoughts:

In my experience with similar systems, the "pessimistic" students are often the excellent ones, that is, the ones that pass the course anyway.
A lot of students have exactly the number of checkmarks they need to pass the course (and not more). I do think (but without proof) that if students are just at the border between passing and failing, they will do enough work to pass and get more "optimistic".
Announce in the first lesson as clearly as possible when an exercise can be checked and also, when it cannot be checked. It is often useful to give examples when it can not be checked as students may compare their situation to the example.

Would it be possible to get students to "grade" or "mark" other students submissions - blindly of course?
This may well help with those who are too pessimistic on themselves.
The rule would be that it is "constructive criticism" only and marks have to be justified :
laid out nicely +5
or
confusing layout +1 ...
Edit, you could also consider "recognising" the "best" for each assignment - anonymously i.e. this is the best this week etc... might add some competition.. or the prize is a bar of chocolate...

This sounds like focussing on correctness rather than on the attempt. Also, one of the advantages of this system is that students do not have spend much time on writing things down nicely, but can focus more on the content.

I wish you had given us the actual wording of the question on the sheet that gets passed around.  I have a feeling this is a key part of the problem.  If you can give us that wording, I'll see if that helps me improve my answer.
Here are some ideas for you to consider.  I don't mean, with this list, that you necessarily have to do all of these things.  The numbers are intended only to make discussion easier.

Collect some data and look to see if there's a gender correlation with timidity/pessimism.  Knowledge is power.  If there is a gender correlation, it will be helpful to be explicitly aware of this.  (I'm not going to write specific suggestions based on an assumption that there is a gender correlation.  If there is, I'd encourage you to write a separate question.)

Ask the students for feedback and suggestions.  Because you have a problem with timidity in your section, I suggest asking via a short written questionnaire, not via a group discussion.

There should be multiple ways that students can demonstrate knowledge, skills and effort.

One of my fondest memories of being a student was my freshman calculus class, which had chalkboards on all four walls.  The last 20 minutes of class, the teacher had ALL the students in the class write up a different homework problem on the board.  That experience was fun!  Like when an only child of two or three begins to experience "parallel play" in a play group.  There was a bit of opportunity for interaction with one's neighbors, and the barrier between instructor and student came down.   No one felt put on the spot, because we were all writing our work on the board.

Timid students may benefit from being told in advance which problem they will be presenting to a group.  It might be even more helpful to let them choose the problem they want to present.  Timid students may be hesitating to check off some of the problems they did look at at home, if they feel nervous that they might be asked to present certain problems that they feel unsure about.

It might be beneficial to change the way the question is worded on your sheet.  I wish I had access to the actual wording you're using.  Here is a draft wording that might give good results in English:

"For each problem that you looked at outside class, please put a check mark under 'attempted'.  For each problem you would be comfortable presenting to the group, put a check mark under 'willing to present'."

Ask someone with excellent observation skills to come in as a fly on the wall to observe the behavior of the more confident students, and your own behavior.  There are subtle things that can have a big effect on timid students.  Depending on what exactly is going on, it might be helpful to do some work in subgroups.

I wish you had given us the actual wording of the question on the sheet that gets passed around. – There are no words. It is just a table and everybody knows what it means.

@Wrzlprmft - How did they find out what it means?  Sometimes, when some people are behaving markedly more timidly than some other people, it can be helpful to check exactly what people actually have understood.  It's possible that differences in the understanding are an important factor in the differences you observe.

How did they find out what it means? – The modus was announced before the first exercise. It is also the default for many kinds of courses within this programme.

What's "modus"?  In Mexico I once met a young man from the US who was studying medicine in Mexico because he hadn't been able to get into medical school in the US.  He had prepared for his relocation by memorizing his Spanish-English dictionary.  "Modus" reminds me of him.... // I can't tell whether you're looking for affirmation that you've done everything you can about the problem you've described here; or whether you're looking for ideas on how to solve the problem.  If it's the former, I'll refrain from repeating myself.  If it's the latter, how about rereading...

... the part that starts with "Sometimes" and ends with "observe" and letting me know your thoughts about that?

What's "modus"? – a mode of procedure, a way of doing something. — I can't tell whether you're looking for affirmation – For what? So far I didn’t do anything but follow the procedure that was handed down to me. — I didn’t comment on this so far because your question suggests that you have quite a different understanding of how these exercises work than I do, which I would like to clarify first. I can say though that I am confident that the general rules of how the exercises are evaluated (the modus) are clear to everybody.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


text:
As a new faculty member, how do I avoid the Peter Principle?
Quoth the Wikipedia:
"The Peter Principle is a proposition that states that the members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, 'Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.'"
In academia, we have a tendency to promote brilliant and productive young researchers (e.g., grad students and postdocs) into positions with a large management component (i.e., assistant professors who must run a research group).  God willing, I will get promoted.  But during my PhD,
I was not trained as a manager!
The conventional wisdom is: it doesn't matter!  No professor ever took management training, and, hey, everything "works out" in the end.  The main problem I have with that statement are the quotes around "works out."  I have seen friends suffer through horrible, painful, sad grad school experiences as a result of having advisors who are brilliant researchers and terrible managers.  Likewise, the advisor suffers because she/he is investing time/energy/money in a student that doesn't produce anything.  So my question is
Q: How do I avoid becoming a terrible manager?
In particular, what kinds of activities have you seen successful leaders of large-ish research groups engage in?  Did they take training specifically targeted at managing groups?  Read certain books?  Talk about it a lot with senior colleagues?  Make lots of posts on academia.stackexchange?  Or did they really all just fly by the seat of their pants, and let natural selection take its course?
Thanks!

How did your senior faculty mentor answer this question?  (You do have a senior faculty mentor, don't you?)

Sorry, I wasn't clear here: not a faculty member quite yet.  Just trying to prepare for the imminent future!

…as for my PhD advisor: "I am not a manager."

I don't want to put it as an answer, because it is probably not one, I still feel tne need to say it: Managers who came from management schools are easy to recognize, because they are unexperienced theoreticians who are keen on the theoretical crap more than on their own brain and logic. You can get some limited help in managing schools/courses/tutorials/books. But you'll never become a good manager from these. You have to go and start managing something, being it a local beer-drinking group, a programme for helping blind homeless people or a group of people at a department.

Your PhD advisor is dodging the question.  Shame on him.  Find a better mentor.

You may be interested to read Uri Alon's How to Build a Motivated Research Group.

Based on my experience with faculty, if you care about managing well, and don't want to be a bad manager, you are already doing better than many people. Again, in my experience, the worst offenders along these lines are those who think they are God's gift to their graduate students and postdocs, and cannot bear to hear any criticism.
So, if you want to do a good job managing:

Keep caring about doing a good job and encourage constructive
criticism/suggestions.
In particular, talk to the people you are managing, and find out
what they think. Lots of junior people are scared to even give
constructive advice to their seniors, because they don't know if it
will adversely affect them. It is obvious to say that you can often
learn a great deal from the people around you, but people sometimes
forget that this is very much true of the junior people you work
with as well.

This is only tangentially relevant, but this blog post by Matt Zimmerman is quite good.

"if you care about managing well, and don't want to be a bad manager, you are already doing better than many people" I couldn't agree more.

Short answer: Know when to turn down a promotion offer.
In the meantime, seek out mentorship opportunities, and learn what you can. Does your institution have a faculty development office? See what kinds of workshops they offer. Not all of that is about teaching techniques. If the faculty development office doesn't plan to offer any kind of training on managing a research group, request that they do so. Faculty development offices are often underutilized on campus, and if the people running that office are worth their salt, they will go out of their way to give you the assistance you are requesting.

management position ≠ promotion

@JeffE - That's an interesting take, but it's an assumption buried in the O.P.'s question ("In academia, we have a tendency to promote brilliant and productive young researchers into positions with a large management component...")

A management position does not even necessarily require a change in title. All it requires is having enough students.

Well, then, in that situation, I would modify my short answer to: "Know how many students you can effectively handle."

I suspect that this response to "know when to turn down a promotion offer" stems from the "Peter Principle" that was invoked in the question's title, as promotions is what that principle refers to.

It's a great question and one that is not asked often enough, inside or outside of academia.
In my experience, all first time managers suck at it. Likely you will too. Don't be disheartened, just understand that proper management technique has a large artistic component and you just have to learn by doing (and usually by making mistakes).
I do not think this is a good excuse to turn down the job. If you take a management job later you will still likely start off as a poor manager. That said, starting too young will make it more difficult (on you and on those you manage) simply because of less life-experience.
The key is to be open minded and, as teachers always tell students, read more. In your case, read as much as you can. There are so many great management books out there from very well respected writers (Drucker, Covey, etc.). Read, experience, reflect. As you learn you will be more competent and that is, in the end, how you avoid the Peter Principle.
Another key I had always thought relevant to avoiding the Peter Principle was that you should never accept a job that you cannot already do 50% of. The same is true when recruiting - never offer a position to someone unless they can already do at least 50% of the job.

In my experience, all first time ANYTHING suck at it.

Since this is a site about academia, I believe it is worth pointing out that Management as we perceive it today, has no more than a 60-70 years history as a body of knowledge which is (attempted to) be systematically taught (it started out as in-house seminars in General Electric corporation), and even less history as an academic, research discipline. Of course texts about leadership are scattered throughout human history -but they are more of a deontological nature, focusing on how a leader "should be" rather than on how they can help the reader be that leader.
This does not mean that being trained as a manager is worthless -there are general conclusions about Management that seem to stand the test of time, of activity field, and even the test of culture.
From my 20-years experience as a manager, I have two pieces of advice for someone inexperienced like you say you are:
a) Be available
b) Criticize the act and not the (professional or personal) character.

Let me add a few scattered points to the answers that are already here.

First of all, I'm not sure your question is about Peter Principle. As I understand it, the Peter Principle is about ending up with a position that you cannot and will never be able to cope with. I think this is very different from not being a good manager because you're just at the stage to start learning management skills.
From that point of view, there's nothing wrong with trying to learn management. If you are afraid that management isn't your thing, make sure you have a way out at least every once in a while. This also means that you need to stay at the top of your 'primary' profession (I consider full-time management a different profession!).
Find yourself a good mentor. Personally, I'm lucky: in one of my former positions I had an exceptionally good leader. We're still on good terms, and I know where I can ask for advise on leading. I do so, too.
Of course it helps if the mentor is from academia, too. But this is not necessary. Look around not only with colleagues but also with friends, acquaintances etc.
Maybe your partner or a good friend is in a similar situation, and you could discuss and reflect every once in a while what you've encountered.
Side note: There's a saying that on average a human needs to exercise a profession 10 to 15 years to arrive at the top of the personal performance in that profession. I think this also applies to management, though there are counter-examples. All in all, it means that your first students will suffer from your lack of experience.
However, I try to be open with students about the fact that I'm learning these skills, and also when I don't know how to teach them something. As others have already said, being aware of the potential problem is probably already more than half of the solution:  It is one of those points where those who are concerned would not need to be concerned, and those who aren't probably should be.
If you are open about learning your part, it is easier for students to give you the feedback you need. It is your step to mutual openness.
In my culture (German) it is up to the senior (position) to offer the Du. Likewise, I think the supervisor should make the first step in being open about the soft skills. If this is about criticizing your leadership, you'll normally have to repeat this several times until a mutual level of trust is established that allows students to give you feedback.

=> Look around you what is going on. Try to find out what goes well and why, and what went wrong and why.

A bad enemy of learning these skills is being assigned too many students, and being assigned students where you did not participate at all in the application/selection process (I'm in a close-to-academia institution, but with us, students have to apply for research topics.) IMHO this can lead to serious trouble between the supervisor and the students, and backfires already in the mid-future (some improved skills pay off very quickly I think).
I'd like to encourage you: keep fighting that your needs (time, space, ...) for improving these skills will be met somehow.
Of course, one also needs to learn how to cope with the more difficult situations...
Last but not least, probably you did have some training on this:

Likely, you have been looking already after undergrad/practicum students.
Possibly, you have (unofficially?) supervised Bachelor's / Master's theses already. Or at least helped with the supervision.
Likely, you have been attending meetings already.
Possibly, you have already been leading meetings.
Possibly, you have been in charge already. For sure, for your thesis. Maybe also for other projects.
Also, you probably have by now some experience in managing the managers. ;-)

Disclaimer: I'm not in a management position. Though I try to learn it while working in my primary profession. I actually think switching over to management too early too much is a waste of all the training and learning. Personally, I want to see some fruits of the highly productive phase that I think I've reached now after some 10 years in my profession -- I like that far too much to leave it completely for management. But I see that it is basically impossible to be a good group leader and do substantial amounts of scientific work yourself. So I try to slow down the changing sides to management. On the other hand, I've done quite a bit of leading students behind the scenes. And I've been responsible for several projects on a volunteering basis.

If you are worried that you aren't trained to manage the humans under your direction go to Human Resources and ask them what "early management development" support they offer. These are the type of afternoon or day long seminars on things like employment guidelines, university policies about being the supervisor for a bunch of people. You would be surprised how useful it can be to understand how departments like Accounts Payable work (reimbursements come much faster when the paperwork is done the first time). There should also be opportunities for them to help you develop the kind of workplace leadership skills that you may feel need sharpening because they aren't the same as research leadership skills.
One thing though, most of the development opportunities will be focused mainly on staff, not faculty. But once you start talking about managing employees much of it carries over. Of course, simply talking with other folks who have run large groups before. But always press them for specifics of what they wish they had not done.

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text:
Finding graduate programs supporting a specific research focus
I'm looking forward to finding a university that I could do my PhD in computer science in financial systems and machine learning. Financial systems means Foreign Exchange market or Stock markets.
Is there any way to look for such universities?
My background:
I studied in three universities in Egypt, USA and Singapore for my bachelor in Comp Eng. Worked in two universities as undergrad research assistant (NTU, Singapore and Uni of Arkansas, US). I won several national and international awards and competitions. Now, I'm working as a junior researcher in north Italy (one year of experience, two by the next fall). And I published 4 papers in last 12 months

I'm open to all places. I studied in three universities in Egypt, USA and Singapore for my bachelor in Comp Eng. Worked in two universities as undergrad research assistant (NTU, Singapore and Uni of Arkansas, US). I won several national and international awards and competitions. Now, I'm working as a junior researcher in north Italy (one year of experience, two by the next fall). And I published 4 papers in last 12 months.

I disagree with the close votes.  The actual question "Are there any way to look for such universities?" is applicable to almost anyone interested in a graduate school in a specific topic.

@Kogesho,, yes?

Okay @Kogesho , no problem.

@M-T-A What is your e-mail?

Three easy suggestions:

Look for advisors, not programs.  It's unlikely that any department is going to have a separate program, or even a separate research group, with your particular focus.   Look for authors of papers that you've read about financial systems and machine learning.  (You have read such papers, haven't you?)  Then look at the authors they cite, and the authors that cite them.
Don't limit yourself to computer science departments.  If you do good research, nobody cares what department is listed on your diploma.  (And if you don't plan to do good research, you don't really want a PhD.)  Lots of faculty and students in non-CS departments do excellent computer science research.
Ask your faculty mentors.  After working at six universities, you've built a large professional academic network; exploit it!  Your faculty colleagues will be considerably more familiar with programs in their (and your) particular focus than Random Strangers on the Internet.


text:
Admin/teaching workload in a UK university, compared to other research universities
I'm a junior faculty in a reasonably good UK university. It seems to me that the non-research workload is quite high, and more than I would wish/expected for.
I have two courses per year. Which is okay. And then there's some admin work.

Question 1: Is this a fair amount of workload? How would you characterize a standard amount of non-research oriented workload?

Further comments: I feel also that the admin concerning everything in the UK is very high in comparison to other higher education systems in the world.
For example, two courses and some admin seems fair, but the amount of bureaucracy and effort made in each of these tasks is overwhelming, in comparison to other places I've seen.

Question 2: Is my impression that UK has a high non-research related
workload correct? Or do most standard faculty members have quite
high non-research related workload? How would you compare it country
wise?

No one can say what's fair. But yours is an exceedingly common complaint, and certainly one that people have switched jobs over.

Around here (UTFSM, Chile) normal workload is 4 courses a year (one semester long). Not just "junior faculty", BTW.

My (tenured) advisor at a US university has two courses per semester. I would not call that unreasonable.

@Anon, I said "fair amount", meaning "standard workload" for a faculty. Indeed, if this is standard workload there's no reason to switch jobs. So basically, my question is: how would you compare it to other places?

How many class hours has each course?

Is there actually anything like a "standard" non-research workload? At least in the US, this various tremendously across institutions of different kinds.

@ff524: for instance, in Italy certain parameters of the teaching workload are standardized by law. A university, for example, can assign to a full-professor a maximum of 120 h/yr of class hours (office hours, exams etc. don't count). Above this threshold, the university should pay a professor for the excess hours. How much is paid, depends on the university budget. Instead, a researcher (or, as we are now called, assistant professor) like me should be paid for all the teaching hours and, in principle, I could refuse to teach (in practice this has been a long debated issue).

@Massimo, class hours: for each course it's 10 weeks of 2 lectures hours and one or two exercise/lab hours per week. So in total, every week it's 4 lecture hours + 2.5 lab hours.

@Jack: Are you saying you teach 65 hours total per year? If so I would consider this extraordinarily light. At my research university in the US, I teach two courses per semester, 2 1/2 hours per week each, and the semester goes for roughly 14 weeks. 2 * 2 * 2 1/2 * 14 = 140, and this is quite typical. At top places the load is lighter, but usually only by a little bit.

@Anon, yes 65 per year approximately. But there is some admin, some frequent meetings with students, and supervision of final year projects etc. And I need to mark 1-3 assignments per course, and final projects in the courses and final exams. Overall, I don't know how to compare it to other research universities in other places. So this is my question.

@Anonymous My impression is that here in Central Europe, teaching load for faculty tends to be lower than in  the US. On the other hand, teaching load for PhD students is often rather higher in comparison (I had times as a PhD student when I was teaching 4 courses a year, and not as TA).

In the US it's also typical that faculty need to do marking, meet with students, admin work, etc. I stand by my opinion that this sounds much lighter than a typical load in the US, even at a top-notch university.

I work at a university reguarly ranked in or near the top 10 in the UK. "Minimal contribution" to teaching is regarded as 40% of "deployable time", and to admin as 10%. The 50% remaining is (notionally) allocated to research activity. Suck it up!

Research, teaching and admin are the three halves of an academics job.  I have four courses a year (and final year and MSc projects to supervise), @Jack's workload doesn't seem excessive by U.K. standards AFAICS.

My standard comment applies here: it's not just the total number of hours, or the number of (UG or PG) students, but there are certain extra expectations imposed in the UK system that are very different from e.g. the Canadian system. (At least that's the case in my own field)

One thing which may not have been mentioned in the existing answers (apologies if I overlooked it) which is very different between UK and North America is the workload involved in setting and moderating exams. This is at least an order of magnitude more work in the UK (per student taught) than in the Canadian system, and I expect the US system to be more like the Canadian than the UK

I am a CS lecturer at a UK university. Officially I have an even teaching/admin vs research split, but
I spend my time teaching, marking, tutoring, supervising, writing reports, making assessments, and making assessments of assessments (moderation). Haven't done any assessments of assessments of assessments yet but I won't be surprised when the day comes.
Senior staff told me things didn't use to be like that.
The uni put a workload model in place. I designed a new module,  the workload model grants 7h per hour of lecture. This is 14h/week for a 2h lecture to figure out what you want to teach, search literature, provide study material, create around 50 slides, create demos, labs and homework, and set up everything on the learning system. Altogether it takes me around 60h, I doubt anyone can do it in 14h.
The workload model tends to underestimate the time required for a task.
I really need to work evenings and weekends to progress on the research side and actually write grants. I've heard similar complaints from colleagues, so I don't think it's just me being too slow.

It sounds like you are not from the UK. I agree that most UK workload models underestimate how long it take to create a module. I personally think they tend to over estimate how much prep time the average teacher puts in when giving a lecture for the 3rd+ time. I also think 7 hours is about right for the first time teaching an existing module, but 7 hours to prep a new lecture in a new module is on the light side.

My UK university grants 2h of prep time per 1h of contact time for new courses.

@StrongBad These are good points and data but "not from the UK" should probably be "didn't train in the UK" or "didn't get first job in the UK". I can relate quite a lot to appletree's remarks and I was trained in the UK, I just happened to get my first "permanent" job in the North American system, and the UK system really does look OTT from that perspective

Many universities, including those in the UK and US, talk about the split between research, teaching and admin. A split of time of 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% service is not atypical at an R1 university (e.g., UK Russel Group). Some schools might go as low 20% on teaching and others might go as high as 80%. Some schools allow you to "buy out" of teaching with grant income and give teaching releases to new faculty.
In the UK, the work year consists of about 1800 hours (37.5 hours per week times 48 weeks a year). With a 40% teaching load, you should be doing 720 hours of "teaching". Teaching obviously consists of more than just standing in front of students lecturing. My UK university developed a work load model to capture our teaching. We were credited with time for supervising undergraduate final year project students, our mandated office hours, marking, tutorials, and lecturing. For every hour of tutorial and lecture, we are given either 4 or 8 hours of prep time depending on if it is new teaching or not.
For my school, a standard load includes providing 15 hours of "teaching and prep" for each of 6 project students, 10 hours of first year tutorials, and 10 hours of second year tutorials, and 40 hours for office hours for a total of 230 hours. Over the course of the year we typically have to mark 400 essays and 100 lab reports at 0.25 and 0.5 hours each. This brings our "teaching" outside of regular classes to 380 hours. This means we need to provide about 68 classroom hours a year or 3.4 hours of teaching time every week of term time. Depending on what you mean by two course a year, in the UK that could very well equal 3.4 hours every week.
Our workload model tries to capture admin work in a very superficial way. We get credit for attending faculty meetings, away days, and department seminars, but do not get any "prep" time. Committees are banded based on expected number of hours spent. Some drastically underestimate the load and others are about right.

In my UK institution the expectation (at lecturer level, on the "balanced" role - neither teaching nor research specialized) is that the research/teaching/admin split is 40/40/20 %. How this splits into actual hours worked is a different matter.
The question, of course, is how much of the "teaching" or "research" percentage is "admin to support" teaching or research. My impression is that (in comparison the the US or Germany, which are the only other places I have limited experience of) the bulk of this admin is done directly by the lecturers in the UK, not by TAs or administrators.
As an explicit comparison, I will be responsible for 3 courses this year and will teach on 5, and will also do various PG training. Over the course of the year I expect this to fit within 40% of my time.

For the comparison with other countries, at French universities, lecturers and professors (which are both tenured position) have to teach 192 hours exercices classes/practicals or 128 lecture hours (or more generally a mix of both with 1 lecture hour counting for 1.5 exercice/lab hour) per year. Additional hours are payed and are not mandatory, but remain very common.
These are classroom hours and do not include preparation, marking, final project supervision or marking, teaching-related administration, etc. which are mandatory.
So, by French standard, 65 classroom hours per year are very light.

Having met a few French mathematicians, I think that a comparison of hours can be misleading. The nature and extent of the assistance one is expected to provide for students in the UK system appears, from my anecdotal sample, to be very different from what is expected in the French system

@Yemon Choi Indeed, from my experience in both countries, what is expected in the UK system is closer to what is done in small French universities, where one-to-one meetings with students and small group tutorials are relatively frequent compared to large universities.

That's interesting to know - thanks. I'm curious to know what French students feel they are "entitled to" in terms of their educational outcomes, but probably this comment thread isn't the right place for such a discussion

That's like nothing.
In Pakistan people have a course load of three courses per semester (6 in a year) in addition to administrative duties and publishing. You don't get a TA. The number of students may range from 50 -100 per class.


text:
How do I express a degree on my CV that I have completed but have not been awarded?
I have completed all the requirements for an M.S. degree and have filed the appropriate paperwork. All I have left to do is walk at the end of this semester. I want to put this on my CV, but it seems appropriate to differentiate it from my Ph.D., which is (only) "In progress", and another M.S. which I completed a few years ago.
How should I express this on my CV? Should I say "Anticipated" or "Expected", with the date?
My question is different than Should one list incomplete degrees on a CV? because that question asks about a degree that was entirely incomplete, unawarded, and is not likely to ever be awarded. In my situation, the degree needs only to be formally awarded.

'Complete, to be awarded 5/2016'? How will it show up on your transcript right now?

I like @Jon Custer's comment better than the suggested phrasings in the two answers.  The answer of postagepaid would give me the right idea, after I puzzled out the somewhat unfamiliar phrasing.  The answer of O.R. Mapper would give me the wrong idea: that the work of the degree was not yet complete.

If for example it's a PhD which has been ratified but not officially conferred, you can write:
PhD (Discipline) Awaiting Conferral.

This is the term I am most familiar with as well.

For in-progress degrees, you should indicate the expected approximate date of completion. For instance, if the only open action is waiting till the end of your semester and then deterministically going through one bureaucratic hoop, you would write:

in progress: M.S. (estimated date of completion: March 2016)

If you would like to volunteer more details about the single steps still missing, you can do so, but only if the total length of the CV warrants such details - in overall short CVs, the reader will be more interested in the details of the steps you have actually completed than in your upcoming plans.


text:
What causes some students to be selectively impervious to supervision of their thesis writing?
Background
In my academic surrounding, we follow the following approach for supervising the actual writing of a bachelor’s and master’s thesis:
Whenever the student has written something more than a page, they can give it to an advisor (PhD student, postdoc, or professor) and they will quickly receive extensive feedback. Later, they hand in entire chapters, and eventually their entire thesis will be criticised – before being submitted.
The idea of this is that the students can refine their writing step by step and learn by actually applying what they learnt from critique.
Also, they do not have to revise the entire thesis with respect to basic issues that can be spotted from one page of writing.
Finally, this process is less exhausting for the advisors, as they usually never have to read a mess of a thesis.
We make all of this clear to students in the very beginning of their thesis and usually later on.
Note that this is not compulsory: If a student does not wish to receive any feedback but just submit a thesis at the end, they are free to do so (though it usually doesn’t turn out well).
The problem
For nine out of ten students, the above works fine¹. The remainder follows the following scheme:

They hand in their writing as we suggest.
They listen to and seem to accept the critique and suggestions. In particular they get to keep their annotated writings and make notes themselves.
They do not amend their existing writing or change the way they write new material. Note that this includes very straightforward changes such as fixing typos.
They continue handing in revisions.
They seem to understand and accept it if we tell them that what they are doing is detrimental to them and annoying for us², but they still do not change anything.
They eventually hand in a mess of a thesis.

There are three striking aspects of this phenomenon:

If it happens, it is very consistent in the way it happens. The students in question do not deviate from the above scheme by stopping handing in their work or change their ways in light of criticism. I also have never observed an intermediate case between this and a normal supervision.
There is no apparent correlation (or anticorrelation) to the quality of the student’s scientific work, their work morale, language proficiency, or how well they respond to feedback on their scientific work. If it happens, it comes out of the blue. In particular, this also happened to students who were otherwise very motivated and delivered good scientific work.
This is independent of who is the student’s primary advisor, i.e., the person who first gets to criticise their writing.

These suggest to me that there is a common underlying cause of this problem that can be addressed.
Question
So far, we addressed the problem with typical procedures for badly performing students – i.e., we tell them that their behaviour is problematic and why, explain our general approach to supervising writing, ask them where the problem lies, etc. –, which has lead nowhere so far. Thus I am looking for alternative approaches.
While my ultimate goal is to prevent or mitigate the above problem, the first step to this is understanding it.
Thus I am asking:

What are possible reasons why students react like this?
Is this a known and ideally scientifically described phenomenon?

¹ or in rare cases doesn’t happen at all because of the student having general difficulties with supervision and working on a thesis project.
² in particular, if they make us read the same material with the same problems twice or have two advisors read the same material and tell them about the same problems, which they then ignore.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I recognize the problem from supervision (also at graduate level), and remember it from when I was a student myself - saw several fellow students who acted like this. I have no golden solution, but here is what I often find efficient.
Some people are poor at receiving criticism. There can be many reasons for that. One that is quite common is that the person receiving the criticism misunderstands criticism of their work as criticism of their person.
At some point we all needed to learn how to write a paper. Some people have a hard time understanding that they can't write a thesis, simply because they have not learned to yet, and that this is completely ok. This does not necessarily correlate with academic performance. You can have good students, who have simply not learned to write an understandable scientific text. And since they are used to acing everything, the fact that they get a lot of criticism, puts them in a place they are not used to. I must say, though, that I find this problem much more prevalent with students who are otherwise also not stellar. It is not surprising that there is a correlation between students who can't write a text, and students who are otherwise poor performers.
My (ours, I should say) attempt at a solution is to be very open with the students about this. Tell them that it is uncommon to have students who are good at writing from day one, and their first returned drafts will be red with ink. This does not mean that they are bad, it means that they are learning. Sometimes TA's needs to be reminded about this as well, in order to not take away the students' motivation.

It may be just a form of communication problem.
The student probably learned that is polite to listen and nod, but actually, they either disagree with you or (more likely) consider your points to be of minor importance, to be fixed sometime later if there is time.
I know that some people consider formatting, structure, typos etc. as waste of time because it is "just about the content", and "clear enough".
Furthermore, it is sometimes astonishing that some people just don't understand a sentence that normal people would consider to be a pretty direct request NOT to do something.
I would actually try to be really as direct and clear as possible, like "if you hand in a thesis with a structure like this, you will fail", not something like "I would strongly prefer if you fix the structure first."

If that's the case, "you will fail" is still not direct enough - some students see it as some annoying nagging and, possibly, a cautionary tale "no one really follows anyway". They might've made their choice to hand in a mess of a thesis a week before the deadline and beat it into shape within that week and don't see a problem with that (unlike advisors).

@Lodinn That is actually true. Some students are spoiled by their high schools where teachers warn them all the time, but most of the warnings are just show.

I would actually try to be really as direct and clear as possible, like "if you hand in a thesis with a structure like this, you will fail" – Well that would be an empty warning unless the structure is phenomenally bad or we are monsters, but announcements along the lines of “Fix this, or your grade will suffer.” were made, had no effect, and became true.

@Wrzlprmft Have you asked them why they did not change anything? Did they offer an explanation?

I can think of a few ideas (I fully admit, these are just guesses, although based on remembering my own experiences and experiences of people I went to school with).
First, in the general space of a lack of motivation:

One of the comments in the comment thread suggested this could be a form of burnout, where the students have worked hard on the project, and are tired and do not have the motivation to write it up. I think this is plausible.

Another plausible, related explanation is that some students toward the end of a degree have lower motivation to focus on their studies (senioritis).

Students may enjoy the technical aspects of solving problems, but find the writing aspects boring and simply not want to do it, or not think it is really important, and therefore not put as much effort into it.

Second, in the area of a lack of experience:

It's tempting to focus on major issues first and then move onto "easier" issues later, whereas at least I've found as I've gotten more experienced that it's actually better to fix the easy things first.
A lot of work at the undergraduate and masters level is "personal", in that it only really affects the student (you are responsible for your own grade, for example). At higher levels, work is more collaborative. So, when they turn in messy work, they may only be thinking about how this affects their grade, and not thinking about how they are creating more work for you, or that this piece of work is meant to be read by someone and communicate information. I realize that might sound silly, but I think there is a mindset shift that has to occur in at least some students between "I am turning this paper in for a grade" and "I am writing this paper because I want to communicate ideas to others."
Students have probably never written a document of the scale of a thesis before, nor one that will be read as carefully. Perhaps they have bad habits from skating by in courses with writing assignments. (Even talented students can develop poor writing habits that "work" for some courses but eventually do not). It is always difficult to change bad habits, and now they are in a relatively high-pressure situation to produce a thesis, which can only make it more difficult to change those habits.
In computer programming, there is an idea called technical debt. If a programmer chooses an easy and fast, but ad hoc solution, they accrue some "technical debt" that must be repaid in the sense that eventually that code should be rewritten in a logical and coherent way. Eventually, if one waits too long to pay off the debt, the code becomes a disjointed mess that is difficult to maintain and costly to convert into something more streamlined. A student (especially one who wants to minimize the amount of time because of burnout or lack of motivation) may feel that the most important thing is to produce text, and accrue some "writing debt" by saying that they will fix "trivial" issues like typos and references later. They don't realize that this writing debt can quickly build into a lot of work -- for them, and for you. Perhaps they even intended to fix typos, but produced a lot of text accruing a lot of writing debt, that they did not have time to pay off before the deadline.

The common themes in these scenarios (which, I admit, are just guesses) are an overall lack of motivation to deal with writing issues, a lack of planning, and a certain degree of self-absorption to not think about the effect this has on the people reading their thesis.
In terms of how to produce better behavior, as always there are "carrot" and "stick" options. The "stick" options are probably more obvious (but also likely to increase anxiety, which could be a factor, as another answerer pointed out), and include things like

Explaining clearly that their grade will suffer if they don't fix the issues.
Refusing to accept written material with a lot of typos and broken references.
Confronting the student during feedback meetings to explain your disappointment in their work. "I expected more from you.",  "Do you think this is acceptable?" etc.

The "carrot" options (which probably require more work on your part to be creative and to implement, and thus might not be practical, and might also be considered unnecessary coddling by some people) might be things like

Rewarding behavior that you want. ("I noticed this section was well written compared to the others, nice work, please apply this to the other parts of the text.")
Offering to check in with a struggling student before their next draft is due to see if they are accruing writing debt, and offering advice on what to focus on before the next draft is due.
Take one chapter draft and ask them to focus on the writing aspects for a given draft, even if that means they don't fully complete all the content for that chapter. You want to see a polished draft of something, just to force them to work through the writing steps. The idea here is that they can use this draft to build up the writing skills they may be missing that they can then apply to other sections. At least they'll get an idea of how much time it takes.

Another "off the wall" idea could be to have students read and critique chapters of each others' thesis. I took a course in grad school where everyone was a reviewer of everyone else's paper. This could create some positive peer pressure to create a good version of the draft. And, making someone give feedback on someone else's work, can make them think about what someone is looking for in their work.
It may be that some students just don't want to do the thesis, and nothing you can do will help them write a better thesis. However, as an optimist, I have to believe that if there are such students, they occur at a rate far below 10%.

I have no experience or evidence to support this, but wanted to share one uncomfortable possibility because it fits the symptoms and the apparent incongruity so well:

The feedback never reaches the writer.

If your first bullet point describing the problem is in error, and the reality is that

Students hand in the work of a ghostwriter.

it would surely explain your observations.
I realize that your system of piecemeal submission and early feedback is supposed to prevent this, but nothing stops the students from pulling sections out and submitting them as if the writing were an ongoing process.

Thank you for your answer. While this explanation is surely something to consider, I would dismiss it in the cases in question as there is plenty of evidence that the students do the underlying scientific work themselves (they are capable to discuss it and do incorporate feedback) and are clearly sufficiently intelligent to incorporate trivial changes such as typo corrections into a ghostwriter’s work.

First, that's a great system for getting students to write and seek feedback. It sounds like it makes writing and seeking feedback a habit, rather than letting students wait and worry. Though we often think of "writer's block" as about being out of ideas, often it's about anxiety, and it might be what you are seeing with the students who don't look at the revisions. Here are some things the Purdue OWL recommends for writer's block and I found "The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block" to be helpful during my thesis.
If your school has a writing center, they may have a workshop or resources aimed at graduate students, and they might also have insight from the students they see.

What the OP describes doesn't seem to be a case of writer's block, but of failure to incorporate straightforward changes (e.g., typo corrections) from the reviewer's comments to the new draft.

@cag51: While I am not convinced that writer’s block is the answer, I wouldn’t dismiss it that easily. E.g., if a student focusses on major corrections first and encounters a writer’s block, they may obsess on this and never perform the minor corrections.

One could speculate on all sorts of possible causes for this behaviour (see e.g., comments to the original post), and much as I would prefer not to answer a question that was not asked, I think the more important issue here is to establish the proper limits of responsibility over a student who does not wish to avail him/herself of expert advice.  With great respect to the questioner, who is obviously interested in helping, in my view it is pointless and counter-productive to embark on a speculative psychological exercise designed to understand the failure of a student to act on repeated expert advice about their work.  The job of academics is not to play amateur psychologist to their students --- it is to teach clearly, provide proper academic assistance, and assess work using appropriate objective standards.
This attitude of the nursery-school campus, where all responsibility is on the academics and none on the students, has been creeping deeper and deeper into academia for decades, and it seems to be currently at its apex.  How can we better motivate this student?  How can we make this class more "relevant"?  How can we encourage this student to follow advice and instructions?  What are the causes for this student not doing his work?  Etc., etc.  In the particular case at issue here we are not speaking of early undergraduates in their late teens (who might be expected to have some bad working habits as a hangover from high school), but in this case even some Masters students with their undergraduate education already under their belts.
If a student has been repeatedly advised of defects in their work, and declines to correct these, that is on the student.  If an inquiry is to be made into the deep psychological causes of this behaviour, it is for the student to undertake that inquiry.  Academics should not devolve into (untrained) psychologists for their students.

"This attitude of the nursery-school campus, where all responsibility is on the academics and none on the students, has been creeping deeper and deeper into academia for decades, and it seems to be currently at its apex." -- this is all opinion and neither of the two sentence halves may be true.

"If an inquiry is to be made into the deep psychological causes of this behaviour, it is for the student to undertake that inquiry." I disagree. Supervisors (and universities) are the service providers and are responsible for understanding their clients' (students) behaviours which may reflect sub-optimal service (i.e. supervision).

Part of the role of the university is certification of knowledge according to a standard that is independent of the "client".  In my view, the sub-optimal service that is presently being provided in universities is the excessive deference to the desires of this "client" and the consequent failure to adhere to appropriate expectations for the work undertaken.

@Ben Standards do apply to both students and supervisors/universities.

While I agree that students are adults and responsible for their own actions, it would be foolish to dismiss all responsibility for student’s failures like this. Sure, there will always be students who fail due to reasons of their own responsibility, and there is nothing you can do about it – if the phenomenon in question had happened only once, I wouldn’t worry much. However, if otherwise normally performing students fail at a certain step in a consistent manner, you should at least try to understand the source of the problem.

Nothing in this answer dismisses all responsibility of academics --- that is a straw man, or a failure of reading comprehension.  The point explicitly stated in the answer is that it ought not be the case that all responsibility is on the supervisor.  The fact that this opinion is considered controversial (and is heavily downvoted) is merely confirmation of the deeply-rooted nursery school mentality that pervades modern academia.

@Ben nothing in the question assumes that all responsibility is with the academics, that's a straw man built up by this answer or a failure of reading comprehension.


text:
How does the COVID-19 crisis affect durations of peer review and editorial handling?
One question we often get on this site in one form or the other is: Is my paper under review (or similar) for too long and if yes, how should I react? Now, suppose I have gone through all the steps to answer this question in a normal situation: I have procured statistics of the journal’s handling or peer-review times, added a fair margin for individual variability, etc. My question is: How should I modify these in lights of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis? I do not want to bother editors more than appropriate.
The obvious thoughts are:

Some reviewers and editors are busy with challenges arising due to the crisis, e.g., due to having to switch to online teaching, having no childcare, etc.
On the other hand, some reviewers and editors now have more time available due to conferences being cancelled, not being able to access their labs, and similar.
Some fields are obviously directly affected by the crisis, in particular medicine, virology, and epidemiology. I am not considering those.

I am only interested in answers that go beyond such obvious thoughts, for example being based on experience as an editor.
The ideal are answers based on statistics, but those likely do not exist yet (but will be welcome when they eventually will).

I think it is too early to predict such things and too many variables in flux at the moment. Expect a longer review period and you won't be disappointed.

@Buffy: Expect a longer review period and you won't be disappointed. – Sure: Lower expectations reduce disappointment.

I understand your question as "My paper has been under review for too long, how should I react, considering the ongoing COVID-19 crisis?" In this case, don't act differently as you should otherwise, except that you should wash your hands more often and stay at home as much as possible. And surely, many reviews will take more time than usual due to the obvious reasons you mention in your question. Just be a little more patient than in a normal situation.

I am an associate editor for two journals, and although the situation is fairly new, I expect to have no substantive change in the time for me to handle papers.
The reasons for this are:

Pretty much everything is handled purely electronically anyway, so there's no physical interaction to be disrupted.
Reviewing is typically a sparse activity by people who are mostly always overloaded anyway, and it's always fairly low triage for people.  As such, I don't anticipate the availability of reviewers to particularly change: if people have more time, they'll fill it with things more important to them; if people have less time, I'll just have to ask a few more to find a full reviewer set.
The time to review is typically dominated by the time that a manuscript ages quietly on the reviewer's desk before the review deadline arrives --- actually carrying out a review often does not take all that much time, by comparison. The number of weeks we give our reviewers isn't going to change, so that dominating time won't either.
Because of the preceding factors, there's already a lot of stochasticity in time to review. Even if it does go up a bit, I doubt it will be readily detectable against the background of stochasticity.

Yes this is all true, but while you may not have much change in the time you handle papers, it is likely that many people involved in the reviewing process will have some delay in handling their tasks. However, I don't think this should change the way authors react to late reviews, except that they should be a little more patient than usual.

@AntoineZimmermann Unless such additional delays are on the order of a month or more, it simply won't be visible in the processes of any but the fastest current journals.

@jakebeal: Isn't this situation similar to WWII for mathematical society?

@C.F.G Not in the least, since 1) we didn't have the internet then, and 2) the enemy is a disease and not humans.

How should I modify these in lights of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis?

I don't think you should modify anything about your approach. That is the journal and editor's job, not yours. Watch for official updates, if any, but otherwise proceed the same as before.

I am only interested in answers that go beyond such obvious thoughts

This is an unprecedented situation with a large amount of uncertainty: no one has experience with it. So the hope for an answer rooted in experience or statistics seems unrealistic.
The "obvious" thoughts you listed are on point.
Some people will proceed the same as before, and others may have more or less time.
On average, it is unclear whether things will proceed faster or slower than usual, and I don't see why it should affect your behavior as the author.