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What can a student who is already studying hard do to improve low grades?
I have been studying hard for the past year and a half (it's my second year of Computer Science) while not getting remotely close to the desired results. I passed my first year with a 7.2 GPA (5 (failing grade) - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 (best)) which is very low given that I want to master in applied maths or an area revolving around that.
I'm doing 6 hours a day Monday to Thursday, 10 hours a day Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday I try to rest a little. I rest every 30-45 minutes for 5-15 minutes. Now, I'm isolating myself, sacrificing my social life, among other things. I'm feeling angry at myself every time I get the exam results or when a deadline passes and I haven't finished the lab/project.
I even started eating healthier because I thought unhealthy food was the problem.
What can a student in this situation do to earn better grades?
P.S: I do like what I study, no matter how angry I get, I know I will wake up the next day and head to the library/school.

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Changed the focus of this question from "What is wrong with me?" to "What can a student in this situation do to improve his/her grades?" Nobody here can answer the former question, unfortunately :)

One important detail missing from the question: Do you feel comfortable with the prerequisites for your current course of study? Do you think the problem could be that you have not fully understood the background material in previous courses?

Yes, I feel comfortable with the subjects needed as background. Also, I'd like to add that it takes me very long to finish a lab exercise (we're writing them from home) and very long to grasp material, and I even forget it afterwards, so I additionally need to put in time to re-learn.

I feel comfortable with the subjects needed as background — That's good, but not good enough.  Do you actually know that you've mastered the prerequisite material?  Not based on your own self-assessment, but based on honest expert feedback from someone else?

6 hours a day Monday to Thursday, 10 hours a day Friday and Saturday, and in Sunday I try to rest a little — This is part of the problem; you're pushing too hard.  "Sensei, how long will it take me to master the sword?"  "10 years."  "But what if I devote my entire life to practice, following your every instruction to the letter, living, eating, drinking, sleeping, breathing with the sword 24 hours a day?  Then how long?"  "50 years."

@JeffE That's a nice quote. Did you create it or know where it is from?

I think it would be good if you added a section on what you've tried.  Have you talked to your professors?  Do you go to office hours?  Do you talk with other students?

One of the most important things for me at university was to work together with colleagues. I'm not talking about copying the homework, but discussing how to achieve the goal.

@JeffE How is 6 hours a day too much? I was studying 8 hours per day in addition to 3 hours of classes on weekdays for 4 years as an undergraduate and never ran into problems. Can someone burn out while studying something they like to study?

How many classes are you taking? You might just be overloaded. It's a lot easier to do well in your classes if you take fewer classes each term.

We have the same grading system here (Netherlands) and I would say that a 7.2 is not that low at all. And some students find that the master is actually easier than the bachelor because it is more focused on the subject you really like and therefore easier to learn. So I wouldn't worry at all.

@Village: Yes, you most definitely can. Eventually, one if the symptoms is that you stop enjoying whatever it is that's burning you out, but even before that, too much stress can reduce your ability to concentrate, and therefore the effectiveness of your studies.

Study Smart, Not Hard. Simple and Concise

@MarkFantini Sorry, I don't know the source of the story; I heard it 20+ years ago from my aikido instructor.

Computer Science is one of those areas where you can't study like you do for a history test.  A lot of it is just logical thinking. This will sound like a joke, but a lot of people fail first year CS classes due to not understanding the words "if" or "while." I have no idea what the actual issue is, but perhaps putting aside the actual course material and studying logic a bit will help.

@gorska Small tip from personal experience: Often profs leave some hints as to some 'important' concepts that are likely to come in the exam. These can be treated as low hanging fruits and I make sure that I cover these well. This easily increased 10% of my score per paper. Catch is you need to be extra attentive during class ;-) Good luck!

Don't panic. The fact that you're still enthusiastic about your studies suggests to me that you can likely fix the problem, whatever it is.
If you're having trouble with just one or two of your subjects, then there's probably a gap in your background knowledge. Try to figure out where that gap is. Right now it may feel like everything in those subjects is difficult, but I suspect if you look hard, you'll find out there's just one or two small gaps in your knowledge, and that's something you can remedy. Perhaps you can take a lighter course load next semester to give you time to focus on the areas you're having difficulty. Once you figure out what the gaps are, you could either take the appropriate course, or teach yourself. This strategy may delay your graduation by a semester, but it could be worth it.
If you're having trouble with most of your subjects, then I suspect you're not studying very efficiently. You may be working hard, but not using your time well. Unfortunately, I don't have specific advice on how to improve your study habits, but there are lots of resources available for this kind of thing, and others here may be able to point you to those resources. Again, it might be worthwhile to take a lighter course load while you practice your new study habits.
Talk to your student advisor about your problem. If you think it's a gap in your foundational knowledge, t may be worthwhile to pick one problem that you found particularly difficult, and ask the instructor (during office hours, not in class) to go through it in gory detail with you to help you figure out where your knowledge gaps are.
Also, there is probably a student centre or something like that at your school, where you can get advice on how to improve your study habits.

I would just like to add some examples of resources that you should try to use:

professor office hours - go talk to the teacher(s) and see what they want you to learn, and clarify any misconceptions that you may have
Tutors - see if there are any school-supplied tutors for those who need additional help.
Other students - form study groups and see if you in particular are lacking any concepts.
TA's - see if you can talk with them about what they look for when grading stuff, or just advice in general.

Indeed, a very insidious hazard is self-misperception about "studying hard". Time logged per se, or intense proximity to sources, is not the issue. This problem is potentially made worse if one studies in isolation, without any feedback.

This is a good answer in general, but I'd give you a +1 even just for specifically recommending taking one particular problem and going through it "in gory detail" with an instructor.

I am in my third year, and I am on course to get a Math with CS minor degree.
When I don't understand something, feel stuck, or get crap grades, I take a step back and ask the following questions:

Was I careless?
Do I lack fluency?
Can I explain the material?
Am I answering without sufficient proof?
Do I know my definitions?
Am I mindlessly practicing?

Each of these questions comes from experience.
Careless is easy. Slow down, think through the wording of questions, check your answers for plausibility. Unfortunately, this is rarely the true culprit.
Fluency is often key. Don't give in to extremism (concept-only or mechanical-only learning). Fully understand practice problems, and then practice writing out solutions with clarity and succinctness. You cannot gain fluency by mindlessly repeating problems, copying and pasting code, compiling until it finally works, checking answers in the back when you're half done, etc. But you cannot win by learning only concepts! You must be fluent writing out solutions. Teaching others is perfect.
Which leads to explaining nicely. Try explaining problems to yourself in the shower, and their solutions. Try writing out very neat and tidy solutions, diagrams, and other tools for deeper intuition. If you can explain something to someone else, you will use and grow these a lot.
As you move forward in your studies, you will be asked not to simply provide answers, but answers that you can prove are correct (and in the case of CSC, often demonstrate have certain running times). This means you must know the background material so you can draw on definitions, previous results, and similar proofs.
So know your definitions. If you cannot say in one sentence or less what a function is, a set is, a graph, a cyclic graph, a residual graph, or whatever terminology and level you are at, then you will have major problems.
And mindlessness will kill you. You cannot memorize definitions flashcard style and expect to succeed. You have to write them down over and over in your attempts to solve problems. You need to be fluent reading and writing the material of your major. Think about how your fluency in your native tongue came about. Understanding others, and then making yourself understood. It does not come from standing in the mirror mouthing 5 words of the day over and over again. I hope you see what I mean.
I have no proof for this, but I believe that some of my study sessions are 10x more productive than others. These are not the sessions where everything clicks! Those are the product of many efficient study sessions. No, efficiency comes when I turn on my mind, I slow down, and I work the really hard problems methodically.
Finally, make sure you read How to Solve It by Polya (or at the very least, read a summary of this work).

One way of sort of summing up what you are saying in your answer is to ask "are you actually attempting to learn the material, or are you just trying to complete the homework and do as well as possible on the exams?".  This answer really gets to the heart of that question, and could well be the asker's actual core problem.  Especially considering the comment the asker made about having to "re-learn" things--maybe they weren't learned, just memorized for a test?

@msouth absolutely, thank you for clarifying what I took too many words to say :)

@msouth I like this answer the way it is because it pinpoints where many students screw up studying

Yeah, I think this is better than the top answer, it gives specific criteria and targets that you can measure yourself by.

@msouth You've pretty much summed up surface vs. deep learning, which is popular terminology in Education. What's amazing is that students can expend a lot of effort taking a surface approach.

Many of the people I knew who majored in Computer Science put in a lot more than 44 hours a week on their classwork and projects; how much time do your classmates put in on their studies?
If you're spending 44 hours a week on your studies why do you feel that you are sacrificing your social life?  People who work 40 hours a week at a job don't usually complain about not having time for themselves.  (If you are spending 44 hours a week studying on top of having a job to support yourself, you may need to think about whether you're capable of a full-time job and a full-time course of study at the same time.  Many people are not.)
As others have suggested, forming a study group may help you; you can learn from those who have mastered concepts you are struggling with, and learn even more by teaching what you think you know well to those who are just learning. Going to a professor or tutor for extra help might also be useful.
What parts of computer science are the most fun for you? Algorithms?  Programming? Hardware? Theory?  Would it help to do a personal side project that mostly just uses the fun stuff, to help encourage you to get more practice? (For example, program a little video game to relax.)
Do you have as much maths background as your classmates?  There may be concepts you struggle with that they learned in other classes, like Boolean logic.
Finally, you may benefit from going back over your old coursework to see what you missed, but now have the framework to understand better.  If you have graded homework or exams from your first classes, can you now easily see what you missed at the time?  If not, you may benefit from going back to study those elementary concepts until they are second nature.

+1 for reviewing exactly what you got wrong on your homework, rather than just looking at the grade. Learn from it, so you don't make the same mistake again. (I once had to catch up on half a term of math. Spent several weeks before the final in the math study room, redoing ALL the homework -- do the problem, check the result, if wrong look at how I should have done it and DO IT AGAIN to make sure I would remember it properly, repeat... Lots of hours of work, lots of effort, but I did ace that final!)

Use SQ3R to Focus Your Readings
To help your memory and focus on material that you learn from reading, try using the SQ3R method. See this article from Virginia Tech to further learn how to use it. Several other strategies exist to help you to think more carefully about how you think of the material while you study are listed in this Wikipedia article, but be selective and strategic in which ones you use and when.
Use SRS for Repetitive Practice and Review
To practice skills that demand repeated practice, such as math, try using SRS. This is essentially flash cards, but controlled by algorithms based on memory research. Many SRS tools allow for cards with graphics, audio, and LaTeX, HTML, and CSS. You could add math problems from your textbook to the software and the algorithms in the software will help you to spend more time on the difficult ones, less time on the easy problems. Study with such tools daily, but do not use them in excess. As SRS takes considerable time to setup, as you will likely need to build custom study materials, so use your holiday time to get started. "The 20 Rules of Formulating Knowledge in Learning" is essential reading.
Avoid Attentive-less Practice
Many students get into a routine of solving their textbook's problems by just following their teacher's steps or by memorizing information by rote. Think carefully about how you think about what you are learning. If you are studying math, avoid just pushing the numbers around as your teacher showed you and spend time exploring the real meaning of the problem through visualization. Spend time solving your math problems using concrete, representational, and abstract methods so that you do not merely build the capacity to solve problems on paper, but can visualize what that math actually represents:

Concrete - use some physical items or the physical space to solve the problem.
Representational - sketch the physical items or situation on paper to solve the problem.
Abstract - use the mathematical language your instructor or textbook taught to solve the problem.

Use Support Services
Determine what academic support services are available. For example, your school might have a writing center to help you with your writing. Your school might have a tutoring center to help you with your math. Some departments may also have a meeting area where you can meet other students who are working on their homework, where you can join a study group and potentially meet your teachers or their teaching assistants, to get help outside of class. In the US, some schools offer 1-credit courses or free seminars to introduce these available services. Do not attempt to do everything on your own.
Maintain a Fixed, Sufficient Sleep Routine
Staying up late to get in a few hours more work done can cost you more hours the next day. Establish a fixed sleeping schedule where you wake up and go to sleep at the same time each day, even on weekends. Make sure you are getting a good amount of rest each night so that you can be very focused the next day. Break this schedule only at strategic times, e.g. to work on an important project, but not before an exam.

Meh, not convinced that repetitive learning has much value. If a course requires such memorisation I'd say it was out of date. A CS course should be teaching skills and deeper understanding, which I think are best gained through experience: working through exercises and solving problems.

Go slow. You can't improve your grades overnight, and if you try too hard to do, you'll do more harm than good. Different people learn at different rates, so if you don't get something straight away, don't fret. Nobody gets everything the first time. That might sound obvious the first time you hear it, but every time you fail, you need to remind yourself that you have to fail in order to succeed. Your first and largest hurdle is learning not to be afraid of failure. Contrary to popular belief, your failures will not haunt you for the rest of your life. :)
Don't spend too much of your focus on assignments and study, either. De-focusing, in fact, is a valuable research and problem-solving technique. Take a break every thirty minutes or hour to grab a snack, talk to a friend, or play a game. Return to the task that had you stumped when your mind has had an opportunity to relax a bit. This will give you a fresh perspective on the problem and will make it far more likely that the thought process that ultimately gets you to a solution will stick with you.
Figure out your learning style. Some people learn best by writing down everything they hear. Others learn great just by listening. Still some other people need to actually build things and hold them in their hands to see how those things work. Start by figuring out if you're a visual learner (you learn best by watching others do things), an auditory learner (you learn best by listening to instructions and discussion), a lexical learner (you learn best by writing things down and taking copious notes), or a physical learner (you learn best by doing things yourself). When you've figured this out, remember to employ your learning method as much as possible throughout your education, and make your strongest effort to "study" things in the way that works best for you (regardless of whether that means listening well in class and not studying at all or writing down every gosh darn thing you hear). If you need to write down everything, I highly recommend investing in a small audio recording device you can use in your classes, unless you're a super fast writer.
Speaking of recording classes, learn to use your resources, also. Your teachers or professors are there, for the most part, to help you, so never feel bad about taking advantage of office hours or after-class help sessions. Whenever you are struggling to understand something, ask for help! Sometimes someone else explaining things differently can have a big impact on your ability to understand.
Do everything that you do with the mind that you'll have to do it again someday. When you try something new or encounter new material, don't just learn what to do. Learn how to do it. This practice doesn't require OCD studying. Just get in the habit of wondering why things happen. If you ask enough questions, answers will come back to you. They have a natural way of that.
Also, read! Pick up reading as a habit, and do it for fun. Reading regularly will make the kind of reading you have to do for effective studying much easier. You'll feel less exhausted after studying, and you'll retain much more of what you do study. Best of all, books are cheap from Amazon or local bargain book stores and make for an outstanding way to kill some time.
After reading for awhile, maybe you can get yourself to start writing, too. Even if you're just writing in journals, the purposeful employment of language implicitly forces you to think about things like syntax, word choice, and tone. Writing is a really great way to engage problem-solving and analytical skills without actually doing any overtly structured problem solving or analysis.
Play games! Sudoku, solitaire, puzzle games, "code" games, video games--anything that gets your brain juices flowing. Games that involve problem-solving and strategy can stimulate parts of your brain that you actively use during studying and test-taking. Besides solitaire and Sudoku, take a gander at Zendo, Mastermind, and chess. If you're into video games, good news--basically every mainstream video game is designed to stimulate your mind (because, incidentally, that feeling causes gamers to play the game more). If you go the video game route, just be careful not to play too much. :)
Lastly, be patient, but don't let opportunities for good discussion pass by. To learn to love learning, you have to experience a kind of learning that is super engaging for you. It comes when it comes, but if you don't put yourself out there, you'll never see it. Be involved in classroom discussions, and when a topic comes up that interests you, share your thoughts on it. Eventually, when you've learned how to make connections between things you would used to have thought unrelated, you might make a comment that starts a totally new perspective on a topic for a whole class, and that's a really cool feeling. You've probably also heard before that the most effective way to learn is by teaching others, right? Well, guess what classroom discussion is all about? Put yourself out there. Discuss!
Obviously you can't do all these things right this very minute, so I refer you at this point back to the first two words in this whole mess of verbiage: go slow. Rushing yourself is the surest way to get nowhere, so make a long term plan describing what you want to accomplish within the next twelve months and daily chip away at it. Just remember above all other things that you can't reinvent your learning style overnight. :)

I know far too many students who took up video games, then never got any homework done. Not recommended.

Given the long WOW above, I did not see the reference to video games. But if it is presumably in there, then makes the entire answer suspect. Short of doing drugs, video games are one of the more dangerous pastimes for a student.

Like with most things, it's a question of moderation. Like it or not, many video games and competitive puzzle- or code-type board games demand that the brain process various types of information quickly and in various kinds of ways, and that gives problem-solving parts of your brain a real-time workout. You are absolutely right that games should not be played so much as to interfere with schoolwork, but taken in moderation, they can be a fun way to engage those skills.

See here and here.

Lots of good material is already there in the other answers.
There's a lot of focus on how to improve the "act of studying", which of course may be the problem, and can always benefit from attention.
There are some other things to add though, which will be useful to add into your mix:
1) Do hobby activities that relate in some way to your study.
In Comp Sci, this is so easy.  You can make web sites, program Raspberry Pi, make little games ...  being involved in actually doing stuff that relates to what you are learning can go far towards making it "click".
You always learn better when doing things that use the learning, particularly if you are using it in an enjoyable way.
2) Participate in the learning community.   Head on over to Stack Overflow and see if you can answer questions.  That's right, you're learning, and a great way to learn is to answer other people's beginner questions.   On Stack Overflow, there are hundreds of very basic questions per day that a student of Comp Sci should be able to answer.
3) Get a learning buddy, someone who is doing well and who would be willing to have you along.   Study in their room, in the library, nearby and have coffee and talk about the work.
Finally, I agree that 40 hours per week is no where too much to be spending on your Uni work and related (hobby programing, recrational reading about your art etc).   At University, your learning is your life.   Just do it, it's over soon and you can party for the rest of your life.   Which is not to say "don't party" - just don't look resentfully at the people working 9-5 and partying the rest of the time.

+1 on the answering other people's questions tip. You've not understood something until you can explain it to others.

Yes @slebetman ... and the act of trying to answer questions has many positive benefits.   Self-assurance when you get it right, exposure to other practitioners answers - which initially will be better and you learn from them ... all in addition to solidifying your own understanding as you go to explain it.   I was once a programmer by profession, now a manager of programmers.  I stay abrest of the industry by doing all of the three things I mentioned above :)   I'm practicing what I preach :) Learning doesn't stop when you leave Uni, and these three items work for me :)

There is missing a lot of info about your particular situation so I'll come with some different answers based on different assumptions about your situation.

You might not have a natural talent for this. That doesn't need to be a problem in your case however since you seem very motivated and work hard. Working hard will make you smarter and more capable in time but it won't work in the short term. Also getting top marks isn't crucial if you got the motivation. E.g. I've happened to have talent and got good grades without working as hard as many of my peers. However I failed to get my Master due to lack of motivation. I know several fellow students with shitty grades, who still managed to get their Master because they stayed motivated and kept working hard. Seriously I'd rather have had shitty grades and gotten my Master degree than getting good grades and then dropping out on the final project because I had zero motivation.
You might have a very inefficient study technique. Research this. It makes quite a big difference. E.g. reading the same thing over and over again takes long time and is inefficient. Active work like doing practice assignments or trying to teach somebody else what you read is more efficient.

I might mention a story about a fellow student. He used to get stuck on assignments and got frustrated with himself. He was failing a lot of assignments. He finally went to a coach, that got him to stress down. He told him to not stress out if he didn't understand something right away. It isn't normal to do that. Just take his time. There was obviously a lot more to it, but this student he got a dramatic improvement. He got absolutely top marks. I noticed when discussing problems with him that he was not any smarter than me. But I noticed when reading or preparing for tests that he was way more focused than me. He could really stay in the zone. The coach had taught him how to do that.

Points:

Try to think what you have learned, DO NOT JUST LEARN.  This means that more time should be spent for thinking, thinking about where this kind of knowledge could be used, how to use it. Learning is not enough, thinking will help you understand deeply about what you have learned, which can give you more chances to get higher scores in examination.
Do not isolate yourself, you need fresh air by exchanging ideas with others. Trying to talk about what you are learning with other students. Others' experiences will inspire you to get high scores.

Personal experiences to improve study efficiency:

Practice your ability to concentrate for a longer time. Remove source of distraction (phone, PC, people) and remain vigilant to prevent mind from drifting. Given enough practice, you will find yourself focusing for more than 3 hours without noticing the flow of time, which is longer than a normal exam session.
If you are attending the lecture, make sure you understand the content beforehand, validate and reinforce your understanding during the lecture. Given enough practice, you will start skipping lectures because productivity is higher when you read books on your own.
When something doesn't add up, dig deeper instead of just memorizing. Understanding details helps reinforcing the memory, and speeding up re-acquaintance. Besides, your later courses depends on the previous ones, gaps in knowledge will eventually come back to haunt you.
Healthier life style helps a lot, regularize your sleeping schedule and do exercise.
All of above are time consuming and requires persistence, expect to study for >60 hours a week if your goal is 9/10. Good news is, you might find yourself getting smarter, doing thing you wasn't able to do before. Like remembering numbers you didn't even try to memorize, and a much faster reading and learning speed.

Be reminded that, except for extraordinary people, high GPA comes with costs. Isolation and scarification of social life have their consequences. Knowing when to stop is quite important.

Spending 60 hours per week on school is not really effective in my view, just as research has shown that structurely working more than 40 hours does not increase productivity.

You don't say exactly what you're doing in all those hours, so I don't know whether this applies to you, but in my experience a lot of students don't know how to study effectively.
I highly recommend this article in the New York Times for an overview of what recent psychological research has to say on the subject.  In a nutshell, one of the major messages is that for studying to be effective, it should be active.  Time spent re-reading books and notes is time wasted.  Instead you should be actually doing the things that your field is about — solving problems, writing code, etc.
I sometimes encourage my students to think of it this way.  If you're training for a sport, you spend your time doing the things that go on in a game/match.  You don't read about how to do those things, or watch videos of someone else doing them.  You practice doing them yourself.

First things first, you gotta know what's dragging your grade to the nether regions. Are you turning in everything but scoring low, or not turning in everything? I know plenty of fellow students who would do amazingly well if they turned in everything, and I know the other case as well. Are you taking good notes, or not understanding, or some other issue entirely?
I've asked plenty of questions, but these are an important part of knowing how to improve the grade. There are some tricks that can help you improve but you gotta know/tell the problem first.
I'd normally say I'm done here but I found some handy tools recently that may be worth checking out.
Organization: Trello.com is a neat organizer you can use for sorting assignments, tracking due dates, and project ideas. What I did with it involved making a homework "board", which contains stacks of cards. I then made one stack for each class, and then one card per assignment. You can drag the cards with assignment names and info around, as well as rearrange the card stacks. What I do is sort the cards by due date and delete them when the assignment is done.
Studying: Studyblue is a neat Web app that not only does flashcards, but also shares them, searches for similar decks, and allows you to borrow decks from classmates. It also tracks your progress and learns which ones you know, and it helps me to study.


text:
My student told me his mother has cancer, what do I do?
Today I saw that one of my students in the class was looking very sad. He sat down at the end of class and he looked like he was in a bad mood. After all the students left the classroom I called  him over. He told me that his mother has cancer.
I told him be strong and try to not think about it too much. But honestly, this was a big lie. How can I try to get him to not think too much of it?
What should I have said to him?

How can I try to get him to not think too much of it? — Why would you want to?

@JeffE ever heard of empathy?

@WolfgangKuehne: not thinking about it is avoidance, it's not healthy. Of course, by definition nobody should do anything "too much", so in that sense the advice is true but useless. He's attending class, so it's not preventing him from functioning, and he's looking sad, probably because he's sad. I don't see why empathy would dictate this should be avoided. And of course idiomatically "don't do X too much" is liable to be taken to mean "do X as little as possible", which isn't necessarily the advice an instructor should give.

@WolfgangKuehne I'm afraid the sentiment "Don't think about it too much", coming from the instructor of a course the student is taking, comes across as the opposite of empathy. Of course the student is going to be preoccupied with worry. What he shouldn't be thinking about much is not his mother's illness, but your class.

@JeffE no I wanted to say, thinking and finding the solutions are good but If you say why this problem happen for me is not help you and just make you sad. and If you insist about thinking the problem itself and not the solution is bad. but why I said that is a big lie, because if I was in his situation this (my)  speech can not change my mood

If you're an instructor and not a therapist then it's arguably unwise, unhealthy, and unkind (and maybe unethical) to try and mandate some particular emotional response in the student.

Most universities (at least in the U.K.) have a system for dealing with extenuating circumstances, which aims to take what steps are available (e.g. extensions, intercalactions etc.) to compensate the student for difficulties not under their control that affect their ability to study.  Advise the student to use this (it is what it is there for) and direct them to their doctor or suitable counsellor.  Telling them to be strong and not think of it is potentially going to make things worse (e.g. by not recognising e.g. depressive disorder that miight result).

As an instructor, the best you can do is to offer your condolences and tell him to just ask you if he needs anything. For example, you could offer an extension on assignments. If he needs some time off from lectures, maybe a classmate who takes good lecture notes will agree to make a photocopy, or you could get the lectures to be recorded for him.
Your university might also have a policy that allows students to withdraw from the course and receive a refund of fees without penalty to grades: it would be worth finding this out and advising your student if this is possible. Depending on the severity of the illness and how much it is affecting your student, he might wish to take fewer (or zero) courses for a while.
If the course is nearly finished, perhaps an aegrotat (compassionate consideration) will be applicable to the final exam. But neither an illness in the family, nor a bereavement or any personal physical or mental health issue can excuse a student from having to learn the material and complete assessments in order to pass a course. He will still have to demonstrate mastery of most of the material.
Just be compassionate, and as flexible as you feasibly can. Nobody could ask for more.

I was in the process of composing a similar answer.  The only thing I have to add is that you might tell him you are sure his mother would want him to do well.  Do check on compassionate withdrawal policies, but my own experience is that work will be better for the student unless he has obligations to provide care for his mother.

@BobBrown I agree that (unless it's a highly aggressive or late-stage cancer) the student probably shouldn't withdraw from all study. However, the instructor should suggest he talks to friends, family, and perhaps a counsellor for advice about that. Although well-meaning, saying "I'm sure your mother would want you to do well" subtly suggests he should keep concentrating on his study. It's not the instructor's place to advise that.

I think you are correct.  So, the OP should investigate what counseling services the university might provide and have that information at hand.  (For some reason the comment system isn't letting me prefix with @Moriarty.)

... and if the instructor does address the student along those lines, phrases like "I'm sure your mother wants you to do well" are more appropriate than "would want you to".

If your university has some form of counseling service for students, you might want to kindly point it out to the student. In my experience, many don't know about these service and if they do, don't really consider going there (who needs help of shrinks, right?). They can not only offer some free listening and adivce on how to deal with such circumstance, but they also have a good overview about all the things that can be done w.r.t. regulations to assist students in trouble.

+1 for the word "flexibility". It is the right way to go: Don't request less from the student, just allow them for instance a different exam schedule, or offer to consult stuff personally if he misses some lectures because of such a serious problem.

I imagine that most universities will have policy on this, and professionals who are trained to help. Apart from "find out the policy", IMHO unless you know the student well personally and are confident in your ability to deal with things like this (which the fact that you are asking this question suggests you are not) then all you should do is express sympathy and,

ask whether they've told anybody else at the uni. If not, with their permission, consider informing whoever has overall responsibility for their academic progress (eg head of dept, director of studies, etc)
make sure that the student is aware of whatever counseling services your institution offers
research for your own info what arrangements can be made for extensions to deadlines, or consideration of circumstances when exams are marked, both for the current situation and in the event that the parent dies.
make it clear to the student that allowances can be made (assuming this is the case), and that they should not be hesitant to speak to you if they feel that the situation is affecting their academic performance. No need to be specific for now - if the student is worried about this then just knowing that there are "options" may reduce the stress that they feel.

NB I have no particular qualification to comment here; once again, your uni probably has people whose job it is. If in doubt, consult them.

Exactly, leave it to the people who's job it is. They can provide better help than you can and they're trained and paid to do it.

Our school actually has an "early warning" system, which allows faculty and staff to report issues like this directly to the Dean of Students, who can triage and find help for students.

You might encourage him to reach out to other resources at the university. I imagine your university has counseling or psychological services, a chaplain, and the student may have an assigned advisor who can help the student understand their options, and provide professionally trained support.
I think the comments about offering certain accommodations, as you think appropriate, is generous and reasonable.

I told him be strong and try to not think about it too much. But honestly, this was a big lie. How can I try to get him to not think too much of it?

This is not your place.  I was due to graduate top of my class back in 2005 before a tutor started to hand out unprofessional advice that she was not qualified to give. I stopped working altogether and couldn't graduate. The gap on my CV and the loss of my dad, plus not being able to graduate caused a lot of pain.  I hope you keep it professional. You might be opening a can of worms by overstepping the mark and putting someone's life in a much worse place.

It's unhelpful to tell you the teacher what you "should have said" because there is no perfect recipe for what to say, if exactly the same situation should arise again which it won't. Your priority should be to acknowledge that your student gave you an answer which you understood. I advise not advising anything before you, or someone with time for closer discussion with the student, has identified an actual need. I would ask whether his mother is receiving treatment or tests. From the answer you will learn whether the student has good or uncertain information, without which you cannot know whether this is just an imaginary case of worry, an actual terminal cancer case or likely something in between. There are other good answers here aimed at helping the student complete or delay completing the class. An empathic response (that I learned from a doctor) to be used if and only if the student talks about his Mother's medical progress is "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best".

My two cents:  While a tragedy has befallen this student's family, the student must keep up his work.
Part of life is learning how to deal with blows like this, and to keep moving though them.
He will need to prioritize things in his life, in order to make sure that he fulfills his educational requirements, while also meeting familial expectations.
Working on his education can actually be a way to take his mind off of his family situation, if he chooses to look at it that way, or he can see it as a burden, but in the end that is his choice to make.
I think you did right to offer your condolences, but am not sure if there really is anything else you need to do as an instructor.

Would appreciate a brief explanation to accompany downvotes.

Its good that the student shared the problem,the best thing to do is to let the student know that the parent is not the only one with cancer and he shouldn't over think about it,its normal,it happens and most of all it can be controlled by a series of medical procedures,the student has to accept the fact because its not the end of everything after all,Just try to encourage him or her that the doctors are under control and the parent will be ok

This is really, really bad advice. Comes dangerously close to "it could be worse" and "get over it" territory

If you say "it could be worse", or "your mother's not the only one with cancer" to someone, the recipient of such uncaring phrases might be liable to punch you in the face.

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text:
What should I do if I don't know the answer to a question posed by a student?
If I am the TA for a class, what should I do if a student asks me a question which I can't answer? While "tell the truth and say you don't know" is one approach, are there other options?

I agree that honesty is the best policy, and it's too bad if you're in a situation in which you feel worried about admitting you don't know the answer.  You shouldn't try to bluff, by pretending you know but don't have time to explain or by giving an intentionally vague answer.  However, there are ways of handling it more smoothly than just saying "I don't know" and leaving it at that.  Depending on the circumstances, you can say "That's a really interesting question.  I haven't thought about it, so I'll have to look into it, but let's talk about it in office hours."  (Or you can promise to return to the topic in the next class meeting if it's really relevant to the course and everyone in the class will want to know the answer.)  Or "These issues can be complicated.  I don't know the details off the top of my head, but the place I'd look them up is Reference Work X.  I'd be happy to show you where to find it after class."  Or "That's a good question, but it's somewhat beyond the scope of this class.  I'd be happy to investigate it with you outside of class."
The key is to respect the student's desire to learn.  If you avoid the question or give an answer you know is inadequate, then you're being deliberately unhelpful.  If you just give up and admit defeat, then at least you're being honest, but the student still isn't finding out what he/she wanted to know.  If you respond by pointing the student on the road to an answer, even if you can't supply it off the top of your head, then you've done everything that can be expected of you.

And, even if you suspect that the student might be just hassling you, nevertheless treat every question as genuine and sincere, and respond as sketched by AnonymousMathematician. That is, the conscientious (and "innocent") response is also the best defense against suspected hecklers.

+1. In some cases, "I don't know, but let's find out!" may also be an option. Of course, you should only try that if you're confident that you can work out the answer reasonably quickly; spending too much time working on a single question not only cuts into your available time, but can also easily bore the students.

@IlmariKaronen I have done that and sometimes was not able to find the answer. No biggie -- just abort after 5/10/... minutes, say "This seems to be harder than I though, I'll get back to you! But now we need to continue with the other material" and all is good. I think that students can learn more from watching how you approach a problem you don't know already know the answer to than they can from watching you present a polished solution.

+1. Or - gasp! - you might even ask whether some other student has an idea (assuming that this happens in a classroom setting)!

I believe directly, and if that happened more than one time, admitting that you don't know the answer may cause you to lose students trust on you.

@math137: If you are repeatedly unable to answer elementary questions, then yes, the students would (and should) become alarmed.  On the other hand, the solution to that problem is to learn more, not to try to hide your ignorance from the students.  But it's easy for students to ask arbitrarily obscure or difficult questions, and curious students will sometimes do so; there's no shame in not having an immediate answer.  Naive students may believe their instructor should know everything, but it's valuable for them to learn what sorts of things an expert does or doesn't know offhand.

Also I try to deal with it with some humor.  "Well congratulations!  You have stumped the professor!  I do not know the answer but..." and then either "let's figure it out together" or "I'll have to get back to you" with follow-up.

I'm a professor, so I am expected to know the answers, but sometimes I don't. This often involves some minor detail in a programming language.
So I usually say, "That's a good question. I don't want to give a wrong answer, so let me think about that and get back to you." We use a course management system which includes a discussion board, so I will usually then add, "I don't want to forget, so post that on the forum. That way everyone will see the answer." Then in the posted answer I try to explain how I found the information. I find this works well.

You should say that you don't know the answer or did not prepare for answering it (especially if it is a question that is out of topic). Then you can either search for the answer with the student if you have time and it is appropriate. Or if you cannot at that moment, you can say that you will look for it and give the student some explanation by e-mail or next time. This is something that happens even to professors sometimes.

An alternative is to ask whether any of the students want to answer it. Or even whether they would be willing to research it and provide an answer in the next class. You needn't assume that all of the answers need to come from you. Students need to learn, not to "be told".

I don't know the answer to your question at the moment, let us all try to find a
  solution together.

In that way, you are communicating the fact that there are always new ways to look at things and presented for the first time, it is difficult to answer.
Then, you might well be in the same shoes as the questioner and other students and one logical way is to sit and solve it together. You could invite the whole class if you wish; a cooperative effort. The main idea is to try to find a way to tackle the problem before it dies away.

It's happening a lot so in this situation  I prefer to not saying I don't know the answer" but I will say good question and let us think about it and we will discuss later

Agreed.  I have never really liked professors who tried to be infallible.....

If that is course related Just tell them  "we will get there", don't hurry. Go home find out the answer and give them answer the next day or so. :)

That is an attempt to fool the students. They are not stupid, and will probably see through it (specially if you do this often). I thin there is more value in teaching that it is OK not to know everything, but give the tools to figure out, as Anonymous Mathematician wrote in his answer.

Best action is to say I do not know the answer. Then research it. That's it.

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What are the benefits/detriments to graduate students joining unions?
The graduate students at my university (a relatively large state school in the US) are considering joining a union. To help decide whether to sign a union card in support of joining the union, I'm interested in more information about how unions have helped graduate students at other universities. What are some improvements to graduate life gained by graduate students at other universities upon joining a union?
I'm also interested in information about how unions have hurt graduate students at other universities. What are some detriments to graduate life caused by graduate students joining a union?
I'm primarily interested in student-body-wide benefits/detriments, instead of student-specific or faculty/administrator-specific claims (e.g. "my advisor treated me better with the union behind me" or "my students have stopped working since they joined a union" is not what I'm looking for).

Never heard of these until you posted this here. The first few hits of a google search leads to a lot of interesting results, though.

Not answering because I have no concrete experience to share, but I would have the impression that PhD students are exactly the kind of workforce that unions make sense for: the ones that are deeply dependent on their superiors to the extend that they basically don't have alternatives to negotiate with. That being said, I live in the german-speaking area, and around here some unions have gone horribly wrong lately.

The University of Michigan went through this recently, with it polarizing grad students along those that do more teaching vs. research.  You might look at how it shook out.

Note that another question https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/89955/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-well-compensated-stem-graduate-students-joining-a was closed as a duplicate of this one, and the answers to that question contain a number of good points not made here.

I went to graduate school in mathematics at a university with a TA union. I think the main effect was to level off graduate student compensation across disciplines -- so, the union was apparently a great boon to those in the humanities, but I heard that compensation for math TA's would likely be higher if not for the union.
Another benefit to the union was that it instilled (for many) a sense of camaraderie and common cause. Union events were fun, and they served beer. It was a good way to get to know your fellow graduate students.
The main disadvantage was that dues had to be paid, around $200 a year (most of which went straight to the AFT). This is not a lot, but on our salary it did mean something. Dues were mandatory, even if you opted out of the union -- although state politicians have since seen to it that this is no longer true.
Another potential disadvantage is that union dues went (in part) to political contributions to union-friendly politicians. I didn't mind, but this tended to alienate graduate students who were more politically conservative than me.
There was occasional heated rhetoric when I was there, and even more after I left, but overall the union didn't seem to do much good or harm. Mostly, I remember the beer.

"Mostly, I remember the beer" - Sounds more like a social group than a politically effective tool for ensuring rights, which honestly doesn't surprise me.

But if they did increase salaries for some TAs, that's a politically effective outcome.

The point about math vs humanities matches my experience.  From what I've seen, math/natural science grad students get treated better than social science grads, who are treated better than humanities grads.  The grad union that was being proposed at my school wanted to smooth that out in that everybody gets treated more equally.  This means humanities and social sciences grads can see big benefits, but math/natural science grads might actually see some drawbacks.  These are gross generalizations of course.

I don't have first-hand knowledge of specific details, but I am aware that at my university the graduate student union has successfully negotiated items like:

Basic health care coverage for GAs, RAs and TAs, with full coverage provided to 0.5 FTE assistants.
Tuition payment deferment so that earned stipends can pay tuition fees not covered by tuition waivers.
Paycheck deductions in installments for parking permits for graduate assistants.

I have also been told that they negotiate assistantship salaries and minimum and maximum working loads for assistants, and that the union will represent assistants should a grievance arise.
I've never discussed the graduate student union with anyone in my department – professors and other students alike – and am aware of no negative impacts of my membership.

I was a postdoc at an institution with unionized graduate students.  One specific consequence was that graduate students weren't allowed to ever lecture in place of a professor.
This is an annoyance to the professor, but more relevantly, it's a mixed deal for graduate students.  When I was a graduate student, getting the chance to lecture was an opportunity---at some schools it's one of the few chances to get that experience while still in grad school.  On the other hand I have heard stories (in other fields) of professors abusing this and passing a large part of their teaching load off to their grad students.  (This, I assume, is why the rule was negotiated in the first place.)

Strongly agree with this. Unions can often result in "across-the-board" rules that are well-intentioned, but bad for some departments.

You ask about student-body-wide benefits, I think you need to ask this question across schools.
Unions at some schools have more bargaining power than others, and at some schools the field is already more level than others.  But when you look at things like tuition waivers and health benefits, I don't see how they would be as common as they are now without TA unions pushing the fight for the last 40 years.
Non-union schools are under pressure to match the compensation at union schools.  Now other battles loom at many schools regarding international student issues and mandatory fees.
I was involved in my TA union as an elected leader for three years, and I heard lots of complaints about how the department wants to give us this, but the union won't let us, the school wants to pay us more, but the union won't let us, etc. I personally investigated every case and the most common explanation is that the school administrators -- starting these rumors -- did not understand labor law or the union contract.  In no case did the union prevent a TA from being paid better, etc.
Also, I heard complaints about union dues going to liberal politicians, this is also not true, and is against the law.  Unions do help some politicians, this is true -- but it isn't with dues money.  The reason unions do help is because unions have painfully found out that what is gained at the bargaining table can be taken away at the state capitals very easily.

I suggest structuring this answer better. It is a bit of a "wall of text" now. (I like the content, it is just not easy to parse for me)

Thanks for the answer! I'm curious if you have any specific cases in mind where non-union schools have increased compensation/benefits/etc. to match unionized schools. It seems to me that graduate students would not pick their graduate school based on the peripherals, but rather based on the faculty they would work with. This would seem to reduce the leverage of grad students at non-union schools and reduce the incentive of the school to match the unionized school's benefits. But of course, I don't have any specific cases in mind so I can't take my own advice! :-)

@shane Wikipedia has a nice article explaining the timing, which can be verified at the UW-Madison TAA website: http://taa-madison.org/taa-history/ As for the actual benefits... that's why I asked the question! :-)

This is a huge over simplification, but it is worth noting that Universities, unlike companies, are closed systems that generally do not make a profit. Giving additional benefits from someone means taking them from someone else. For a company it is usually the share holder that loses out. For academic departments added benefits to graduate students hurts professors.
There is no question in my mind that while graduate student unions may provide a short term benefit to graduate students, those students who wish to continue on in academia are effectively shooting themselves in the foot. Those increased benefits come directly from departmental budgets. This means heavier teaching loads and less discretionary money for academic staff. To offset this you need either high grant overheads which will make getting a grant even more competitive or higher tuition. Basically if you support graduate student unions, you lose your right as a faculty member to complain about high teaching loads, not having a grant, and high tuition.
As a graduate student in response to "threats" about unionization my university increased the PhD student stipend. The stipend was above the NIH recommendation. This means that any student funded by an NIH grant needed to find an additional source of non governmental funding. This essentially boils down to PIs using their overhead accounts to supplement the stipend, but PIs did not get a bigger slice of the overhead pie to cover this new cost. At the same time the University got a site license for Matlab. To cover the cost the PI slice of the overhead pie was reduced. Universities take, but rarely give.

I very very rarely downvote (except for spam), but I did here. I second (and upvoted) Nates comment below. No offense, but your answer is nuts.

It is indeed a huge oversimplification to suggest that grad students and faculty are playing a zero-sum game.  Student and faculty salaries combined are a relatively small part of a university's budget.  There are many other players: administration, facilities, athletics, student services.  The game isn't even zero sum: the university could raise tuition, increase fundraising, or (for public institutions) convince the state to increase funding.  I don't agree with your characterization at all.

@FaheemMitha: Sorry, I decided to delete that comment and write something a little more measured.  You can upvote it now if you want :-)

@NateEldredge I did. :-) Being measured has its place, but I decided to dispense with that today. :-)

@NateEldredge I have not had a lot of experience with departmental budgets but my experience is that when a university centralises a service they reclaim the money from the department budget but when they decentralise something there is not a corresponding item added to the budget.

@NateEldredge I actually had an experience that is consistent with what StrongBad suggests. Grad student salaries mostly come out of grant money; a sudden externally mandated increase in salary in my department has translated directly to a sudden inability to hire new students, as grant money no longer stretches as far.

I had to downvote this as well. Basically, the same argument is always brought up against unions in any context ("you might be helping in the short run, but it's bad in the long run"), and I am convinced this argument never holds water.

@xLeitix that is NOT my argument. I think the union will help grad students for years and years to come. I think it hurts grad students when they leave grad school.

@ff524 you mean the university didn't cut the football team's budget to offset the increased salary costs in your department :)

@StrongBad ok, I misunderstood. To be honest, that seems like an even worse argument, given that most PhD students will never be professors.

More like, the university didn't cut the president's salary :)

Also, for what it's worth, the "higher" regulated salary levels translated to a 16% cut in my salary.

I would like to move this to chat.

@xLeitix I tried to be careful and said "students who wish to continue in academia" for students who plan on leaving the union is a good thing.

@StrongBad where is chat?

@SSimon  this is [chat], but I am not sure anyone continued the discussion.

@StrongBad Nothing about your answer :(

A good thing in unions is that you get to interact with others, specially your seniors, who can guide you in your academic life because they are one step ahead of you.
A drawback is that you will have to be a part of parties, meetings, and gatherings etc. which could be disturbing for some people who are not into much socializing.

To be part of union you have to be a part of their gatherings. No body forces you but it makes a lot of difference if you actively participate or don't participate in meetings and gatherings.

This is false. Here in the UK the union enrolls students automatically. I suspect thousands of students have never gone to a students' union gathering.


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Am I being a "mean" instructor, denying an extension on a take home exam?
I am teaching part time at a community college (in the US) and I have one student who is about 16, I think he is a senior in high school (at least he is about to graduate HS in the spring).  He is currently applying to MIT, Harvard, etc...  and he is taking my differential equations course. But he wants an extension on his take-home exam.
I gave my students an in-person exam last Monday.  It was too hard... if anyone is interested in what "too hard" means, I can post it, but trust me, it was difficult... anyway, so I give them their exams back this past Monday (after our Thanksgiving break) and I tell them "give thanks, the exam is take-home now and due Wednesday".  He didn't show up for class that day (which when I was in HS was called being delinquent) and I told the class I would also make the announcement on our "online blackboard" so that anyone who missed would get the announcement.  I forgot to do this, and Wednesday I made the announcement that I forgot to post it Monday and so I said it was due Friday (this time I didn't forget to post it online). I did keep my supervisor in the loop and they thought this was reasonable.
In any case, the student in question (and only one other student) weren't there on Monday but did show up on Wednesday.  He asked for me to make it due this coming Monday. I told him that was not reasonable because the final is next Wednesday and I need to get the grading done in time plus I want to post solutions to the exam so they can study it to help them for their final (but I obviously can't do that if he hasn't submitted).  So their submissions are due in just about 1.5 hours and he is the only person who has yet to submit his exam.  This past Wednesday after class he said he wishes I would "work with him" because he has 7 other classes he's in (I think I'm remembering that correctly.... that's insane) and he has some winter concert he has to perform in for his school band and... he's never had a B ever... but in my class he has a C, many of my students by the way have A's.  I think he lacks maturity and I told him if he wants to go to MIT then he should act like an MIT student and quit complaining and get his work done.
Main Points:

I have a young student applying to MIT who is a dual credit student in my differential equations course.
He is complaining because he has a C in the class, but I feel he isn't putting in the appropriate work.
He claims there is a lot of work to do in high school and wants an extension on a take-home exam.
I disagree with his request for an extension, and I wonder if his request is reasonable and if I'm the person being unreasonable here.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. (Also, comments can only be moved to chat once, so future chatty comments can only be deleted.)

I'm incredulus as the mention of differential equations course for high school. Is that somehow different from the diff.eqn. course I took after 15 hours of calculus?

It's the same class, indeed! The student has taken calc1 through calc3.

I'm curious, how comes you are teaching in college (which AFAIK is on the same academic level as a university) and have a student who has not graduated from high school yet?

@AndreaLazzarotto, it is becoming very common in High Schools in the US that students can take college courses that count towards HS and college.

We don't know why your student missed class on Monday.  He may have been delayed in his travels after the Thanksgiving break, he may have been under the weather, he may have had an extra rehearsal, etc.  What we do know is that you suddenly changed the ground rules about the exam, but neglected to inform students who were absent from class on Monday via the online blackboard.
A student who learned of the take-home exam two days behind the others, through your slip-up, should be given two extra days to work on it.
That may not change your dual enrollment student's grade, but it is fair.
On Friday, you can post a study guide instead of an exam solution, to help students prepare for the final.  Post the exam solution two days later.  You may need to stay up late to prepare the review study guide.
Once the stress of the semester is behind you, do some thinking about test design.  For example, you could take a look at "Preparing tests and exams" from the University of Waterloo.  You can verify an exam by asking a colleague to take it before you give it to your students.
We are all only human.  But when we make a mistake, we need to make a reasonable effort to clean up after ourselves.
Note: Seven classes is normal for high school.

Should he take into account that the exams were originally due on Friday, and if the student gets two extra days, the exam will be due on Sunday? Other students had to deal with going to classes and other homework assignments being due; this student will get two full days to work on it. It seems very unfair to the other students, if you ask me.

@Sana - But what OP proposes to do is judgmental and arbitrary (this student has been doing C work and therefore shouldn't be given a fair chance).  Why should this student be given less time only because the instructor is inexperienced, did not verify the exam before giving it, and didn't post the announcement on Blackboard?

Yes, I also believe that the OP messed up; he never should have made such huge changes to the syllabus. But the student is in fact being given MORE time, due to the fact that he is getting the weekend to work on it. That feels unfair to the other students who attended the class. In all honesty, if I were the OP, I would own up to the fact that I messed up, maybe say that extra 10% will be given if they turn in a complete exam, and more or less go with the original grade.

@aparente001 I liked your answer until I read that my proposal is "judgemental and arbitrary".  In fact, reading your answer...  I did exactly what you propose I should have done!  The assignment was given Monday and due Wednesday, I forgot to post an announcement so Wednesday I said it was due Friday (everyone was there but I did still post an announcement).
Sana's statement "the exams were originally due on Friday" is false.

@Sana I told my students that I "messed up" they weren't upset and in fact many of them disagreed with me and said they should have just studied more.  I get the impression that many of you are quick to throw blame when you don't know all the details.

@Squirtle -  Teaching isn't easy; we all make mistakes.  Speaking of which, thanks for correcting my misunderstanding about the due dates.  I will adjust my answer accordingly. // If it concerns you that some parts of your question came across as judgmental/arbitrary, perhaps you'd like to edit your question and take those bits out.  Your question is valid, regardless.

I disagree with this opinion. At my university we have a policy that the student is responsible for anything that happened on the day they missed class (I imagine this is the policy everywhere). If an announcement was made, the student should have learned of this (from other students, from emailing the professor, etc.). Doing so, the student would have realized it's essential to get their test back asap and would have come get it. Whether or not an announcement was made online is ancillary.

You give a lot more information about the student than seems relevant to the question.  That the student is applying to MIT for instance is neither here nor there.
That your student is in high school may be slightly relevant.  It feels awkward to have a high school student in a college/university course when they are not doing well, because usually students (especially in mathematics) take such courses because they are too advanced or gifted for their high school programs, but that does not automatically make them prepared for college/university standards.  If you are an inexperienced instructor (and I think you are: more on that later) then it is a good idea to talk to colleagues to get some perspective on how high school students are typically dealt with.  This may well be different at a community college than at a research university, by the way.  I will say that my attitude in dealing with high school students in (research) university math courses is: if there are any special rules or dispensations that apply to them, these should be made clear at the time of their enrollment in the course.  In the absence of such rules, I try to treat high school students identically to all other students (keeping in mind that "all other students" is a large and inhomogeneous group).  I would certainly avoid talking to them in a way that would not be appropriate or respectful for an adult university student.  E.g. you write

I think he lacks maturity and I told him if he wants to go to MIT that he should act like an MIT student and quit complaining and get his work done.

This sounds rather condescending to me.  As I said above, that the student wants to go to MIT is really not relevant to your course, and dragging that into the conversation is unhelpful.  By the way: telling someone to "act like an MIT student" presumes some involvement / affiliation with MIT on your part.  If you don't have that, what you say can come off as obnoxious.  I have taken classes at MIT (as a Harvard PhD student) and have some colleagues on the faculty there (for instance, I spoke there last month).  But I would not tell anyone to "act like an MIT student": while MIT students are in the aggregate very impressive, they are people, not stereotypes, and in my experience evince a wide range of behavior, including complaining.
Coming back to the matter at hand: honestly, what strikes me most is the way you are teaching your course.  Giving an exam which is too hard -- even much too hard -- is something that instructors do often, and it is not necessarily a problem but needs to be dealt with very carefully.  Turning an in-class exam into a take-home exam after it has been taken in class seems like a prohibitively poor idea to me.  If you are not sure about why, you may want to ask that as a separate question, since it would be helpful to get a range of responses about this.  By the way, I also find

"give thanks, the exam is take-home now and due Wednesday".

to be a bit obnoxious.  A week after an exam was given, a student is expecting to receive their graded exam back again.  Coming into class on a Monday and learning that they are getting a "pop take-home exam" is something that a wide range of college/university students would not be thankful for.  Most students are very busy with a range of activities (academic, extracurricular, work, health, family...), and very busy people plan their schedules in advance.  Giving the exam back without a grade, asking the students to do it by the next class, and then forgetting to communicate that to students who missed that one class, is not great behavior on your part: honestly, it looks a bit lazy to me.
You say that you want to post the solutions in time to have the students study for the final.  That's good.  However, remember that you were the one who created the time crunch in the first place by making an exam you were so unhappy with so as to mess with it later.
Okay, what do I recommend?

You won't want to hear this, but: giving a take-home exam in an undergraduate math class in 2016 is probably a bad idea full-stop.  As a participant on math.stackexchange, you know well that your students can get solutions to even a way-too-difficult undergraduate differential equations class rapidly without leaving home.  I have colleagues at SLACs who feel confident that the majority of the students take the honor code seriously enough not to do this and feel that the cheating by a small minority of students is more than offset by the gain in learning from students who work through a carefully crafted take home exam.  When I was a postdoc, I had the experience of students cheating on a take-home exam (at a research university) and saw the poisonous effect their higher grades had on the morale of the other students, so for me even a small minority of cheaters is a high price to pay.  But this is not a carefully crafted take home exam: it's a too-hard in class exam.  And moreover it's a take home exam that was already given as an in-class exam.  Don't you think that many of the students spoke to each other about the exam afterwards?  And that a few of the students may have been interested enough to look up the answers online and/or talk to outsiders (e.g. more advanced students, tutors, instructors) about it?  I see no way to guarantee academic integrity in this situation.
You could make a different exam for your student and all other students who want to take it / can't solve the take home according to the deadline(s) that you rather precipitously announced.  Alternately, you could admit that the assessment coming from this midterm is not the greatest and just offer to drop everyone's lowest midterm grade.  In fact I usually drop the lowest midterm grade in my undergraduate classes conditionally on satisfactory performance on the final.  (And in fact I often don't announce it until near the end of the course, because I want all the students to take all the midterms.) I find that students are very happy with this, and since I too often give exams that are a bit more difficult than I had wanted, this ends up with course grades in the range that I want.

Thanks for the answer.  For the record, the student finished the assignment just in the knick of time and it looks rather good.  My gut feeling is that he procrastinates, because I give long (but easy) homeworks and he hasn't turned in either of these -- I suspect because he starts at the last minute and becomes overwhelmed.  I AGREE with your statement that the fact he is applying to MIT is "neither here nor there" it might have been a little obnoxious or cavalier, but I did this because I just feel he needed a little push.  I don't think saying "give thanks the exam is ... due Wednesday

is an obnoxious comment, the students were all elated.  To be honest, I wasn't sure what was best to do over the break; I weighed my options and made a decision -- I'm sure had I made another decision that you like, for example, that others would have seen it as unwise and obnoxious.  In any case, thanks for the input.

@Squirtle: Well, I also shared my concerns that your choice compromised the academic integrity of the exam.  In the grading of the exam I would certainly take a close look to see whether collusion occurred.

And you're right: instructors make a lot of decisions on the spur of the moment and learn from our experiences.  In terms of what I "like": well, I am a full professor and graduate coordinator in your field and your country, so I do a lot of mentoring of students like you.  So dismissing what I think are good practices is your right, but a more mindful approach would serve you better.  I encourage you to talk to other students and faculty in your field and get a range of opinions on what are good teaching practices.  Just because you can't please everyone does not mean you ignore everyone.

Thank you for your insight.  I did in fact consult many other instructors first, including my chairman.... ultimately I just did what I thought was best.  The big kink in the process was forgetting to post something online.... but on second thought.... this wouldn't even be an issue if we turned back to the time before internet.  The absent students would have just been penalized and I wouldn't have forgotten to post anything on the nonexistent internet

@Squirtle: I'm glad that you consulted a lot of people.  You still didn't mention how you ensured academic integrity under the circumstances, which for me personally is a strong argument against doing this again.  But fundamentally I agree that you have to try something that seems right and see how the students respond.  Since it sounds like all of your students are now satisfied that they have been treated fairly, then you achieved a good outcome this time around.

I was a college student in the late 1960's. Important notices were posted to a bulletin board we could monitor. It's just a bit more convenient now - you didn't need any push pins to post your notice.

I agree with Patricia.  I was a college student in the early 1970's.  I made sure I had phone numbers of fellow students.  Also note, when a student is absent due to illness, travel problems, etc., s/he could and can present the mitigating circumstance to the instructor/department.

I've had a professor approach the whole "take home exam" thing pretty well before.  Pretty much no one got the midterm near done on time, so the prof graded it then gave some hints and sent it back for us to do as a take home.  I'm pretty sure he didn't count the take home for nearly as many points as the actual midterm.  He just wanted everyone to actually do the questions; which was great for me because I doubt I wold have done he midterm questions again.

@Squirtle in the time before internet the student would know to check with his colleagues/you for anything he missed. But in the presence of the internet and more so your "online blackboard" the student is quite justified to expect updates online.

csiz im I'm not responsible for his assumptions and lack of contacting me when he missed class.   @aparente001 you're correct and I have received none of these. The student gave me no reason for why they missed Monday. To Patricia, I agree with you that there were bulletins. But I guess my mistake then wouldn't have made a difference because I would have posted something Tuesday morning and the student would have not seen it until Wednesday because they only come to my campus for my class ( they're in HS)

@Squirtle Sorry, you did say "I told the class I would also make the announcement on our online blackboard". If that's where you usually post updates to then you are actually responsible...

I think he lacks maturity and I told him if he wants to go to MIT that he should act like an MIT student and quit complaining and get his work done.

The issue here is that you unpredictably added a large amount of extra work into the student's schedule that had to be done in a short time.  What I would expect of a mature student taking eight courses is some careful budgeting of time to make sure there was enough time to do everything.  Suddenly learning on Wednesday of a new, high stakes, difficult assignment due on Friday would throw that into disarray.
I don't see anything immature in a student complaining about a last minute syllabus change which makes things substantially worse for them.
Sometimes mistakes happen, and I have to make changes to the course structure in the middle of it.  I think it's my obligation in that case to make sure that every single student is at least as well off as before the change; that usually means a lot of extra work on my part, and making some individual accommodations or having several options, because different versions will be good for different students.

I think this answer captures the problem the best. The main answer to a student complaining about lack of time is: "You should have planned better". The problem is that there was no time to plan, nor is it a minor task that can be fit in somewhere.

I respectively disagree with this response.  Many students said that they only needed about 3 hours in addition to the time spent in class on the exam; some said they did it Monday night immediately and others said they did it a little at a time between Monday and Wednesday (about half an hour to an hour per day).

+1 for "The issue here is that you unpredictably added a large amount of extra work into the student's schedule that had to be done in a short time." Even "only 3 hours" is a lot of time to have to add to your schedule unexpectedly.

@Squirtle: 1) Just because some students can do it in 3 hours doesn't mean they all can (a student getting a C and trying to pull that up is exactly the person you expect to need more time) 2) 3 hours is a lot of extra work to fit between two classes (9 hours a week is a typical upper bound for homework, so this is equivalent to doubling the work for that period) 3) if your student (responsibly!) prepared for your early to make room to work on a project or study for an exam in another class due Friday, it was reasonable for them to expect to put in 0 hours for your class during that period

The other answer are nice and true, but somehow nobody seemed to address the failure (and not meanness!) of the OP.
Summary (without offence! but with honesty):
You created a bad exam, it was too hard for the class. You did not do a good job in the first place but creating exams can be hard so this can happen. It still is your responsibility to create fair exams and it is you who did not achieve this. Anyway, this was an exam, you have to give marks and may think of ways for the students to compensate that mark. Period.
Then you handed out the exam for home-work. A homework exam without announcing it is just not possible at all. What if a student is working in the evening, is somewhere else, has other plans... imagine, you would come to class and get told like: Here is your ticket, you have to go on a two-day trip. Now! Or you will have a very bad mark. That is a complete NO-GO.
You told to upload the information on the webpage as announced before. I would actually even write an e-mail to be sure. You did not do either of this (or too late). For a student missing the Monday class, being sick or whatever, he could rely on the fact that you will announce it online. Which you then did not. You screwed up again and giving that student more time (to compensate your mistake of too late announcing it) is the least you could do. If he, on the other hand, knows about this from his fellow students already, he has an unfair advantage. But you don't know about this. Anyway, this is way beyond any legal or fair grading and by uploading the information too late, you crashed any possibility of making this exam count.
So what to do: Mark the exam written during the announced time. Marks will probably be bad, announce a second exam. Forget about the take-home exam, people will cheat! Mostly those which are bad at class and therefore they would get better marks than the good ones who did not cheat. What a motivation!
You're not mean. But you screwed up. Don't blame a single student for this.

I think there was an element of meanness in shifting the blame for a mess the OP caused to the student. Telling the student to quit complaining and get the work done would have been appropriate if the take-home exam had been announced well in advance, and the student had failed to plan for it.

Seriously, I think you are out of line.  The student skips half of the lectures anyway and is consistently late to class.  To say that I was "a complete failure" in writing my exam was a bit careless on your part.  Did you take the exam?  Have you looked at it?  I, by my own volition, believe it was too tough, but I know many of my professors while I was in college would not have even gone so far as to admit any fault of their own.  To say I "screwed up" is a bit strong.... Every student who attended Monday said it was extremely generous and looked forward to the opportunity.

@Squirtle, in another comment I said I agree with the answers in general.  NOT this one, it's 99% wrong.  This "answer," however, sounds like something you should expect to see in the "evaluations" your students will submit about their opinion of the class.

+1 This answer is what I would have written, but more diplomatic. The fact that one knows other awful professors is no excuse.

@chell Actually we are required to take attendance and attendance is mandatory for high school students and based on the number of absences I actually have the right to give him an F.  Not that I would....  I think that policy is a bit lame.

Seriously, I think you are out of line --- I don't think this answer is out of line at all.  You messed up. Whether or not the student was also irresponsible doesn't matter in the least.

@Squirtle, yes, the students may looked forward because they all thought that it's a way of improving their mark. With "cheating", of course. Imagine, you wrote a bad exam. Now your prof gives you the change to create a good mark out of it (if you "cheat". Just because they have more time most probably does not mean they became "better"). Who would not want that?!
And for the "cheating": I consider this as much cheating as picking up a lost 50-dollar bill as "stealing". You nearly "have to".

@Squirtle I am not trying to cast blame; I am trying to place responsibility.  There's a difference.  The student is responsible for their actions; you are responsible for yours.  The student is responsible for mastering the course material (whether they come to class or not); you are responsible for fairly assessing that mastery. The student skipped class; you changed the parameters of an exam without warning, and without carrying through on your own promise to communicate such changes to absent students. The student deserves your fair assessment, even if that fair assessment is a D.

@Mayou36: I also would expect that any student who just finished an exam and is interested in the subject would go and lookup answers to the questions they couldn't answer. After the exam it's not cheating, it's learning. So by the time this became a take home exam, lots of students would have looked up the answers without cheating.

@Squirtle it's not surprising this student skips a lot of classes if their workload is so high. They may be able to teach themselves the material in less time than your lecture and needs the time he can save. It doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't take his studies seriously.

@gnasher729, sure, sorry for not clarifying: I was not talking about an interested student who looked up some answers. In my experience, this is anyway not too often the case and those students "deserve" it. I was talking about all the students, which take the exam home and will look up the answers then (yes, most of them will...)

Good point from @Kat.  Squirtle, if the student's attendance record is poor, and that in itself puts the academic credit in jeopardy, you should include this information in the question.  It's disrespectful of the community to dribble information out in multiple comments.

I disagree with this opinion. At my university we have a policy that the student is responsible for anything that happened on the day they missed class (I imagine this is the policy everywhere). If an announcement was made, the student should have learned of this (from other students, from emailing the professor, etc.). Doing so, the student would have realized it's essential to get their test back asap and would have come get it. Whether or not an announcement was made online is ancillary.

@DavidWhite at the Universities that I've been, there are stricter rules about how exams, or in general the grading of the course, are announced. Are you sure that exams can just be orally communicated once?
The policy by itself seems general, and yes, I've seen that at different universities as well, but not for this case.
Even if: if the professor also announces that it will be uploaded, that means the information wil be there. So the student already took pre-cautions as he will the information will be available.

@Mayou36 That's actually a great point. I do think we have stricter rules about exams, and probably changing them at all from the syllabus is a violation of those rules. I rarely do so, and only if a survey of the students (e.g., Google Form) expresses a strong vote in favor. That said, it sounds like the OP was giving students an opportunity to earn points back which is not really the same as an unannounced exam. Lots of my colleagues offer "exam re-writes" to earn points back, and do so based on the test average, which they only find out in the moment.

@DavidWhite yes, that's also what I had in mind, and if you change, you'll need to be very careful. But what he is doing is an exam, it's literally the exam that they held. The same piece of paper, the same marking, the same counting. They just get spontaneously extra time. He's literally changing the rule of the exam, spontaneously. That's not a "re-write", that's extra time, isn't it? Extra time which was absolutely not scheduled (just think of students that have plans for that evening/other exams/a live)

First of all, I think the most relevant point is the fact that he hasn't submitted his exam and it is due in about 1.5 hours. I would email the student now and warn him that you plan to post the solutions at a certain time, and unless he submits by then, he gets a zero on the exam. Documenting never hurts.
Secondly, did anyone else miss the class besides him when you made the announcement? You are partially at fault for not making the announcement, and if it affected just this one student, then maybe some adjustments could be made (however, giving him extra time over the weekend is unfair, since the students got Monday-Friday, but he would not only get the entire weekend to work on it, he would also get an extra day).
But in general, I would caution against making major changes to your syllabus, because if the student really decides to go after you, he does have some grounds to stand on. The exams are probably worth the majority of their grades, and doing things like this unannounced is not good form, in any case, although it was done with good intentions. I would have opted to just take the original grade, then curve it.

+1: This is a good answer, especially: "I would have opted to just take the original grade, then curve it." Yes, I agree heartily.  The problem with a very difficult exam is that it has bad effects on student morale.  In my experience difficult exams actually do a better job of differentiating between better and worse students (up until the point where it gets ridiculously hard, of course).  Curving the exam would have been much better.  Perhaps allowing students to turn in one problem they got wrong for extra points is also a good practice.  Giving the exam as a take home is not.

I also considered letting the students pick one problem and correct it, but I dismissed it because I thought, "Who does that?"
@Sana.  Him and only one other student missed the announcement on Monday.  In any case, I tried to accommodate my mistake by making it due Friday.

@Squirtle Yes, but the other students still got two extra days, so it does seem unfair to the two students. In general, students will appear happy at random things that are not necessarily helpful to their learning (well-known example: student evaluations rarely actually address the quality of teaching). So it's the instructor's responsibility to ensure fairness, regardless of how the students feel about it.

They didn't really get two extra days if they had it done when they thought it was due.

@WGroleau PRECISELY!  Also on another note.... With the exception of one student, every student present Monday turned in their exam Wednesday, even when presented with extra time..... and the one exception did well from what I can see.  The belief amongst the students was "I don't need the extra time" (this isn't speculation this is what they said)

@WGroleau That's not correct. Unless things have changed since I was a student, giving me two extra days for a take home exam is guaranteed way to raise my score. Just because someone turns in a "done" exam doesn't mean they believe all their answers are correct. They are just done. That's two more days for me to reflect on places I thought I made mistakes, not to mention discussions you'd have with other students about the test (since you thought it was over). Which has now happened twice! Being a HS student, you'd miss out on a lot of this.

@iheanyi I agree with you and WGroleau that more time usually means better scores, however these students had the option of taking the two extension and they rejected it and just turned it in. Also, I did NOT discuss the exam at all after they submitted (nor after the exam finished on the original date) precisely because I post solutions after grading the exam (no need to talk about it)

@PeteL.Clark - Extremely difficult exams do nothing but allow the professor to pad their ego. The goal of exams is to determine if the students learned the material they are expected to have learned. Nothing more. IME, most of the "extremely difficult exams" rely on the student recognizing some bit of mind-reading trivia in sync with the what the professor had in mind in order to solve the problem. If a student "misses" that mind-meld opportunity then they get a bad grade despite knowing the material quite well. Does that really differentiate better and worse?

@Dunk: If you have a question about the pedagogy of difficult exams, please feel free to ask it on this site.  But too easy exams differentiate between students' ability to avoid all mistakes, however minor, and don't give most students a chance to show what they actually know.  More difficult exams differentiate students who know how to solve, or even to approach, certain kinds of problems from those who don't.  This differentiation can still be done even if all of the students are missing, say, half of the problems (though many students won't like it).

This answer is very bad. Since he's a high school student he probably still depends on his parents' transportation (see politics) and so missing the class was likely not avoidable. If you take this answer, either offer a course grade of Credit or be prepared to face a challenge.

When I was taking college classes, if I missed a class, I contacted the professor to see what I missed. This is what was expected, and I would assume is still what is expected. Even if he missed the class because of his parents not being able to transport him to class that day, he is still very capable of contacting the professor and getting the details of the new assignment, which he should have done. It isn't the professor's responsibility to make sure students who miss class have the homework.

@forgivenson It is if the professor has set up the expectation that he/she will post it online, and then doesn't.  "Why are you asking me what the homework is?  You know where to look to find it."

My opinion is if he doesn’t make the deadline for the exam, make up another exam and give it to him. You can make it available as extra credit for other students too. Admittedly, this student may be stretching himself thin (something the establishment is encouraging him to do, depending on who is around him), taking up a massive workload, and yes, he’s floundering. But you grow through struggle, it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew, and it’s hard to grow if failure means you totally screw up your chances permanently.
Am I being unreasonable? A physics professor of mine would give the option of redo exams several times a semester. He said to me, "If you really want to study this material more, learn it better, and you want to do extra work for this grade, then i should help you do that. Sometimes you have something going on in life---who knows? Anyway, real learning doesn’t work on a deadline, and my job is to help you learn. The class, and every other class, has enough deadlines that I don’t mind doing this."
A chemistry professor of mine told me of a professor at Berkeley didn’t believe in failing students; he only gave incompletes. Students could do extra work after semester to bump up and get their grade. If students didn’t take care of it, it would bottleneck their class progression, so most students ended up finishing their work. The result? More students ended up not only passing, but did better overall and learned the material better. My professor said this man was only allowed to get away with these shenanigans because he was tenured. What a pity.
You may say people need to learn discipline and to adhere to deadlines. Remember who you’re talking about: students in differential equations who have plenty of experience, and will constantly be, working under deadlines their whole life. This is not a lesson that needs to be hammered in at every opportunity to the detriment of people’s futures.

I agree with this so much and I am not trying to "hammer in deadlines" in fact on their homework assignments I allow them to request for extensions.

@Squirtle - Hmm.  It occurs to me that your elastic policy on homework assignments may have contributed to your current dilemma.

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