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Professor is upset about student comments about her lectures. What should I do?
One of my former supervisors is upset about student feedback for her lectures. There are two problems:

If she provides complete slides with information, students complain that she reads from the slides.
If she doesn't provide complete slides with information, students complain that her slides are incomplete.

And

If she provides webcasts of her lectures, students don't turn up to lectures.
If she doesn't provide webcasts of her lectures, students complain she's a bad lecturer.

I know she's upset + it's directly impacting her medium-term happiness based on what she wrote on social media. However I have not talked to her about it. Should I? If so, what can I say? Both problems look generic enough that other lecturers must've dealt with them before. How?
EDIT: Thanks for the advice. Since there's little I can do, I liked her post and left it at that.

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

What should I do?

Honestly? I suggest that you sympathize courteously, but do nothing else:

She's a grown woman and an experienced academic, she doesn't need you to handle frustrations from student feedback.
You (likely) no longer work at the same university as her.
You're not a close personal friend of hers.
You don't have a good idea of what actually goes on in her classes these days, nor what the student body is like overall.
It is generally the case that students don't complain repeatedly and en masse about a course just for the sake of complaining and regardless of anything else. There's probably something that's wrong with the course (perhaps not even with her behavior) that you just don't know about.

An alternative to doing nothing would be: Suggest that she ask a relevant question here on  academia.stackexchange.com. We could obtain more information which you don't have rather than help her via a third party.

@DSVA: Sympathize as a courtesy, because she's upset, that's all.

I've never been a professor, but I'm sure after a few rounds of those reviews you quickly see what is naive students complaining and what is real actionable feedback.

@corsiKa: Maybe, maybe not; I'm just saying it's not OP who should be doing that.

I guess after I re-read the question, OP is asking what to do about HER situation. I thought it was more like ... what should I do when I eventually end up in that situation. Your answer makes a lot more sense now.

@DSVA he means empathize

@AlexGordon: Actually, I think I don't.

Some comments about the situation first (even though you have not explicitly asked about this):
Let me rephrase what you wrote slightly: if the teacher gives the students all relevant infos beforehand they see no need to come to the lecture anymore; the only way to get students to come to the lecture is by explicitly holding back information, and then the students (rightfully) complain.
There is an uncomfortable truth hidden in these items of feedback - perhaps the lectures as they are given now are useless? Note that this does not necessarily mean that your collaborator does something wrong (although this may be the case), but I have found some materials are just not optimally taught in lectures. If the lectures are perfectly replaceable by podcasts or just reading the slides, then what's wrong with that? Give the students the material in advance, don't do a lecture, use the in-class time for exercises or quizzes, or re-structure the entire course and have less in-class time in general.

I know she's upset + it's directly impacting her medium-term happiness based on what she wrote on social media. However I have not talked to her about it. Should I?

That really depends on how close you are, what your relationship looks like, and if you are in a position to give advice on teaching-related matters. If you only know her situation from social media I would venture that the answer is probably "no".

If so, what can I say? Both problems look generic enough that other lecturers must've dealt with them before. How?

Something based on what I wrote above. However, as I said, this can come across as somewhat patronising and offensive, so I would not suggest giving her any feedback unsolicited, especially if you are not close or already a mentor to her. Especially note that there are a number of people who just like to use social media to vent - don't take a few random social media posts as ground truth that there is something terrible going on in her professional life that you need to help her fix.

And I daresay that complaining on social media about student feedback is really a bad, bad move that can further damage the reputation of the professor among them.

@JeffE While it's very fashionable to say lectures are useless, I think it misses a very very important point: showing up to lectures provides motivation. As has been said above, many students to not actually use materials provided online, they just tell themselves that they will.

@JessicaB I'm not claiming that all lectures are useless.  I'm concurring with the suggestion that these particular lectures may be useless.  Showing up to useful lectures provides motivation.  (And if students aren't consulting materials provided online, perhaps those materials are also useless!)

@JeffE You're still making the judgement of usefulness independently of whether the students attend. I am saying that the process of showing up to the lectures is itself useful, so long as the lectures are basically on the topic at hand, whether or not the students consider them suitably entertaining.

@JessicaB You are making the assumption that useless lectures simply do not exist.  I am disagreeing with you.

+1 for "perhaps the lectures as they are given now are useless?"  Again.

This one is a piece of cake.
Have her create two sets of slides.

Lecture slides - slides with less info so she doesn't read from her slides and with more graphics for the spacial/visual learners out there
Notes slides - slides with everything that she talks about on them that she can read off in front of the class.

PowerPoint will actually let one project "slides" and read "notes pages" from the monitor.    However, someone qualified to teach a course shouldn't really need those "notes pages."  The abbreviated material on the slides should be enough of a reminder.

@BobBrown: Minor caveat: notes slides require a two-monitor setup. E.g., my institution put in video splitters everywhere to save money, and hence notes slides don't work.

But notes slides can be printed as such and distributed. +1 for recognizing different learning styles.

@BobBrown "However, someone qualified to teach a course shouldn't really need those "notes pages." " - Very strongly disagree. I use the notes pages extensively even for my own research talks, for which I am certainly more qualified than anyone else to present. It can be a good place to put reminders about what your audience needs to hear, or extra information that you might not recall but may come up in questions. If you are in any field that changes substantially over time I think it is quite limiting to present only material you have completely memorized.

@BryanKrause  OK... you have convinced me that you are correct.

This is called "being between a rock and a hard place"...
All of those strategies are valid : complete slides / incomplete etc But the direction chosen has to be made clear on day 1 and kept to.
So, information is available X hours / days before the lecture for those who want to read up etc.
Webcasts : well if it is an online course then fine, if the course is not online then it is up to her but not always necessary : the idea of turning up to lectures is to have the opportunity to ask questions (sometimes).
And, as for feedback, some students will say "great", others will not - I find that there are always some students who show maturity whose opinion you can ask for, and get, valid feedback : positive or negative but what they say you can discuss with them. If they say that X is good but can you do Y? you can find out why they want Y and then offer something that suits your goals and theirs.

It's perfectly possible to put up slides with the information on them, and then talk about that information.  You don't have to read the exact sentences from the slide.  In the corporate world, that's the biggest reason for death-by-Powerpoint.  You bullet-point the information on the slide, but you fill in the details, justifications, implications, and help people to understand that information.
As for the webcast versus not - if she's delivering a series of lectures and students are expected to attend, then why webcast at all?  The answer to that complaint is simple.  This is a university, and you attend courses to learn.   If you cannot be bothered to attend courses, the lecturer is not obliged to spoonfeed you with webcasts to let you watch the lecture from your bedroom.
A key thing to remember in all reviews is reviewers can be wrong too.

Okay, given this situation it's really not clear whether you should do anything except offer sympathy and support, and other answers have this covered. This answer is assuming that you are interested in how it might be possible to address the students' complaints.
These are the four problems you list:

If she provides complete slides with information, students complain
  that she reads from the slides.
If she doesn't provide complete slides
  with information, students complain that her slides are incomplete.
If she provides webcasts of her lectures, students don't turn up to
  lectures.
If she doesn't provide webcasts of her lectures, students
  complain she's a bad lecturer.

One potential solution to at least three of these (possibly not #3) might be to use a flipped-classroom approach. In other words, she provides recorded seminars with complete information but at the same time makes it clear that the students are expected to watch them at home before attending. Classroom time will be used for discussion, taking questions and other organised learning activities. I have not yet had a chance to try this myself but know several people who have and feel it has gone very well.
The only issue that this might not solve is poor attendance, so some thought will need to be given to how the benefits of attendance can be made obvious to the students. I would also recommend discussing this with the course organisers and checking that they are supportive of it, but in this case showing them the current feedback might help make the case.

Should you talk to her about it?
The answer to this depends very much on your relationship, her personality and the nature of the social media post.  It is probably advisable to err on the side of caution and to assume that the post was simply letting off steam rather than a serious attempt to solicit advice and to not say anything, unless advice is explicitly being asked for or you know her well enough to be sure that it would not be taken in a negative way.
That said, if you do feel able to talk to her about it, I think there is some useful advice that can be given.
What should you say?
Different students have different preferences and learn in different ways, so it is not uncommon for their aggregate feedback to be highly contradictory.  You cannot please all of the people all of the time.  However, that does not mean that this feedback can be ignored and there is still usually an optimal path that can be taken which will somewhat satisfy both extremes.
Ideally, slides shown during a lecture should present the same information that is being spoken about, but in a different way.  There are several reasons for this:

Again, different people learn in different ways and will respond differently to two different explanations of the same topic - you thereby increase your chances that at least one will be understood and retained.
The spoken word and visual media each have their own strengths which can be played to (for e.g. spoken explanations can be more verbose and rely more on nuance of emphasis to get the point across, while slides can include illustrations and diagrams).
Simply reading out what is on the slides can be actively distracting and annoying as it is typically much faster to read something to yourself than out loud.  Students will be spending half of each slide waiting for the lecturer to 'catch up' with what they have already read and so will become bored and disengaged.

I can certainly empathise with her displeasure at students not turning up to lectures - it can feel like something of a personal affront!  However, it is typically not meant that way by the students and provided they are indeed watching the recordings it is not necessarily a problem.  If the ultimate reach is the same then it doesn't matter if the live audience is five people or a hundred people or no people!
However, she may feel that this is sub-optimal for her students and that their preference for this could simply be laziness to their own long-term detriment.  In which case I would say she is under no obligation to provide webcasts of the lectures so long as she does provide some other form of reference material and can safely ignore the complaints.  An intermediate option would be to record the lectures, but only release the videos after a suitable period - perhaps only at the end of the term.  This will emphasise that these recordings are only for reference and that attendance at the lectures is still expected.  I would especially recommend this approach during the second year of running the course - that way the students will have access to the previous year's recordings in case of emergencies, but will be aware that they are not getting the latest material and so will feel more inclined to turn up to the live show.

There are not just 2 problems.  There are 2 problems reported (in social media).
She is upset and a bit of a rant.  What she posts is the inconsistent feedback.
If you had access the actual feedback I suspect there is a wide range of praises, complaints, and suggestions.
I don't think you should try and help her based on this limited second hand information.  For sure don't try and help via social media.

From my experience as a student, I recommend what my favourite lecturer (who has also won the department award of favourite lecturer several years running).
Use slides to backup your lecturers but do live examples. Sometimes reading from them is appropiate but it shouldn't always be like that. Then provide a set of comprehensive notes covering all the topics on that module. This way students can focus on listening instead of trying to quickly write down everything that is said. This also means that student won't fall behind if they miss a lecture.
Provide webcasts if you like, there is nothing wrong with more options. However I would say that a good set of lecture notes should be a must have. If the lecturers themselves are not monotone then students will show up (I know most of us did). The lectures should be dynamic, live examples, oppertunity to ask questions, not scribbling down notes before the slides change.

About five years ago, I saw a video where a professor at Stanford University said that after developing his first  MOOC he realised that his previous 28 years of "teaching by lecture" had been ineffective. (I think he said "a waste of time" or something similar.)
The professor was talking about what he had learned as a result of using the "Flipped Classroom" - teaching method where students study "the material" on their own before they meet in a classroom. The classroom session is used to discuss "the material" - no lecturing.
Sorry but I could not locate the original video, but here is a 57 Second extract from a 1 hour video produced by the same group at Stanford.
My Stanford MOOC experience in 2012 and 2013 (organisational analysis & databases) caused me to research the question "What is learning". After several years of research, I have concluded that "learning" is just a name for the process of "creating new synaptic links in your brain".
Furthermore, the learning process may require that you have to actively suppress "old" synaptic links that could be said to represent "Fake knowledge".
So, my working hypotheses are:
(1) The popular belief that:
"Long lectures (whether supported by PowerPoint or not) are effective in helping people to learn."
is false - in today's terminology this belief is fake knowledge
(2) Learning requires action - passive listening is not effective.
If my hypotheses are true, then a lot of today's "PowerPoint lecturers" are going to have to go back and study modern pedagogical practices so that they flip their thinking before they flip their classrooms.
So my answer to the question about the "upset professor" is "Send her back to (modern) pedagogy school!"
As a milder social response, you could try to engage her in an open discussion about pedagogy.

Only she can solve her own problems, not you.  If she's aware of that feedback then she needs to use it to make improvements to her courses.
First of all, she needs to always provide slides with complete information and train herself to stop reading from them.
Second of all, she needs to find a way to provide webcasts for student review without giving them the benefit of using it as a replacement for showing up to class.
Option 1:  Grade on attendance
Option 2:  Don't post the webcasts until a week after the date they occur or the very last minute before an exam
Option 3:  Give a short 5 or 10 question quiz at the beginning of every session based on the material covered in the last session.
Option 4:  Some combination of all of the above.

Option 1 is a terrible suggestion, and has the same issue as the answer in general. These are people considered capable of driving, drinking, shooting, having sex, and studying. Let them handle their needs for actual presence on their own. Option 2 starts okay but then goes to terrible advice, posting materials for the purpose of learning when there is no time to actually learn from them is a waste of the educator's and students' time and effort, leads to worse results than making them available much earlier, and defeats the purpose of having such material.

Assuming webcasts are something desirable, a technical solution to the latter problem may be:

Provide webcasts protected by a temporary (or better yet limited use) password
Explicitly announce that to get access to webcast, a specific student registered for class must contact the instructor and provide valid reason to need the webcast (e.g. they were sick that day in class).
Explicitly note that webcasts are limited to such use; and if someone abuses this by disseminating the password to other users (as detected via different IPs using same login/password), the webcasts would not be provided again to anyone, with offending student being publicly outed as the reason.
Offer webcasts with open access with meaningful delay (4 weeks after the lecture?), this way people can refer back to them if they need to revise material for tests; but can't use that as a crutch to help avoid attending lectures.

(a weaker form of #3 would be to protect webcasts with students' university login/password if that's an option the university systems offer - but that is likely to be abused - people even share login/password in workplaces, never mind college).

"I'm studying the course." Oh, look -- everyone has a valid reason! I find it really hard to consider witholding educational materials from students while teaching in a university. It seems to be the exact opposite of the point.

@DavidRicherby - how is failing to provide a webcast "withholding educational materials"? Your job is to teach in class, not to offer video lectures (unless you explicitly were hired for, and the course was advertised as, online course). Mind you, I think the whole problem is not worth agonizing over (just offer the videos and don't worry if people won't attend in person) but the OP seems to care.

Your proposal is to produce the videos but then deny students access to them. The videos exist so they are "materials". They exist for the purpose of education, so they are "educational materials." You are denying students access to them, so you are "withholding educational materials".

@DavidRicherby - the videos are produced as a courtesy to students who aren't able to attend class for a good reason (at least that's how I understand the question). They are a perk, not a standard.

It doesn't matter how you phrase it. If they're a perk, you're giving the perk to some students but not others, which is unacceptable. If they're a standard, you're denying a standard from some of the students, which is unacceptable. If the videos exist, they need to be available to everyone.

If you'd put all the effort into making a worthwhile online resource, there's no justification for preventing its use by any student in the class,and good reason to make it more widely available wherever possible. The idea that attendance at lectures should be mandatory, let alone enforced and assessed, is about control, not about education.

@Nij - you don't seem to understand the purpose of SE. The question assumes that last part. You aren't supposed to criticize and downvote the answer for answering the question, just because you disagree with the question's premise, no matter whether that premise is right or wrong.

What does the question assume, exactly? That attending lectures should be mandatory? I don't see that assumption anywhere. Actually, I don't see the question assuming anything. It says that students give contradictory criticisms of somebody's lectures, gives a couple of examples and asks what to do. (cc @Nij)

I'm well acquainted with the purpose of Stack Exchange. Firstly, the question doesn't mention attendance at all, second it doesn't imply or suggest or require that this be mandatory, and third even if t did both, "you don't" has always been a legitimate answer to "how?", Academia in particular recognising the XY problem exists. @DVK

@nij - quoting from the question: "If she provides webcasts of her lectures, students don't turn up to lectures".

@Nij - there's a difference between accepting XY problem answers, and insisting that X answer to what you think is an XY problem is somehow bad (because your have no idea whatsoever about details of OP's context and thus whether X is really not what they need)

Yes, that is part of the question. This answer recommends a bad solution to that problem, which is caring about something that shouldn't be cared about, so I have downvoted and commented as such. What exactly do you think you're showing, here? @DVK

@Nij - that deciding what OP should and shouldn't care about on the basis of very limited information in the question (which makes your decision inherently impossible to be an informed one, and thus correct one) isn't part of SE approach. The question wasn't "should the person care?". It was "they care, and how can that caring be addressed".

There is a difference between caring about something and making it mandatory. Can you figure out what your point is and then make arguments for it, rather than the confusing switch you've done here so far? Here's mine: it doesn't matter what the question is looking for, this answer gives bad advice, and is therefore exactly what should be downvoted, whether or not it answers the question being irrelevant.


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What do PhD researchers generally do when someone else solves their problem?
Suppose, someone is at the 3rd year of his PhD program. I.e. he has passed more than half of his time in his degree program.
Then suddenly, he comes to know that someone else already solved this problem and published a research paper in a journal last week.
What do researchers generally do in such cases?

Scream? Or do you want ask how one recovers?

@Buffy, how one recovers.

Hmmm. Your edit suggests I may have answered the wrong question. To avoid it from the start, work in a field so obscure that no-one cares about it but you.

My own work didn't suffer from competition. It would have been a miracle if anyone beat me to the result. When I finished only half a dozen people worldwide worked in a field close enough to easily  read the dissertation - or even care. It was very cool (blush), but very esoteric.

Relevant search: https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=Scoop* See also: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/141852/results-published-by-others-first-in-parallel-is-my-work-still-publishable

If you work in a "hot" area in some field this sort of thing is fairly likely to occur. A lot of other people are also looking to make advances simultaneously. This is what makes it "hot".
What happens for the degree depends on the local situation. In some fields and with some advisors it is a true setback and the student needs to either start over or continue on looking for "fresher" results. In other situations, the judgement might be that there is no problem and you just finish. But that assumes that your research is essentially done (not in the middle) and all you need to do is write it up. In those situations the degree might still be awarded.
I know of a case in which two people did the same work at the same time, independently of one another and submitted it to the same CS conference. It took faculties a year to determine that it really was independent work and both received degrees. Both students went on to become fairly prominent - and friends, I think. This was an example of a question being asked that was fairly "hot" and many people wanted to see it answered. So the independent searches was easily understandable.
But for a student in the middle of research, with few results so far, it is a setback. The first thing to do is to talk to your advisor about the options. It may be that a slight redirection will serve. It might be that an extension of the published paper will serve. The student presumably knows a lot about the (sub) field and so should be in a decent position to recover, though it may add time to the quest. But starting over on a new problem should be only the last resort considered.
But it doesn't mean failure in any sense. The student was on the right track, at least. If you are really doing research, there is no schedule for when the results appear. It is a reach into the unknown.
With the consent of the advisor it might even be worth forming a collaboration with the other authors. That might work better in some fields than in others.

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Would I be facing any kind of trouble in the future for leaving my degrees incomplete?
I have dropped out of 2 MSc in CSE programs because of my health issues and lack of proper math background.
You can check the full story from my previous question.

What should I do now to go ahead and restart my aspirations to become an appropriate candidate for a Ph.D. program?

Now, I am facing a new decision dilemma.
One of the professors from the Faculty of Life Science of a university in eastern Europe just hired me to work with him on a project. The project I would be working on is related to data science and algorithm development. He is also interested in taking me as a Ph.D. student under him. I can start a Ph.D. under him in 2022 if I agree.
Suppose, I enroll and complete my Ph.D. under him. Would I be facing any kind of trouble in the future for leaving my 2 previous MScs incomplete? I have been having a lifelong ambition in working in academia in the USA. Would any problem arise in the future regarding these 2 incomplete MScs?
Another question is, how would it look like if I want to work as a teacher in the Faculty of Engineering in the USA, but have a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Life Science?

The usual consequence of unfinished degrees is inability to repay debt.

If you face a problem at all, it is likely to be difficulty in gaining entry to a PhD program.  If your professor has already decided to accept you as a student despite knowledge of your previous non-completion of studies then you appear to be "over the hump".  Once you have entered the program the only problems will depend on your performance in that program rather than what came previously.  If you were to enter and complete your PhD program then your non-completion of previous programs will be irrelevant.

A friend of mine did a PhD in biology with a focus on genetics and bioinformatics. A number of years later after various postdocs she ended up as a computer science professor.
A typical story? Frankly, I suspect not. But it does happen.
On the other hand, if your dream is to be an engineering professor, the surest and most direct route to doing that (which still is by no means certain to succeed, and leaves plenty of obstacles to overcome and potential points of failure along the way) is to pursue a PhD in engineering. My impression is you are trying to fit a round peg into a square hole with this life sciences PhD scheme. A PhD is hard enough for people who are doing it in the discipline they are actually passionate about. Doing it in a discipline you don’t care much about just because somebody is offering you a position will only compound the difficulty, and will potentially put you in a situation where your skills are mismatched with your responsibilities and likely career opportunities.
As for the degrees you didn’t complete: I don’t know what kind of trouble you are imagining this might cause so I can’t really address that question. But generally speaking, if you satisfy the formal requirements to be a PhD student, you can be a PhD student. So if you are concerned, check with the university you’ll be attending that those dropped degrees don’t disqualify you.

My potential supervisor proposed to get admission to the Interdisciplinary doctoral school. I am planning to do something by mixing CS and protein analysis algorithm simulator software.

@user366312 sounds interesting. Good luck!

What do you think about the plan?

@user366312 I don’t know enough to have an opinion. All I can say is if your goal is to teach engineering, the most likely way of achieving it is to pursue a PhD in an engineering related field. If the interdisciplinary PhD will be considered an engineering PhD and the papers you publish are focused on applications of engineering (even if it’s to biology), that’s probably good enough. But there are many other factors to consider that depend on your personal preferences and abilities, and other things. So as I said, I can’t really say much about your specific plan.

Leaving the masters unfinished isn't a huge problem. But moving from a Life Sciences Doctorate to Engineering is a big step and would need a lot of justification. You don't say which university in Europe so it is hard to guess at their reputation.
I won't predict that it is impossible, but I think you will have a hard time convincing people unless you have produces some substantial papers that are pretty technical.
Is getting an engineering doctorate in Europe an option for you instead of one in life sciences? Or some sort of joint degree.
Tough road. Uphill all the way, I think.

Not a place known to me. Some Polish institutions are quite high quality, I know. Maybe someone else can help.

I would be working on to data science and algorithm development.

You really can’t switch fields easily. It will be hard enough to move across the world staying in the same field

@Dawn, but, what about my data science and algorithm skills?

Very few departments hire those with PhDs in areas not explicitly matching. Some of this is for accreditation reasons, some for reputations reasons. The departments that hire more loosely are considered interdisciplinary. So you would need to find a US department that is interdisciplinary between life sciences and engineering. Maybe biomedical engineering or chemical engineering could work but you would really need to be publishing at a high level to make a such a move. It is not about skills but about publications.

@Dawn, actually accreditation rules aren't as stark as that, even in STEM fields. Many calls for applications say something like "Field X or a closely related field". But you need a special skill set if your application isn't mainstream.

Okay, but do you agree that the publications need to be in journals valued by the desired end department, not just using skills valued by the desired end department? Like I could never get hired by an Econ department without an Econ degree even if I was using common Econ skills, unless my papers were in top Econ journals (and even then it would be an uphill climb).

@Dawn, again, not quite as stark as that. You need to have skills that complement and are valuable to the hiring department. And even Econ is a pretty wide field, some favoring quants and some not.

Kind of a lot going on here.  I read OP's other thread, and pulled this tidbit I'd like to address first:

due to my undiagnosed clinical depression and, apparently, insufficient math background, I dropped out of two Masters in CS programs from two different EU universities

I do not question your health issues (welcome to the academia club!), but it is striking that within the same breath you suggest its either depression or a lack of a mathematics background...in a CSE program.  Isn't it possible that your (supposed) lack of maths backround did the heavy lifting here?
That said, to address your specific question of would you face any future difficulty after leaving two MSc programs?  Not if you can explain the situational, academic, and life factors that led to this. But lets be clear, you won't be applying for faculty at Stanford.  You're looking at 2nd/3rd tier universities, which I attended, loved, and led to lots of success - nothing wrong with that.
As for the agreement between Faculty of Engineering vs Faculty of Life Sciences, this might bring up some scrutiny, but I've found that this is less of an issue if you can demonstrate you are a good fit for the position.

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Do teachers generally refer to hard-to-comprehend books?
I have studied at 4 universities, and in 3 different programs.
I always observed that when asked for a recommendation for a  book to understand a topic easily and clearly, university-professors always referred to books that are not student-friendly, i.e. written for more advanced level than that of the student. Then, after several years, I discovered that there were easier-to-comprehend books available which could have helped me acquire better grades.
Is this intentional?
If Yes, why?
If No, is there anything wrong with the higher education culture of the country I am studying in?

Wait, if a university student isn't an advanced level reader, who do you think is?

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX OP obviously means advanced in the topic, not advanced in reading.

@DKNguyen: that is what I mean as well: the most advanced textbooks on a particular topic.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX There are "advanced" textbooks and then there are ADVANCED textbooks. That is to say, there are books written with different audiences and intentions in mind.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX: There are many advanced books, which contain all the material but are not learner friendly (assumption that the reader remembers every small definition somewhere without being pointed to the site where it was, dry style without motivations,..). They may good for somebody advanced in that topic (a prof who worked there for 10 years) because they cover much but not for a student who had only one course on the topic.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX Plenty of academic books are intended as compiled references for professional researchers.  They are not at all didactic and make no effort to teach the material - they expect that you are an expert and either already have an advanced command of the topics or at least otherwise have the research chops to fill in the blanks yourself.  For postdocs and professors this can be a reasonable assumption of the audience.  For undergraduate students, less so.

Some of the answers here make good points, but part of it may also be how you are asking.  When I first read your phrase "a book to better understand the topic" my first thought was something that explains things at a deeper level, and thus a more advanced book.  E.g., if you find the course text hard to understand, and want something "easier" you need to make this clear.

@user111388: I fully agree that there are (too) many bad textbooks (at all levels), and barely readable academic monographs as well. However, I slightly misread the question referring to textbooks as opposed to books in general. I'd hold, though, that the most advanced textbooks I've met (which sometimes are at the border of reference works) are something a professor may put on the reference list for an undergraduate course. And if only, to have it handy in case someone needs to dig in later on (similar to what Kimball points out).

Were these topics outside the scope of the course? Or did the course not have a dedicated textbook for the covered content?

@DanielR.Collins, the topics were always inside the course. The lecture slides were concise, vague, and full of formal math notations, the teacher had low proficiency in English. There were some textbooks referred to in the syllabus, but they were extensive and impossible to comprehend.

@user366312: That describes every course at your 4 universities? Was English the language of instruction at all of them?

@DanielR.Collins, That describes every course at your 4 universities? --- No. I didn't ask for book-recommendations for the courses which I was able to manage myself. For instance, I asked for a book for Pattern Recognition, not RDBMS. Was English the language of instruction at all of them? --- yes.

@user366312: But your question asserts a widespread phenomenon, "I have studied at 4 universities, and in 3 different programs. I always observed..." To be clear, how many courses did you have this "more advanced level" text interaction in?

I remember all my profs always naming several textbooks, with a short personal comment on each, without us having to ask for it, in the first lecture of each semester. As to anything being wrong with the higher education culture of your country, well, where do you study?

Did the professor happen to write the textbooks in question? I have found that profs tend to often recommend their own books :-)

"Then, after several years, I discovered that there were easier-to-comprehend books available" could this actually be a bias here? At this point, the you that has several years under your belt learning the material, you're probably much more knowledgeable than the you that read the original book, and therefore the you now would've perceived the new book as much easier than the you back then, even when the objective difference in readability isn't actually that signficant.

@ErikF It would be very peculiar that a professor writes a book and then recommends another one, wouldn't it?

One possible reason is that I feel the style of textbooks have changed in the last years, so that newer books are sometimes easier to understand (use more modern-day language and symbols, is friendlier to the reader etc.) (This does not necessarily imply that they don't cover as much details as the older ones or are more superficial)
But the professor, being older, does maybe not know about them or is used to the older style. And often, some old books are considered classics that all students should know regardless of whether something better came out in the recent years.
Additionally, another reason might be that your professors don't have any education in teaching and don't know much about it. Most of my professors thought the most effective way of teaching is to copy lecture notes onto the blackboard and read it out loud with a monotone voice, without any explanations or motivation because they assumed that having it written down means students know it. Those may also be the types of professors who recommend you a hard-to-read, but factually correct book.

This is the most logical answer to me.

Also consider that individual learning styles differ, so your professors may be recommending books that THEY think would be easy.   For me, a lot of that "modern-day language and symbols" gets in the way of understanding.

Learning a subject is partly understanding the material, and also substantially understanding the vocabulary. But one way to make a text seem beginner friendly is to avoid nuanced industry terms. Indeed, you only need them to have an efficient conversation with knowledgeable folks. But what are professors if not knowledgeable folks? Perhaps they are trying to give the tools to understand the material and to understand how to ask questions when you want to expand on what you've learned.

@kojiro Reading a book for experts does not make one an expert. An amateur jumping in is more likely to end up knowing less about the subject than they started with. That's the whole point of college in the first place.

@MatthewWells I did not mean to suggest that every book that teaches a subject's vocabulary is a book for experts. I mean that for the purpose of really studying and understanding a subject completely, you need a book that gradually introduces standard terminology, but such books can seem complex next to books that use lay terminology. I am saying that professors may be conscious of this when they make book recommendations.

It may also simply be that the professor recommends a book that they, personally, learned from. Their background at the time might have been different from the student's background now. They might not realise that "easier" books are now available, or they might simply prefer recommending something they can personally vouch for.

@CGCampbell: You are presenting another possible reason: Many people think that "newer and more understandable language" implies "dumbing down"! This is sometimes true, but often the older and newer version have the same level of rigouriousness, yet the old book teaches as if the material were God's words and no questions should be asked while the newer book gives more explanation like why the material is important. But some people think "this book is better written, so it must be dumbing down". Could be that also OP's professors think so.

I wonder if this is a transient phenomenon or not. Today's "modern-day language and symbols" will eventually become old-fashion and hard for next generations of students. What could save them is to have many more books published than in the old days so that it becomes easier to find a good book that is recent enough.

It may also be a matter of dignity and reputation.  There are lots of well-written books under the "_____ for Dummies" brand, but if your professor assigned one as a textbook people might think twice about his credentials.  So he'll assign the $300 database textbook from an educational publisher instead of the $20 SQL for Dummies even if the latter covers all the materials his students need.

Faculty (and people in general) do not have time to read multiple books that describe the same thing.  So they will suggest the book they have read, not the best book.
Further, it is unlikely for two people to agree on which book is best.

While the "best book" is often debatable, some books are clearly, let's say, not the best. For a real-world example: every student and faculty I asked shares my opinion that the Landau&Lifschitz about statistical physics is worse in every respect compared to the Diu/Gunthmann/Lederer/Roulet book.

@UJM I doubt a student can tell the difference though between not best and worst.

Faculty... do not have time to read multiple books that describe the same thing — Yeah, actually, we do.

''Faculty (and people in general) do not have time to read multiple books that describe the same thing''  That's so untrue I can't even comprehend that you said that.

Note that you and your teachers might have divergent goals. Their ideal goal is having you understand the topic, as this is what matters in the long run. Grades and exams are only a tool to this end. After all, if they want everyone to get good grades, they could just make the exam easier.
But especially for beginner classes there are often a bunch of books that drill the standard exam problems, without properly explaining much of the actual topic. They might seem helpful to you, but for the goal of teaching a topic they are actually counterproductive.
Furthermore there is also the less obvious to spot category of books that offer simple, intuitive explanations for most of the topics, which seem easier and helpful to you, but whose explanations just turn out to be too superficial or possibly even completely wrong. Most professors have experienced having to waste time helping their students unlearn such bad ideas, so they will be wary of any books that seem to easy.

As a former student I felt this was the case with some of my peers. They wanted a book that would show some examples and tell how to solve problems and pass the exam. The books suggested by profs are usually those that explain what is going on and leave the exercises as exercises.

If there's a big gap between passing exams and understanding the topic, maybe the solution is making better exams, instead of recommending books that teach understanding but don't help with exams.

@Mark In an ideal world, exams would indeed focus on understanding instead of blind calculation. In reality, at least in any attempt to do so I was involved in, a huge majority of students then will vocally complain about the exam being unfair and way too hard and so on, because they are unused to this style of exams. I would still pose exams that way, but I can understand why the result is not worth the additional effort for many.

+1 I was hoping someone would say this. I think it's also the case that faculty are already used to thinking about the concepts behind a course at an abstract conceptual level, so they are predisposed to understand and like books that operate that way. Students who are new to the material may find such books more difficult, in part because they want a book that will directly tell them what they need to know to pass exams, but also because these abstractions can be hard to understand for some if you also haven't wrapped your head around the concrete examples too.

"The goal of teaching a topic" depends on the student's goals too. A more abstract conceptual understanding of a topic may be vital if a student will go on to study it further and confusing if a student is more interested in practical applications (think proof-based Calculus for a future math major vs engineering Calculus). If the professor thinks you want to embark on an in-depth study of the theory behind, say, Statistics, but you actually want to know how to apply basic statistical tools and don't care to learn too much about how or why they work, you will find yourself with the wrong book.

Where I am (Germany), lectures do not "follow" a certain textbook, they cover topics listed in the curriculum. University students are expected to choose a textbook (or several) on their own which suits their style and covers the listed topics.
There is also nothing wrong with starting or also using a "lower-level" textbook (e.g. one from school, or one intended for students who take this subject only as minor side field).
Textbook recommendations will typically list a few popular ones (of which the local library holds a substantial number of copies), maybe together with "For the exam, the level of detail as e.g. in $textbook1 or $textbook2 is expected."
Literature or suggested reading lists often include large amounts of literature for those interested to dig deeper into particular topics than the lecture does. This is intentional.
I may add: like many of my colleagues, I bought books that are somewhere in between textbook and advanced reference book since I can use them longer throughout my professional life. Typically also after I had passed the respective exam, when I could confidently judge which one suits me. I usually learned with various textbooks from the library. Sometimes the literature recommendations were also along the lines "You won't need that level of detail for this course, but if you consider buying a book, consider $advanced_book since that is one you're likely find useful for a long time."

To give some examples (German, sorry): e.g. for inorganic chemistry a recommendation we got would be that the level of the Riedel (back then, ≈ 1000 pages) would be good for our 1st and 2nd year exams, but if we'd want to go for a book that "lasts us longer", the Hollemann-Wiberg (back then "only" 2000 pages small print on "bible paper") was recommended. I'd characterize the latter as a mix of textbook and reference book, possibly what @DKNguyen calls ADVANCED textbook. I certainly did a whole lot of learning where lecture notes were for the concepts plus reference-type books for more "data", and I hardly touched typical textbooks. But there were other subjects (e.g. physical chemistry) where I worked with several textbooks and I also worked through a whole lot of excercises from textbooks for engineers (though I'm "plain" chemist, not chemical engineer).

I am also from Germany and your experience does, sadly, not transfer to several math lectures I took as a CS student at one of the TU9 universities. We did have several lectures which were, in fact, following a book, or portions of a general purpose book on the subjects that was written with different courses of study in mind.

Note that if one asks for a "reference" book, that is exactly what one should expect to get: a reference, which is a book intended for those who already understand the material and simply need a reminder. This is different than a teaching book to learn from that holds your hand.
I'm also sure that some of it also has to do with the professor already knowing the material and forgetting what it is like to learn something for the first time. When you already know what something is trying to say, it can be very easy to be unable to comprehend what it might look like to someone who doesn't know what it is trying to say. If breadth and depth of material are your selection criteria when this happens, you end selecting a comprehensive book not written to hold someone's hand.

"it also has to do with the professor already knowing the material and forgetting what it is like to learn something for the first time" -- exactly. Once you understand the material, you understand even the hard-to-understand books.

Also be very careful about WHAT you ask for, if you ask a prof. to recommend a  book on say the Foundations of electronics, do not be surprised when it STARTS with Maxwell and the maths get worse from there.
The Problem is that "Foundations" has a very specific meaning in academia and it is NOT the same as "Introductory", I made exactly this mistake, surface integrals and partial derivatives are NOT usually first month of first year undergrad friendly.

A good teacher would understand this possible confusion and ask clarifiying question to find out what the student really wants. Of course, professors are not neccessarily good teachers..

lol. You asked for a book to help you understand surface integrals and partial derivatives, and thusly discovered just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

@DKNguyen Yea, but kind of unintentionally, I thought  I was asking for an introductory book on Electronics not an advanced book on the underlying physics and maths. I mean that stuff is cool, but it was NOT what I was looking for at that point.

@DanMills You asked a book to provide you with a foundation, not the foundation haha.

Well I mean okay, if you took this book by yourself. A prof who recommended you this book without asking first if that is what you really want is wrong at a teaching job.

I've had pretty much the opposite experience, the recommended textbooks were often more beginner-friendly than the alternatives. For biochemistry the recommended book was the Stryer, not the Voet. For physical chemistry it was the Atkins, not the Wedler. And for organic chemistry it was the Warren, probably one of the best textbooks for learning the topic for beginners I've seen. And in most cases while there was a recommended book, the lecturers also provided some alternatives with a short description of how those are different and why you might want to read them.
My experience was in Germany, where the textbooks are generally recommended, but not required. You're free to choose a different one if you like. But my experience was that the professors did in almost all cases recommend the book they genuinely thought was the most appropriate and useful for the students at that level.
There are some cases where I'd argue that some textbooks are simply better than others. But there are also many where they simply take different approaches, and none of them is clearly better, they're just different.
I would take the recommendations seriously, but it's also a good idea to take an independent look at what textbooks are available. There are some topics where the differences are large between the books, and where it is worth it to look at other options.

To emphasize that everyone needs to find the textbook that suits them: I liked the Wedler much better than the Atkins (which I never used after a short try; I also used older Näser and Hummel-Moore)

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX I bought the Wedler, and I wasn't entirely happy with it. Which does prove your point, there often is no universally better book, there are books with different approaches.

There is nothing wrong with the culture of the universities you mentioned. At least, not that is evident from your posts.  This problem comes up with any expert, not just academic faculty.
Once you know a lot about something, it's hard to imagine not knowing it. Your professors know a lot about a subject. If you ask them to recommend a book, they do so from the perspective of having a very detailed technical knowledge of their subject. Those books are likely very good - but not for you.
"Teachers" don't recommend hard to comprehend books. Think back to your primary and secondary education. Those books were usually written explicitly for learners at a desired level of ability. But most professors aren't teachers in the sense that they were specifically trained to teach. Rather, they are experts in a particular subject matter who also have to teach.
So what can you do? Instead of asking faculty, ask your peers what books were helpful to them. Your peers won't be experts, which is a double-edged sword. On one hand, they can't tell how thorough, precise, or "correct" a book's material is. On the other hand, they will be able to tell you what they perceive helped their own understanding.

Depending on the standard of the university/college and the reputation of the professor, the other aspects to consider are their own standing/ego/reputation and their tendency to stick to tradition and not rock-the-boat, especially since they are representatives of the university/college. Recommending a "highly-respected" author/book would be seen as more appropriate, since it would point to the high level of education or professional standing of the professor or institute.
My professor used to recommend "reputed" books, which we couldn't understand anything from. When we told him, he'd say "If you respect the book, the book will respect you and you will be able to learn". That's some of the biggest nonsense I've heard. My advice is that if you find it hard to understand concepts from a book, keep it aside and find books or tutorials on the internet that explain the concept well. After years of completing college, when I wanted to refresh my concepts on differential equations and integration, I was shocked at the "famous", "reputed" engineering maths books I had with me. I couldn't understand a damn thing, because the author didn't know how to explain concepts! It was only then I realized that it was not because I was stupid, that I did badly in those subjects. The explanation in the books were just pathetic!
So yes, there is something seriously wrong with the education culture all across the world (and this is something that people have known for decades and done very less about). There's something wrong with the way academia is run. I find it very strange that dedicated, intelligent academicians who expand human knowledge and push the boundaries of knowledge to give us all the impressive technologies we use, have to go through the rigors of research work with constant danger of having their careers and reputation dragged through the mud (while being paid so less) for the slightest errors, but people who predict the future based on stars or people who talk to the souls of loved ones or those who perform "miracle-cures" in front of audiences or use pseudo-science to trick people, happily make tons of money. I wonder what would happen if researchers stopped being so meek and pushed back to demand scrapping the exploitative "publish or perish" system. Researchers also need to be offered a better status and privileges in society. As of now it's the corrupt bullies who are taking a large share of the cake and enjoying life while the hard-working researchers are exploited. Imagine what would happen if researchers went on strike and refused to do any research unless the exploitation stopped.
Hopefully, online education will change this. Learning and understanding concepts is more important. Not choosing a hard-to-understand book, just because somebody says it's written by a "reputed" author or of "high-standard".

Note: English Google translation, original text in Portuguese below.
In my opinion, I do not see an intention in the teacher to harm and / or delay the student's teaching. The fact is, that books with their various authors and publishers create an educational "weight" through the experience on which it is based. There are books that will be easier to be interpreted and understood, but this may be the book that will not pass the experience that the teacher wants for the class, simply because of the content or even the language used. For students from Universities, colleges, undergraduate students in general, a cultural content greater than that of previous educational levels is expected and for this, the collection of books and teaching must be differentiated. A young man who is in high school should not fulfill or perform a task for a student of higher education, except for the simplest questions. However, it is worth emphasizing the desire of some teachers to want to complicate more than it already is, Higher Education. The big question that should come to mind is: "has the teacher been able to transfer knowledge?" "Was there any use of the content presented?" It soon follows that, being a book with content that is difficult or easy to understand, we can make it easier or more easy, it just depends on the interested.

Ao meu entender, não vejo uma intenção no docente de prejudicar e/ou
atrasar o ensino do discente. Fato é, que, os livros com seus diversos
autores e editoras criam um "peso" educacional mediante a experiência
na qual ele se baseia. Existem livros que serão sim mais fáceis de ser
interpretados e entendidos porém, este pode ser o livro que não irá
passar a experiência da qual o professor deseja para a classe,
simplesmente por causa do conteúdo ou até mesmo da linguagem
empregada. Para alunos de Universidades, faculdades, graduação em
geral, espera - se um conteúdo cultural maior que os dos níveis
educacionais anteriores e para isso, o acervo de livros e de
ensinamento deve ser diferenciado. Um jovem que cursa o Ensino Médio,
não deveria cumprir ou desempenhar uma tarefa para um aluno de Ensino
Superior, salvo as questões mais simples. Contudo, vale ressaltar a
vontade de alguns professores quererem a todo custo complicar mais do
que já é, o Ensino Superior. A grande questão que deveria surgir em
nossa cabeça é: " o professor conseguiu transferir conhecimento?"
"Houve aproveitamento do conteúdo apresentado?" Logo conclui - se que,
sendo um livro com conteúdo de difícil ou fácil compreensão, podemos
torna- lo fácil ou mais facílimo, só depende do interessado.

Hi and welcome to Academia SE. This site is in English: for this time, I took the liberty to add a Google translation of your text, but for the next time please stick to the site's language.

Sorry, but the Stack Exchange policy is that posts should be written in English (see this FAQ), and the burden of the translation is on the post's author. Posts which do not conform to the site's policies are deleted. Please, also have a look at the [Tour] and at the [Help] to see how this site works.

Hard to comprehend is is a relative term. New students want lots of exposition, examples and informal explanation, while more experienced people probably prefer something which works good as a reference.
Compare a proper mathematics book, and a formula sheet. The formula sheet is useless for learning, but perfect as a quick reference. This example of course is rather extreme, but the general gist is there.
Professional people (teachers) tent to consult reference books, rather than books written primarily for teaching a subject, since reference books are more efficient for that. So, teachers will naturally be more familiar with reference books which are not student-friendly (but are professional-friendly).

This may be how it is, but what those teachers do does not sound like teaching.

+1 I would have phrased it slightly differently, but I think we are getting at the same point: professors and lecturers are usually very intelligent, very experienced folk who have long since formed a solid understanding of what they are teaching or recommending for. E.g. in mathematics and physics (my background), they thus tend to value conciseness, rigour, elegance, and deep "connections". These things are all great, but for someone just learning the subject for the first time, too much of any of them easily makes the subject overwhelming and difficult. ...

... on the other hand, students (unless perhaps they are geniuses), tend to want a gentler introduction that builds up a conceptual framework, with lots of nice exercises, and not necessarily something too succinct. Alas, most lecturers in my experience are very poor pedagogues, and do not appreciate this fact, even though they may have gone through the same experience during their student career.

At my (science) institution, the lectures / problem sheets / etc are entirely sufficient to pass the course.  No recourse to books should be required. (At least that's the theory)
The reading list is primarily intended for expanding the student's mind, it is not intended to be a requirement that all students should read the book (and the library wouldn't cope with the demand for that).  The book is there for those who want to read beyond the material covered in the course, and perhaps to see a different perspective on the material than the lecturer.  It is therefore common to put books on the reading list that are more advanced than the lecture material - because the aim is to expand beyond the material in lectures, not merely repeat it a different way.
That is not to say there might not be a basic level book on there, but in reality only a few students will read it.
(Obviously it is different in subjects where books are the subject under discussion - in a class on the history of evolutionary theory it is difficult to get by without having read at least some of On the Origin of Species.  But that's a primary source, not a textbook.)

In at least some areas, books that are easy to understand are not hard to find -- but they're usually not the same as the books that are right. If a student wants a book recommendation, I'll be much more inclined to offer a book that's correct almost everywhere over one that's simpler but will give them enticingly incorrect notions that are harder to correct later.
Teachers are people, too, and may often themselves prefer an easier source to understand, other things being equal. Certainly a resource should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Which is to say, what unskilled students would prefer to be given and what an expert in the subject believes would be better for them to have (albeit requiring more effort) are not always going to be the same thing.
My own subject area has a lot of "amateur" users in other subject areas - many of whom go on to write textbooks on it aimed at students in their own area of learning. While some of these out-of-area writers are widely read and highly skilled, many are not. Many of the textbooks that are written in such areas try very hard to make the basic knowledge of this out-of-their-area subject less technical/"easier" for the students.
Some of these books are extremely popular with students and teachers in their specific application area, gathering huge numbers of sales across many editions. Unfortunately, some of them are also quite brim-full of nonsense, and the ability to distinguish superficially plausible nonsense from the slightly less intuitive fact is fairly widely lacking; even when better books exist they may fail to generate much traction.
I try to point people toward "better" books, but it's not always successful.
One thing I have often told students is to use more than one book; it's not always the first book you look at that's the best one for you individually to learn from, and an additional source can provide useful perspective a single view loses. For my own learning, with a topic I'm unfamiliar with, I tend to start with looking through a wide selection of sources (if so many are to be had) before narrowing it down to a few to work from.


text:
Why does someone work in a non-STEM field after completing a PhD in STEM?
Several years ago, when I was taking an English language course, one of my teachers said that one of her acquaintances did a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and became a Headmaster in a Bilingual school.
At that time, I didn't think much about that information. However, since, I am preparing for a Ph.D. entrance, this question has become a sticking point in my mind. However, there is no way I can find this particular teacher and ask the question.
Why might someone work in a non-STEM field after completing a Ph.D. in STEM?
Let us define a STEM position as a position in which using STEM knowledge is the primary job responsibility.
For example, A Biomedical Engineer (BME) working as an entrepreneur in a biomedical engineering firm can be considered a STEM job. A Biomedical BME working as a teacher to teach Biomedical engineering is a STEM job. However, the same person working as an office administrator at the same department in the same college is not a STEM job, let alone working as a receptionist, etc. Also, a BME working as a patent lawyer is a STEM job.

Yes, this happens all the time for a myriad of factors and the emotions the individuals feel towards having completed their doctorate fall all over the spectrum from positive to negative. Bottom line: a STEM PhD doesn't guarantee you a job in your field, nor does it guarantee you will desire that future for yourself. Prepare accordingly for this lack of guarantees.

Because they liked it better?

Indeed this is a mysterious phenomenon. Here’s another example.

Here another example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel

I think the top answer makes a good point that answers will depend on your definition of "STEM field." I tried to summarize your position in the question; feel free to revise if I botched anything.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX, Okay. After knowing what a Patent Attorney is, I retracted my old comments.

Update: I have to admit that I do not quite understand where exactly OP draws the line between STEM jobs and non-STEM jobs, and why. Since the comments may vanish, to sum up their position:
STEM:

chemist working in archeology or museum/art restauration
teacher, e.g. physicist teaching physics
patent lawyer

non-STEM according to OP

someone working in goods logistics where they apply the optimization techniques from their STEM profession
business consulting by an engineer about product lifecycles

Some points that have not been mentioned so far:
STEM teachers
Well, even bilingual schools need STEM teachers!? And teachers are the population that headmasters usually come from.

I also know physics PhDs who became teachers. Guess what subjects? Physics and math...

When I was in school, we had a few teachers with PhD. My recollection is that at least from grade ≈10 - 13 one did realize that they had a substantially better knowledge of their fields than the average teacher.  Which does not say that there weren't also good and knowledgeable teachers without PhD. But it does say why a school may consider someone with PhD suitable as teacher.

Where I am, STEM teachers are particularly scarce. It may be easer to hire someone from a STEM field (possibly with academic teaching experience) and train them to become teacher than to tell a non-STEM teacher to learn, say,  physics or chemistry.
There have been state programs here that hire in particular STEM people
and give them pedagocical training to become teachers.

Side thought: the headmaster's office back then did a lot of what I'd nowadays describe as solving optimization tasks with lots of boundary conditions.

BTW, where I am, headmasters usually continue to teach.

STEM work in non-STEM fields
There are large numbers of STEM people working in non-STEM fields (with e.g. the department on their business address not hinting at them being STEM) in their original profession.

Many non-STEM fields need e.g. statisticians, engineers, etc.

A chemist may work in a museum as chemist (e.g. analyzing paints or glues so that objects can be properly restored) or in archeology (working on questions like possible falsification/fraud detection of artifacts, what paints/technologies were used etc.).

Patent lawyers: according to OPs comment non-STEM. Under that definition, every German patent lawyer) is a STEM professional who left for a non-STEM field (and the German Wikipeda page says most of them did a [STEM] PhD before starting the legal training): over here, a full university degree in either a natural science or engineering (plus working experience) is prerequisite for the training to become patent lawyer.
(did later on become an "upgrade" to be considered STEM work)

Problem solving and analytical thinking skills
Doing a PhD gives not only professional experience in one's field, but also in certain ways of problem solving, analytical thinking etc.
These particular skills of a STEM PhD are useful in many other jobs as well. It may be labeled a non-STEM field, but it is really something closely connected to their profession.

Management
Someone starting to work in their STEM profession may drift more and more into management. This even happens inside academia: many of the group leaders/professors basically do management and administrative jobs (professors have to do a minimum amount of teaching, though) and do not have time to do research themselves. Similar carreers happen in industry.
For the question at hand, the answer would then depend on whether we consider someone who's sitting in an office, doing lots of administrative work, grant writing and management (of STEM people) as STEM or not.
IMHO: not that much of a difference to the "STEM fraction" of the BME entrepreneur's work, or the patent lawyer's.

STEM work in non-STEM fields --- the examples are incorrect. These are not non-STEM jobs.

@user366312: whether you consider this STEM job or not is a matter of definition: "Dr. X, dept. of restauration, Arts Museum" does not hint more at a STEM job than "Dr. Y, teacher, BiLingual School" you may say that are non-STEM jobs. At the same time, if X does chemistry and Y teaches maths, you may say they both still work in STEM. So then does someone who actually does e.g. optimizations for goods logistics or business consulting where they apply their engineering background e.g. to product lifecycles. BTW, would you consider a patent lawyer STEM or not?

So then does someone who actually does e.g. optimizations for goods logistics or business consulting where they apply their engineering background e.g. to product lifecycles. --- This is also a non-STEM job.

teacher, e.g. physicist teaching physics --- this is not true. A CS graduate teaching CS should be a STEM job. Coz, he is using his CS knowledge to earn his living.

@user366312 but then what's the point of your question? I mean, at least over here, also headmasters usually teach. A biomedical engineer would likely be considered to have the subject-specific qualification to teach some of the following (depending on the specializations they took) subjects: biology, chemistry, maths, shop class plus there are "rare" subjects which schools offer only if they have a qualified teacher, e.g I once had an electronics course. Except the "skills" section, all examples I give "use their STEM-field knowledge to earn their living".

A biomedical engineer would likely be considered to have the subject-specific qualification to teach some of the following (depending on the specializations they took) subjects: biology, chemistry, maths, shop class --- However, she is not being able to use her highly specialized knowledge. So, that's a bummer.

@user366312: I don't think for any of the school teachers, more than undergrad subject knowledge is required. So that's true for the CS teacher and the physics teacher as well. But then, also within STEM people migrate from one field into another over time. I know a microbiologist, who then went on to (medical) statistics, and is now head of a chemical wet lab. A biologist who, via photochemistry research, now does chemical analysis and statistics. IMHO, the highly specialized subject-specific knowledge of a PhD is only one part of their specialization. The skills are equally important.

In the end, the PhD is only one project (typcially the first one of > 1a "size"). Over a professional life, there may be many, and easily several that require mastering new subjects at similar depth.

There are several potential reasons, some of them coming together at the same time.
Earning a doctorate takes a while, longer in some places than others. People's desires might change over that time period and yet they complete the degree since they have invested a lot in to it and it offers an opportunity.
For some an unexpected opportunity arises near the end of the degree program and it seems to them at that moment to be preferable to continuing in STEM.
For some, an industry position might draw on their knowledge of some STEM field but not be directly connected to it. Management of a product development group in an industry is a possibility.
And, for some, the marketplace for their skills just collapses at the end of their student days. Again, time is a factor and the economics changes. It is a particularly hard time at the moment to obtain an academic position in many fields.
I'm sure thee are other possibilities. Some even return to a family business after earning a degree.
I know of one person who has an undergraduate (not doctorate) degree in CS and who is an excellent crime fiction writer. I await his latest book each year. And I don't actually recall CS being part of any of his books. But, he "scratched an itch" at an earlier point in his life.

The most common reason is that management jobs pay better than STEM jobs.

Why did Ronald Reagan move into politics after being a film-star?  Why did Martha Steward move from modelling into stockbrocking, into homemaking?  Why did Terry Crews leave the NFL to go into acting?
The answer in all these cases, is that people often have diverse interests, and they may be attracted to another field even after receiving training and experience in a different field.  Sometimes there is a symbiosis between the fields, because they require similar skills or characteristics, but sometimes there is quite a disparity.  You will find many instances where a person trains in a field, and maybe even works in a field for a substantial time, before transferring to a different field (some examples here).  Doctoral level education can open up some doors, but it is not a career-prison-sentence --- if you do a PhD in a field, it does not oblige you to practice in that field for the rest of your life.

In part it is because multidisciplinary activities are all the rage, especially as of late. Sometimes people stay in STEM and change the field, sometimes they go to non-STEM to notice some problems that are trivial to them but pretty much nobody else around. So it is a low-hanging fruit, and people would often feel more appreciated and accomplished for picking it instead of banging their head on a wall at the forefront of research.

Hmm... That could be one of the points.

Yes, several of my PhD students (in "pure math..." with high technical prerequisites), who've not stayed in academic math, have said that "everything else is super easy" by comparison. :)


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Why do academics stay as adjuncts for years rather than move around?
A majority of academics (from assistant-full professors) at The Faculty of Computer Science in my university are working as adjuncts.
Why do they stay as adjuncts and not move around too in the EU or other developed countries to find a permanent position? I saw many small universities across the border in Germany offering permanent positions.
Secondly, how do adjunct teachers sustain their lives? I mean, the adjunct salary must be minuscule.

Often, people aren't as mobile due to partners and family

Well in my part of the university doing that would be more lucrative than working as a professor or lecturer (which many universities count as a professor) although individual mileage may vary. And you can concentrate on the teaching when teaching and don't have to deal with university politics (much). This is especially good gig if you don't want to do direct research,

The biggest factor that makes people less interested to move around is:

The presence of a spouse or children. If the spouse has a job, then they can't easily move. Similarly, moving would mean having to find a new school for the children. Moving also means leaving all of one's friends behind, which is a major cost.

Other factors are:

Owning property. If you own property in City A and move to City B, what happens to your house in City A? Do you sell it? Do you buy a new house in City B? Property is illiquid (i.e. it is not easily converted to cash), so moving has a serious cost.
Time. Moving is extremely time-consuming. You need to find a place to live, a place for food, a place for daily amenities, a new dentist, etc.
Visa issues. Only applicable if you are moving to another country, but if they're present, they are another major hassle. It's possible the target country wants you tested for tuberculosis, or certificates of good conduct, etc.
Language issues. English is the language of academia, but if you move to a country where English is not the main language (e.g. Germany as in the OP) then communication with others (especially non-academics) can be hard.

Language also! A

I agree with user111388 that language barrier also plays a role ie. if you live somewhere else for a while you will probably have to learn some of the language for your own benefit.

Retirement! Switching between retirement plans is detrimental, most of the time, as many retirement systems are not linear in the number of years.

Even without owning property I would say that moving has a serious cost. I would have mentioned "Money" by itself as a factor. Not everyone can afford to move.

@Xi'anнівійні Do adjuncts in the EU have retirement plans? (I'm from the US, where they don't, but I do know Europe has better employee protections in general.)

@BenHocking: In most countries, they do, as workers are required to contribute to public pension systems, with varying benefits depending on the number of years they contribute. For instance, Germany has rules against hiring new full professors more than 50 or so for the reason they are provided with full retirement benefits up to that age. See  https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2013/09/16/essay-german-expats-seeking-academic-jobs-their-home-country#sthash.UdcDCYqV.dpbs

@BenHocking in general in EU countries have retirement plans which apply to everyone including even lowly adjuncts, however, they have generally developed pre-EU with a single-country focus  so that working x years in one country and y years in another generally gets worse retirement conditions than x+y years in one country.

To supplement the answer of Allure, some people serve as adjuncts as a part time position because they have very good full-time employment as a researcher in industry. They just love to teach and associate with academics, but find their "day job" more important.
The place I last taught prior to retirement had some of these and they were highly respected and taught upper level courses in their research specialty. This could occur partly because of geography, with a number of universities and a number of top level research organizations located in easy commuting distance from one another.
Not all adjuncts are desperate.

I taught as an adjunct for many years while concluding my industry career because I wanted to teach.  After I retired from industry I taught full time for nearly 20 more years.  Now I've retired from the university and I'm back as an adjunct because I enjoy it.

This is the correct usage of adjunct contracts!

In the United States, most adjuncts rely on teaching to pay the bills.

@AnonymousPhysicist this is an issue that varies by department. All of the adjuncts in my department are retired from industry, have full-time employment elsewhere, or are consultants who teach as an adjunct for the reputational benefits of being associated with the university (and because they enjoy the students)— also we are a professional program and our adjuncts do not have PhD degrees

Any sentence that starts out "In the United States, most..." is likely to be an overgeneralization based on personal observation. There is far too much variation between states, within states, between R1 universities and liberal arts colleges, across fields, etc. to be able to categorically state that something is true for "most" of anything.

@allure lists all but one of the reasons that I had in my mind as well. The last one is this:

Moving around to other places and jobs only makes sense if you have a reasonable belief that it will lead to a better outcome than what you have right now.

I'm not sure that is true for many. There is fierce competition for permanent positions, by the best people in a field. You have to be quite good to get such a position, and not everyone is certain that they are or that they are willing to put in the amount of work necessary to be competitive. If you're not convinced that you can compete for these few permanent positions, then what's the point at uprooting yourself and your family every few years?

The converse is that people might stay an adjunct at a more glamourous institution in the  hope of finally bagging not just any old permanent position, but a permanent position at a high ranking/research focused university, rather than taking a non-adjunct position at a lower ranking/teaching focused university.

I do not know about the EU, but in the USA many adjunct faculty are unable to find permanent jobs at universities.  Universities are unwilling to offer permanent jobs because they have an adequate supply of cheap adjunct faculty.

I do not know how you calculated that majority of academics of that faculty work as adjuncts, and I'm not sure it is true, but let me point to a possible source of confusion: "adiunkt" is a Polish word that means (roughly speaking) assistant professor, and has nothing to do with English adjunct professor.

It could also be simply a measurement misunderstading. If each adjunct gives 1h of lecture a year, and they only take 20% of lectures a year, its would probably mean that there would be more adjuncts than full time professors, but it would not mean what I think OP suggests, which is that most lecturing hours are given by adjuncts.

In the US adjuncts have been a majority for many years.

@AnonymousPhysicist, a majority of what, exactly?

@Buffy Faculty.  As it says in the first sentence of the answer.

@AnonymousPhysicist, don't confuse non TT faculty with adjuncts. And don't confuse "bodies" with full time equivalent. Yes, there are too many adjuncts, but there are others. Some stats even include TAs as part-time but not adjuncts. I don't know about postdocs and such. But many schools have full time positions not TT (Duke, CMU, others) who serve on long term stable contracts. But these aren't adjuncts either.

@Buffy I did not confuse those things.  We have had this conversation too many times already.

@Adam Polak Great point! Also, notice that if you set the page to PL language, click on Adiunkci, and then switch to EN language, "Assistant Professors" is selected.

authors: Xi'an ні війні


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How to check if a conference is "indexed" or "fake"?
I submitted my paper to a conference. Based on a previous accepted submission, the conference response seems suspicious, not to mention that gmail marked their email as "suspicious mail". Instead of getting the reviewer's comments, I got "your paper acceptance rate".
According to IEEE, the previous book series of that conference appears in their digital library. But as far as I know, not all conferences in digital libraries are indexed.
Is it done through ISBN search or how to can I figure out if a conference is being indexed?

According to a related asked question
How can I determine whether a conference is reputable?
The publisher or the sponser is known. The point is I have already participated in a conference (MIUCC) that was neither indexed nor scopus, however, the conference proceeding book was inserted on ieee digital library. So being in ieee digital library does not confirm being an indexed confenrence.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/69272/is-it-possible-to-get-doi-from-isbn-of-a-book

ISBN is no marker of quality, if that's what you assume.

So how to check conference indexed or scopus case?