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Is it reasonable to have concerns about the recognition of Russian degrees given the war in Ukraine?
I would like to pursue my master's studies in mathematics in Russia. Yet, I was told that there's a possibility of foreign universities not recognizing Russian degrees due to the current political situation and sanctions. Eventually, I would like to begin a PhD in Europe.
Is this a valid concern? Is it true that Russia is isolated academically due to their involvement in the war?
Clarifications:

I have always appreciated Russian mathematics culture, and got admitted into the few universities I applied prior to the war. I'm in a situation where most of the scholarship windows for international students are closed. If I do not attend a university now, then I have to wait until fall 2023.
I'm from a third world country which is politically and economically unstable. There's no access to higher education in mathematics, either in my country or neighboring countries.

FWIW the International Congress of Mathematics originally scheduled for St Petersburg this summer will not happen there.

Russia invaded the Ukraine. Relations between Europe and Russia will be cut off for decades again.

It's not about "not recognizing degrees", but about "why would you want to go to Russia in the current (awful) situation?"

@paulgarrett: One could consider that Russia still has excellent mathematicians and they are not responsible for the war. Actually, the Western mathematical community tried to keep ties with their colleagues in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Of course, there are certainly better countries to do mathematics and build a career these days.

@Taladris Also: the Soviet mathematical community tried to keep ties with their colleagues in the West during the Cold War!

@Taladris, note that, in spite of "trying to keep up communication" it was generally very poor and lots of parallel work was done on both sides of the iron curtain due to the lack of effective communication, not to mention distrust and fear of exploitation by "the other side".

@Taladris: First they came ... If moral reasoning is not enough, is this enough?

Note that most of these answers were written before you clarified that you are in a third-world country and have no "backup plan": you have to choose between wasting an entire year or accepting this offer in Russia. This drastically changes the situation, so much so that you might consider removing that update from this question and instead posting a new question that explores this dilemma specifically. Up to you.

Disclaimer: I did my BSc, MSc and PhD in Russia and I was Russian citizen from birth up until 2020.
You ask about the recognition of degrees, and thus your question sounds as if it was about the decisions that other people or organisations may make in relation to your MSc degree.
I think that this way of framing your question is slightly misplaced. The real question here is about your decision to study in Russia at this time. What do you feel about the fact that Russian army invaded Ukraine, destroying their cities and killing thousands of people? Do you think that this situation, as you nicely put it, is irrelevant to the education experience you will receive in Russia? How will you respond if the administration of your University publicly supports the "special operation" of Russian army forces in Ukraine? Will you take side in political discussions that might happen in your classroom or among your fellows?
You need to consider these questions before making a decision about studying in Russia right now, as the answers will significantly affect your experience while doing your PhD and your future career, particularly if you plan to do a PhD in EU/US/UK later. The quality of your MSc degree probably won't be compromised, but some people who will read your CV later might reasonably ask questions: Why did you decide to go to Russia? Did you condemn or did you support the war? Which other options did you have at this moment and why did you choose this one?
When conflict arises, we might not be able to make things go our way, but we can express our disagreement by speaking up or by walking out. Ordinary people in Russia might not have an option to make their Government to stop the war, but some of them have an option to express their disagreement either by protesting (under a risk of detention or imprisonment), or by leaving the country to live elsewhere. Depending on your nationality and personal circumstances, your decision to walk in and live in Russia when it attacks Ukraine might be interpreted as your (silent) support of the ongoing war. This might not compromise your degree, but it might cast a shade on yourself as a moral human being. Do you have answers which will displace people's doubts about your character in future? Or would you rather take this risk?
Please consider the questions above while making your decision. Good luck.

«if the administration of your University publicly supports the "special operation"» — this actually is very valid, because the professors now are encouraged to read lectures on it. See e.g. this article (in Russian) on a news website blocked by RosKomNadzor. (BTW, keep this in mind too: we do have strong censorship here, one has to jump through hoops like VPN to read independent media.)

While it is prudent to be cautious of negative effects (if an association banned Russian cat breeds by being stupid enough to think that will do any good, there might be some academics who'd discriminate against Russian degrees), you shouldn't try to guilt-trip the OP. Because then, according to your logic, the OP should not pursue a US degree (because then the OP would be complicit in US attacks in Syria, and past invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan), nor a Turkish degree (Turkey recently invaded Iraq to bomb some Kurds), nor an Israeli degree, etc.

This is all very true but it doesn't answer the question. The opportunity costs of taking the moral high ground are also lower if you live in the West than if you're from an impoverished "third world" country where choices are limited to say the least. So I feel the actual question is valid and shouldn't be dismissed.

@vsz Your comment neglects a difference between going to a country while it invades its neighbour, and going to a country that has invaded another country several decades and presidents ago. If over-reaction (as in your example with cat breeds) can be stupid, then under-reaction can probably be stupid too, would you agree?

@henning The question is, broadly - will it is bad for me if I did my MSc in Russia now. The OP thinks that bad consequence might be that MSc is not recognised. I can't predict the future on that. Instead, I pointed out that there may be another, perhaps more important, bad consequence. I believe this is a useful consideration, which might help OP answer their question. You are welcome to write your own answer suggesting the best strategy for a student from a third-world country now.

@vsz: Indeed those are all very valid considerations one should have in mind when aiming for a degree abroad. You will be asked why you chose country X. The rest is a sliding scale of judgement.

If OP is studying on a stipend and not paying for the education, then I don't think studying in Russia amounts to support of the war in any practical sense. I rather encourage OP to think about the psychological hazards. When I was a master student in Russia, a friend of mine, who got imprisoned for his opposition of the war, got tortured in prison. I didn't feel safe talking about it with any of my teachers, so I had no support. One person who taught me math in school said that I was too emotional and we liberals all deserve to burn in hell forever.

I struggled to choose an advisor because I couldn't trust anyone. What if my advisor, too, said one day that my friend deserved to be tortured, how could I work with him then?

some people who will read your CV later might reasonably ask questions I'm curious what you think of this question, since the answers there currently imply that there will be no effect, at least in academia. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/105451/are-political-ideological-reasons-for-career-moves-acceptable-in-academia

@Allure Good question --- I contributed my answer there.

@seed: Iff OP accepted a scholarship by the Russian Govt (I don't know whether they have any such programs, but other countries do) for studying there, that would in my eyes be a rather more pro-Russian-govt statement than if they pay for their education. (I upvoted your comment for the psychological hazards)

@DmitrySavostyanov : The USA is active in Syria right now, and the other examples are happening right now, not "several decades ago".

I must admit that I know relatively little about the US conflicts compared to what is going on with Russia. You are right, if any country brings war to another in XXI century, killing thousands, destroying cities, looting homes, raping children, and threatening nuclear escalation -- I'd say do not go to this country to study for a while.

It seems risky to go to Russia at the moment for lots of reasons, but I think that recognition of a degree is probably lower on the scale than many others. Academics are generally more open to dealing with individuals as individuals than may be generally true. But, at the moment, Russian individuals are having a hard time in the "West", much of that unwarranted.
I haven't heard of Russian academics in the US having difficulties, for example, unless they vocally support the Russian government's war in Ukraine. Keeping my fingers crossed that it won't happen.
However, Russian institutions may have a hard time with funding over the next year (or perhaps much longer). Travel will be difficult to impossible. Acceptance by Russians of foreigners may not be optimal at the moment. Even communication in and out of Russia is becoming difficult.
I can't predict how the world will behave long term but think it would be very sad if individual academics suffer for the acts beyond their control. There is certainly the possibility of an overreaction. So, some caution is certainly reasonable.
I doubt that there is much mathematics done in Russia that isn't also done elsewhere. Unless you have made contact already with a top Russian mathematician who wants to work with you, I'd advise not doing a degree in Russia in the current environment.
And if there is some particular Russian mathematician you want to work with, perhaps you can do it remotely in the context of a degree from elsewhere, working remotely. Or manage an invitation for them to leave. Many might well be anxious to do so.
If you want to, for example, also explore Russian language and culture, you may have an opportunity to do that later in, hopefully, better times.
War is not healthy for children and other living things.

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Russia has a mathematical culture that is among the best in the world, so the mathematics that you will be taught in a Master’s program at a good Russian university will be of a very high level, and will prepare you well for a PhD program. In that sense, any university in Europe that is evaluating you for admission should not have any concerns about your mathematical preparation. Your degree will surely be “recognized” for the academic value of the knowledge that it signifies that you acquired.
The issue of concern is purely a political one. There have been many times and places in history where citizens of country X, or even people from other countries who spent time in country X or were seen as affiliated with X in various ways, were not welcome in country Y, because of a political conflict between X and Y. And at this particular moment in time, clearly many countries around the world — meaning, both their governments and large segments of their populations — are extremely upset with the specific “X” that is Russia, which is widely seen as having illegally and immorally instigated one of the most serious global geopolitical crises of the last 75 years.
Can we predict whether this will be a problem for your academic career, because of such obstacles of a political nature ending up affecting you somehow, if you go to a Russian university for your Master’s? No, obviously we cannot. But if you ask whether it is reasonable to have concerns that something like this might happen, and if those concerns are valid, I’d say: YES. Quite clearly it’s very, very reasonable, and the concerns are very, very valid.
It’s a vague statement, but that’s all anyone can say right now. Good luck in any case with whatever decision you end up making.

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Do not study in Russia
Currently travel and communicating between Russia and "the west" is difficult.  I cannot predict the future, but the west has passed several sanctions against Russia, and Russia has blocked access to many non-Russian sites and news sources.  I would not count on the sanctions, or Russia's decision to isolate itself to change anytime soon.
I would have several concerns about studying in Russia at the moment.

Current sanctions are likely to affect funding at Russian Universities in the short term.  Even if you are not funded, this will impact class and professor availability.  At the extreme level the University may have to make massive cuts or close due to lack of funding.

There is little to no pro-Russian sentiment in the west.  Like you, I would be concerned the degree would either not be recognized, or worse, be seen as a negative in the rest of Europe, even after the war has ended.  Sanctions may be imposed for years or decades.  Negative feelings in the west will last for years to come.  Your admission to non-Russian universities could become a political fight.

If the situation worsens, it may become untenable for you to stay in Russia.  Russia may decide to expel foreigners.  Even if they don't, further sanctions and actions by the U.S. and Western Europe could render your degree worthless or make life so miserable you don't finish.  Russia could decide to close all Universities and focus on the war effort.

Travel and communication is difficult.  You will almost certainly not be able to work with academics outside of Russia.  If you have friends and family outside of Russia you may not be able to visit until the war is over.

Conferences scheduled in Russia like the International Congress of Mathematics have been moved.  You'll likely have to travel internationally to present your work.  Travel is difficult and expensive.  You may not get a chance to present your work outside of Russia.

Russian universities will lose ground.  For the reasons above, students with choices won't choose Russian universities.  On top of sanctions, many businesses have cut ties with Russia.  You may find yourself unable to (legally) use software you need.  You may also find a dwindling supply of functional computers as the war continues and resources are reallocated.

The war could escalate, the Iron Curtain could go up again.  Which side do you want to be on?  You and your University could be forcibly co-oped to participate in the war effort.

There are plenty of other great universities not in Russia.  Attend one of those.
Do you support the invasion of Ukraine?  By attending a Russian university many people and admissions departments will assume your answer is "Yes I do". You may not get a chance to explain your real sentiments.
If you are a Russian citizen
If you are a Russian citizen, people and admission departments may still assume you support the war by participating in Russian academia even though most polls show Russian academics are generally against the war.
If you are willing to leave Russia, I'd suggest moving up your plan to study abroad.  Start studying abroad as soon as possible.  Get out while the getting is good.  Don't wait for more sanctions or for the Russian government to tightly control international travel or to be conscripted into the army.
EDIT - OP explained they are from a 3rd world country, not Russia
You did all the right things and got screwed anyway.  Find another country you'd like to study in and apply for 2023.  I would not advise you travel to a country in the middle of a war.

"Travel is difficult. You may not be able to visit friends and relatives until the war is over." You are assuming OP is not currently living in Russia. For Russians it would be the opposite.

@Džuris - good point.  Edited and explicitly addressed the Russian national case at the bottom

"Do you support the invasion of Ukraine? By attending a Russian university you are implicitly saying "Yes I do." or "No I don't" The number of Russian academics supporting the war is much less than 50%

@undercat We don't know if OP is male and we shouldn't assume, but in general I agree with your point here. There was too much waiting between 2014 and 2022, so "to wait and see" is not really an option anymore.

@DmitrySavostyanov I'm not assuming OP's sex or gender. But it is a huge risk for roughly 50% of applicants which is a reason why I've brought it up. Giving a piece of advice that may get a person drafted and killed, traumatized or jailed (if they refuse serving and/or killing innocent people) seems wrong.

If you are a Russian citizen, I would suggest that you at least consider staying put for now. Europe is not a friendly place to be at right now. If you decide to go to the EU to study, be ready to be a second class citizen and be harassed.

@AyamGorengPedes I firmly disagree with this. This is a tabloid-level fear-mongering. My University offers counselling and support to Ukrainian and Russian students all the same. Any harassment based on nationality is strictly condemned and is not tolerated.

@DmitrySavostyanov good for you! My advice to CONSIDER stays the same. It is up to the reader to consider what is best for them.

@AyamGorengPedes Which EU country are you talking about? Surely you can't speak for all of them?

@DmitrySavostyanov no I can't speak for all of them. I am not even an EU citizen, but I study in one of the countries that is relatively friendlier to Russia, and even here it is bad. Note that I can make these observations (and thus what I recommend) because I do not have the same morals as the standard European. People I know are wondering when they will be fired, until when can they eat. I am not discussing the morality or the ethics of imposing this to the Russians, I am here to suggest consideration based on what I have seen.

@AyamGorengPedes I'd like to challenge the premise and state that perhaps being a second class citizen in the EU might be a better option than being a first class citizen in Russia. Also worth keeping in mind that people opposing the war in Russia are getting continuously and viciously harassed and threatened there, they are always at a risk of losing employment or getting jailed, so they are not "first class citizens" in their own country either, regardless of their ethnicity.

@AyamGorengPedes You should make a clear distinction between "people are wondering when they will be fired" and people actually been fired. The first is just personal insecurities (which is expected given the stressful situation), the second is a real event. Passing one for another is just causing unnecessary fear and confusion.

@DmitrySavostyanov People are wondering when they will be fired, because their friends are already fired.

As a data point, my colleague and I are Russians, we work in Berlin and no one harasses us. Actually, my colleague just recently got praised for doing a great job.

Didn't Russia legalize software piracy? On the contrary, you will be able to use all the software you want legally in Russia, even software you could not legally use in a western country.

It seems unlikely that recognition will be refused
It goes against all historical precedent to refuse to recognise degrees from nations engaged in such acts. Degrees from Nazi Germany continued to be recognised during and after the war, for example, and where academics were able to cross from East to West (or vice versa) during the cold war their credentials were accepted. If there is an issue it is more likely to be around book-keeping details of getting proof that the course is suitable in the right language.
However, there are likely to be other issues resulting from your choice
You will be choosing to enter a country that has started a war of aggression and is currently carrying out atrocities in Europe on a massive scale and spend your money there. It is quite likely that this choice will be viewed negatively by at least some of the people assessing your record in future. In a situation where there is a choice between you and another candidate of similar ability/record this may swing the decision against you.
Since you've updated with more details about your situation: I would think that in the circumstances you've described most people would consider that you behaved reasonably in going ahead with your plans made before the invasion began given your limited options. However, you may still encounter some negative reactions.
And sanctions may have an impact on you whilst studying
Limits on money transfer, availability of goods, travel difficulties, even the economic stability of the university at which you study may be threatened. These factors make choosing to do your MSc in Russia vs. elsewhere a more risky choice.

Some good answers already. Some additional practical considerations:

The main issue for those foreign students that I have met here in Germany was always money. How do you expect to make a living in Russia? Will everything be covered by a scholarship? If yes, will this scholarship still work in times of economical crisis and a near-bankrupt Russian state? Do you plan on working? If yes, will this work in times of economical crisis? Or do you plan to receive money from your family? If yes, would this work with the current sanctions in place? Would the exchange rates be realistic or would you have to convert good hard currency via some officially inflated rate?

Another answer has pointed out that there might be an increased risk of political instability. How would you leave Russia if the situation becomes unstable? Are there nearby countries where you can travel without visa? Do you trust your embassy to be able to evacuate you if the shit hits the fan? Some 3rd world countries are surprisingly good at this, but others not so much. You might use Wuhan in February 2020 or Ukraine in February/March 2022 as a reference. But keep in mind that Russia is much bigger.

How would you deal with emergencies that require large-ish sums of money quickly, e.g. medical emergencies or the need to quickly leave Russia/quickly return home? Would you be able to receive money from your family under currennt circumstances (see above)?

Autocratic regimes have a tendency to demand displays of loyalty and support. Displays of support from foreigners are expecially valuable. The fewer other foreigners there are in Russia, the more likely it becomes they might ask you in particular to show your support. They might also have their ways to trick you into situations where it is hard to say your actual opinion or to avoid commenting. Being perceived as having endorsed the Russian invasion of Ukraine will definitely be bad for any career in the west.

That said, I do not really see a grave moral problem here. If you think you can handle the points mentioned above, it's probably not a particularly bad idea to give it a try. Just be aware that there is a certain probability that you have to return early and without a degree, i.e. think hard about how much money and other stuff you are going to invest.

note that any money converted at official inflated rates is a de-facto donation towards the war effort.

Yes, your degree will almost certainly be recognized, but you probably will not get what you want.
I thought I would provide an answer that is really addenda.
If an American went to Russia, it would likely have a very strong and very adverse impact on their career.  A candidate from an unstable, developing nation would not likely be impacted in the same way.  However, there are some things to consider that are not mentioned above.
The sanctions regime has taken on its own life.  The official list of goods that were sanctioned ended up being much less than voluntary sanctions.  Firms have decided to sanction Russia even though the goods are permissible under the laws of trade.  So the governments have prohibited trade in X and allowed Y and Z, but the firms that produce Y are refusing to sell to Russia.  Even if formal sanctions are lifted, informal sanctions may persist for years.
The reason that such things matter is that key components of standard things in computing and energy are now unavailable.  It would be unsurprising to find their computers started failing due to a combination of cyberattacks damaging hardware and an inability to access components.  A recent massive attack erased the hard drives of computers throughout Russia and Belarus.  It was not performed by a government.
One of the reasons governments are racing to get rid of their dependence on Russian fuel is that the parts to make wells work are becoming unavailable at any price to Russians.  Even if natural gas is not sanctioned, it may not be possible to get it from the ground to a European market.
It is quite possible that a university in Russia may find itself without hardware, software, and fuel for heating.  While some math does not depend at all on the ability to use a computer, it restricts what you can do.  A university is a very high-end proposition, in terms of supporting equipment.
The next concern I would have is the ability to enter or exit.  Russia's air fleet has gone beyond its safe maintenance period.  It has a stolen fleet of planes.  It will have to cannibalize stolen planes for parts but many things that are dependent on software from a headquarters computer will be gone.  Their civilian fleet may completely come to a halt.  There may be a train to China, however.  Serbia also flies one flight a week into and out of Russia.
You should consider the possibility of civil war.  When Russia invaded, it brought 120 battle groups, each with 800-1000 men, to the field.  They have reconsolidated their forces and now have 70 battle groups in the field.  Roughly 40-50,000 soldiers are dead, wounded or captured.  Thirty percent of their general staff has died in battle and a greater percentage of their colonels.  It is quite possible that a group of generals may decide one morning that enough is enough.  A general with an army in the field can direct that army to march in any direction, including for it to march on Moscow.
Degrees are certainly granted during civil wars, but sometimes a regime decides to kill the intelligentsia.  They will not bother distinguishing foreign students from professors from native students.  War is very unpredictable.
Universities depend on both the quality of their professors and the quality of their students.  Russia is suffering a massive brain drain.  The last news story I saw said they lost 30,000 computer scientists and software engineers.  I would assume mathematicians are going out the door too.  Senior faculty probably cannot flee because it has become too late.  Junior mathematicians are usually less rooted and may be gone already.
The university that you applied to may not be the one you graduate from in terms of quality.  Universities may have difficulty with funding, equipment, basic necessities like fuel, water, electricity, and staffing.  You may be going from an unstable, developing country into a very unstable developing country that recently had world-class mathematics programs, but no longer does.  Your dorm room could have bullet holes in it and the train to China might be captured by a rebel army.
Russia is imploding.  It is now a vassal state of China.  The People's Liberation Army is not worried anymore about the ability of Russia's army or navy to fight.  They were peers.
In January of 2022, Russia's math programs were world-class.  They could deteriorate quickly because academia is an expensive, difficult, resource-intensive proposition.  It is difficult to consider what their state of affairs may be in January 2024 or 2025.

"train to China" does probably not exist atm due to Covid.

The answer is: it is quite possible.

You can see the current state of mind of Western academia in the comments.
If you consider the MS as a stepping stone to work in industry (oil, gas, etc.) then there are sanctions.
If it is pure math and you want to do grad school eventually, it is much better to do the MS in the same country as the PhD.

I did my PhD math in Russia during the Cold War when the USSR was the enemy conducting several wars and a state sponsoring terrorism. My PhD was recognized but it was not trivial.

it might be useful to expand a bit on the last phrase: "it was not trivial".

@Buffy: It is unrelated to this Q.

Fair enough. Glad it worked out.

By the time I came to the US I had 35 papers published, several books, newspaper columns on math, etc. That helped

@Trunk  As I said, it helped. Also I had many Western collaborators, it helped too,

It is not relevant to the question because I was not a recent PhD or MS when I came to the US.

I don't believe your degree would be ignored (that's nothing more than a personal opinion, by the way), but there are other matters you should be concerned about.
If you're seeking a Master's, I would imagine it's because you would like to use it in your career, and maybe even as a stepping stone to a PhD.  If this is the case, it's important for you to establish robust communication with others in your field, worldwide.  The immediate situation is such that you may well find substantial obstacles to this important aspect of your career development.

Many good points have been raised already in other answers. I'd like to add something that I'm missing so far:
Isolated position as foreigner impacting studies
As a foreign student going into a new country for your masters, you start from a point where you don't know anyone, don't have friends locally, and in addition there are cultural differences (including/plus language) that you need to navigate.
Both factors are present for anyone studying abroad, and they require a certain amount of your energy and time. However, if you move to Russia right now, you move into a society that I'd expect to be very tensed and in consequence not very open and trusting. Plus, everyone has their own, recently increased, troubles.  This will make it very hard for you to find friends, team up with your colleagues etc. If people already don't know whether/to what extent they can trust their long-time neighbour, they're unlikely to be very open becoming friends with a foreigner.
(Others have mentioned already that communication with your family & friends at home may also be more difficult than usual)
You're thus quite likely to be in a very isolated position. Such isolation is challenging (read some of the Q&As here of PhD students that moved into a foreign country into Covid regulations), and I'd say there is a substantial risk that this strain has a negative impact on your ability to study (in the sense that due to these circumstances you may not be able to learn as much maths there as you would in friendlier times).
An excellent maths program which you cannot utilize fully may be worse than a good maths program somewhere else where you can concentrate on your studies.
(I have no real knowledge about the situation inside Russia right now. Maybe someone with actual insight could comment)

Potential choices elsewhere
Even though application deadlines are over for other programs, if you decide you don't want to go to Russia, it may be worth while to contact them saying that you got accepted into a Russian program that you applied for long before the Ukraine war started, but are urgently looking for an alternative now.
Here in Germany, many universities accept fresh students either winter or summer term. I.e., you'd lose only half a year instead of a full year.

Acceptance seen as active pro-Russian-govt statement
Similar to what others have said, I'd expect western academics to be rather understanding if you explain that your choice was basically no higher maths education at home vs. attending an excellent Russian programme which you applied for long before the war started.
That being said, if that programme offers you a scholarship paid by the Russian government, accepting this right now will be far more likely seen as a pro-Russian-govt statement.
(And I'd also be very wary of that since it gives the Russian govt even more hold over you. See also what @Jan says about totalitarian govts requiring very clear expression of loyality.)

Unfortunately yes, it is possible we might rise to that level of hysterical jingoism
Based on the historically high quality of Russian mathematicians, I would think that a Russian degree in mathematics would generally be of high quality (depending on which university it is).  As other commentators have pointed out, there are various practical concerns to take into account presently, due to the war.  In particular, you will need to consider issues of safety, the effect of economic sanctions, issues relating to university funding, and your own status in Russia depending on what country you are from.
As to your concern that the degree might be seen negatively in the West due to anti-Russian sentiment, unfortunately it does indeed appear that this level of psychotic jingoism could occur.  Throughout Europe, the US, Canada and Australia, there has been a substantial increase in anti-Russian discrimination, the vast majority of which involves people of Russian descent who are entirely removed from any involvement with the war (see e.g., Chapman (2022), Adam et al (2022), Lika (2022), Law (2022), Marcetic (2022)).  In particular, this has included instances where professionals are being excluded from events due to Russian descent, banning Russian products (including cultural products), refusal to serve customers of Russian descent (or with Russian-sounding accents), refusal to provide medical treatment to people of Russian descent, proposals for loyalty oaths prior to service, etc.  In such an environment, it is plausible that some of the same people who engage in these types of exclusionary activities might populate institutions that assess the quality of your degree.  It would be unfortunate, but it is possible.
As an illustration of the level of hysteria, you may be interested to know that the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra banned performances of Tchaikovsky, a Russian who died over 120 years before the present war (Weaver (2022)).  This was one of the lesser cases, insofar as it did not involve a living person.  In the comments below, user gerrit reports that in Germany some people removed an exhibit about volcanoes in Kamchatka in response to the war, so apparantly the anti-Russian sentiment extends to ancient non-conscious geological entities that have the effrontery to now exist in the same country as the government prosecuting the war.  There is no particular reason that a Russian degree would be immune from this type of reaction.

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If your goal is to get a PhD in the West, then consider enrolling in a Master's (MS) program in the West, but during your first year of the MS, work with your Russian contacts on arranging a study-abroad exchange visit during the summer between years one and two.
Assuming you can get around any visa/travel restrictions, your degree would be Western, and you'd also have an opportunity to learn from Russian mathematicians.

Russia will likely be considered high risk for travel in the next few years, and student exchange schemes may discourage/prevent students from going there.


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Is it OK to inquire about my application status after a late application submission?
I recently encountered a situation regarding the submission of my application for a 9-month academic program. I submitted my application after the deadline by 40 minutes and now find myself contemplating whether it would be appropriate to reach out to the program and inquire if my application will still be considered or will be overlooked. I was enthusiastic about this opportunity.
What would be the most professional and appropriate way to approach the program regarding my late application or shouldn't I do it at all?

There’s never any harm in asking.

Yes, you can inquire with a polite mail. Explain that you were 40 minutes late, and ask if you'll be included or not. Their rules may be strict or not.
You don't need to give a reason unless asked.

I was thinking of doing that but, I worry that way I am forcing them to tell me "no" as they might not want to look like they don't take rules seriously. My impression is that they are strict. At the same time, I thought that if I asked them if there is a chance my application will be reviewed while apologizing for this oversight. It might work in my favor.

Who can say? If you have a need to know, then ask.

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Online checker for Plagiarism: How accurate are they?
I've finished writing my thesis and have done an online plagiarism check. I used https://www.check-plagiarism.com/ to check and got a lot of plagiarism. I don't understand why. You can find an example below. For instance, I don't see where the plagiarism is in the first sentence which is marked red. When looking into the suggested URL, I don't even find the key words from this sentence there. What should I do?

The two links shown in the picture are https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/cryptocurrency-adoption-increases-despite-uncertainty-in-the-us/ and https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/financial-services/articles/future-of-retail-banking.html I also do not see how the highlighted sentences were identified at those URLs. It even seems unlikely that older versions of those articles would contain the sentences in question.

I believe if you are a college student, you can access better plagiarism-checking software for free, like Turnitin and ithenticate, which are recommended by my university for checking research integrity. These two give you better and reliable results

That seems like a particular bad, and even dishonestly presented, plagiarism checker.

Surely the accuracy varies wildly based on how well the checker is programmed? I don't think you can make a blanket statement about all of them.

Standard dot.com bitcoin mining site with free download to research publications and 2500+ research tools; With spell checker, link maker, citation maker; grammarly to write concisely. Sigh, what a cluster fuck has the internet become!

My wife used Grammarly to check for plagiarism. I remember helping her reformulating sentences, using synonyms, just so that Grammarly would flags less things as plagiarism. I expect that with the current state of "plagiarism checkers", even if you write everything yourself, without looking at any published paper, you'll end up with lots of things flagged as plagiarism.

The questions in the title and in the body of the question are different; I'll answer the question in the title, which I cite here in case of a later edit:

Online checker for plagiarism: How accurate are they?

Answer: They are inaccurate, but moreover - they are simply not "checker[s] for plagarisms", even if some of those programs have names which appear to claim the contrary.
The reason is that plagiarism is a subtle concept; determining whether some piece of writing P is plagiarized or not requires, in many cases, a proper understanding of the contents of P as well as of the context of P. Understanding those things is far beyond what software can currently (2022) do.
What software tools like the one you showed in your question really do is some kind of automated (probably statistical) analysis of texts, and highlighting of some parts of the text. The output of the software does not determine whether something is plagiarism. The fact that such a tool shows some absurd text message as a result (such as "33% plagiarized content" in your screenshot) tells us something about the software, not about the text it analyzed.

I use the term "similarity checker" since similarity is what they are actually supposed to check for.

@kaya3: Indeed, this term makes much more sense.

I think you're being a bit harsh re: plagiarism detectors. They work for what they're designed to do, quickly comparing a large set of submissions against a much larger database of possible sources that may have been plagiarized, which can't be done by hand, and producing a ranked list of submissions worth reviewing.

@NicoleHamilton: Indeed, I agree with what you wrote (both in your answer and in your comment). I don't think though that I am harsh on those tools - I'm just harsh on misnaming those tools and on non-sensical output messages such as e.g. "33% plagiarized contents" (which I translated from the picture in the question, where the phrase is stated in German).

(But admittedly I might be a bit biased concerning those things since I already had too many bad experiences in my (not yet particularly long) life with people you misused various software tools to do things that those tools were never designed to do - with corresponding consequences for the results...)

Jochen Glueck's answer provides a good description of the general problem with "plagiarism checkers."
Looking at this particular one, clearly its statistical analysis (or whatever it's doing) is failing pretty badly. In tests on my work it's often not able to identify my original sources (from which there may well be a few phrases I did take verbatim), it suggests I've plagiarised from sources I've never seen, it claims that trivially short phrases and even single words are plagiarised, and, perhaps most astonishingly, it claims that large portions of my text are unique when it's comparing against a copy of that same document.
To see how this particular plagiarism checker works I took a couple of items from my personal technical notes and ran them through it. I picked this item on the technical details of video standards (dropping the last part to get it under 2000 characters) and this item on the design of the CMake language because these notes happen to have taken a particularly large amount of work to properly write up. (The first one because it's a complex topic where I had to use a lot of different sources, and the second one because CMake documentation is just terrible at explaining the core principles of the language design.) I am quite sure that these notes bear little resemblance to the original sources because I wouldn't have had to put such much work into them otherwise. (I am not particularly concerned about plagiarism in the notes I take for personal use in any event, but it's unlikely there would be much anyway because if a source is already in the form I need, I would just link to it rather than re-typing it.)
These didn't come out as high as your example did, 16% and 22% respectively, but some characteristics of the output are interesting to note.
In the first example it identified 22 "plagiarised" bits. Almost all of them are from pages that were not sources I used. I checked only the first few before it started to seem rather pointless because without exception in the ones I checked the text given in the plagiarism match was from my document and there was nothing resembling that text in the source to which they linked. (In the case of a link to a BBC page, the source had not only no technical information about video standards, but almost no text at all.) Several of the matches were for a single word and, in a particularly hilarious example, the word "this" from the Merriam Webster thesaurus:

(There was more than one of those, actually.)
In the second example it correctly identified "plagiarism" from my on-line copy of the document linked above. (Given that it's from the same repo on GitHub as the first one, I have no idea why it failed to find the copy of the first one.) But somehow it decided that, though it was comparing against exactly the same document (albeit formatted slightly differently) the copy I'd given it was still "78% Unique Content."
I couldn't even be bothered for this one to chase down the sources given by the checker, but I am pleased to note that the letter "g" followed by a period is apparently quite original to me:

(I am guessing this is from one of the five uses of "e.g." I made in the text.)
In short, this "plagiarism checker" seems pretty rubbish.

Do we know that this is even a legitimate plagiarism checker and not a bit of malware?

@shoover They do have a paid tier that allows you to check documents greater than 2000 characters, so it seems that there's some attempt to make the plagiarism checking part of the site a legitimate business. (That of course doesn't mean that it doesn't also engage in distributing malware or other unsavoury activities.)

@cjs "They do have a paid tier [...]" that is a huge sign of being malware: not only they may affect your computer, they even get access to your creditcards, paypal account or the likes!

@cjs It seems that all this "plagiarism checker" does is ingest your paper and flag some random sentences in it to be exact duplicates of nonexistent sentences in articles at random links. Maybe its purpose is to accumulate papers for a Chegg-like entity to sell?

the letter "g" followed by a period --- If it's of any interest, I've noticed that in some older mathematics literature (late 1800's to first few decade of the 1900s has been where I believe I've noticed it) the usage included a space, so it would be "e. g.", and thus occurrences of space-'g'-period-space should occur (if something this specific is actually being looked for). And surely occurrences of space-'g'-period-space would show up in other ways also.

@EarlGrey Having a credit card merchant account (or working with a service provider that does) seems to me a sign of not being malware; it gives them a contractual connection to the banking system and puts them under a lot more scrutiny via things like PCI audits, for example.  It does not give access to things like PayPal account information.

@cjs did you try to pay? I am not discussing if they have a proper merchant account, I am discussing a website providing you all the ring and bells of a real shop that at some point pops-up a window asking for your credit card or paypal details (the site must be so well done that the potential scammed people would even contact the customer care "dear customer care, my browser is suggesting me your site is not reliable, I would like to proceed with the payment" "dear customer, we are very happy to serve you, please ignore the browser alert, it is due to a late update in our windows server :) ")

No, plagiarism detectors are not accurate.  They produce lots of false positives.  All they can do is identify candidates for closer inspection and the bar is usually pretty low on what it takes to become a candidate. From there, it takes a human to carefully review the evidence (the matches) that were found and apply experience and judgement to decide if it's compelling.
They work well for what they're designed to do, quickly comparing a set of submissions against a vast database of possible sources that may have been plagiarized and producing a ranked list of submissions worth reviewing.
We used the MOSS (measure of software similarity) system at Stanford to do cheat-checking for one of our large intro CS classes at Michigan, each time comparing 1000+ new submissions against each other and our archive of roughly 10K prior submissions.  This would have been impossible by hand. It scored and ranked the results and did a good job of identifying matching sections.  For example, it wasn't fooled by common obfuscation, like variable renaming, simple expression rewriting, statement reordering, rewriting a for as a while, changes to comments, and so on. It really is very good at this.
If it flagged 30 submissions, we might commonly write up six to perhaps a dozen after a careful discussion with my cheat-checking team.  We often agreed the rest were a little suspicious, but there just wasn't enough evidence to support a case. By these numbers, you might argue we saw a false positive rate of 40% to 80%.  But as a practical matter, what we also experienced was that the cases we reported were usually the ones MOSS ranked highest.
While plagiarism detectors work well at comparing a large set of submissions against another far-larger set of possible sources of plagiarism to find possible matches, they do not work well on an individual submission except to produce a list of the closest matches it found, which may not be good matches at all.
The ranking score for a single result is completely meaningless.
Ranking scores are only helpful for sorting a list of suspects (or similarly, search engine results) because rank values only have to obey ordering, not linearity.  (A score of .8 may be better than .4, but it's probably not twice as good.) You need the context of other submissions it scored higher or lower to know what a score means.
In your case, you've reviewed the output and decided there's no real match.  Good for you.  It was a false positive, which is no surprise because these tools generate lots of false positives.  (And presumably, you already knew you didn't plagiarize anyway.)
If you expect a plagiarism detector to be right most of the time, you're going to be wrong most of the time.

Checking for similarities between computer programming assignments in a single course is much more likely to produce valid matches than the OP's use case and still produces mostly false positives.

I'm planning to add "code similarity detection" to the system we currently use for preparing student submissions for programming exercises, but the way I was intending to use it was to decide the order in which I marked them, so that if there was plagiarism it would hopefully be spotted as I marked.

@DikranMarsupial  Sure, you could do that.  But be aware you won't get a full ranking.  You'll only get top suspects ranked.  Also, in reviewing a suspect, it's helpful to have a fresh idea of what most students do with assignment, especially that there's always a lot of similarity given the problem constraints and any starter code.

@NicoleHamilton yes.  At the moment the way I deal with it is that I think "mmm, that bit of code is both odd and familiar" and then go through the ones I have already marked to find it.  It would just make it easier to do if the more similar solutions were closer together in the pile. My plan was to look at pairwise similarities, rather than ranking by amount of similar code.  I don't really trust the rankings, just want to make manual plagiarism detection more efficient.

Some similarity checkers are moderately good at finding text that is similar between two documents. If a reputable checker says two sentences are the same, it is almost certain that they actually are. Producing such tool, with a sufficiently comprehensive database of sources to check against, is also very expensive. This is why universities and colleges pay very large sums for access to software like Turnitin. Its unsurprising that a free tool on the internet cannot do such a good job.
There is a reason that often universities don't allow students access to these tools (although this is not universal) - doing so helps them to plagiarize. Reading a source and then rephrasing it sufficiently to pass a plagiarism check is still plagiarism, its just plagiarism that can't be detected as easily. Plagiarism is using other peoples thoughts without attribution, not using their words.

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Is it OK to spend most of the Ph.D. period in designing & programming systems (vs experimenting and creating experimental results)
My PhD. in data science in EU requires mostly a system to design and to develop using some programming language, eventhough it introduces some novel approaches that I showcase through use cases. I am bit worried that my whole research work doesn't produce any experimental results.
Is that OK for a PhD?

That is a question that only your supervisor(s) can answer as they will be the one(s) evaluating your PhD work and if the should or shouldn't award you a degree for it.

see also: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4471/academia-varies-more-than-you-think-it-does-the-movie

Designing and programming aren't quite enough, though it may be necessary in some fields. While it isn't necessary in all cases to have extensive experimental data, it is necessary to provide evidence of the value of your programs and designs. That can be done through small studies, perhaps, or thorough theoretical investigations. In your case, probably some small experiments, though your advisor is the proper judge of that.
In more traditional CS, a student might spend a vast amount of time developing, say, a new garbage collection system for a family of languages. That is fine, but it isn't enough for a degree. You also have to show that its performance is at least as good as other approaches, even by a small amount. If you can't do that, then you are just spinning your wheels.
In such "failed" cases, however, it is also possible to salvage something from the effort, perhaps enough for a degree. If you can show that an approach once thought valuable is, in fact, worthless it can be a useful contribution to scholarship.
But it isn't "time spent" that is the value in research. It is what you add to the knowledge base of humanity.

"it is necessary to provide evidence of the value of your programs and designs". Sure thing, otherwise what's the point of designing it in the first place.


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Authorship Issue with Ph.D. Supervisor: Is it ethical for the first author to make less contribution to the manuscript?
I am a Ph.D. student. I recently have an issue with authorship on the paper where my advisor was the first and the corresponding author, I was the second, and our Dean was the third. I felt very frustrated and would like to have your ideas. I am not sure in such a case I could claim being the second author of the manuscript.
My advisor constructed the idea and we developed all the materials for the project together. When we started our project, we decided that he was the first and the corresponding author, and I was the second author. After we have completed data collection, my advisor invited our Dean to be the third author, responsible for data analysis. At this time, I initiated the idea that the we needed to be clear about our responsibility to the manuscript writing. In my private meeting with my advisor, I told him that I would write the methodology, data analysis and result sections of our manuscript to fulfill the role of the second author. He agreed.
Then, I learned from my advisor that the Dean would write the data analysis and results sections, which makes sense as he worked with data analysis. However, my advisor suggested I should write the literature review but I refused as I believed that, him, being the first and the corresponding author should make the most contribution to the manuscript. This means I assume that he should write the literature review and dicussion, the two sections central to the manuscript. So, I told him that I was more than willing to write the introduction, implications, and conclusions. However, after I told him my plan, I got this reply:
"Thanks for letting me know you that you are unwilling to write the literature review. I have other plans for the sections you mentioned." "As you did not contribute more than the third author in the manuscript writing, you are NOT the second author".
Later, my advisor told me "the other plans" we had was asking some of his students, possibly the RAs to write the rest parts of the manuscript. This makes me feel very uncomfortable, as I felt that he was trying to claim the first author without making the first-author contribution to the manuscript writing.
Following is the information about my role in the project:

My advisor conceptualize the project, and I constructed the experiment materials for project by working with my advisor.
I played a leading role the data collection by working with 2 undergraduate RAs and 2 postgraduate RAs. I assisted all the 4 RAs in the course of data collection as they are still new to our experiment. Apart from that, I independently collected 50% of the data.
I have written the methodology section of the manuscript.
I cleaned all the data and coded the data for the Dean's analysis.

My questions:

In general, does the second author have the right to choose which sections he writes for the manuscript?

We have agreed the sequence of the authorship but my advisor is inviting more people such as the RAs who did not made much contribution to the experiment (expect for data collection) to write  the manuscript. This means he will only need to write the abstract and the discussion sections of the paper. Is this ethical that he still claim to be the first author?

I will not write the literature review but I have agreed to write some other sections of the manuscript. However, it seems that I could not be the 2nd author unless I write the literature review. May I know how to solve this issue?

As a PhD student, I suppose you are in training to become a researcher. So your advisor is an established researcher, and you chose to be trained under his supervision. It's not wrong to work as he said. Generally, advisors usually put their grad students up front to support, but occasionally, some will put their names first (which I admit is not a good practice). Your options are limited: either do as he says or change your advisor (I suggest the second one, it looks like your team dynamics are not going great.)

Based on your description of events, I don't think your advisor has followed good practice here.  Authorship is something that should be negotiated based on project contribution (as you did at the outset) and changes in the contributions give rise to legitimate opportunities to renegotiate authorship.  I do not believe it is fair for one author to make a unilateral decision to "demote" the authorship order of another author simply because they refuse to take on more work than was initially negotiated.
What should have happened here was a discussion between you and your supervisor (and possibly also the Dean) to reallocate work on the manuscript and determine whether the reallocation of work justifies a change in the order of authorship.  This is something that ought to be done by negotiation in the first instance, with some kind of outside adjudication in the event of insoluble disputes.  If you feel that you have been hard-done-by on the authorship of the paper, and you want to take this further, you might consider telling your supervisor about your concerns and asking that they be resolved by adjudication by an outside party (e.g., another academic in the Department).  It is reasonable to expect that if you undertake the work that was negotiated at the outset then you should receive the authorship credit that was negotiated at the outset, unless there is some compelling reason to the contrary.
This situation is complicated a bit by the fact that it occurred within a supervisory relationship.  In general, it is normal for a supervisor to allocate work to a student, even including allocating additional contributions to a project beyond what was first anticipated.  Part of this occurs because in addition to writing a paper, you are also in training for research work, so your supervisor probably wants to ensure that you have practice in all aspects of research.  It is generally not good practice for a research student to refuse to do the work allocated by their supervisor, since the latter will generally have a good idea of how to effectively train their research student.  The interaction between this and the authorship question is somewhat complex.  I don't think that either you or your supervisor have covered yourselves in glory here, and both of you should rethink your approach to matters like this in future.

thank you for your reply. I agree that as a doctoral student, I am still in training for academic research under the guidance of my advisor. While I completed the methodology, my advisor did give me some feedback to improve it (This justifies him being the corresponding author of our paper).  What I am concerned about is whether he makes a direct contribution to our paper as the first author.

I assume that a general consensus in academia is that the first author writes 75% or at least 50% of a manuscript. If a Ph.D./Master supervisor could claim to be the first author without writing a reasonable amount of the manuscript, then he could invite 5 -6 students to write his manuscript, one for each section (if there are five sections in the manuscript). I think this is unfair to all the co-authors. This is why I felt unfair and upset.

This is a complex issue as I am both collaborating and working for my advisor. Still what he did was a huge disappointment to me.  Thanks for your advice. I will not let this happen when I work as an independent researcher in the future.

I don't think things are quite as formulaic as that, mostly because the actual writing is just one aspect of the contribution.  There are circumstances where it might be justifiable for an author to be first author with only a small writing contribution, but ultimately it comes down to a holistic assessment of the contributions.  Again, these are issues that should be negotiated at the outset, and renegotiated when necessary.

In general, there are no special privileges associated with being a second author.
The ordering of authors and their contributions follow conventions of the field and of the culture. For example, in pure Mathematics, all authors are in alphabetical order. Computer Science has developed some customs according to which the most important student author goes first. You are not giving your field or your country, so there is nothing I can tell you about whether this ordering is unusual.
(1) As a second author, you do not get to decide which sections you get to write. This is a collaborative job, and in academia, your advisor is the one who calls the shots. (A smart advisor will listen to the collective wisdom of the rest of the students.)
(2) Anyone who makes a substantive contribution to the paper can become an author. A first author has not necessarily done most of the work or written most of the article. If you advisor thought of the project and supervised you, there is a point to be made that he was most instrumental in getting the paper written and therefore has a right to be the first author. The data collection you supervised might or might not have been of a technical nature that a lot of other people could have done as well. An advisor is supposed to let students write parts of an article so that they learn how to do it. The advisor is supposed to supervise them closely.
(3) If you do not write the literature review, then you will not be the second author. If you want to be second author, you write the literature review.
The literature review is after the introduction the most read part of a paper for review. It shows that the authors understand the field and are not re-inventing the wheel. If you are asked to write the literature review, then this means that your advisor judges you capable of writing it, meaning that your advisor thinks that you have mastered the literature.
It might very well be that in a more just world, you would be first author or the second author contributing according to your wishes. However, when you entered academia as a student and when you picked your advisor, you agreed to be supervised and guided. This means that you might have to defer to their judgment. Also, you seem to be trying to pick a fight with the very people (advisor and dean) who will referee this fight. Do not expect to win this one. I cannot tell for sure whether your advisor is acting unreasonably or not. It seems to me however that you are underestimating your advisor's role as a guide and decision maker, and more importantly, the rest of the faculty in the department might see it this way as well.
Too long to read: Not knowing the field and country, we cannot tell whether your advisor or you are acting unreasonably. It does not matter, because if you fight your advisor, you are not likely to win, but will destroy the relationship with your advisor and make a reputation for yourself as a difficult student. Difficult students make it through a program if they are brilliant (or very close to it). Are you brilliant?


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Faculty application: getting a recommendation letter from a professor at the same university
I am applying for an assistant professor position at a university. I have worked with a faculty member there for a long time - he was a postdoc in my PhD lab and I have been in touch with him later. He is one of my references in all other applications, but I am not quite sure how the search committee of his university would feel about his reference.
Any suggestions?

I assume you mean "faculty search committee" instead of "admissions committee"?

Ask him about the appropriateness (as well as his willingness) of his writing a letter. I think that in most cases it wouldn't be a problem, but he would then, possibly, need to abstain from further official participation in your application to avoid conflict issues.
Since you were never his superior, there are no real issues that I can see.


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How can I help my advisor not lose face when changing from a thesis to non-thesis program?
I am a comajor masters student who is experiencing difficulties in timely responses from my advisor. It has taken an average of almost 4 months for me to get feedback each time I have received feedback on my thesis since leaving campus.
As a result, I am trying to  convert from a thesis to a non-thesis based MS, take an additional course this fall, and be done. I would need to modify my program of study to include some independent study credits (requiring my advisor approval), representing my non-published thesis work, and be done this fall. The additional work is well worth it to me to avoid the uncertainty of depending on an advisor who is unreliable for timely feedback.
Because of these delays which are likely going to make even a fall thesis defense impossible, I have been in contact with the Ombuds office at my University. At their suggestion I then talked with the faculty who is the director of my graduate program and both seem to think this is the best outcome. The graduate director thought my advisor might resist this idea because it causes him to lose face.
I need my advisor's permission to convert to the independent study.If I do not receive this, I will have to take some additional credits - which I am prepared to do, though this is non-optimal.  Technically I need his permission to switch committees, too, though I have been told him refusing this is incredibly unlikely. Having suggested the idea to my advisor via email about a week ago, I have (unsurprisingly to me) not heard any response.

What strategies should I use to work with my advisor to change my program of study and committee which help him save face, but simultaneously causing my issues to be resolved in a way which results in him signing the paperwork?

The only reason I care is I want him to approve my program of study change, so I have to take less credits. If I didn't need this approval I would just drop the paperwork off to change my committee and be done (and easily escalate if he refuses)...

How about presenting it in the context of lightening their workload? "I noticed you have been taking a long time to respond to my questions. Since you are obviously busy, I wish to pursue [this other option]. Would you mind signing this paperwork to approve it?"

Put down the email and go talk to him face-to-face. He can't keep you waiting for a week if you just ask.

Wow, what a terrible supervisor^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hperson :( Still, after all of this, and given the urgency of your situation, I imagine you could press the point - be insistent. He's not going to physically remove you from his office :P Don't leave until you've set an appointment time for a face-to-face chat.

Why are you worried about helping save face for this person?  It sounds like they have been nothing but problematic.
If the department is OK with you switching to a non-degree program and graduating, just do it and get out of there.  Based on what you have reported, there seems to be no benefit for you doing otherwise: you're just making a lot of excuses for what is very poor behavior. For example, it doesn't matter if supervising your thesis is "low priority" and your advisor is "very busy"---supervising your thesis is part of your advisor's job.
Given that you are have already engaged both the program director and the Ombuds office and gotten their encouragement to proceed on this path, just go ahead and finish your degree without the thesis.  The only disadvantage you are likely to have is that you're not going to be able to get a good recommendation letter from your former advisor---but then, would you have been able to anyway?

Too much kindness can hurt too. Sometimes you have to let people get what they had coming.

I think the question is about how to convince the advisor to sign the relevant paperwork.

@JimConant With support already obtained from higher-up administration, it is almost certain that somehow an appropriate person will be able to sign the appropriate piece of paper.  The advisor might lose face, but will probably lose a lot more face if they try to fight the administration.

No argument here.

This was my first thought on reading the question's first few paragraphs, but continuing reading it became clear that the issue here is helping make the situation as attractive as possible to the supervisor, so that they are inclined to agree to the plan.

This seems to have worked - unless something goes horribly wrong in the next few weeks I will finally be done (without extra work other than the single additional class, either, though it took a "I'll have to get you what I need changed on your thesis document to approve the change to your program of study" to a month later, "actually looks ok" drama...).

This is a pretty difficult situation. Are you able to switch programs to ind. study without approval if you can show that the adviser was negligent? If not, I still don't see what the adviser will gain from refusing to allow you to switch unless he hopes that the extra credits will deter you from that path.
If you think that he will resist in order to save face, you could be clear that you plan to switch to the independent study program regardless of his response, which will make him choose between a) refusing you out of spite, or b) giving you a better choice which still costs him nothing as compared to choice a. I would like to think that the adviser would not be childish enough to stop you out of pure spite when he loses nothing by giving you the better option.

Are you able to switch programs to ind. study without approval if you can show that the adviser was negligent? <-- I don't think so, this apparently requires some trickery in changing previous credits I have (which is possible per the program coordinator). But those credits are in my advisor's name so it requires his approval to convert...

However I can still change my program to a non-thesis program, I just will have to take more credits. I was told this would be incredibly dumb for my advisor to attempt to prevent. This is my "worst case" scenario route however as I will have to take more credits.

I need my advisor's permission to convert to the independent study.

You sent the request once and waited a week.  Since this is August, you should either wait a second week before proceeding with the next step, or try to find out from someone if your advisor is out of town.
The second step is to Reply to your email from a week ago, to your advisor, with a cc to the graduate director, saying

I look forward to receiving your reply.

If there is still no response within a reasonable amount of time, then put the problem in the graduate director's lap.
If the graduate director does not feel sufficiently authorized to take action (such as signing in your advisor's place) then go to the head of the department, or higher still, if need be.  That would probably be a dean.  Watch out -- there are often large numbers of "assistant deans" who are sometimes ineffective.  I would hesitate to work with one of those.  On the other hand, it can be effective to work with the dean's secretary.  Deans' secretaries are usually as smart as a button, and efficient.  A good secretary will sometimes listen to your tale of woe, and then call you back a little while later to tell you the problem has been taken care of -- without you having to do anything.

This line concerns me the most

It has taken an average of almost 4 months for me to get feedback

You should likely talk to the Dean or Provost of your department.  Be ready to show that you're being proactive, but your current advisor's lack of attention has shut you down.  Go on ahead and start figuring out how to switch programs of study without your advisor's approval.
You will likely ruin whatever relationship you have left with your current advisor, but it sounds like you've done what you can to keep communication open, and your advisor hasn't reciprocated.  After 4 months of in-attention, its time to figure out how to go around, not through.

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current supervisor vs. previous work
My M.Sc. Thesis' abstract got accepted for presentation at a conference this year and I am about to send the paper. Should I give the paper to my current supervisor (of my Ph.D. in a different University) to read it and have an opinion?
EDIT: Including answers to comments
My previous supervisor has read it and gave me feedback. He suggested me sending the abstract and his relationship with my current supervisor does not exist since they don't know each other.

That's up to you and him, really. Has your previous supervisor already looked it over?

Welcome to Academia SE. As it stands your question is very broad or unclear, respectively. What are your goals and concerns? Do you need additional feedback? What feedback did you already get? Why do you think you should not do this? What is the relation between your new and old supervisor, their areas of expertise, and your topics?

Since you already have feedback from your previous supervisor (who presumably knows the research in question much better since it was done with him) it's not critical to get feedback from your new advisor. But any feedback can be useful, especially if your new advisor is in the same area.
I would at least make your new advisor aware of the paper and ask if they want to read it, just so there won't be any surprises or perceptions that you are publishing "behind their back". Leave it up to them if they want to give you feedback or not.

Yes, it's your current supervisor's job to coach you.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Engineering Major applying to Pure Math Grad school
I'm an engineering student from Korea, but I'm going to apply to graduate school in pure mathematics (to US, UK, and other European schools). I took several classes in math and I'd like to know what other courses I should take for my application to be considered "good enough". I took and got A from the following courses:
Undergraduate: Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Number Theory, Algebraic Curves
Graduate: Algebra I, Commutative Algebra, Differentiable Manifolds, Riemannian Geometry, Algebraic Topology

What other math courses should I take for my application to be considered seriously?
Can I take graduate courses instead to demonstrate proficiency in the courses in Question 1?
For example, if I am advised to take undergraduate Topology class, does taking graduate Algebraic Topology class count as taking the undergraduate Topology class?
Is it bad if I took all the courses in Question 1, but didn't meet the requirements for obtaining B.Sc in Mathematics in my school?
For example, my school requires that I take Statistics as part of the B.Sc requirement, but other schools may not.

Thanks a lot in advance..!
Edit: I added where I'm studying at and where I'll be applying to.

It seems to me you're missing real analysis or you forgot to mention it?

Please tell which country or countries are relevant for the question, and if you want, something about the target university. Do you have a bachelor's degree or master's degree or equivalent?

@scaahu I actually didn't take any analysis class. I self-studied the basics (including complex analysis) but didn't take the advanced analysis classes.

@TommiBrander I'm a student from Korea, and I will be applying to graduate schools in US, UK, Japan, Switzerland and Germany (if it's too expensive I'll choose not to apply to some). I will be earning a bachelor's degree in some engineering discipline in 1~2 years. The universities I will be applying to are the usual competitive ones (Stanford, MIT, ...).

If you've already gotten an A in a bunch of graduate Math classes and you still have 1-to-2 years left of undergrad, it seems like you should be able to get a double major in Math pretty easily - or is that not how it works over there?

Depends on where you are. I don't think you are required to have studied on graduate level at all to start a PhD programme in some countries - just finish the BSc and then you can start. In some it's required to finish a MSc to be considered for starting in one.

@Nat the problem is that I only took graduate school courses out of interest and didn't bother taking the undergraduate classes that I self-studied. Now I need to make up for it by taking it all again...

Follow-up: I ended up just doing math double major anyway and took all the vital courses mentioned in the reply.

You don't say where in the world you are or where in the world you want to be.  Giving this information would allow for a more targeted response, as the mathematical background of students entering a graduate program varies quite significantly by location: in particular, most European undergraduates take exclusively courses in mathematics and closely associated fields, whereas for most American undergraduates mathematics occupies less than half of all the undergraduate courses they take.  I will answer with respect to an American PhD program in mathematics, since that is what I am more familiar with.
With that in mind: your overall math background seems quite strong to me.  It is more than enough so that admissions committees will overlook the fact that your undergraduate major was not mathematics.  That you took and excelled in five graduate courses is better preparation than the average incoming math PhD student at most American PhD programs and is similar to the average background of beginning students at, say, programs ranked 11-25 or so.  [Give or take: I have been affiliated with programs ranked both above and below 11-25 so can make an educated guess, but my direct experience is more limited.]

What other math courses should I take for my application to be considered seriously?

The one noticeable omission is in analysis.  Both differentiable manifolds and Riemannian geometry use some analysis topics, but far from all.  Your application will be taken seriously already, but your chances would be better if you had courses like: real analysis (undergrad or graduate level), metric spaces / general topology and complex analysis.  In the US system, undergraduate real analysis -- taught out of Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis or a more recent equivalent -- is taken by most "serious" undergraduate math majors and is perhaps the number one course that admissions committees want to see an applicant take and excel in.

Can I take graduate courses instead to demonstrate proficiency in the courses in Question 1? For example, if I am advised to take undergraduate Topology class, does taking graduate Algebraic Topology class count as taking the undergraduate Topology class?

The answer is that it depends on a lot of factors.  In the example that you give, undergraduate topology is desirable but not required.  Taking graduate topology looks great...but it doesn't entirely cover undergraduate topology, depending upon what that means.  In the US, unless otherwise specified, undergraduate topology is primarily general topology, which you are not going to learn much about in an graduate algebraic topology course.
Another consideration is that -- at least at the American institutions I'm familiar with -- grading in graduate courses is often different and more lax than in undergraduate courses.  For instance, in more than half of the graduate courses I've ever taught, every student has received an A grade.  For almost every undergraduate course I've ever taught, 25% or less of the class received an A.  (It is a strange coincidence that the notable exception was...general topology, in which almost half of the small number of students taking the course got an A.)  On the other hand, this is not always true.  If you have recommendation letters from the faculty who taught these courses explaining convincingly why you were one of the best students in the course, you'll probably get "full credit" for your grades.

Is it bad if I took all the courses in Question 1, but didn't meet the requirements for obtaining B.Sc in Mathematics in my school? For example, my school requires that I take Statistics as part of the B.Sc requirement, but other schools may not.

Not really.  Most math admissions committees care about what you know and they find that out in large part by looking at your coursework.  We tend not to care so much about meeting other requirements.
On the other hand, now that I look over your story I admit to being a bit curious / confused about why your major is in engineering rather than mathematics.  According to your SE profiles, you have been studying and also taking graduate level mathematics courses for the last three years.  In a recent comment, you say will receive an undergraduate engineering degree in 1-2 years.  It doesn't quite add up to me -- with the math courses you've taken, how could you possibly be any further than 1-2 years away from a math degree?  You might want to address this point in your personal statement.
Added: I am currently the Graduate Coordinator of the mathematics department at the University of Georgia (and thus the chair of the committee that does graduate admissions).

One more way in which location matters a lot here: in some places, a "calculus" course may cover most of the material of an undergraduate real analysis class in the US (including a lot of general topology).  I know this is the case, for example, in Germany.  (The OP has now said they're in Korea; I have no idea what calculus classes include there.)

Thank you! For your information, I'm a student from Korea, and I'll be applying to schools in US, UK, and some European schools. I ended up being in this "limbo" because I took bunch of graduate-level classes for fun and didn't think about the subject requirements I need to meet to get a double major.

Our calculus course covers up to multivariable integration and related topics like Lagrange multiplier. But I do need to take some advanced analysis courses indeed. Thank you for the advice.

You have a far more than adequate preparation in the area of algebra, but your lack of basic analysis and topology courses could be a problem.  On the other hand, you have taken several more advanced courses in topology and geometry.
Depending upon how it is taught, an algebraic topology class may have very little to do with general point-set topology.  So there might or might not be a significant gap in your knowledge.  Similarly, you have taken graduate courses in differential geometry, which generally require some knowledge of analysis and topology, but it is difficult to know exactly how much you might be missing.
Some graduate programs in pure mathematics may dismiss your application out of hand, for lack of basic analysis classes.  However, most admissions committees will take a more holistic view of your application.  For example, algebra is your strongest area, and if your stated intention is to work in algebra, that will probably help you.
Most importantly, though, will be how your letters of recommendation read.  Your will probably need at least two letters of recommendation from mathematics faculty, and these letters may be able to explain away your lack of certain courses.  If the professor you had for differential geometry can write a strong letter, which specifically attests to your understanding of the important elements of analysis, then you should be in a very strong position.  I would suggest that you talk specifically with your letter writers about these issues; point out to them that you are missing certain courses that would normally be taken by pure math majors, and ask whether they can highlight your knowledge of the relevant subject matter.  If you can get strong letters that tell the admissions committee that you have the relevant knowledge, your chances of admission should be pretty good.

Could you tell me if you have been involved in a graduate school admission process?

@progressiveforest Yes, I have been involved in graduate admissions.  Although I am actually on the applied side of mathematics, I am familiar with the inner working of pure math admissions as well.

Your Question 1: Pick a couple of target schools and analyze their sequence of classes.  Work your way back through the prerequisites step by step.  That will help you discover any gaps in your training.  These gaps might not prevent you from gaining admission, but they might slow you down once you start your new program.
Your Question 2: That would be fine, as long as the course is a good match for you.  This is something for you and the instructor to decide.  You can decide tentatively prior to the start of the course, and you can check in again a couple of weeks into the course.
Your Question 3: In principle it's okay if your coursework doesn't exactly match the requirements of a particular undergraduate math degree program.  But you need to think carefully about where you want to end up eventually in your research and in your career, which might include teaching.  If you have the time, it would be good if you could give yourself more breadth, even beyond the courses that you end up choosing by following the procedure I outlined in Question 1.


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Doing PhD in Germany vs the Netherlands
I am planning to apply for a Ph.D. grant. I have two options, one in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and the other one in Stuttgart, Germany.
The one in Amsterdam is 38h per week. The remuneration is
€2,395 to € 4,402 gross per month and a favorable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants, I am not Dutch.
The one in Stuttgart is 40h per week and the remuneration is according to (TV-L E13 level).
How much the net salary will be?
I don't know how much income tax will apply in either of these countries.
I know there are a lot of other factors I need to take into consideration.
If you have any suggestions or recommendations,
please share them here.
Thank you so much.

Commonly in the Netherlands, you start at 2395 and it goes up every year according to a fixed table. You should be able to get the specifics from the university, the range you give here is huge. In any case, keep living costs in mind (mainly rent and health insurance could differ a lot).

This might help: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7231/what-is-a-tv-l-13-position There are a few other TV-L questions in this forum. I think usually a full time position will be 39.5 hours per week.

@Wacek, having completed a phd in the Netherlands, 38h per week can be realistic, but this varies by field, university, and supervisor.

@Wacek Unlike in the US, in the EU many universities actually take seriously the contract and labor laws, and actively step up to prevent the 60-80 hrs /week scenarios.

Considering the difference in living costs between the countries and cities, and the goal of a PhD, I do not think your main consideration should be the exact value of salary. Small things like living conditions, lab culture, can much more impactful of your overall wellbeing, and you should also consider professional / scientific value of the two projects, too.

@Wacek Well, bad for you. Personal experience in Austria and Germany that several labs shut down before 6 pm, and talking with colleagues this happens in other places, too (chemistry, too).

Just to clarify: of course, reading, writing can (and often does) take extra time, but at least not in the lab.

The salary range for the Amsterdam position is almost certainly a mistake and should read €2395 to €3061. It would average out (over the 4 years and your progression through the salary range) to ~€2200 after taxes per month but there are holiday and end-of-year bonuses which push it up to ~€2400. Additionally, €500/month is going towards a pension fund. This is money you can't immediately access but obviously it still has value.
If the 30% ruling applies (one of the conditions is that you need to be under 30, have a master's degree and relocate from abroad), 30% of the income will be untaxed. As a very rough first estimate, this would net you an additional €200-400 per month (at the expense of losing out on some relatively insignificant social security benefits).
I don't know the German situation well enough to comment on that, but hopefully this gives you a rough idea of what you would earn in the Netherlands. Note that, for a proper comparsion, in the Netherlands you must have mandatory health insurance which is ~€100/month (which you could view as a kind of tax).

You're right, the range for Amsterdam was certainly a mistake. That range was actually for postdocs not for PhDs. thanks for correcting that. And thank you for your good answer.

@Wacek No. It can still be paid out if you retire when living abroad. You can also choose to immediately transfer the accumulated pension to your new pension fund if you take up employment elsewhere.

@Tom van der Zanden, Yes indeed you can. But take into account that when you get it paid out you will probably have to pay taxes over it, it is not tax free money, so that reduces the value somewhat.

Quite certainly the number of hours listed will be irrelevant. It would be extremely unusual for a PhD student to be on the clock.
The salary range listed for Amsterdam is gigantic. Your net salary in Germany will depend on various personal factors, e.g. whether you are married, if so how much your spouse makes; whether you have children and what religion you are. However, in both cases the salary will ultimately be sufficient for a modest lifestyle; and that is what matters.
The aspects you should focus on are:

Do you forsee that working in the research group will be pleasant and productive?
Do you trust that the PhD supervisor will be capable and willing to act as an effective mentor for you?
Is the idea of living in Amsterdam or Stuttgart respectively for several years appealing to you? Or at least, not off-putting? [If you are planning to bring anyone else along, the same question applies to them.]

You are right, the range for Amsterdam was a mistake. That was for postdocs not for PhDs.

The number of hours listed is extremely relevant since that decides what the monthly gross is (irrespectively of what the actual hours worked are). 40 h/wk is a 100 % position.

@cbeleites that may be so in germany, but in the Netherlands 38h weeks are a fulltime position (though people sometimes work 40 and get additional leave days in return)

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX It is relevant that both positions are fulltime. The hour-numbers don't matter.

@user53923: also 38, 39, 39.5 h/week would all be called full time position in Germany. But there are also PhD positions that are nominally 19-20 h/wk (50 % part time) or 26-ish h/wk (65 % part time). The latter positions will yield half and 65 %, respectively, of the gross wage of a full position. This percentage is the single most important variable factor in finding out how money a PhD student earns. (And those hours paid are in many cases completely independent of the hours a PhD student is expected to work on their thesis).

A full time TV-L 13 position in Germany will give you roughly 2200€ oft net income in the first year, and it increases after 1 year, and again after 2 years.
So I would guess the amount of money you will have in both Amsterdam and Stuttgart will not differ by much more than a few 100€.
From a pure money perspective, you should thus consider:

how much would you roughly spend in each city for rent, food etc.?
how far are the cities from your current home or your family and would you spend considerably more from one of the to places to travel to those?

But as @Arno already remarked, the more important things to consider are the academic surroundings in each place, the research abilities, the prospective colleagues and mentors, as well as things like local language and culture.

yeah, thanks for your answer.

Hmm, might it be possible that you just extrapolated the information in the first half sentence from your own experience? In fact, it is not possible to determine the net income without additional information about the OP's personal situation (as pointed out in Arno's answer).

@JochenGlueck: it's possible to do a worst-case calculation with tax class I, no kids and high additional health insurance fees of 1.7 % etc. Everything else will lead to higher net (exluding tax class 6, but presumably the PhD position will not be accompanied by any higher paying side job). For a 100 % (40 h/wk) TVL 13-1 for BaWü I get about 2500 € net with the settings above.