text:
Is there hard evidence that the grant peer review system performs significantly better than random?
Funding agencies in academia use peer review to assess the quality of submitted grant proposals and to decide which proposals should be funded. I have some doubts that this system actually works based on the following findings:

A recent study in PNAS "found no agreement among reviewers in
evaluating the same application".
We have by ourselves performed boot strapping on reviews provided
for the same proposal submitted at multiple calls in multiple years
(yes, the guidelines allowed this) and obtained on average almost exactly the overall average acceptance rate of the calls.

My question is now in the opposite direction ... Given that the grant review and panel system is quite costly: is there hard evidence that the grant peer review system provides results significantly better than random?
E.g. Do studies exist where e.g. 50 proposals were funded based on the standard review process and 50 random proposals were funded at the same call and then 5 or 7 years later the number of high profile papers, citations or similar was counted? Or do studies exist were re-evaluations show the same outcome as the original evaluations of proposals?

A quick comment: The PNAS study you mention could not reliably distinguish grants within a pool of previously deemed excellent grants (they had all been funded by the NIH). That is not the same as finding that the process could not distinguish mediocre from excellent grants. Just something to keep in mind.

If proposals were decided on wholly by RNG, I know that I would have handed in a lot more proposals than I have so far.

This is related for entrepreneurship grants in Nigeria. They used the design you suggested and found that scores were not a predictor of success.  https://www.poverty-action.org/study/identifying-and-spurring-high-growth-entrepreneurship-experimental-evidence-business-plane

Random allocation on which sample set of researchers? All university staff? All people that declare themselves interested in doing research on a certain topic (for instance, "vaccines" or "global warming")? All registered users on Arxiv? All registered users on Vixra?

@sgf and FedericoPoloni make the most compelling challenge to your question. The fact that there is known to be a review process will alter who submits what. Comparing accepted/rejected proposals submitted to review, versus a random sample of proposals submitted to review, would likely yield very different results than comparing accepted/rejected proposals submitted to review versus a random sample of proposals submitted to a funding source known to randomly select proposals for funding.

Not all agencies use peer review. In particular, the US Department of Defense uses a program manager model where funding decisions are largely made by one person who then oversees research progress and has the ability to direct follow-on funding. The PM is further responsible for their research portfolio producing results. A more likely comparison would be between the panel and the PM model.

You might be interested: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115231/why-is-peer-review-so-random

Does the word "hard" contribute anything to the requirement for evidence here?

@ASimpleAlgorithm I take the word "hard evidence" to mean based on experimental data and some statistics, as opposed to "anecdotal evidence". It's there to reinforce that answers to this question should not be of the form "This once happened when I was in the panel", "Expert X writes that", or "My opinion is".

You're misrepresenting the PNAS study and its conclusions, the usual meaning people will understand by peer review is 'accept/reject/request (minor/major) revisions'. You might as well argue that individual members of the Nobel Prize [scientific] committees have widely differing votes.

You might want to check out this paper which, indeed, proposes to add randomness for efficient funding strategies.

@FedericoPoloni Perhaps "scientific evidence" then? I rather feel "hardness" of evidence is in the eye of the beholder. An irrefutable anecdote could certainly be "hard evidence" in a court case. Meanwhile even scientific studies have major problems repeatability.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/49087/8185

No such study exists.
You have to realize that the current model of funding research through grants is rather recent. Fifty years ago, research was funded with recurring credits: a lab/researcher got a fixed amount of money each year to do research as they saw fit. Only applied researchers got industrial grants to develop precise new applications, but this wasn't the core of their funding.
The current system arose due to the combination of two factors:

The growing hegemony of the neo-liberal ideology in the 80s-90s and the commodification of society as a whole. According to this ideology, research as a whole is supposedly more efficient (for an ill-defined notion of "efficient") if researchers compete with one another on the global market of research funding. They will "naturally" tend to research what works in order to keep their funding.
Politicians' will to govern research. Research, and especially fundamental research, is a notoriously difficult thing to govern: you never know where an idea might lead, or what new ideas will come up along the way. You don't know what will work and what won't. You don't know what will be applicable and what will remain a nice theoretical idea. Otherwise it wouldn't be research.
But rulers want their word in this: they want to tell their voters that their policies improved lives in a very direct way as a result of such and such decision they took. This is why words like "governance" and "steering" are becoming more and more prevalent in modern academia: administrators are not in the business of just helping researchers carry out their research, they are in the business of ensuring that researchers are researching what they are supposed to. And how do you force someone to do what you want, short of physical violence? Through economical violence.

Of course, this yields absurd situations, such as the fabled year when the French National Research Agency spent more on administration than on research. And such thinking paves the way for short-term research with zero long term goals, and especially not goals reachable in more than five years (the usual length of "long-term" grants). But these decisions are not driven by rational thought; they are driven by ideology.

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I don't know about such studies, but I have served on ~20 panels to review proposals. While I'm entirely willing to believe that multiple panels will not agree on the relative ordering of proposals, I am quite convinced that they will in general agree on which proposals are "good" and which are "not good".
In any given round, a panel (at the National Science Foundation) will review on the order of 20 proposals. What may not be obvious to outsiders is that of these 10 are pretty obviously not fundable. 3-5 are eventually rated as excellent and the remainder as "pretty good". I am pretty convinced that if you ran multiple panels on these 20 proposals, that this classification into three groups will be more or less stable. What I am also convinced of is that panels will produce different rankings within each group.
The consequence is that it is quite possible that different panels will results in a different set of proposals being funded, given that only ~4 proposals out of the 20 will be funded. But overall, the result will still be far from random. The top 3-5 are still likely to be funded, the bottom 10 will definitely not be funded, and it's a toss-up in between.

Having sat on a similar number of panels (for internal proposals) I am entirely in agreement on this. You get 10 people to rank 20 proposals, and they fall into those three categories in about those ratios. If anything, it is pleasantly surprising to see a room full of people with different backgrounds and priorities generally agree on 80% of the proposals (12 are bad, 4 are excellent) and only need to hash out which of the remaining 4 are worthy and then only if there is enough money.

Hmm the study linked above finds the opposite: "discussion during study section meetings worsened rather than improved disagreement among different study sections. " (study section meetings = panel meetings)

I've never served on a grant review board, but this agrees with my experience in other settings where I had to choose from a set of candidate (selecting papers for conferences, best paper awards and recruiting). So from outside it looks as if the final winner is a random choice from the top X submissions. But @Buffy's notes above how the peer review does improve the grant proposals. So we could peer review to get the grant accepted in a pool, then randomly select from the pool?

@rcriii: Yes, that's my experience: It would be enough to cluster proposals into pools. The NSF asks panelists to also rank proposals in the top and middle pool, presumably so that they have some backing for when they make the call on a particular proposal to be funded or not. I suspect that the outcome is not vastly better than by just randomly picking from the pool.

@lordy I have never personally been part of a grant selection committee where what is described has occurred.   I know anecdotally that - depending on the field - some will vigorously depend their choices but quite honestly true curmudgeons are rarely regularly invited to such panels largely because committee chairs and grant managers seek consensus rather than division.

I agree with this answer based on my experience submitting proposals. You need a good proposal to "get there" and then it's random. If acceptance rates were around 30% this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, we're seeing acceptance rates below 15% in most cases (in my area) and sometimes even significantly lower. With these rates the chance of ending up empty handed even with a strong proposal (and the associated time waste) is very high.

20 proposals. What may not be obvious to outsiders is that of these 10 are pretty obviously not fundable. 3-5 are eventually rated as excellent and the remainder as "pretty good" — If you're lucky.  I have served on panels that judged only 2 proposals to be obviously unfundable, 10 to be merely excellent, and the remaining 8 to be funded all possible costs.  (And then to the program manager: "We refuse to rank them, even though you claim to have money to fund only three proposals.  Argue with your boss.")  I have also served on panels that did not recommend even one proposal for funding.

@JeffE: Yes, this happens. My statement was about averages, and I believe the average happens relatively frequently.

There are 2 questions. You answer that the ranking is not random. But how a "good" proposal correlates with a proposal that leads to good research is a different problem.

There is another aspect to the question at hand. A random assignment of monies to projects can be expected to fail because the system in place, whatever it is, induces certain behaviors. One wants to design a system so that positive behavior is encouraged and negative behavior discouraged.
In a system of peer review those seeking funds are induced to give their analysis of why their proposed project should be funded and why it is highly likely to be successful. They know that their words will have consequences and that the review will be carried out by knowledgeable people who have assumed a certain responsibility.
But if the system were random, and known to be random, the behavior induced would be quite different. There would be no real need to spend the time and effort to examine and explain the background and methodology to be used and to guarantee that it meets scientific rigor. The consequence would be that many more proposals would be made and most of them would be junk.
With that background, note that the proposals that are actually made to funding agencies are pretty much all guaranteed to be at least adequate. So the peer review boards are choosing from among the best proposals that might be expected, rather from the trash that might be thrown out by charlatans.
This brings me to a thought experiment that I've used in other contexts. Suppose, in a system that repeats, you rank a set of things on some linear scale from best to worst, and you discard the worst. The worst is replaced. This is sometimes what happens in companies that rank employees on some numeric scale and fire the worst performer.
But, if you started out with the, say, ten best performers in the world, your system will only worsen your overall system, since everyone else will be worse than the ten you start with.
Thus the question asked by the OP doesn't occur in a vacuum. Nor, I suggest, can the various proposals be ranked in theory on a best to worst scale. There are too many variables and something better on one scale isn't as good on another. So, while the system has flaws, it is in the nature of the world that some flaws will exist. But a system that induces and rewards good behavior is, in principle, about as good as we can hope for.
The various judgments made by the review boards are, in the larger sense of things, relatively minor.

"the proposals that are actually made to funding agencies are pretty much all guaranteed to be at least adequate" -- this is empirically not true. About 20-30% of the proposals I've reviewed (which must now be in the range of 200-300) are not adequate by any measure.

But I'll add that these are not written by charlatans, but typically by younger scientists at smaller universities with inadequate mentoring by those who know how winning proposals look like.

You are assuming that all submitted proposals enter the lottery. This need not be the case. You can still screen the proposals and dismiss those which are clearly inadequate.

@CarlChristian that is not the definition of "random". Currently we have some degree of randomness in that different panels have different people. And different competition. People re-submit grants without any edits and get them just because competition or review panel changed

@aaaaaa I do not see that your comment has any bearing on the fact that Buffy assumes that all submitted proposals enter the lottery. Drawing lots among all adequate proposals eliminates any possibility of  favoritism of any kind. This includes the well documented bias against female scientists. If there is a downside to drawing lots which compares against such gains, I simply do not see it.

@Carl Christian: your last comment is just wrong. The well-documented bias against female scientists would continue, in that female scientists would have a smaller probability of having their work judged "adequate". This new system would have all the same potential for bias that the old system did.

Short answer:
Such hard evidence probably does not currently exist. Recently, however, a random "funding lottery" scheme has been implemented in New Zealand, and is being studied. However, the sample size is small, and it may take until at least 2026 before real data is obtained.

Why there is a lack of evidence:
In the RAND report Alternatives to Peer Review in Research Project Funding: 2013 Update it was noted that "the idea of randomly allocating research funding has been developed theoretically and is used by some institutions for small grants". While it's clear that the award of said small grants avoids some of the biases inherent in peer review-based funding and much of the administrative burden, the fact that the grants are small (e.g. some are appropriately sized for travel funding) means that the one cannot really infer anything about large-scale random funding schemes.
Things have evolved somewhat since. A 2018 paper titled "Policy Considerations for Random Allocation of Research Funds" by Shahar Avin notes that at least three major funding bodies have started allocating some funds using a degree of randomization. This includes

The Health Research Council (HRC) of New Zealand's “Explorer Grants”.
New Zealand’s Science for Technology Innovation's (SfTI) “Seed Projects”.
Volkswagen Foundation’s “Experiment!” grants.

HRC describes the Explorer Grants as follows:

Explorer grants support transformative research ideas that have a good chance of making a revolutionary change to how we manage New Zealanders' health. They are available in any health research discipline and are worth $150,000 for a term of up to 24 months.
  ...
  Applications for explorer grants are assessed by subpanels within the HRC's Explorer Grant Assessing Committee to see if they meet the criteria of being both transformative and viable. Unlike with any of our other grants, the assessment process for explorer grant applications is anonymous and all applications that meet the criteria are equally eligible to receive funding. A random number generator prioritises these applications.

The HRC does not use this scheme for other grants, but believes

that random funding is a fair and transparent way to choose between equally qualified applicants, and it's particularly suited to Explorer Grants where it may not be appropriate to rank or score high-risk applications with less predictable outcomes.

The SfTI Seed project proposals similarly undergo an initial assessment, and then a some of them form a special pool, from which proposals are randomly drawn. Proposals for the Volkswagen Foundation's Experiment! are screened by an interdisciplinary jury that funds some proposals, rejects some, and leaves some for a funding lottery.
As such, HRC's Explorer Grants are the most interesting from this aspect, as all proposals meeting the minimum requirements go into the lottery. This is why they are currently being studied:

A funding lottery creates a perfect randomized trial because we have equally worthy researchers who are funded at random. We can then track their careers from the point of randomization and compare them in terms of metrics such as publications, citations, and other funding, as well as perhaps more-complex outcomes, such as innovation. We are currently following researchers who applied for funding with the New Zealand Health Research Council and were randomly allocated funding (3); however, the sample size is small, and it may be at least a decade before we have accumulated enough data to show meaningful differences.

Summary:
In conclusion, there does not seem to be any hard evidence that the grant peer review system performs better than a process with random selection for proposals meeting minimum standards. (Like the other answer writers, I'm fairly sure a random system with no quality checks would lead to opportunistic low-standard applications...) The reason is that such randomized funding has basically not been attempted. The same letter cited above hints at the real reason why this hasn't been studied more, despite lacking evidence for the peer review-based system:

We have spoken with Australian funding agencies about using a lottery, and the reaction was strongly negative, with one staff member saying, “It would make it look like we don’t know what we’re doing.” A key concern is that politicians and the public would react negatively <...>

Your original question assumes that the denominator (i.e. the set of proposals submitted) is likely to stay the same (or similar) in the quality of submissions across both pools (peer-reviewed vs. random chance). But that may no longer be true once a program puts out a call with a 50% random chance - as the quality demographics could dramatically change at submission.

This will only be a supplement to the answer here of user106886. That answer discusses an interpretation of the actions of political actors. However, not all funding is from the government, so I'll write here about another option: private funding.
Back during the Renaissance, artists and scientists were funded by patrons, often kings and princes, who controlled vast sums. There is still a vestige of patronage now in some circles. Web comics can be funded now, for example, by Patreon, thorough which people (like myself) pledge a few dollars a month to support the creators of the comics. We, the patrons, have no real influence on what gets created as each is a small part of a larger whole.
But most private funding is from profit making companies, usually publicly traded companies who must justify expenditures. The rules of the game are that those deciding how to spend money have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders that monies are properly spent in furtherance of the goals of the company. Therefore, money can't just be given out randomly, but requires some assurance that it will be well spent. This results in a pre-review of some kind, though not exactly the same as that required for government funding.
There is a review and it is similar, at least, to peer review. It could even be peer review, as most companies wanting to fund research in X normally also have research departments skilled already in X. If a company gets 10 proposals and can only fund 3 of them, it needs to do a cost-benefit analysis before it can award funds, even if the analysis is flawed. It has to appear to be valid on its face.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk, could, in principle use their own money to conduct a random experiment, but Microsoft and Tesla cannot. If the company gives you money they need some expectation that it will be properly spent and not wasted.

Unfortunately, I don't know of such a study, so this is more like comment that was too long for the comment box:
Grants, especially big ones, also include a lot of politics. "Is this research topic interesting for the international reputation of our country?", etc. Thus, also the peer review is needed, because "I gave these guys 50 millions because a coin flip decided on that" doesn't sound as good as "a committee of experts discussed for 8 months and decided...".
I personally (without backing of any data or study) think that it is really hard to determine high quality (number of papers, etc.) before hand, so it might well be that random would be just as good; but as explained above, even if peer review is no better than random, we still need it for political reasons, and of course to prevent total garbage or spam submissions just to get funds.

I do not know your definition of "hard evidence". But if it has any clause about anything needing to pass peer-review then you should think twice and realize the catch 22 in this situation.
Anyone trying to publish such a thing, do you think they would be afraid of not getting grant next time, maybe? I would not expect them to get renewed grants anytime soon as what they are trying to publish is undermining the influence of how the grants work.

"Next time" they won't have the same reviewers. Also, "the grants" and a venue publishing such a study are not identical.

@henning the reviewers supposedly also want grants in the future no matter who they are for the moment.


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How to avoid personal issues interfering with my Ph.D. studies?
Background
My life had (and still has) difficult problems (chronic disease and its consequences: social isolation, anxiety, having to take extra measures to take care of my health...). As a disclaimer, I am in psychological therapy right now.
That being said, I managed to finish my bachelor’s degree (mathematics, with a very uneven transcript with both very high and very low grades) and after that I did my master's degree, this time with very high grades. I did my master's thesis and then I was offered Ph.D. admission by the same research group in which I did the master's thesis.
To the point
Now, the problem is that I am constantly reevaluating if I should do my Ph.D or 1) either find another program or 2) move outside the academia, and I am unable to make this decision due to the fact that I think personal issues are interfering. I identify several more or less objective problems:

The Ph.D is in an applied department (biology), which is formed by specialists in the area, I have been told the research group is good in its area by a professor from another department (from the same university) which I trust, but since I am a newbie and have little knowledge about the area, I cannot test it myself. I have been here for 6 months.
I did not choose this Ph.D. They chose me. I think ph.D students are actually scarce where I live, and that is a reason why they hired me. I feel I could be in a more satisfying Ph.D program or area.
It is likely difficult for me to get funding in other Ph.D programs due to the problem stated above. This Ph.D is the comfort zone, I have funding (this is Spain, where even in private companies salaries, for graduate students with no experience, are not that high).
I feel like academia is a good fit because it allows me to work without a fixed schedule and in a non stressing environment. Note that I have not really worked outside academia.
My Ph.D supervisor is great, I like her as a person. But although she is a mathematician, I sometimes feel like she left mathematics and now she is a biologist more than a mathematician. This is leading me to think she not the right person to supervise a mathematician, past Ph.D students are happy with her, but most of them have biology related studies. Also,
She chose a Ph.D subject which is now in stagnation. I warned my Ph.D supervisor about this likely outcome several months ago and she told me to trust her, up to a point where we showed we could no longer apply the technique (a particular machine learning technique) we were trying to apply to the topic, leading to now being trying to publish a result so that the time employed is not lost. I now feel as if we were trying to desperately find something to publish from a technique that has proven not to be effective. Not to mention that reading through papers in biology is difficult, as I find myself not understanding lots of things.
I have enjoyed research, but not most of the time, I fear this has to do with personal problems not letting me concentrate, when I should be reading papers, I end up procrastinating with the phone or forums. I can concentrate when I like what I am doing, but not right now. I also do not feel like I have a strong passion for researching in a particular topic.
I am also concerned about overspecializing in a particular topic that leads me to not being hired afterwards.

So the question is, How can I make sure I want to pursue a ph.D?,  i. e.  pretty much what title says, I want to avoid personal issues interfering with the decision.

I was offered a Ph.D by the same department --- Perhaps change this to "I was offered Ph.D. admission by the same department". It wasn't until the next paragraph that I realized I had completely misunderstood your background information.

(1) I don't think you can 'make sure' you want to pursue a PhD - life is a series of choices few of which are unambiguously right or wrong. (2) Personal issues should always 'interfere' with life decisions - they are personal for a reason!

The problem is easier than it seems. Your first responsibility is to yourself. What you most need to do is find a way to build a life for yourself that you will enjoy over the long term. This could involve a PhD or not, however, you seem to really be attracted to Academia where a doctorate is required. Earning the degree might actually be the sacrifice you make to achieve your goal. But keep the "good life" rather than the PhD foremost as your goal.
A number of things in what you say indicate that you might profitably look at a different subfield than mathematical biology. You can use your current position, as well as your past education, as a base from which to conduct your search, speaking with other potential supervisors and even institutions. Don't underestimate the value of a good supervisor, of course, and she may be able to help you if you approach her in the right way.
Having been chosen, rather than choosing is possibly a big part of your problem. You "went along" at a point at which it might have been better to "take charge". This led to a number of your other dissatisfactions, I think. But you can take charge without making a clean break at this point until you see something that you really want to do.
Also, since you were chosen you should have confidence that your skills are not in doubt.

I'd focus on your "topic change" issue. Disclaimer: I am a mathematician, who got his further degrees in CS and is currently intensively collaborating with people from life sciences. It's fun.
Do not fear that it will be to shallow!
Yes, you'd be probably working on applications of mathematics to biology, some simulations, formalization, or just convolute data processing.
No, there will be enough depth for research. The more you focus on an area, the more unholy abyss opens there. The how and why exactly questions are the same as everywhere else.
Now, for soft-skills: they suggested the position to you. This means, they are quite sure, you are capable. Have some trust.
I am deliberately not commenting on your health issues, this is something someone other than strangers on the internet should advice you.

Thank you very much for your answer, health issues are, indeed, out of the question, and actually nowadays under control and going well. I simply wanted to mention it because it has had and has an impact in my career.

One other point to consider is that while pursuing a PhD degree requires a long-term commitment to complete, accepting a PhD offer does not imply that you must go through the whole process come “hell or high water.” Even (and especially) in countries that issue contracts for PhD students, there is usually a probationary or exploratory period during which either or both sides can decide things aren’t working out for whatever reason and move on with no shame or negative consequences other than the time and resources already spent.
So, unless you’re absolutely against accepting the position or just don’t want to work in the discipline (and even that can change later!) I don’t see much of a reason not to give it a try.

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Doing a STEM Masters after a non-recognized Masters/PhD
I am from a third-world African country. I have a STEM Masters degree from a non-recognized university (ranked 3000 or more worldwide).
I am doing a PhD at the same university where I will be graduating this year (with only 1 publication and some teaching experience). I want to ask if it is possible to pursue another Masters degree in a reputable university (in Canada or Australia) to strengthen my chances of getting an industry job outside Africa.
When I approach supervisors (or the administration) for my application should I:

Not disclose my status of being a PhD student (Though I still worry about my gap in my CV)? or
Tell them the truth of having a PhD (which I think will ruin my chances of being accepted)? or
Tell them I have a Masters,  but I was doing some teaching and research assistant activities after my Masters (trying to not disclose my status)?

Ignore the ranking of the university. Did you do good work there? Is your advisor supportive? Are you changing fields?

@Buffy Not really a good work. But the article is published in 5+ impact factor journal. My supervisors are not supportive (I sometimes have problems with them)

Do you still need an answer?

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Professor deviating from the syllabus mentioned apriori
I am currently taking a graduate course which is a combination of two subjects and we have two faculty teaching it - call them A and B - one for each subject. Before my classes started, we had an orientation and the syllabi of all the classes were shown to us. In this case, Prof A explained to us the syllabus of both the subjects.
But later, when Prof B started teaching, they have deviated a lot from the syllabus. In particular, the topics that were shown to us in the orientation as the syllabus, were pretty much covered in the first couple of lecture and Prof B taught it to us as "background knowledge" (which we thought was going to be the content of the entire course.) Anecdotally, a lot of students are finding the course difficult due to this reason.
Prof B also hasn't provided us with a syllabus of what he is going to teach and we find out the topics on the day of the lecture.
So my question here is: Would it be appropriate to approach Prof B and let them know that this is not what we were expecting from the course? If so, how do I bring it up without coming off as confrontational? Should I instead talk to Prof A and let them know that the syllabus he presented is different from what is being taught?
[Prof B does us ask us during class if we're understanding the topics, but due to the online nature and it being a fairly large class, people haven't really spoken up.]

Is this a required graduate course, covering material that will be on the qualifiers? Or is it a 'topics in...' course covering recent advances? Either way, to a varying extent, it is high time to understand that graduate school is not undergraduate part 2.

@JonCuster No, this is not a topics course, but rather an introductory course which serves as a prerequisite for more advanced courses in the further semesters. I understand that the gaps in knowledge are meant to be filled by the students in graduate school, but I feel the gap is a bit too much and hence the dilemma, if I should convey this to the professor and if so, how.

Yes, you can speak with both of them, but in the spirit of enquiry, not condemnation. There may be good reasons for it and you have a right to know such things. You especially need to know how much the testing/evaluation framework will follow the original syllabus. And a bit more lead time than "the day of the lecture" is useful for the best students who might be inclined to study ahead of lecture.
Some adjustments may be necessary in the course and your enquiry might lead to them, but it might also lead to a deeper understanding on your part of what is more important in this subject.
There might be a lot of reasons for a deviation, including an inexperienced instructor - or a very experienced one.
And you are in a better position to make guesses about personalities and the effect of an enquiry than anyone here. A reasonable person shouldn't take questions about the syllabus and the expected learning as confrontation.
And, of course, there is also the question of how much scaffolding the professors provide for your learning.


text:
Proof of proficiency in mathematics
Apologise if this question isn't relevant to this forum, I tried my best to look for similar questions but couldn't find one.
I am a computer science major enrolled in a not-so-renowned university in India.
I am in my pre-final year and have taken four math courses. While I did well in the first two (got an O grade i.e the highest grade possible), due to some personal problems, I got a D and a C in the next two courses. Unfortunately, my university does not have a provision to retake the courses.
My eventual plan is to apply for grad school in fields such as machine learning where they require a strong math background.
My question is: how can I show that I know the required math for the courses beyond my uni courses?
One way I thought was of doing MOOCs on the subjects and uploading my solutions to them somewhere? But the general consensus which I found here was that MOOCs don't hold much value when it comes to showing proficiency in a subject.
What are some other ways in which I can demonstrate my proficiency in the subject?
Thank you.
EDIT: The courses where I fared poorly included the following topics (since it's an engineering course, we don't have specific courses like Linear Algebra or Statistics - we instead learn an overview of mixture of a few math subjects each semester) - Fourier Analysis, Laplace Transform, Vector Algebra, Complex Variable and Mapping, Z-transform, Complex Integration, Matrices, Probability, Sampling Theory and Mathematical Programming.)

Are there other (optional) math courses that you could still take in your final year?

Unfortunately, no. The relevant math courses are offered in the first two years of the 4 year degree and I am in my third year right now. I do have electives related to the program I want to specialise in, but other than that, no math courses.

What were the courses?

Edited to add more details.

Do any of your upcoming courses use these topics? Doing well in a course which makes use of vector algebra, for example, (even if it's not explicitly in the title) is a good way of showing you can do vector algebra.

Get a top reputation here.

Are you applying for Master or Ph.D programs? If you plan to apply for Ph.D programs, then you can consider applying a Master program and take a lot of math courses...

Unfortunately, there's no way around crappy grades (other than explaining what happened in your personal statement). But as far as showing that you are competent in these subjects on a grad school application you could:

Do a project which would clearly require knowledge of these topics.
Take the Math Subject GRE and do well, assuming you're applying to programs which care about the subject GREs. The risk here is that what's covered on these exams isn't a perfect match for your integrated courses, but there is a lot of overlap.

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When applying for a position, how do I best reply to a question asking for skills I don’t have?
I am applying for a particular position where they have asked me if I have first-hand experience in protein crystallization and x-ray structure determination. I don’t have experience in any of those but I have mentioned my other experiences as asked. I lack only these.
How should I positively reply back so that it conforms my position there?

Is it something you can easily learn and do you have the necessary background to do so? If so, tell them that. If not - think about it if you want to have a job you probably cannot do.

I'm not sure this is a great fit for Academia S.E. -- it almost seems better suited to Workplace S.E. (even if it is a grad school interview). But I'm not certain enough to VTC.

Thank you tonysdg for suggestion i will post this question there.

@tonysdg: I don’t think it’s off-topic here. This is not one of those situations where everything is generalisable to a non-academic hiring process.

@Wrzlprmft Thank you. Actually i am new to this, so i had no idea where to post.

First of all, do not worry too much about whether this is a strict requirement for the position.
This is something they have to decide (based on your honest assessment of your prerequisites).
Also, if you made it past the first stage of the hiring process, it is likely that this is not a strict criterion.
Additionally note that (depending on country, field, and individuals) job ads that ask for more than they can possibly get are sadly common and in this case it is no problem if you only have a subset of the skills they ask for.
Whether this actually applies to your situation is something you have to judge yourself:
How likely is it that somebody already acquired all the mentioned skills at your stage?
In particular if we are talking about a PhD position here, acquiring relevant skills on the job should be the norm.
That being said, when faced with such a question:

Answer truthfully. You don’t want to do a job you cannot do and it almost certainly ruins your relationship with your advisor if they suspect you were dishonest about this.
Is there anything similar you have experience with or anything that may facilitate you learning these skills? If yes, talk briefly about this.
Do you find the methods in question interesting? If yes, state so and explain why. (If no, you probably should look for another position.) It may very well be that you were asked this question just to check that you do not shiver with disgust in light of these methods.
If it wouldn’t be uncommon to have these skills at your level, explain why you do not have them. For example, if your past universities did not offer a course on them, state this.

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Is there a test equivalent to a bachelor's degree?
Like the GED, which is equivalent to a high school degree, is there a test that you could obtain that is equal the a bachelor's degree? Which states in American can you take it? And what are the requirements? Is there a website? Please leave the link. Or is there some kind of online test that is equal to a bachelor's degree? If not, what would be the quickest way to get a bachelor's degree without going to college/University?
I want a bachelor's degree in Science, space science. I want to get a bachelor's degree quickly cause I feel as if I've wasted years of my life and want to get back on track. I want the bachelor's degree so I can go for a Master's degree.

Bachelor degree in what?- Science, Engineering, ...?

What do you want to do with it? Most of the time, a bachelor alone won't help you if you haven't done the courses required for whatever you want to do with it afterwards.

It might actually be feasible to do this for a two-year degree. Some Community Colleges in the US will give you an Associate of Arts or Associate of Science degree in Liberal Arts or General Studies for taking a well-rounded set of General Education courses. Many of these General Education courses (e.g. Calculus I and II, French I, US History, Intro to Microeconomics, etc.) are ones for which Credit By Exam has long been available - a corresponding Associate's Degree Exam could consist of more or less having to take all or at least most of those exams in one swoop.

No, there is not.
A bachelor's degree isn't a generic thing like a high school diploma.  For example, it makes a big difference what institution it's from and what your major was.  Unlike high school, in the US there aren't government-specified standards for what should be taught or tested for a college degree; each institution makes its own rules (usually under the oversight of accrediting organizations).  So there's no way that a standard test could substitute for a bachelor's degree in general.
There are some reputable colleges and universities that offer online degrees, but it involves a lot more than a single test.  You'd do roughly the same coursework as if you were physically attending the university, and you should expect it to take multiple years.
There are some disreputable "colleges" which will offer a degree based on a single exam, or your life experiences.  These are scams and their degrees are worthless.

"For example, it makes a big difference what institution it's from": I don't know about the US, but also at the high-school level there are big differences between institutions. In fact, when examining my students, I can frequently tell which type of high school they attended.

Obtaining a bachelor's degree means that you have coped with the (at times arcane) requirements of an accredited academic institution. You have learned to read, understand, summarize, spell (we write out "you" and do not capitalize "university" in English), and write for a specific subject area. Some credits can be obtained online and there are a number of more or less dubious institutions that will certify credits for you as long as you pay them. But trying to just buy a sheepskin so that you get the job that requires a bachelor's degree will soon get you into hot water, as the employer will expect you to be able to work at the level of a bachelor.


text:
I'll take a year to apply. Should I search for new logic projects or round up what I have?
I'm graduating in two months (Pure Mathematics), and I'm planning to take 2019 to prepare for applying to PhD programs in the US (in Mathematics or Computer Science, depending on the program). I'm not applying this year because of time constraints. My interests lay within the broad area of logic. I particularly like (generally speaking) to design effective procedures that have a strong theoretical background.
My issue is the following: during the last few years, I have been exploring different research areas (ordered from oldest to newest: a little of BigData, cybersecurity, three full years in a software engineering research lab, and a research internship in Coding Theory. My MSc thesis was in ordinal notations and proof theory, a somewhat abstract logic subject - which I loved).
It's a complex story, but I can explain why I did it: I was exploring! I don't regret any of it, as it was really fun and I, as a human being, have many interests. Now I know I want to focus in logic. My questions are the following:
1) Does it have a negative impact that I tried so many different things?

I'm expecting the answer to be "it depends on how you tell the story". I like being passionate about more than one subject, but can it be a bad thing?
2) Should I focus 2019 on getting more research experience in logic?

I have no intentions in using my time just to apply to the US. I know the obvious answer to this question might seem to be "yes", but what I'm not sure about is whether I should put all my effort in more concrete experience in logic, or if I should round up the things I have already been doing - for example, I can continue the research I did in the Coding Theory internship, which was really interesting for me. Also, though I don't support hunting, 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'. Anyway, of course it's not a binary decision.
Thank you very much for your time.
Guillermo.

Why do you feel you need a year to prepare for grad school rather than applying now?

That's a good question. I felt that if I did it this year it would be a poor application, as I was dedicating a lot of time to my thesis, teaching, and final exams. And I didn't want to leave everything I was doing aside, just for the application.

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/52586/in-a-statement-of-purpose-for-a-phd-in-computer-science-in-the-us-is-it-better-t https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8802/how-many-research-interests-should-be-included-in-a-statement-of-purpose-objecti

Your application will be no poorer than those of all the other undergraduate math folks looking to go to grad school. Give it a shot this year - it really should not be a huge time commitment (particularly relative to taking an entire year off).

Given that a doctorate is about depth in a small area, your option 2 sounds better to me as long as you have sufficient breadth of knowledge in your field already.
Note that many (most?) US students move to a doctoral program directly from their undergraduate program, so the "breadth" required is only about that required in a baccalaureate. So, I think, that except for the time factor you mention, you are likely well prepared now. But getting a bit of research going certainly won't hurt you, even if you have only minor results. You probably won't be working with a guide, after all. The area in which you do the research, however, might matter. It is better if it is closer to the sub-field that you actually want to work in.


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Realistic expectations from a postdoc in terms of publications
I am in the process of applying for a postdoctoral grant and I was wondering what the expectations are in terms of journal publications when I plan?
Would it be fine if I plan 1 paper per year if I have no PhD students? Is 2 papers/year an exaggeration?
Input from senior members, possibly those with selection committee experiences would be great.
Field: engineering (electrical and electronic)
Country: Australia, EU, USA

Which field, which country?

Apart from your specific subfield, this also depends on the nature of your research project and several other factors. For example, some kinds of projects tend to result in several small publications while others result in a single large one. I therefore do not think that anybody who is not familiar with your specific project can give you a useful answer.

One per year may appear unambitious. I suggest framing them in terms of 1/year 'sure bet' publications and additional 'reach goal' publications, to show a balance of ambition and realism.


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Why do people in the United States pay for master's degree in areas where PhDs exist?
In the US, except for professional master's degrees like MSW, one can get a master's for free, in less time (and even get paid a stipend) by starting a PhD then dropping out.
(In my PhD, you could do this with nothing but one year of ordinary coursework and a single modern language test.)
And   starting a PhD program gives you the option of continuing.
So, why does anyone pay for a master's degree in cases where they could instead pursue the above plan?

Because the entry requirements are (much) lower?

Because it's unehtical?

Because they have the money!

Many course-based master's degrees can be completed in one year.

@BrianBorchers But they are much more expensive than a PhD, which is typically funded. Also, starting a PhD program gives you the option of continuing.

Because that would imply lying and deception about your intent to do a PhD? So your question is really a special case of "why do some people avoid lying?"

@user541686
If you went into it with full deceitful intention, then yes. But people are complicated. They go into a program with uncertain intention, then change their uncertain minds. When someone drops out of a program, no one , including they themselves, usually consider them a wicked fraud.

@JoshuaFox: The kind that happens naturally is fine. It happens once in a while. It's sad but nobody has hard feelings. It's just not the kind of thing that really prompts your question though—the question at that point is generally whether you're interested in doing a PhD, not whether there's a way to get the MS for free.

One possibility is that if you did want to do a PhD later on, you'll find it much harder to get back into a one if you dropped out of one already.
Also, I've found there are usually many more positions available for master's students than PhD students at a University. For a Masters's, space is usually limited by space in lecture halls, while PhD's are hard limited by the number of supervisors available. For master's projects, each supervisor can usually have several at the same time (in the same year), while for PhD's (depending on the field) supervisors may only take one (or a small number) students per year. Thus it would be easier to get into a (paid) master's as opposed to a PhD.
Finally its a bit of impolite move on the students behalf. Depending on how the funding is structured (for the supervisor) they may not be able to get a another student after you drop out, to "take over" the project. Thus they have wasted time on their project. Its also pretty impolite to the other students who could have taken your place and seen the PhD through to the end.

I studied at an R1 that had about 150 doctoral students and around 50 faculty. I don't actually remember anyone who was there for just a masters. So, I worry about the first sentence in the second paragraph: "... many more positions available...".

Sure this assumes that a master program exists.

Perhaps one could consider it impolite if done with full intention. But in practice, dropping it is emotionally laden and is often recognized by all as the best choice. Unless the student brags about it, I don't think that impoliteness usually the most salient aspect.

"if you did want to do a PhD later on" Doing a PhD is an unusual and extreme activity. Most people would not worry about this. More, if one were to pursue my plan, that initial year or two would be the best possible evaluation of whether one wants to do an PhD (and so can just continue in the program).

@JoshuaFox This answer's suggestion of impoliteness is based on the premise of your question which is that it is done with full intention. I think the answer was being generous with the word impolite. Unethical / immoral would also be suitable words.

its a bit of impolite move on the students behalf - what is impolite? This university seems to be a business so it works like a business. If what you are not doing is part of the deal ("resignation" section of the contract) then why not. We are not in the "this is why we cannot have nice things" kind of situation - the for-profit education organization is stating their rules in their contract, you take it or you leave it.

I don't care about the university it's the supervisor it's impolite to. It's alot of work to get funding, then to find that it is wasted because your student had no intention of finishing (it's different if they have to drop out for other reasons), is impolite.

@WoJ The OP did not state that it was a for-profit university.

@Ray: why does anyone pay for a master's degree I take that you have to pay to get to that school, so this si not a free one where ultimately someone else is paying for your education.

@WoJ Fees don't mean it's for-profit. Nonprofits charge just enough fees to pay expenses (and public universities charge much less than that, with tax money making up the difference). For-profits charge higher fees than necessary in order to make the owner money.  I can't speak for other countries, but in the U.S., most universities (and practically all respected universities) are non-profit.

I suspect that there are a lot of factors.
One is that there are a lot of universities in the US that have masters programs, but no doctoral program. Some of their masters students just continue on from a bachelors at the same place.
A second factor is that there are more needs out there for education and "mad skilz" than you might expect. Programs in management, for example, are often taken by employed (night school masters) for advancement in their current job. Employers used to pay for this, but I think that is rare now. But an advance will come with better salary and more opportunities. I've seen the same to be true among software developers. They want to modernize their skills, but not do research. The masters may be tailored for these needs where doctoral study is not.
A third factor involves what a student's advisor will support. Some will recognize that a student isn't really suitable for a career in academia and will only write letters for masters level applications.
A fourth (probably minor) factor is that not all students understand that you don't need to get a masters first to join a doctoral program in the US and, perhaps surprisingly, no one tells them otherwise.
A fifth factor is that some people just have different goals than others and, while they want to learn more, don't really consider doctoral study and/or don't want to game the system in the way you suggest they can.
A sixth factor, of course, is that the standards and requirements for admission to doctoral study are pretty high and the competition is pretty fierce. Someone faking it will probably give of "tells" that can be caught during the process. If you don't express true commitment in you SoP then you are probably less likely get in.

"student isn't really suitable for a career in academia"  That's not relevant to PhD admissions as most PhDs don't have a career in academia.  https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17431/what-ratio-of-phd-graduates-in-stem-fields-ultimately-end-up-as-tenured-profes

@Anonymous M a master's degree is  still a master's degree, and helps you get a job.

I just retired and started an MS program. Why didn't I apply to the Ph.D. program?

Admission to the local Ph.D. program is highly competitive. The MS program, not so much.

The requirements for the MS degree are not onerous, no prelims, no qualifiers, I only have to find one other referee besides my final project advisor, i.e. no putting together a thesis committee that may end up having to sit for 4-6 years.

I have enough savings that I can take care of tuition and living expenses without a strain. I've been a TA before. No thank you. I have other things I want to do with my time.

Because I'm funding myself, I can study whatever I can convince some faculty member to advise me on.

The program can be part time, so I can adjust my MS work load to accommodate my other post-retirement activities.

I'm not seeking to start a new career. I'm just exercising my curiosity in a more rigorous way than a self directed reading program.

There are a few other retirees in the program.  I accept that we're a bit of an edge case. Most of the other students are already working at jobs they like and that are quite remunerative, mostly in engineering or software development. Taking a position as a funded Ph.D. student would require them to give up their well-paid job for a not so well paid TA or RA. If they really wanted a Ph.D. they could try to convince their companies to given them time and funding to work on their research project at the Ph.D. level. Certainly possible, but a much higher bar.

Consider the example of Stanford. It is significantly easier to get into the MS program there than the Ph.D. program. So, if you can only get admitted to the MS program, and think it will help your career enough to be worth the money, then you might choose that route. I think companies will sometimes pay for all or part of a master's degree.
Other universities simply offer stipends and research positions based on qualifications, independently of whether the student intends to leave with a master's or stay for a Ph.D. And some universities will admit students to the Ph.D. program without promising funding. So it's not always a matter of "pay for a master's, get paid for a Ph.D."

In addition to the other answers:

People pay for expensive masters degrees because they have been tricked by clever university marketing.  This is the same as other expensive unnecessary purchases, like oversized, inefficient vehicles.
Many people think you have to pay for a PhD.

Many masters programs exist only to generate revenue.

This is really the answer. Paying to study in a graduate-level program is a scam, and whatever extent to which is is "unethical" to do apply-as-PhD-and-drop-out, it's 1000x more unethical for an institution to accept non-fully-funded students into a graduate program (masters or PhD) to begin with.

This can further be expanded: Some countries require a masters for a PhD (most European countries), these people may not be aware that they could immediately continue with a PhD. There is also sometimes a certain suspicion towards some other countries and their education systems (lack of trust in grading, risk of corruption etc.), so a Masters buys a "locally" accepted degree.  - All these play into the university's hands of selling expensive Masters degrees.

@DetlevCM The question specifies United States.

Some expensive professional graduate degrees are not scams.

Many expensive professional graduate degrees are not scams.

Just going to add another perspective here for people pursuing a masters degree while working. It may be more financially advantageous to pay for a Masters instead of quitting for a year to work on a PhD.
Just to give an example, let's say I'm offered a $33k/yr stipend to pursue a PhD. One option would be to quit my job to get a PhD, but drop out after a year and get a new job with a 21.4% pay increase. Then let's say the cost of getting a Masters is $66,340. I would need to make more than $124,175/yr to be profitable staying with my company and doing a 2-year Masters program compared to taking your approach. There may not be many people this applies to, but there probably are some, especially if they can get lower tuition and/or can't get a good stipend for their PhD.
I will say that as an alternative approach, you may get the opportunity to do a PhD while you work as well, possibly as a collaboration project between your company and the collaborating university. If you do this though, I don't see a good reason to drop out early with your Masters.

While yours is a completely valid reason for getting a Masters, I think the question is asking why an individual would pay for a Masters. Perhaps you could adjust your financial argument to show that even if you paid for a Masters, you wouldn’t be that disadvantaged in the long run. This would then supplement other claims in this thread that Masters are easier to get into than PhDs.

@cole good point, I've updated the question although it's not a very good argument any more.

For smarter peoples, getting into a PhD program with the intention to leave with a Master's degree (MPhil maybe?) is, simple put, not profitable. We're not even considering the fact that PhD positions are scarce and require significant devotion and perseverance to.
PhD programs usually spans across 5 years or more, and it's rare that you can "quit as Master" in the first two years. More likely, the options are "quit with nothing" and "struggle for another year". On the contrary, one can normally finish their courses and receive a Master's degree in less than two years, and you can start a good-paying job right away. The one-year difference can be much larger than you'd imagine. You can earn more than 3 years' worth of PhD stipend plus your Master's tuition. It's even worse if you failed to "quit as Master" in year 3 and have to struggle for longer, which further amplifies the difference from job-after-Master.
Not to mention that it's easier to hunt down a decent job right before you graduate as Master than when you're quitting a PhD program, and all the efforts to enroll in PhD when a Master is much simpler.

Why do you say it's rare to quite with a master's in the first two years? I ask this because I know things aren't the same in every field, but in my program, everyone receives a master's after passing prelims at the end of your second year. So yes, you could quit with nothing early (as in a master's), but there's no "struggling for another year."

@AzorAhai-him- That certainly depends on the specific fields and programs one's enrolled in, and maybe more on your advisor - typically advisor wouldn't want you to quit PhD right after the first two years, especially when your research projects are still ongoing, which is not a case for Masters.

Well, yeah, no advisor would want you to quit, but you can, so I'm curious why you say its rare to be able to quit with a master's.

@AzorAhai-him- Technically nobody can detain you and force you to complete the PhD, but practically there are much more to be taken into account when quitting early. For example, you're most likely burning bridges with your advisor (and sometimes worse, a good lot of your reputation around the field), or may have a hard time answering about your PhD life to interviewers, or need extra time to find your first job. None of these are normally issues when you complete your PhD where all of them can be smoothed over in the last year.

What? Being a bad idea is different from being able to quit in the first two years

@AzorAhai-him- Bad ideas are practically invalid ideas. No one goes on a hard way when there's a better option. Whether a specific idea is "bad" depends on your stakes, then.

I'm sorry, it seems like we're talking at cross purposes here.

why does anyone pay for it - because human behavior is rarely optimal. The question is posed as a fantasy about a global optimum that barely amounts to a local one. There are differences between programs, and what you see as "of course everyone should" is just an indication of limited experience, nothing more. There's no question here really. It's a ruse :)
One program I'm familiar with expects you to take the PhD qualifier in the first 2-3 semesters if you are on a funded PhD track. For an MSc student, it's basically unnecessary stress, unless they enjoy redundant examinations (how would that jive with the "let's optimize everything" worldview begged by the question?). 2nd failure and you're out, BTW, and you're then nominally barred from the same field of graduate study in that department - no matter whether it's masters, doctoral or post-doc.
Another program I'm familiar with has much more funding available for Master's students than for PhD students, and all good MSc students there are funded just fine.

In India, PhD programs are extremely scarce, while Masters are offered at almost all universities of repute. Given that about 1/5th of all graduates in the world are in India, that might be a substantial influence.

Just a note that the question text and tag specify United States. But maybe I have misunderstood your point.

@j-w you're right, I missed that tag, apologies. my answer is irrelevant :)

In many places you are not even allowed to start a PhD before you have finished a MSc.
There also are places where no one would actually pay to get either degree but where stipends or employment at the university would pay for the studies.
Well... unless you count "opportunity cost" as an actual cost.

The question specified the United States, which is not one of those places.


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What steps can US undergraduates take to reduce the frequency and severity of assignment of unearned grades, as from grade inflation and cheating?
The book Academically Adrift, by two University of Chicago professors, is one salient source. The following refers to collegiate institutions in the United States.
Reports, including from professors like Rebecca Schuman, show:

Professors, especially adjunct faculty members, often inflate grades with the goal of bribing students to leave favorable anonymous reviews. Adjuncts' jobs often hinge on these reviews, so pressure is high.
60-90% of undergraduates probably cheat often.

According to The CUNY-Wide Conference on Academic Integrity, a quote-worthy report concluded that "9 in 10 students [actually 86%, according to CampusTechnology.com] admit to cheating in college and the students who do report cheating indicate that they cheat frequently using a variety of techniques and that they suspect faculty do the same" (however, the original source seems to be unavailable).
According to the Stanford Academic Cheating Fact Sheet, "73% of all test takers, including prospective graduate students and teachers agree that most students do cheat at some point."

Large segments of both groups want students to have unearned grades. This is likely to mean:

Many students pursue unearned grades by various means, not limited to cheating. According to some professors, these include:

simply begging professors for unearned grades
escalating demands for unearned grades to institutional administrators

There is a strong incentive for students and professors to collude so that students get unearned grades. This can occur via:

acceding to demands for unearned grades
assigning grades that are disproportionate to learning and/or work (by making courses easy to begin with and/or by raising grades that would have been lower according to rubrics or other policies)
inadequately testing for plagiarism (Anecdotally, I have seen this on assignments submitted to Canvas, a platform in which all students can view one another's work. Canvas also calculates average scores for all assignments, so I can calculate average grades for the course as a whole.)
failing to adequately monitor exams, so that students can easily do searches under tables (I have seen this)
allowing students to leave exam rooms (I have seen this)

Possible steps to combat the problem might include:

ascertaining causes of grade inflation
determining whether academic misconduct is a factor, and whether implicitly allowing cheating is a common method for grade inflation, given that it confers plausible deniability to professors, unlike other methods which might require suspicious changes to rubrics or violations of them
seeking allies among faculty or even students
seeking media coverage
seeking involvement from citizens outside the institution, especially in the cases of publicly funded colleges, which have specific standards of accountability to the public

Where have such measures, or others, been attempted, and what tactical and strategic indicators can be gleaned?

What country? What field?

Be clear on why you are fighting it and what you hope to accomplish.

The lack of detail in this list makes it really hard to answer. At what level are you hoping to precipitate change? Personal? Departmental? Institutional? National? The “as an undergraduate student” bit makes this read as if you want to know what actions you can take to not receive a grade that you view as inflated. The best thing that you personally can do to not get an inflated grade is to deliberately do poorly. I’m sure that’s not what you’re looking for though.

Hi, thanks to all for replying.
@astronat: USA; biology

@JonCuster: because it seems to reduce the life prospects of students who don't cheat (in a milieu in which 90% of them admit to cheating); for grades to be more proportional

@StellaBiderman: I would settle for improving the department of my major and/or minor.

Cheating and grade inflation are not causally linked very well.

@JonCuster, good to know. I have yet to do much research on this. My working assumption is that tacitly allowing cheating is one of the main ways Professors inflate grades.

If you go to a university where 90% of people admit to cheating, it seems you picked an incredibly poor university to attend. Also, you seem to have confused “cheating” and “grade inflation” which are separate phenomena. Grade inflation is the (proposed) tendency for the same work to receive a higher grade in 2018 than in 2008, generally claimed to be caused by the lower of standards for what constitutes “good work”. Although cheating is bad “work”, this is proposed as occurring totally independently of cheating. Do you wish to address cheating or do you wish to address grade inflation?

Hi, @StellaBiderman, my last comment hopefully answers some of your questions. In any case, I would prefer to target the problem of unearned grades, which could result from inflation, cheating, or both. As for cheating rates, my very cursory initial searches indicate they are high at many or most US colleges.

I appreciate the added context you’ve given in the comments. Please edit the question to include them, and any other elaboration of your position / request. Comments are non-permanent on the site and do not improve the quality of the question.

Hi, @StellaBiderman, I've edited, striving to improve clarity. Is the question now acceptable?

@Grant Yes, I think so. I’ve changed my downvote to and upvote and moved to reopen the question in light of your edits. My main qualm is that, to an extent, this reads like a list of hearsay. I suspect people will be quick to challenge the grounds of your claims, which you can avoid by including references and citations.

@StellaBiderman, thanks on both counts. I was afraid of that, so thanks for the warning. I read several sources Wednesday, so I'll try to find them again and link some in.

As a CUNY alumnus and former TA there in graduate school, those numbers make me cringe. However, they don’t seem to distinguish between those who cheat frequently and those who have ever cheated in their lives, period.

Grade inflation is not happening because of academic misconduct.  That has zero to do with it.  Most of us are surprisingly good at spotting plagiarism and we give out a depressing number of zeros for that and other forms of misconduct.  Trust me, very few of those students are contributing to inflation.
Grade inflation is a long-term slow trend.  Most instructors try to grade "about like" their colleagues in the department.  But few of us want to seem unfair, so we err on the side of being a bit generous. Over time, you get inflation.
But go for it.  If you came to me, pleading for a tougher curve and a lower grade, you'd definitely be my first.  I would certainly remember you.

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


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Why do top Indian Math grad school students leave for the US/UK?
I am currently a senior year student at Hansraj College, University of Delhi. I have completed my 2-month summer internship at IISc Bangalore recently. During my stay, I got to interact with a lot of Pure Mathematics Ph.D. students. I have come to know lately that many BS and MS students leave even the topmost schools like IISc, IISER's, TIFR etc and go for Ph.D. in pure Mathematics abroad.
Although the standard of research in pure Maths is pretty good in India.
See this post here
I have the following questions and some associated assumptions/facts:
Question 1. So, why do these top students leave these exceptionally good schools that are almost at par with the elite US universities for a Ph.D. in Pure Maths?
Assumption 1. Since they were already a part of the school, it is unlikely that the small department size is a factor behind this. However, unlike US schools, TA's are not common in India.
Assumption 2. The recent pay increase should have improved the financial situation as well.
Question 2. What is something that Indian grad schools lack when it comes to theoretical Mathematics or in general that drives students out of India?
I am going for a Ph.D. soon, so I think this is something I should know.
Thank you.

Migration from India to the US/UK is not specific to math PhD students and I imagine the reasons are also not specific.

@Thomas Well in other fields, I can understand, the first world has better labs, facilities, infrastructure etc. But pure mathematics is immune to these factors. What causes theoretical mathematicians to leave these exceptionally good schools is beyond my comprehension.

Prestige and international name recognition matter in academia. No one looks to universities in India and allows them the same prestige internationally as Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford, etc.

Disclaimer: I'm European student at decent Math PhD program in the US.
Sorry, but it seems that I'm going to disillusion you...

Question 1. So, why do these top students leave these exceptionally
  good schools that are at par with the elite US universities for a
  Ph.D. in Pure Maths?

Although I don't doubt that India have a couple of decent universities with relatively strong mathematics department, they are by no means "at par with the elite US universities". If they really were, I would expect crowds of applicants both from prospective grad students and faculty from Europe and North America to study/work there, but in fact there is quite opposite trend. You have mentioned "topmost schools like IISc, IISER's, TIFR", but without prior web searching I have absolutely no idea what all these abbreviations mean. The same true for overall level of Indian born mathematicians -- they are simply not on par with US, France, Russia and UK in math, just check recent and overall numbers of Fields medalists and ICM speakers. Please do not take it like something offensive, but realizing that is essentially an answer to your question.

Question 2. What is something that Indian grad schools lack when it
  comes to theoretical Mathematics or in general that drives students
  out of India?

Just in my opinion, they lack

Transferable degree recognition and world renowned top notch researchers like I tried to elaborate above, that is crucial for graduate school, because grad school is essentially about research.
Job prospects after graduation. It goes without saying that Europe and especially North America region (US + Canada) have more attractive job market both in terms of available positions, research prospects and salary than India. In general relocating to grad school is easier than relocating to postdoc or faculty position, this is why Indian students willing to have a shot at American or European job market trying to get in local grad schools.

Although I appreciate your criticism, I feel some ignorance on your part. The sheer fact that IISc is unheard for you speaks for itself. It is the top research institute of India numbered 11 in terms of citations all over the world. I put this question just to look for the gaps Indian grad schools have and your second answer is spot on. And the fact about field medalists is also true. There has been no Indian recepient of Fields medal till date.

There are aspects of this answer that are probably correct, but overall it seems to jump to conclusions (no references) and be a unnecessarily harsh.

I too have never heard of any of the "top tier" Indian universities. Had to Google search for meanings.

I had certainly heard of TIFR before (though not the acronym) from their research reputation.

I think you are wildly underestimating how strong the top US/UK universities are.
TIFR is a strong math department.  For example, it looks like they have around one ICM invited speaker per ICM and most faculty publish regularly in top-20 journals.  On the other hand, there are no Fields medalists or comparably famous people (in fact, no one whose research I was aware of before looking them up, though that might be reflective more on me or my field), and most faculty don't have publications in the top 5 journals.  From this data it seems to me like they are comparable to a US math department ranked somewhere between 30-80.  (I hesitate to try to nail it down further because I'm just not that knowledgeable about their department, and because rankings are pretty subjective anyway.  Plus the lack of teaching at TIFR means faculty have more time for research.)  But they are pretty obviously not comparable in research profile to a top 10 US math department, where typical faculty are publishing frequently in top 5 journals and many are famous at the level of Fields medalists.
As far as I can tell all the other universities in India combined had only a handful of ICM speakers in the last 16 years.  I looked at a random other university you listed, and people are doing good research but they don't seem comparable to Tata Institute or to top 50 US math departments.

Though I have more knowledge of the Physics scene, the most important thing for research is not "physical" (facilities, salary etc), but having access to a strong, open, inclusive, active and sufficiently numbered community of grad students, post docs, professors, researchers and visitors. You learn from people around you.
In India, this is definitely not comparable to the top in the world. Do you know that there have been times when TIFR has not taken a single grad student for Math?(Was informed by existing math grad students on these facts). What does this say? How do you get a community then?

I can not answer the specific question about Indian students, but I can give some perspective related to Russia, and some bits of my answer may also apply to your situation.
As you may know, Soviet Union had a strong reputation for the quality of its education and research in physics and mathematics. After the collapse of USSR, Russia inherited the majority of academic institutions and research groups.
The next thirty years are the story of almost continuous brain drain, with a lot of groups and individual researchers leaving Russia for the US, UK, EU, China, etc. Obviously, government is trying to keep people by raising salaries and providing research grants, and in some places the funding is on par with US standards.
However, what modern Russia lacks is stability. Government initiatives are usually a short-term response to a certain political situation. There is a strong feeling that the priorities may change and financial support can be re-directed to other areas of economy. Also, there is a fair amount of corruption, nepotism and sexism in Russian academia, making it less attractive and forcing some students / young researchers to seek luck elsewhere.

Quite a lot of the brain drain that Russia and other Soviet countries faced was due to Jewish intellectuals leaving at the first opportunity available. Similarly many people who had any options to leave satellite countries (Czechoslovakia, say, as my advisor did) tried to flee ahead of various invasions. It left behind a gap that isn't easy to fill. I taught a lot of Russian students, mostly Jewish, and found them uniformly very smart, though not always as hard working as they might have been. Another effect of the Soviet system, perhaps. Not the same problem that India might face.

@Buffy Partly true, but brain drain was (and remains) a continuous process, and the effect goes far beyond a couple of years right after the collapse.


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What should I do when a predatory conference will not listen to us and the journal might retract our paper?
I was in my first semester that a professor asked me for a collaboration with someone else. We have started the project but because of Mr. C bad behavior and lack of contribution our professor fired him from the project.
Consequently, we had published a paper 2 years ago based on that project. After a few months, we have accidentally found out that the initial draft of the paper in another language has been published at a conference with Mr.C name and his wife on the conference proceeding. It is worth mentioning that we kept our data and updates of drafts in a shared Dropbox account that Mr. C had access to. We emailed to the conference and told them to remove the conference proceeding because it had been uploaded without our permission, so they removed it from the conference proceedings. Few days after that the journal that has published our paper sent us an email saying that someone (that we know its Mr. C) told them that our paper has published before and it is a case of a redundant publication and plagiarism.
Then we have told everything to the journal about the situation.
Unfortunately, because Mr. C have powerful connections in government he was able to make the conference proceeding available once again! now the conference won't listens to us and they don't answer us.
The conference proceeding is in another language but the context is about 80% the same as the journal paper that is in English!
We don't know what to do.
We did not hear about this case from the journal for 3 months now.
Is it possible for the journal to retract our paper at this point because of the duplication and redundancy or plagiarism? What should we do?
UPDATE: The conference website is down known and not available anywhere at the moment but the conference has sent the proceedings to an indexing website which is only available in our native language. Also in that website proceedings can be bought only with the X currency and it is not an international indexing website.
Still, I am scared that there might be a possibility for the journal to retract our paper due to duplication! Is it possible?

You and someone else - a very similar story was posted on here a few days ago - unless it was a case of plagiarism as well...

See this:https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/114181/72855

I don't recall submitting this questions anywhere before. Our problem might be similar but there is a primary difference because our problem had been raised because of different situations. My question is still not answered that Is it possible for the journal to retract our paper at this point because of the duplication and redundancy or plagiarism?

One of the most interesting “coincidences” is the government link  ie a Mr X who has strong influential connections... so similar between both stories...

@SolarMike I do not understand why anyone should focus on such matters instead of answering the questions?! I really don't understand that! When I said I don't recall submitting this question elsewhere why the hell I should lie ?!! just to see an answer to my question ?! How skeptical are you?!

@JamB chill they are pointing out that the questions and language used in the questions are strikingly similar. That question, under a different account, was closed as being unclear. If it was your question the procedure would be to ask for the other to be reopened and to provide additional details as to why it should be reopened. It seems like red tape to you but it keeps the community cleaner not to have to wade through similar questions all the time.

It is not a duplication!! In the link, it has mentioned that he/she is top of his/her class. It mentioned that "a supervisor asks me to work on a data that he said the data was his own and he had worked on it along with a draft written originally in another language." in our case it is not true! our primary problem has raised because of we would have updated everything in the DropBox shared account. Moreover, "This proceeding was indexed after 1 year and a half after the conference!" is this any similar to my case?!

"Still, I am scared that there might be a possibility for the journal to retract our paper due to duplication! Is it possible?" The journal has the copyright and technical means, of  course they can. How should we know if they will do that? Get yourself a competent lawyer! Someone who knows your laws, local customs and regulations etc.

The key statement in the above may be "Mr. C have powerful connections in government". That is an issue that may be impossible to overcome. If there is an ethics process in your profession generally, you can bring things to their attention. You can bring it to the attention of the conference committees and journal editors. Unfortunately you may be fighting powers that you can't overcome.
Given sufficient power and influence, yes, they can do whatever they want - ethical or not. If you can shine enough light on it you might get some satisfaction and it may come back to haunt Mr. C in the future, but making powerful enemies in some places isn't necessarily wise (or even healthy). Proceed cautiously. If you can build allies, it may help.

Thank you for your answer, do you know how much time does it take for a journal to decide on a decision for retraction or closing a case? Because it been 3 months now and we did not hear anything from the journal. Does this mean that our case is closed?

@JamB, only the editors can tell you if it is closed. The time for a journal can be highly variable as they don't have deadlines for a particular paper. It can depend on reviewers and on what the editors think about the reviews. A special case could take more or less time, but it is too hard to guess.


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Question concerning proofs of theorems in defense PHD thesis
I would like to ask this question:
-Do we have to present the demonstrations of the results (theorems in mathematics) found and published in a scientific journal the day of the PHD defense  or it is enough to present the results only? Thank You.

No one? Well. "Ask your advisor!" Seriously, this is the best course of action.

That will depend on circumstances. Typically you will be examined by a committee of (mostly) professors in your field during your defense. The defense itself may be open to the public or not. Most of the committee will have read, or at least skimmed your dissertation.
Exceptions abound. Some committees have an outside member from a completely different field. Some are private with possibly a public talk before or afterwards. Some defenses are not just a defense of the thesis, but a defense of your entire understanding of the field.
You need to speak, primarily, to the committee. It may be that a proof is required. It may be that a proof is too long to give in such a talk. You should be able to, at least, give an outline of the important proofs and to say what, if anything, is novel about them.
In some mathematical work the theorems themselves are the most important thing. In others (quite a lot, actually) the proof methodology is more important. That is to say, the "what" vs the "how" of the thesis. Make sure you understand which it is (and if that is the case) and that you spend most of the time on that. You have to give a solid overview also, of course.
Get advice from your advisor on this. He or she will probably know your committee members and how they behave at a defense. Are they passive, are they active questioners, are they skeptical of everything? Are they generalists who want an overview or nit-pickers who want every detail?
If you have an outside examiner, be prepared to give reasonable "layperson" explanations of all of the basics that underlie your work. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, of a candidate in Chemistry being failed after giving a good talk and writing a good thesis because she couldn't adequately explain Ph (acidity) to an outsider after using it extensively in the talk. She studied that so long ago that the simple explanation just escaped her. (This may be a bedtime horror story told to candidates just to scare them before their defense.)
On the other hand, some defenses are really just a celebration by the faculty of the wonderful work that they do in producing such fine candidates as yourself. Possibly ending with Jerez (Sherry).

A friend failed due to not being able to integrate a (simple) fraction....

Zowie @SolarMike. It's amazing what you can forget when you focus really hard on something else, and also when asked a somewhat off the wall question. I've forgotten more mathematics than most people ever come in contact with. I don't know if that is good or bad.

He did tell me that he had lost his motivation / focus and wanted out anyway, so perhaps it was just right for him.


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Will the prestige of my masters program affect my phd application choices?
I am in the last few semesters of my bachelors, and I have been preparing myself for  applying to PhD programs in mathematics. However, as I was sitting with my research mentor today, he informally offered me a graduate assistance-ship for the masters program at my current university. He mentioned I would still need to go through application process but that I am a pure shoe-in for the GA position. I am unsure whether to chase after this offer on a more serious tone or apply for PhD programs, and as such I am seeking information. The real rub stands that I am attending a not too prestigious school for math and this worries me that I may be limiting myself. However, for personal reasons I am considering this potential offer greatly. Would the masters from a low/middle-tier prestige/ranking hinder my chances for getting accepted into top-tier PhD programs?
If you need some information about me. GPA 3.7, Major GPA 3.8, I will have some published works, I will have finished 3 Graduate courses before applications (Order Theory, Analysis, Graph Theory), GRE general in the upper crust, No Math Subject yet (Still studying for this). Two very strong recommendations from current and accomplished researchers, and two standard recommendations.
There is a note that I should include my location before posting. I am attending MTSU for an Advanced Mathematics Bachelors.

I would recommend that you apply directly to doctoral programs and use this offer as a backup if nothing materializes. In mathematics and some other fields acceptance into doctoral programs with only a BS or BA is more or less the norm. Your vita looks pretty good and I think that many doctoral programs would be happy to have you.
Most likely you would also be offered some sort of funding, though it would be as a TA or similar, though funded research isn't impossible. Places with doctoral programs in math in the US need a lot of TAs.
Apply first and then consider your options. You might even be able to get some indication about the likelihood of your acceptance from a faculty member at a proposed university.
Also, in many doctoral programs in the US, you will have the chance to get a Master's along the way. Sometimes just by filling out a request after a certain amount of coursework. In my case a small thesis was also needed.

If it makes sense for you financially and personally to attend the masters program at your home university, then I don’t think it will negatively affect your admissions chances.  Grad schools will look at your grades, the classes you’ve taken and recommendations and they won’t care much which words you got on your degree while doing that.  Their biggest concern is whether you can be successful in their program, and having done well in a masters at MTSU will be a positive for that.


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What language should my poster for a national convention be?
I will present work of mine in form of a poster on a national convention/congress/conference in my broader (STEM-related) field.
A manuscript has already been submitted by me, in english. Manuscripts will be available online for members of the society organizing the conference, and to everybody with internet access after some years. This is why I chose the manuscript to be in english
Last year I have also attended the conference, but presented in form of an (english) talk. In my session, this was the only english talk, but someone approached me afterwards in english. My impression is that only a small majority of the attendees were non-native speakers of my language, though.
I am fluent in both english and my native language.
On the convention/congress website it says (roughly):

"The conference language is native language, but english
  contributions are welcome as well.

My question is:

Should I write the poster in english to make sure everybody will understand it, or rather chose my native language in order to make it easier for the majority to understand and talk about?

(Also be informed that I would like to have a reasonable change of being considered for the events' poster award)

Is your field humanities or STEM?

@mirrormere It is STEM-related.

To me, this depends on the specific country. My experience (25+ years ago) in the Netherlands is that the science was done in English. In fact, it was kind of funny the one time I went to a local meeting where people tried to present in Dutch, but some 50% of the words were English since that is what they always used.

I have been to many local workshops and conferences in Germany where most participants where native speakers. Most people presented in German, but had slides/posters in English. People reuse slides (or poster boxes/figures) from other presentations, and many do not find translating the slides worth the effort.

"The conference language is native language, but english
  contributions are welcome as well.

The conference organizers have made it clear that both native language and English are acceptable and welcome for your conference materials.
That means it’s entirely up to you. If you have strong feelings about supporting your local language, you can feel completely free to use that language for your poster. I am sure many of the native speakers present would find that an agreeable decision and would be somewhat grateful. On the other hand, there will likely be some foreign participants who would find your poster unaccessible and will miss out on learning about your work. Perhaps some of those people are academics you will be interacting with further down the road of your career (e.g., if you end up applying for postdocs overseas).
If you just want your work to reach the largest number of people and don’t care about anything else, I’m guessing English is the way to go (assuming you are in a country such as Germany with a very high proportion of English speakers).
It is a choice to make; neither option is any more right or wrong that the other.
And if you really can’t decide, how about preparing a bilingual poster?

I was scrolling down just to suggest bilingual poster. It is completely doable, I've done it. My main tip would be to put to choose a main langage and put the second, slightly smaller and in a visible grey color.

Many conferences specifically state that The Language of the Conference is X for some suitable choice of X. If so, then use that language. Here, they state that the native language is preferred, so use that.
But, if this conference is in Germany you can be pretty much assured that every academic, and many other people, will understand English. This is true for most of Europe and for many other places.
If it is a physical poster, you could provide an online version in whichever language you don't choose if you have any doubts. So, probably make it in the local language (German?) and then provide an English version online. Or, possibly a handout in English.

I have a lot of friends who are very well educated, in Europe and don't understand English... But they speak 2 or, in some cases, more languages. Why do you assume that they will automatically have English?

@SolarMike, not an assumption. I've travelled extensively in Europe and worked with a lot of academics there. I've never actually met any that weren't also English speakers. There must be some, I suppose, but not that I've come across. In France, there are those who don't like to converse in English, but can.

I live in Europe so I spend more time there, and, consequently meet more educated people on a daily basis... If you restrict this to academics ... But there are other educated people who publish such as doctors, dentists etc... and I converse with them in French as I don't speak German etc...

@SolarMike, yes, most of my contacts (and co authors) are academics or engaged in somewhat similar things (software developers, say), so I was, perhaps too broad. I'll make a small edit.

Voted for your answer anyway...