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Why is plagiarism so harshly punished?
I realize why plagiarism is morally wrong and punishable.  This is not a question about why it is wrong.
This question is about why plagiarism is dealt with so harshly compared to other violations.  This might be because I'm uninformed but as per this question and what I've often read plagiarism can easily mean being expelled or suspended.
Here's a short list of offenses that typically get lighter penalties:

Stealing from another student
Doing illicit drugs
At my university (NYU, where discipline is handled through the housing staff), physically hitting someone would result in a combination of warnings/sanctions/being moved with the harshest outcome being kicked out of housing.  This is definitely an odd system, but I wouldn't be surprised if other universities had a similar imbalance between the punishments for violence vs. plagiarism.

I'm sure you could add a lot more to this list.
Plagiarism is essentially fraud + stealing, but I've always found it strange that the gut reaction many people have towards it seems to be worse than for getting punched in the face.  We definitely don't expel people the first, second, or even third time they get in a fight.

@prime take into account that plagiarism is not punished in the same way everywhere, and the offenses you gave as example don't get lighter penalties everywhere.

Violence and illegal drugs can be handled, if the offense is severe enough, by normal law enforcement. However, plagiarism has to be handled by the school because if not, then the state will not do anything to prosecute the culprits.

Like others, I might disagree that your examples really get lighter penalties. Stealing and doing drugs can both potentially result in arrest and jail/prison time; plagiarism may "only" get you de-registered as a student. Albeit the former would be assessed by civil law enforcement and not the college, so that may be where your perspective got tricked.

Comments debating the prevalence of marijuana usage have been deleted... feel free to discuss in [chat].

"discipline is handled through the housing staff" - NYU routinely offers to refer cases of assault and theft to the NYPD. I don't think it's accurate to say that "discipline is handled by housing staff" when police involvement is a real possibility.

Yours is a hot question in the network. Consider accepting an answer at some later time. I opine that lack of an accepted answer creates better competition to post more useful answers, contrary to when an answer is already accepted. Feel free to disregard my suggestion of course.

In a system meant to teach you something plagiarism is the ultimate offense. One learns absolutely nothing by plagiarizing work and teaches others a farce (believing the perpetrator to posses knowledge). In the institution of education this is blasphemous and goes against the very grain of what is being attempted. It should be met with harsh punishment. By the time one is in college you have been educated and informed as to why plagiarizing is so heinous. Don't do the crime if you don't wish to do the time. Plagiarism stands out like a sore thumb from mid attributions or missing quotes.

A mean, drunk, drug-using and thieving person can still be a great scientist. A plagiarizing scientist however is of absolutely no use to society. Quite the contrary, their behaviour directly erodes scientific efficacy and credibility.

@djechlin In the NFL declining to talk to the press is way worse than wifebeating.

@djechlin true, but universities are not in the business of training mothers, fathers or community leaders. They are, however, in the business of training scientists, and enabling scientific progress.

If you want to compare plagiarism to punching, imagine a student who, instead of completing assignments, puts on a mask and punches the professor until that professor agrees to give the student a good grade. No one cares if a student plagiarizes in their daily life, or if they cite their sources, it's when they do it in class and lie about it that it's a problem.

It's a historical relic of an obsolete and rightly-forgotten value system that had a fundamentally different basis to the values intelligent people hold today. Plagiarism was formerly regarded as an offense against honor, like cheating in golf. The view was that somebody can't be be accepted in decent society if he can't be trusted to do the right thing when nobody's looking. Colleges absurdly thought they were certifying gentlemen, not training workers. Punching people is open conflict, which at worst was seen as better than dishonesty. Completely backwards, but people were ignorant then.

You might also ask why plagiarism is so lightly punished. It is common in my experience for plagiarism to be widely known to be rampant but with only the most obviously egregious examples even reported up the chain.  I think universities in general have not yet come to terms with how to deal the modern Internet age where essentially any college level question can be asked and answered anonymously online with little effort and no cost.  I suspect nothing major will happen until employers complain that the grades that students are getting do not reflect their abilities.

I spent around 80k and 7 years of my life getting 3 degrees. If there are a bunch of yahoos cheating it devalues my degrees and my time spent and the value of getting a degree at the schools I went to. Someone who graduates with a degree is supposed to have completed a curriculum and someone who cheats isn't doing that. Throw them in jail I say...

Dude. Plagiarism is dumb. Don't be dumb.

One thing is that plagiarism is both very difficult to detect and potentially massively damaging to the university. A grad-student doing research who plagiarizes regularly could go undetected for years. When they are finally caught it would call into question everything they'd ever done. It's almost impossible to clean up a mess like that, so the best hope is to make sure it never happens.

For the same reason that counterfeiting money is punished harshly.  It undermines the fundamental mechanisms of the society.

For the same reason that counterfeiting money is very severely punished.  This is an act that undermines the institution in question so it is important to do an extra ordinary punishment to minimize the incitament for doing so.

One key difference between plagiarism and violence is that plagiarism is a specifically academic offense, while violence is already handled by the legal system.  If a violent incident is sufficiently serious, it can and should be dealt with in court.  This means university rules only need to deal with cases in which the people involved prefer not to take legal action, and they can leave more serious cases to the legal system.  In particular, the university rules are typically geared towards the less serious end, since those are the only cases they expect to handle.  (If a student or colleague punched me in the face, I would press charges in court, rather than relying on the university to administer justice.  By contrast, if two athletes got worked up and started fighting during a high-stakes game, it's possible that neither one would consider the incident worthy of legal action.)
Plagiarism is not always punished severely: a first offense or minor case may be treated leniently.  However, the rules allow severe punishments because there are no courts to fall back on.  By contrast, universities don't need to have special rules for how to punish a truly dangerous student.

This is an excellent point and I hadn't considered that.  It doesn't make much sense for the university to have a punishment for murder because... presumably someone else is dealing with that.

@NajibIdrissi Could be country-dependent, then. This is the first reason I thought of in the context of American higher education.

@NajibIdrissi well, I can say this: given the context of American higher ed, I think this answer is correct. If we are going to take the premise that the answer of this question is not country-dependent, then it logically follows that I think this answer is correct in any country.

@NajibIdrissi I think that in the US, the fact that plagiarism is not punished by the legal system is a major reason why it is punished harshly by universities. As for how it works in France, I leave that to the expertise of someone who knows the French academic system. I am aware that jakebeal gives an answer that applies to both countries, and I have heard of Occam's razor.

@NajibIdrissi I've never seen a good reason to believe that applying Occam's Razor always produces the best answer. It's just one way to look at things, not necessarily the best or correct way. Sometimes the simplest answer is actually not the correct one. I think on Stack Exchange there's an implicit convention that the highest voted and/or accepted answer is the best one, so this site rejects Occam's Razor in its very principles.

Still, note that the French examples are limited to specific high-level examinations, and a national examination is connected to the state. Surely copying from a student on a problem set is not a federal crime.

Committing plagiarism also means that none of your previous or future work can be trusted to be yours. Expelling a student may seem harsh, but the alternative is that he becomes better at hiding his tracks and gets a diploma at the end... Sure, some people only cheat "this once", but as a university you can't take risks.

The university is first and foremost a business (or at least that is how most are run). Consider a company that sold defective products because it's QA procedures are lax, that would most likely have a very bad effect on their bottom line. The reason that the university cares less about violence and other offenses is that they usually have a much smaller affect on the universities bottom line. TLDR; universities are a business first and foremost, their product is students, R&D, and their own reputation (to encourage further business).

@NajibIdrissi By federal I meant national – connected with the nation. Sorry for the mistake in terminology.

In some universities, especially in the past, it has been considered somewhat inappropriate to involve state authorities in campus goings-on - even if acts are committed which constitute criminal offences by host state law.

An important part of the answer to your question is lurking in the "can" in your statement "plagiarism can easily mean being expelled or suspended."
In fact, a first offense in plagiarism is likely to result in warnings, zero marks, and/or failure of a class rather than directly in the expulsion of a student, except for particularly egregious violations (e.g., plagiarizing one's thesis).  Note, however, that particularly egregious theft or violence can get a student kicked out for a first offense as well (drugs aren't as good a comparison because many are dubious about considering them a significant offense in the first place).
So why is plagiarism considered an offense on the same scale as violence against another student?  Like violence, it strikes at the foundation of the entire academic and scientific enterprise.  The foundation of academia is production and dissemination of knowledge.  Plagiarism undermines both, particularly since discovering one instance of plagiarism can cast doubt on all of a student's other work as well---is it original, or have they merely failed to yet find the source from which it was stolen?  Likewise, since it is such a foundational and corrosive problem, an institution can be badly damaged by tolerating it or by gaining a reputation for tolerating it.
Thus, the zero tolerance policies and the potentially draconian punishments: one serious case of plagiarism can cast doubt on the entire history of a student's work, and tolerating plagiarism can form an existential threat to an academic or scientific institution.

I don't consider plagiarism "an offense on the same scale as violence against another student" - it's a very bad thing, sure, but not quite as bad as physical violence. Do you, really?

@ff524 The impact of violence on its victim is certainly generally much worse than the impact of plagiarism on its victim.  I do believe, however, that condoning plagiarism has a similarly bad effect on an academic institution as condoning violence does.

To expand on jakebeal's comment, the university is first and foremost a business (or at least that is how most are run). Consider a company that sold defective products because it's QA procedures are lax, that would most likely have a very bad effect on their bottom line. The reason that the university cares less about violence and other offenses is that they usually have a much smaller affect on the universities bottom line. TLDR; universities are a business first and foremost, their product is students, R&D, and their own reputation (to encourage further business).

@ff524 - the basic foundation of scientific research and publications are that 1) what is being presented is the work of the authors, and 2) is to the best of their knowledge and belief true and correct. Plagiarism gives lie to #1. Falsification of results gives lie to #2. Both are reason to invoke the most serious of academic sanctions, which is expulsion (if a student) or firing (if a faculty member). Violence, etc, are civil and/or criminal offenses subject to non-academic enforcement.

@BobJarvis I don't doubt that plagiarism is a serious offense. But even in an academic environment, I consider violence a worse academic offense than plagiarism. (If a student plagiarized in my class, and it's a first time offense, I feel pretty good about his/her chances of rehabilitation and eventually becoming a member in good standing of our academic community. If a student in my class is violent towards another student... I feel much less confident.)

@ff524 Violence is not an academic offense despite your steadfast insistence on calling it one. How many different ways do you need to have that explained?

@msw I'm aware that violence is not handled as an academic matter. The intent of my comment was to disagree with jakebeal's comment that "condoning plagiarism has a similarly bad effect on an academic institution as condoning violence does" (I believe that violence has a much greater negative effect on an academic institution, regardless of what disciplinary system is invoked in response.) So, I still disagree with the statement that plagiarism is "considered an offense on the same scale as violence against another student."

The second paragraph is very important. Science can only work when a set of basic ethical groundrules are maintained by most players. If we allow for (and train students to use, by means of the path of least resistance) plagiarism (among other offenses) we tear down science. Not an option.

@jakebeal "The impact of violence on its victim is certainly generally much worse ...." This really is a matter of perspective and severity though. For example, I personally wouldn't really hold a lasting grudge if somebody were to punch me in the face. I'd either punch them back or move on and heal. I certainly wouldn't press charges. But if somebody were to, say, cut off one of my hands, that's a different story. Same with plagiarism. A mild case may anger me greatly but have no lasting effect, a severe case could affect the rest of my life. So you can't really make a general statement.

One factor that I don't see in the other answers so far is that plagiarism is usually very hard to detect: if a student copies an answer from an obscure internet website or book, only a tool such as TurnItIn might be able to detect it; if they copy from a student in another section or from a previous year, they may only be caught if the same TA graded both sections; if they paid another student or TA to write an answer for them, it might be entirely undetectable unless someone confesses. A student may also plagiarize in multiple classes, and might get off because each of the teachers who catch them decide to let them off with a warning.
If punishment for plagiarism was lenient, students would be likelier to risk cheating, knowing that on the off chance they're caught, they'd only receive a minor punishment. Therefore, the punishment has to be harsh enough that students acting rationally realize that, even with a small chance of getting caught, the resulting punishment is severe enough to deter them from attempting it at all. (See Psychology of Academic Cheating, pg. 144 for a possibly clearer description of this problem).
My own approach to this is to scare my students at the start of the semester by telling them how seriously I take the slightest attempt at plagiarism, but then evaluating them on a case-by-case basis, and only sending the severest cases to my school's Honor Code Council.

It's unfortunate that your answer isn't getting more attention. It's a very nice hypothesis, and it sounds very convincing to me. Now, I wonder whether anybody in the source you're citing did any experimental research around this: e.g there's an interesting counterexample for a similar situation where automatic three-strike lifetime criminal sentences or minimum sentences appear to have no effect crime deterrence. This could have something to do with future cost discounting: time is hard to mentally quantify. Threat of expulsion, like automatic death sentences, might be far more effective.

This is just what I was about to write. It's clearly the main reason as it undermines the very purpose of the school. Nicely put.

Yes, this is an extremely important point. From a game-theory/incentives perspective, the "average penalty" for doing something wrong is the penalty for getting caught multiplied by the probability of getting caught. For infractions that are difficult to detect (or for some other reason the penalty is rarely applied), the penalty must be harsher to avoid letting potential culprits feel like they are statistically immune to the negative effects of their actions.

[Note: I'm posting this as a second answer since it adds a new (and, I think, important) insight that's completely unrelated to my first answer.]
I think a key point to understand is that the value system of academia is different from the value system of the rest of society, and that that makes perfect sense. I don't mean that academia and everyone else disagree on what's moral behavior and what isn't -- I think by and large, in a qualitative sense, they agree on those things -- but they have quantitative disagreements on the extent to which certain behaviors are moral or not (and therefore how severely they should be punished).
Specifically, in academia, honesty and honest behavior (in a professional context) are much more prized than outside academia. That is because this type of honesty is essential to the mission of academia, which is to advance human knowledge. So, for a professor to cheat on his wife is seen by other academics as not good in exactly the same way, and to the same extent, as it would be seen by anyone else. But for a professor to copy a section of a paper written by someone else and publish it in his own paper without attribution, would be viewed by other academics much more severely than it would be viewed by most people outside academia, because it is not just "ordinary" dishonesty, it is a special kind of dishonesty that discredits and harms the entire profession and its mission.
Note that this is analogous to the situation with many other professions that have their own unique value systems and codes of conduct that are different from the rest of society. For example, lawyers care much more about confidentiality of their clients' information than other professionals, and that's why if you are a lawyer who disclosed some information about a client that you were not allowed to disclose, that would be viewed much more severely by your profession (and could lead to harsh punishments such as being disbarred and forbidden from practicing the law) than if you are just a random guy (even a lawyer) who was told a secret by a friend and told it to someone else without permission. The same violation of trust, which according to our normal moral code is just as bad in both cases, is interpreted completely differently according to the context in which it took place, since in the latter context a different value system and moral code would apply. (Similarly, doctors have their own unique codes and find certain behaviors unacceptable in a professional context that most people would not find very problematic. I could come up with some examples to drive home the point but this post is already getting a bit too long.)
To summarize, although in my first answer I argued that it's not necessarily the case that plagiarism is punished more severely than any other offenses, here I want to argue that even if it is punished more severely, that could be rational and based on the unique value system of academia, which holds certain values, and in particular professional honesty and integrity, as much more cherished and important than the rest of society does. When viewed in this way, I think this situation makes perfect sense and is precisely what you'd expect to happen.

Academia is not the only profession / domain with a strong and well-enforced code of ethics.  Others include medicine, civil engineering, and law.

@jakebeal indeed. The military is another example that comes to mind. Even criminals have their own code of behavior, which they need to ensure the proper functioning of their criminal enterprises. Seems like this plagiarism example is part of a much more general principle. :-)

Hmm... I'm not sure that I'd really say that it's so much of an issue of professions considering a particular behavior "more morally wrong" so much as just that those behaviors are incompatible with the mission of those professions and, as such, are punished more harshly than they would be in other professions where they matter more. Still, this is mostly a semantic difference, so +1 for a good point and giving similar examples from other professions.

First, I think it's debatable whether the premise of your question is correct. Some instances of plagiarism are punished more harshly than some instances of the other offenses you listed, but I'd have to see some hard data justifying the claim that as a general rule plagiarism is punished more harshly than violent behavior or theft. Until I see such data, I'll remain skeptical.
Second, with regards to your statement that "I've always found it strange that the gut reaction many people have towards it seems to be worse than for getting punched in the face," I think there is another questionable premise there, namely that violent bad behavior is by its nature worse and more reprehensible than non-violent bad behavior. At the abstract level I don't think that's true. To take a much more extreme example, Bernard Madoff perpetrated a non-violent financial scam that is estimated to have cost a total of $18B to thousands of investors, including leading to some people losing their entire retirement and life savings. I'm sure some of those people would absolutely prefer being punched in the face to what happened to them. Madoff is serving a prison sentence of 150 years, which suggests that the courts also think what he did was much worse than most violent crimes.
Going back to the subject of plagiarism, the answers by jakebeal and Anonymous Mathematician already do a good job of explaining why it is harmful and deserves to be punished (and you yourself said in your question that you understand and agree with that part). Now, some plagiarism cases are much more egregious than others, and certainly expulsion can be an appropriate response in some cases, whereas in other cases a warning and a failing grade in the assignment may be enough. The same is true for fighting, drug- or alcohol-related transgressions, or petty theft: all of these types of offenses can come in very mild varieties that would represent little more than a sign of typical late-teen immaturity and not warrant a severe punishment, but can also escalate to very serious levels where they even warrant a criminal prosecution. So the bottom line is, it all depends on the precise details of the offense. I strongly doubt it would be correct to generalize and say that plagiarism is either worse than, or not as bad as, other typical types of student misconduct.

Colleges, above all, are institutes of higher education, and the standing of each college in academia hinges upon the perceived academic rigor and integrity of the said college. Since plagiarism, compared to the other offences, is especially damaging to the quality and image of a college, it is dealt with most harshly.

Would that make it out of self interest?  If it's just a question of "what's worse for the university", then it's basically a PR problem.  Though I suppose it would explain it since plagiarism is more newsworthy ("busted a cheating ring" vs. "dude was punched in the face yesterday") than other offenses.  Questions of justice shouldn't be about PR.

@Prime Well I said "damaging to the quality and image", not just "damaging to the image". Plus, perception and reality are not really dichotomous.

good point.  And the people who make these kinds of rules probably have several goals in mind anyways.

All justice is about PR in the end.

Whereas stealing and fighting are crimes aganist another person, and drugs are a crime against "the state", plagiarism is a crime against the integrity of the college.  Simply put, they take plagiarism personally, because it hurts the perceived value of their product more than real crimes do.

It has to be handled extremely harshly because of how massively advantageous to the student it is to plagiarize, and how massively unrepresentative it is of the student's abilities.
If it were not handled extremely harshly it would be more advantageous to plagiarize than not to, even with the possibility of getting caught (they probably won't get caught every time...probably not even much of the time). If it's more advantageous to plagiarize then not then it will be rampant (because people aren't dumb...they'll do what they need to do to be the best...which in this scenario would mean plagiarizing constantly in order to compete with the others that do and they will recognize that).
If plagiarizing is rampant then it means the university is putting out people that don't actually know the things the university is giving them accredited documents saying they know.
If a university is handing out degrees to people that can't do the stuff the degree says they can...the university's prestige is what takes the hit...leading to it getting less students and being able to charge less as an institution...leading to all sorts of problems up to and including actual failure of the university.
It is literally a matter of survival for the university itself to punish plagiarism so harshly. That way the punishment is so harsh that no advantage from the act is worth even the minute possibility of getting caught.
If they put out someone that does drugs and punches people...but knows their degree inside and outside then that's a hit on the person, not the university. But if they're putting out sweet angels that are never high on anything but life and take care of elderly people trying to cross streets in their spare time, but don't know their degree, the university suffers greatly for that.
So it's not so much that the punishment reflects the crime as the punishment reflecting how much the crime affects the entity handing down the punishment.

I think it's debatable whether plagiarism is so massively advantageous to a student. After all, s/he will not be acquiring the experience and skills necessary to do the work on his/her own - and that will make it exceedingly difficult for him/her soon enough.

Plagiarism is contrary to the academic ideals, goals and aspirations. To put it bluntly, it is also contrary and damaging to the business model. In an ideal world, plagiarism should not be present in academia.
There are also cultural elements at play. Some cultures are also more adverse than others to underhanded manouvers, lying and in consequence plagiarism. While some cultures only worry about face and being caught in the act, others have better morals ingrained in the society as a whole.
In general, I would say the harsher punishments for this offense work as a detterrent and as an example for less scrupulous  students.

While I don't think this is the reason (Other answers give better primary reasons), one thing I don't yet see covered by other answers is that plagiarism is almost always intentional, and obviously the blame is on the student who plagiarized, so it almost always qualifies for the harshest punishment, when it is found. (There can be cases where plagiarism is unintentional, but those cases are usually readily apparent - and it is hard to say, "I didn't know that was plagiarizing" by this point in education.)

Stealing is sometimes hard to prove. It becomes one person's word against another.
Violence is generally a "heat of the moment" result of a situation in which others may also share a large part of the blame.
Drugs are mostly a safety concern - and the more common ones, while they can be harmful to the user, do not directly impact the safety of others in most situations.

Of course, where those scenarios do become "serious enough" - they can have penalties just as great as plagiarizing. The point is, there are more "arguable" situations in which someone might be accused of stealing, violence, or drugs, but not have actually done it or just doesn't warrant the full harshest punishment.

I disagree. Many students who plagiarize come from other educational systems with a different approach to attribution, or thought they attributed sources correctly but misunderstood, or genuinely thought attribution wasn't necessary, etc. The students are still responsible, but I wouldn't call it "intentional." Also in the case of students plagiarizing from other students, it can be hard to assign responsibility. In my experience, most cases of plagiarism in a university setting have some of these subtleties.

@ff524 There is always some subtleties, the students who come from other systems fell into "usually readily apparent" when approached with the issue - in my opinion. But I'm not sure how difficult assigning responsibility can really be in the second case. Presumably, you could do some test similar to here. I still think there is a difference between plagiarism and the other violations in terms of how "arguable" they are.

Plagiarism can be very costly to other students both past, current and future.
Plagiarizing allows a student to get a better grade; this lets them get a “good” job that they then fail at due to not understanding what they claimed to have studied.    This lead to the university getting a bad name and the given employer not trusting the grading of anyone form that university, so hence, not even interviewing students of the given university.
Plagiarism can be of great benefit to the student.
For example they get a better job, due to the better grade.   A 1% difference in grade an effect if someone gets an interview to train with a top company.     Having trained with the top company, it can increase someone income by $50K per year for the next 30 years!
Plagiarism is hard to detect.
Firstly it is hard to define plagiarism, what if a computer student asks a question on StackOverlow, gets an answer in C#, then rewrites it as Java…..
As to checking if a student asked someone else to do the work, we all know it is very hard to detect and only people unskilled at plagiarism get detected.
Therefore
Given the high benefit, and the low likelihood of detection, the punishment must be great enough for a student not to take the risk.   If the risk of being detected is just having to redo the work, then a student has lots of chances of learning how not to be detected with little cost to the learning -  hence even in the 1st year there must be a real cost to getting detected.
Other violations…
Stealing form anther student for example, will not give the same long term benefit as getting a better grade, therefore does not need as high a punishment to prevent it.

I don't see problem in your second point. If they get a better job just for the grades then it's very much likely the company isn't worth much. If they hire that person not only for the grades but mainly because of it AND THEN the person doesn't fail at the job as you pointed in the first point, then the person is at the right place doing the right job. Nothing wrong with that, plagiarism isn't the causality here, only correlation.

As colleges and universities are often considered institutions of "higher education", where the mind is meant to flourish and whatnot, it shouldn't come as much as a surprise.
As someone has mentioned, a legal system is already in place to deal with things such as physical violence and theft. These crimes are usually passed forward to local law enforcement, assuming the deed was indeed enough to fall outside of the boundaries of the law. It's simply out of the scope of the institution to focus on these matters. However, that is not to say that they should ignore them and action should definitely be taken if it becomes a problem.
Ultimately, as the law is meant to protect those in society from physical violence, these institutions are meant to protect academic integrity. An offence such as breaking and entering frequently causes jail-time. Plagiarism could be viewed as the breaking and entering of the academic world, which should cause the suspension/expulsion to be reasonable.
It's like cheating in a video game. You can get to the top very easily by cheating, but once you get there, everyone likely knows you've been cheating. If not, they will soon find out. Your skill level(s) will obviously not match what your previous work has displayed.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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software to organize (1) research questions (2) secondary literature (3) own notes
Is someone aware of software that can help me create certain goals and research (sub)questions (digitally) and connect these questions in an organized way with the secondary literature on my computer, as well with my own notes.
I have over 2000 pdf files on my computer. The problem is that I don't want to create a new folder (and copy of the file) every time I come up with a new question.
Ideally, but not necessary, the software should also keep track of edit history and I should be able to make notes on files. It would also be nice if I could access my research organizer from everywhere, though this is not a necessary requirement.
I have looked into some software to manage bibliographies, but the main goal of this kind of software is to export the bibliography, rather than organize my research-questions, computer files, and own notes.
I suppose I want to create some kind of database/tree with the following structure

WEEK 1 ("short title comes here")
-- more detailed description of research question; goal/workplan/etc.
-- literature to read this week (software links correct files on my pc)
------- book 1
------- book 2
------- article 1
------- etc.
-- output
------- version (monday)
------- version (friday)

The software, ideally, must have a "search function" which redirects me to the correct node of the tree (i.e. "WEEK 1" not "this-pdf-contains-the-string.pdf")

Have you looked at Devonthink? http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/overview.html

Try Workflowy..

Maybe a local wiki system would help. Something like tiddlyWiki maybe, that doesn't need any special soft- or hardware to be used?

Try using Microsoft's One Note. It recently became free to use and is a very good application to store your content, no matter how lengthy it may be.

Could you perhaps elaborate a little more on why it is a good choice?

I'm not sure there exists an all-in-one solution as you would like, however Docear is pretty close to what you want and allows you to organize your thoughts/files and connecting them.
On the meta level, I use a bare-bones website from Google Sites (free), set to private, to record daily thoughts and progress (searchable).
Hope it helps

You can try Evernote. It's a simple application yet powerful. You can even sync your notes between devices.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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When should the grading scheme for quizzes and exams be finalized?
I am currently working as a graduate teaching assistant for a semester-long introductory physics course, aimed primarily at Biology/Pre-Med undergrads. The students usually have a short quiz every two weeks in a discussion section, along with two prelims (mid-terms) and one final exam. The TAs make the grading schemes for their own quizzes as each discussion section has a different quiz.
One thing that I find very strange with the grading (quiz or prelim) is that the grading scheme is made after seeing the answer sheets submitted by the students, not before. The intention behind doing so (at least for the quizzes) is to assign less points to the harder questions and more to the easier ones so that the average is roughly 7.5/10 (this is a soft rule).
Similarly, on the prelim, the points for individual sub-questions were decided after conducting the exam and seeing a few answer sheets (points for each question were fixed beforehand).

Is this a standard practice for introductory physics courses in the US?

What are the benefits of this practice over deciding a grading scheme beforehand?

From an answer describing a good grading system:

At minimum, a good grading system should meet three criteria:

it should accurately reflect differences in student performance
it should be clear to students so they can chart their own progress
it should be fair

On the first two counts, making the grading scheme afterwards seems to be a bad choice:

Accurately reflecting differences in student performance → making the grading scheme later may bias the grader towards assigning higher points for conceptually easy questions instead of more challenging ones.
Clear to students → the points for individual sub-questions are not assigned beforehand so students cannot judge how much time they should devote to different problems.

In my experience, tests and quizzes have a number in parentheses indicating how many points the question is worth.  But if the TAs are inexperienced, I can imagine that they might be feeling their way as they go.

I thought so too but students usually end up with much lesser scores with that method (~33%), although it could be because I am a relatively harsh grader.

Maybe it would be helpful to give them a practice test to do at home, and to go over together in class.

It's a bad idea. Non-transparent. Highly subjective. Subject to abuse. Not useful to inform students what the big issues are. Also a lot more work (multiple cycles through the test papers).

@DanielR.Collins, do you have suggestions for improvement given the constraints (like roughly maintaining the average)? I find that if I make a grading scheme beforehand, students end up with bad scores like 4 or 5 out of 10 (so I've never actually used it).

Always set a rubric in advance and stick to it while grading the papers. If the average is too low, and upon reflection you think it indicates unfair or overly challenging questions, then just apply a linear scale afterwards (say, +3 points to each paper). In future semesters adjust the tests so that's not needed. Personally, I don't find it hard to dial in an appropriate difficulty level after the first semester.

This is my first semester for this course as a TA so I'm still learning. Most often I end up underestimating the difficulty (or are my students underperforming?). I will try your suggestion. Thanks!

There are definite advantages to this scheme, but I see one big potential pitfall.
The advantages: sometimes a question you pose has a "garden path" wrong answer where students can follow what seems like a perfectly good line of reasoning, and end up not getting it correct. Maybe attacking it from this approach would work in principle, but you end up with horrible equations you need to solve. Whether a student gets these questions right might be rather random, depending on which approach they happen to think of first. If you reduce the number of points these problems count for, the grading will be fairer.
The potential pitfall: it will be very tempting to look at what the two or three best students in the section did, and use this to calibrate the questions. This gives an enormous advantage to the students you think are the two or three best students in each section, and you should try to avoid doing this.

This seems like a variation of norm referenced grading aka grading to the curve. What is unique in your question is that the TAs are not using the student's responses to set the curve for the overall score of the quiz but rather to set a curve for each individual question. This is strange in my personal experience but I cannot say definitively that it is an unacceptable practice. However, probably no one with thorough training in assessment in education would do this.
One of the concerns you mentioned was fairness in the grading. One way to address this is to clearly communicate how quizzes and exams are assessed and graded. If you explain the current system it will help significantly. If students know what to expect they may disagree but it reduces the risk of complaints of unfairness

How can you not use the students' responses to set a curve for each individual question? Out of basic fairness, you want to make sure that students who make the same mistake get the same grade on each question. And unless you've given the same question many times before, you won't know what the common mistakes are until you see them.

@PeterShor: Isn't that the whole point of a "grading rubric" -- to set expectations, to show examples of good and bad work, and to practice on those types of questions in advance? Or do you think that grading rubrics are infeasible in principle (possibly for your specific discipline)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubric_%28academic%29

@Daniel: Grading rubrics prepared in advance are a  good idea, but they have their limitations. What happens when 20% of students make exactly the same mistake, and it's not completely clear how to score it from the grading rubric. Does this not happen in your discipline? Or do you just let the graders judge how to grade it the best they can from the grading rubric, and not worry about consistency?

@PeterShor: Thanks for the response. I'm at a large community college teaching things like basic programming, statistics, and algebra. I don't have graders other than myself. In any problem I just make an answer sheet and assess points proportionally for correct work done, usually 2-6 points per problem, and I don't find any mistakes that fail to fall into that rubric. Usually I can predict in advance what the average grades will be in about a 10% margin or less. That prediction does not always include the 75% point, nor do I feel that it needs to.

@Daniel: Yes, if you're the only one grading the papers, maintaining consistency is a lot easier.

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text:
Student put my name in the acknowledgement section despite the fact I have never talked to him
A high school fresh graduate was applying to undergraduate schools in the united states. He is a friend of a family acquaintance. Despite the fact that I did not even know his name, I was surprised when the family acquaintance asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him and for his friend. I do not know them at the slightest level. It seems that they were working on a research project, which looks completely silly to me (paranormal research related to the secrets of the pyramids, I did not bother to look carefully). I refused the requests to write the letter of recommendation. In the letter that the student sent me for me to submit, he says I worked with him on various things and I think that he is a genius. This was completely dishonest.
Now, I discovered that the student posted the said project on pyramid secrets (I think it is related to non-sensical theories on generating power from triangular structures) on a website, called academia.edu. In the acknowledgement section, he repeated the same claims that I worked with him on the project. I actually have never talked with him before. Now, I am a graduate student in science. This has been incredibly annoying to me. I wonder what is the best way to proceed. I have sent that person a message on academia.edu but he did not respond. I do not know how to contact him. I tried looking for a way to contact academia.edu to report this dishonest behaviour, but I do not know if there is a way to contact them. Any suggestions will be helpful.

Normally, mailing the helpline email id works. I had a problem with research gate (on a completely different issue) but they replied to me after a week or so!

Does this answer your question? What is the best way to deal with cranks?

I'd ignore cranks as well. However, I am still an un-experienced first-year graduate student and this is the first time I encounter a situation like this (that a crank claims in some writing that I actively worked on the measurements with him). I was annoyed because this is completely dishonest act. I think the best course of action is to ignore him.

Note the extreme similarity to this question from late last year. Is OP the same querent in both?: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/158360/writing-letter-of-recommendation-for-someone-i-have-never-met/

Also, incidentally, here is a whois lookup of the contact information for academia.edu: https://www.whois.com/whois/academia.edu It looks like it's run by a company called Academia, Inc. based out of San Francisco.

This is bizarre. Did you talk with your "family acquaintance" about this incident?

Use your paranormal powers to delete the paper as though it never existed.

Searching papers with "pyramid energy" on academia.edu brings back several funny ones.

Are you sure people would associate you with the name on the acknowledgement? Do you have an uncommon name? Does he mention your affiliation?

Move on. There is little you can do about it: People can claim whatever they like on the internet and if they say that you worked with them, that's a nuisance but there is little you can do about it (in most jurisdictions) as long as they do so on websites that do not have strong ethics. academia.edu is not one of those websites with strong ethics.
Continue to do good work and build a reputation for yourself through your own publications. That's what you should focus on. The likelihood that anyone will find the pyramids publication is pretty small, and in the worst case if someone asks you about it, you can always explain the story (or just say that that must be someone else with the same name as you).

Don't worry about it.
Even if people might wonder why you'd be involved with a crank, they should know/realize that cranks do entangle other people. Also that one has no practical power to prevent bogus "thanks", in any case.
This is one of those sorts of sad ironies, that the only way to keep distance from cranks is to keep distance from nearly everyone. If nothing else, "crank" is very relative. Many kids' judgement would make them be declared "cranks", if we forget that they're just kids, and have essentially no experience.
Yes, it is disquieting to be connected to dubious stuff... but, again, there's no reasonable way to avoid this, I think, without cutting oneself off from most positive social/professional connections.

I was exceedingly pleased to realize that my name now appears in the infamous Muckenheim Tome.
https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~mueckenh/Transfinity/Transfinity/pdf

@StevenGubkin, whoa! :)

Talk to a lawyer about defamation/libel.
Regardless of where they've posted it, by alleging your support of their pseudoscientific claptrap, they're doing harm to your professional reputation by lying about you, and there's a term for that: defamation.
So, I'd suggest talking to a lawyer about drafting a letter ordering them to retract their paper and refrain from publishing any further papers claiming your support, and stating that if they fail to comply, you'll sue them for defamation. If you're a grad student at a university, you might want to talk to one of your university's legal staff; most universities should maintain legal staff to assist their faculty with things like IP law.
You might not have the contact details of the website they've posted it on, but you do have the contact details of the crank who's posted it, right? You'd just need some means for your lawyer to deliver the letter to them.

Talking to a lawyer for something like this, especially if the obvious ways of correcting the situation have not been exhausted, is something of an expensive overkill.

@ZeroTheHero That is why you have insurance ("Rechtsschutzversicherung").

@ZeroTheHero It sounds to me like many of the obvious ways of correcting the situation have been exhausted, given that the person in question hasn't responded to their previous communications. "Lawyering up" might be their best course of action, even if it might fuel the sort of persecution complex that cranks often have.

I'm nearly always against recommendations to involve a laywer on this website. This is an exception. There is a clear tort, and there is a clear remedy. Moreover, it seems very plausible that if the crank receives a letter from the laywer informing them of the impending libel suit, they'll carve in and remove that stuff. Sure, it might cost a bit to make this happen, but for me personally that would definitely be worth it.

@Arno this will be somewhat jurisdiction dependent, but in e.g. the UK, the threshold for establishing defamation is very high and what might seem like a "clear tort" to you may be in fact not be. It isn't sufficient that someone has said something untrue and negative about you, nor is mere harm sufficient. There must be serious harm and you must prove that this has actually been caused or is likely to be caused - the mere extistence of the words doesn't mean there is any actual harm.

@JBentley Well, it could potentially result in OP losing their job by becoming thought of as a crank themselves and becoming unable to get their papers published, which seems like "serious harm" to me.

Unfortunately, the legal system wants to see actual harm happen before any action can be taken.

@Arno, "if the crank receives a letter from the lawyer informing them of the impending libel suit, they'll cave".... Filing lawsuits strictly for the purposes of intimidating people is, in most circles, considered an uncool thing to do.  It is also illegal in many jurisdictions

Waste of time and money considering that: 1. This is a highschool graduate 2. Who writes about an esoteric subject. 3. And hides his paper on a website with millions of other papers.

@nick012000 Again, it doesn't matter that there is the potential for harm, or that something "seems like" serious harm to you. The criteria for defamation are legal criteria that have to be proved, with evidence, in a court room, and the bar is notoriously high. Words such as "serious", "caused", "likely" (see the link to the legislative provision in my comment above) have specific legal meanings that are not necessarily the ones that seem intuitive to a non-legally qualified layperson.

@Him Arno's suggestion has nothing to do with frivolous litigation. The latter is something you do as a form of harassment when your case has zero prospect of success (e.g. is not even based on legal principles, or is obviously and flatly contradicted by the facts). Pre-court negotiations where the outcome in court is merely uncertain (as opposed to hopeless) are completley normal and expected.

This advice could backfire; a crank could take a letter from a lawyer and claim it is evidence in support of their theories.  Or they could begin to harass the plaintiff.

A lawyer might be overkill here, but there's nothing stopping you from ending him a cease and desist letter yourself. They're not hard to write, and a letter in official legal language is usually enough to scare people off, even if not written by a lawyer.

Try contacting academia.edu .
From your question I gather you have not contacted the academia.edu site managers/editors/owners. Do so! They have a Contact Form.
Explain the situation -  making it clear how the paper is injurious (perhaps even libelous?) to you; explain how you tried to contact the author directly but were ignored; and ask that the paper be removed. I wouldn't threaten legal action.
Will this work? Frankly, I have no idea, but it's the obvious next thing to do, IMHO.

Talk to the boy's friend and his parents.
You said that your malefactor is

a high school fresh graduate

and that

He is a friend of a family acquaintance.

Ok, so interact with him along those channels. Get in touch with your family member who is the guy's friend. Explain to him - not angrily - that his friend has done something inappropriate, which is inconveniencing you and is also inherently wrong. Try to get him to talk to his friend, and ask/tell his friend to take your name off of the acknowledgements.
In parallel to that, or following a failure of this approach, ask your family member for the contact information of your malefactor's parents. Then have the same conversation with them, but maybe throw in a sentence about how in academia, mis-attribution of claims this is considered a serious ethical violation - and of course you don't intend to pursue this in professional channels (i.e. "of course" but this is a hint that that's an option), so out of courtesy and respect for them and considering the boy's age you're suggesting that they talk with their son about this. You'll need to carefully balance friendliness, respectfulness, condescension and threat.

First, as already answered, don't worry.
Then, some secondary action you may take.
"He is a friend of a family acquaintance"
Then explain the situation as clearly as possible, without giving details on the quality or kind of research (i.e., just focus on the part "we never worked together") to your family or directly to the family acquaintance to pass the message to the "writer".
If you find out your name is associated with that text on google, you can ask to google for removal of that results (and I suggest any results) associating your name with academia.edu .
If academia is not responsive, you may think about enrolling yourself in that site and publishing yourself a clarification text (as dry and short as possible) stating that you had no involvement whatsoever with the crank's text.
I am not familiar with academia.edu, I guess you can link different texts, so you can provide always a link to that text.
Hopefully, in short time you will build a bigger scientific profile than the "crank", so your document will appear first in search engines.

If arguing about removal with a truthist outlet fails to work, another possibility is to use the webspace under your control to mention something like:
Please note that at least one contentious paper has been published online alleging my endorsement in the thank you section. While this is flattering, it is also untrue.
If you do this, keep it nuanced to avoid making it personal.

It's definitely not flattering to be drawn into a fake paper.

If I read that on someone's bio, I'd be tempted to search to find the "contentious paper".  Don't think that is what the OP wants.

tldr: It depends on how did he exactly acknowledge you and his intention.
Case 1. He wrote: "This project is supervised by Professor X". Then this is clearly unethical and he need to learn about it.
Case 2. He wrote something like "This project is inspired by/dedicated to Professor X; all mistakes are mine." Then I won't say he is cheating badly. We need to be a bit more tolerated and patient to young people, as they probably don't know the rules.

I am providing this alternative perspective which might not be the answer you wish to see. From what I can tell, you think that the kid is doing pseudo science.
I agree that he is somehow cheating; however, if your two families are very well connected, then I won't suggest you to fight against your parents and close relatives and friends.
You could write him an email, listing some literature showing that his research is pseudo science.
You require him to include your name in the acknowledgement only if he did the literature review. You require him to to list your name professionally, just like any other academic paper. You can provide him an exemplar acknowledgement, something like: I would like to thank gradstudent for helps; all errors are mine.
If he does this, you write him a fair letter.
This will be win-win for all parties.

The kid is happy that you did help.
The two families are happy because you helped; they will be indebt of you.
You will be gaining a good reputation of selflessly helping a perspective student, no matter how ignorant he was.
The university will have a fair reference letter.

All it costs is 30 min of your time: 15min for finding references and 15min for writing a generic, high-school level letter. Hell, writing a question on SE will take you more than 15 min.
Again, no one will look down upon you for helping the weak. Most people will be impressed with your selflessness.

A literature review doesn't turn a bogus paper into a serious paper. Probably not serious enough for OP wanting to being acknowledged, anyway; let alone write a letter of recommendation.

@henning--reinstateMonica Probably I was not clear enough. I mean, by writing the literature review, the student will learn that his research is pseudo science, and therefore work on making his research rigorous enough to not be consider a pseudo science. I don't understand why would anyone turn down an acknowledgement, if they are not binding with any responsibility.

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text:
Saying no to miscellaneous administrative tasks as a Grad student
In my university, graduate students under scholarship have to perform certain tasks like tutoring and grading. I have no problem with that since it is part of the contract.
There are also some miscellaneous tasks like offering to help out for a departmental party (takes 10 hours over a few days), or volunteer to bring some visitors around the school, etc. These are theoretically on a voluntary basis, but when no one volunteers the admin staff starts to get very pushy and "hard sell" people to volunteer. To get a sense of how pushy the admin can get, I recently had to reject the same task thrice (via email), with the admin getting increasingly curt and rude in their email. (The administrators are not professors, they are in charge of departmental duties including paying our stipend.)
I plan to reject around 90% (edit: maybe 50-60% selectively, as there are some events that I am genuinely glad to help out) of such "voluntary tasks", and have already rejected a few, and accepted one. (I am a new graduate student) Will there be any negative repercussions if I do that (reject majority of the tasks)?
Most of the tasks require at most 10-20% of the students to help out (around 10 helpers out of 60 students). Some tasks just need a single or one or two volunteers.
(Edit: my personal background is that I used to be a "yes" person to the extent of burning out (previous experience not in school), hence I need to learn how to say no firmly to certain things. I have also discovered through the hard way that "yes" people get asked to volunteer more and more, few  actually takes into account that I am already volunteering for another event and may need a rest. )
Also are there any tips on how to say no, with respect to Academia? I may try a new strategy of ignoring such emails, the emails do "require" us to respond whether we can make it or not, not sure if ignoring such emails may be a better policy since I think that is what some students do.
Edit: I have found a personal solution is to read up on more self help books on assertiveness. Thanks for all the help (including sarcastic comments, which confirms my new belief that I should not care about what others think). Especially thanks to Professor Romik for restoring my faith in humanity. Hope this thread can help students facing similar predicaments.

Are the administrators in your question the department secretaries?

Yes, they are something like secretaries

Please be nice to them. They can be very helpful when you need them. They are the ones who would know where  your professors are when you truly need to see them. They are the last people in the world you want to mess with if you plan to stay in the department for a while.

Is there anyone whose contract explicitly states that helping out for a departmental party or tending to visitors is a part of their tasks? If not, then it seems obvious that such tasks need to be distributed among the rest of the staff. It is not clear from your question whether that happens in an evenly distributed way, or whether it is specifically you who is repeatedly pestered with requests to take over such tasks. Unless there is an issue with the distribution of such requests, the way to go for you would probably be to use a department meeting to bring up the issue and ask your ...

... team for a team decision on whether the consensus is to not organize any department parties and avoid having visitors in the future.

"...I plan to reject around 90%". And the admin staff will plan to forget to send the necessary papers for your graduation or your request for funding for a conference trip, just long enough, so you do not get approval.

Think about which requests you want to reject, rather than a blanket "90%". I don't think "helping to organize a departmental party", and "showing visitors around the school", are comparable tasks. For example one of them has a lot more potential for benefit to you than the other one. If you want to stick to the letter of your contract, check that it doesn't contain what is pretty much standard in any non-academic employment contract - a phrase similar to "any other duties, as assigned".

The first rule of surviving in an office environment is not to tick off the administrative staff, since they can make your life miserable if you're not careful (as Alexandros suggests). However, if you are seen as helping out on some tasks from time to time, you'll be able to get away with rejecting much more than if you reject everything at first.

To echo @aeismail and others, if you "work the rule" at the admins you are likely to find them working the rule right back at you. Learning to say no is a good thing. Learning when not to say no is also a good thing.

@ChrisWhite Oh well. OP asked for advice, and has received it. If (s)he now chooses to follow an answer that has received the most downvotes of any accepted answer I have ever seen in this Stack Exchange, (s)he can really not blame anybody but her/himself.

yoyostein, let me start by reminding you (just in case you forgot - some of the other comments and answers certainly seem to be ignoring these facts) that you are a professional, serious person who came to graduate school to further your education and become a better person. Getting your PhD is a nontrivial task that requires a level of focus and dedication that most people are not capable of. It is a difficult and risky endeavor, and for some graduate students even a small misstep like misplacing one's priorities slightly by doing too much volunteer work, or too much of anything unrelated to their studies, can mean the difference between success and failure.
You are also an employee of the department. On top of all that you are a human being, and therefore deserving of being treated justly and respectfully.
It follows that, from an ethical point of view, the administrators at your department have no right -- I repeat, NO RIGHT; ZERO; NADA -- to require you to volunteer even a minute of your time, or to treat you disrespectfully (and certainly not to retaliate against you in any way) if you decline to do so. Conversely, you are 100% within your rights -- morally and ethically -- to refuse to volunteer. At the same time, refusing does carry some risks which you would be wise to evaluate and consider carefully before taking any action. I believe however, that if you resist the administrators' pressure in a respectful and classy manner, and if you are in the U.S. or a place with similar culture, then those risks would be largely mitigated, and you may even stand to gain newfound respect from your administrators and possibly the faculty and your fellow graduate students by asserting your rights.
In terms of what is the best way to respond to the pressure to volunteer, I can think of several possibilities which may be appropriate, depending on the nature of the situation, your personality and the personality of the administrators and other people in the department.
One suggestion is to respond to your administrator's recent request, in writing or in person if you feel more comfortable, with something like the following:

"Dear [name of administrator],
You recently contacted me for a third time with a request to volunteer
  to [insert activity] after I had already declined the same request twice.
  While I'm sure your request is well-intentioned, and sympathize
  with your frustration at the difficulty of finding graduate students who
  can help with
  this, I found the tone of your request somewhat disagreeable and
  disrespectful. I would like to remind you that I am a serious and
  professional person who came to the program to work on my studies,
  gain experience in teaching, and get a PhD. These are difficult tasks
  and I feel that I must focus my energies on them while in graduate
  school. Furthermore, the task of [insert volunteer activity] that you
  asked me to do is not within my core interests or competency. That
  being the case, you should know that although I love to help when I
  can, in the future I may decline some of your and the other department
  staff's requests for volunteers. Please feel free to ask me to
  volunteer anytime, but I ask that you respect my wishes and not ask
  more than once if I decline.
Finally, I would like to raise a philosophical point. I assume that
  you are paid for your services and the department does not ask you to
  volunteer your time without compensation. However, myself and the
  other graduate students are often asked to volunteer our time. May I
  suggest that the department reconsider its approach on this matter? If
  you find a way to make the volunteer activities somehow profitable for
  us, whether it be by paying us directly or by other means (a small
  budget for pizza or for buying textbooks, etc.), I think you may find
  that you have a much easier time getting things done, and the culture
  and atmosphere of the department may improve. I'd be happy to meet with
  Chair [name of department chair] to raise these points with him if you
  think that would be appropriate, or you can mention it to [him/her].
Sincerely,
[your name]"

Contacting the administrator in this way is the least aggressive, and as such, probably the preferable way of raising your concerns. I think you may find that despite being rude to you, the administrator may turn out to be a sensible person who, if approached in such a thoughtful manner, will see your point and back off, and may even end up liking you more for your honesty.
If you are reluctant to speak with the administrator, another possibility is to ask a faculty member whom you trust to speak to the administrator on your behalf and raise your concerns with them.
In the event that these options didn't work or you think they are not even worth trying since the administrator is a really seriously incompetent or inconsiderate person, the other possibility would be to go to the department chair with your concerns. The chair is in charge of the administrative staff, and if he/she is a sensible person he/she will absolutely not tolerate his staff treating graduate students disrespectfully, and will instruct them not to pressure students into doing volunteer activities. A really good chair might go even further and put some serious thought how to correct these systemic problems with his department by addressing the philosophical issues I raised in the draft email message above. (Note: I am currently a department chair myself. Fortunately I am not aware of such problems in my own department...)
Keep in mind that contacting the chair is a fairly drastic measure so I would try other options first. The staff members do not like being criticised by the chair and may develop a grudge against you for bringing a complaint against them. Of course, that does not mean you shouldn't do it when there is no alternative.
If the chair is him/herself incompetent or a jerk, you may be out of luck. While there may still be creative ways to fight the unjust expectations of your department (contacting the dean or the graduate student union, organizing a mass protest, etc.), it seems to me that at this point the chances of success are very low and the risks start seriously outweighing the possible rewards, and that in that case you are better off simply accepting that you will occasionally have to volunteer for uninteresting duties, and swearing that someday when you are in a professional environment and in a position of authority you will treat people better than that.
UPDATE: I see based on the votes that my advice is turning out to be extremely unpopular. Thank you all for the feedback. I concede that my suggestions are based on my fundamental belief that most people have a reasonably well-developed sense of fairness, and while this belief (and the general approach to dealing with conflicts that guided my answer) has worked very well for me personally, it may not necessarily be applicable to this situation, and carries some risks that the OP should consider carefully.

Thanks for your answer! Yes, I will definitely assert my rights and not be a pushover. Thanks!

Glad I could help. Good luck!

This advice is awful. Complaining to the admin staff in written? With smartass comments like "I would like to raise a philosophical point" or "pay us to do volunteer stuff". Have you even walked inside a university? All the professors have to do admin  job (commitees) for free and you as a grad student want compensation? What if the admin staff escalates this to the dean (which he will)? You understand that the dean knows the admin for decades and you are the new guy? Who do you think is going to win?

Alexandros, as I mentioned, I am chair of a university department. Perhaps it was my smartass personality that got me appointed to the role. But anyway, thanks for the feedback. The professors' committee work is not free by the way, it is part of their job for which they are paid a pretty good salary.

@DanRomik So, if you get a complaint from the admin staff about some PHD student making their job harder, what do you do? Obviously the admin staff was ordered by some professor to find volunteers from the PHD students, he did not just make it up. So, if every student says NO, do you do it yourself? Because I have never seen a professor volunteering in a conference desk.

It is not the PhD student who is making the admin's job harder. It is the department's culture of relying on volunteer work for essential functions that is making their job harder. The department is a workplace. If the admin is paid for her work, why should the graduate student have to volunteer? Asking people to volunteer is fine and makes sense when the students get something out of it (e.g. attending a party with a well known visiting scientist, or gaining experience organizing a seminar). However, pressuring or coercing students to volunteer is unethical and possibly illegal.

And to answer your question, as department chair it is my job to solve precisely such problems, and I am often in such situations. If I get that complaint, I will have to figure out a solution, paying someone to do the work if necessary (or more often sweet-talking someone into agreeing to do it, by asking nicely or offering various carrots), or doing it myself in an extreme situation, or canceling the event. The point is that it is MY problem, not the problem of the graduate student.

@Dan, the fact that you are a department chair that treats PhD students with respect and does his best to be fair in solving tricky question does not imply that all department chairs would behave accordingly. Your advice is very risky.

@Ilya, indeed, I acknowledged in my answer both the risks and the possibility that the department chair may not be receptive to the complaint, and cautioned the OP to weigh his actions carefully.

I would like to agree with this post, but it is framed far too starkly. There is plenty of room between doing only what is explicitly stated in the contract and giving your whole life over to the office, and essentially every workplace has it customs and informal expectations, just as do non-work communities like churches and social clubs. Yoyostein needs to tackle the problem of balancing his needs against the expectations of his workplace with a sense of nuance. Making the organization respect his needs may take some doing, but framing the question as all or nothing isn't going to help.

Based on the OP's question, I couldn't tell whether the admin staff does indeed not perform any "volunteer" tasks. Are you sure that's the case? For instance, the task of organizing and distributing tasks such as the ones listed by the OP (yes, assigning tasks to people can be a time-consuming task in and of itself). Also, already in the question, it is not clear to me how "volunteer" is to be interpreted (if the rest of the OP's department uses that word at all). For instance, at my workplace, emptying the dishwasher is voluntary - on an individual per-case level, but someone will ...

... have to do it after all. It's voluntary in that I can freely choose to do it or not to do it today, and it's voluntary in that I'm not violating any of my duties by being absent on any particular day when the dishwasher needs to get emptied. But it's still required that I do it every now and then, as a part of functioning in my team. And of course, neither does my contract list "emptying the dishwasher", nor would anyone seriously bother putting that into a contract, let alone secure any funding to create a special position for that task.

This is terrible advice.

By suggesting that the OP write a letter, you are providing the administrators hard evidence that the OP refused to volunteer.

@Joel, did I get transported to a parallel universe in which the meaning of the word "volunteer" is not what I thought it was? My dictionary defines it as: "verb: freely offer to do something". If it is done out of coercion or fear (as your comment clearly suggests) then it isn't really volunteering, is it? Which raises another linguistics question, namely, am I the only one here who thinks that "graduate student" means something different than "slave"?

@O.R.Mapper, indeed, I would hope that OP is a good department citizen and occasionally empties the dishwasher at his graduate student lounge. However, he was asked to "volunteer" to perform a task that takes ten hours of his time. That's not really the same even if the word "volunteer" was used to describe both tasks.

When I wrote "the OP refused to volunteer," I meant to say "the OP refused to freely offer to do something."  I did not mean to say "the OP was coerced" or "the OP was afraid."  (It is possible for someone to refuse to volunteer even if that person was not coerced or was not afraid.)

@Joel, your "hard evidence" comment implies that OP should worry about the administration having evidence that he refused to volunteer. To me this suggests an element of coercion. If the decision to volunteer or not were truly free and did not carry a concern of retaliation or punishment, why should OP care about the existence of "hard evidence"? But if I misunderstood your intent, I apologize.

@DanRomik: Maybe I'm just weird there, but I think it does make a difference whether someone sticks to the absolutely required minimum, or whether someone somehow goes beyond that. And I think that difference can legitimately have consequences. My contract doesn't specify I have to help colleagues with technical problems, but it's considered a part of basic department culture and common courtesy, even if it can occasionally take away several hours of my time. Likewise, if the tasks described here are a part of the department culture, it seems legitimate that the OP's willingness to ...

... occasionally perform such tasks has an influence on the general evaluation of how well the OP integrates with his or her team.

@Alexandros While I agree this isn't good advice, it is rediculous to think that this response would escalate to the dean. The dean would tell the admin to solve their own problems if the admin complained, and then judge the admin for wasting his/her time with such trivial matters.

Will there be any negative repercussions if I do that (reject majority of the tasks)?

Of course there is no way to say for sure whether there will be any negative repercussions if you keep rejecting those requests. However, frankly, it seems likely to me that:

You will come across as kind of an ass to the administrative staff, and that's not great at all. If your university is at all like mine, there will be a number of times when you need their support in, well, administrative matters, and you will be very low on their priorities list if you make it a point to never or rarely help them out.
You will come across as kind of an ass to the other students, who will surely notice that you never help out and they need to take on more of those duties as a consequence. You will invariably need their help at some point during your studies, and it's not unlikely that they will not be thrilled to help you out then either.
You may come across as kind of an ass to the faculty, which tends to notice if certain students are never volunteering for anything. The extent to which they care is another question, but it seems unlikely that they will consider this a positive attitude. In the worst case, somebody may remember this when the time for letters of recommendation comes up after graduation.

Also are there any tips on how to say no, with respect to Academia? I may try a new strategy of ignoring such emails, the emails do "require" us to respond whether we can make it or not, not sure if ignoring such emails may be a better policy since I think that is what some students do.

If you really think you should keep on saying "no" to those things, it seems fair to tell the administrators directly that you are not available for volunteer work. They will likely be annoyed, but they will also be annoyed if you keep turning them down. I don't think there is a way to turn them down without annoying them in any way.
(and please don't start stringing together increasingly less plausible excuses - that's just childish)

Well, I used to be a "yes" person, saying yes to everything, and got burnt out as a result. Hence, I am trying to learn how to say "no" to some things that are not 100% compulsory.

@yoyostein I thought you are a new graduate student. Is the "burnt out" experience at the same department or somewhere else?

@yoyostein Don't be a "yes" person, but definitely also don't be a "no" person. Saying "no" 90% of the time is way too much, imho. There is such a thing as a middle ground - say yes if you have time, so no if it's really just a very bad time.

Just pointing out a minor typo: extent instead of extend in bullet 3 sentence 2. A very good answer otherwise (+1).

@scaaahu the previous burn out scenario was actually in church. I was asked to be the piano accompanist for an 11am service (among other timings), and also teach 11am Sunday school at the same time.(possible by rushing to and fro from the two places) I didn't know how to say no to the pastor. There were other available people but I was being asked probably because I didn't know how to reject people. I didn't like it and eventually burnt out and switched churches.

I'd like you to look at the matter from another perspective.
The majority of these small requests are about communicating with people. If you are planning on a career in academia, that may come useful. You never know.
During my masters I helped organising a conference. One of the tasks for students was to meet foreign guests at the airport or the railway station.
I was asked to meet a really brilliant researcher, and we had plenty of time to communicate. Half a year later, he wrote a recommendation letter for me that helped me to enter a PhD track. So, you never really know what you are going to miss. And you'll definitely miss something if you keep rejecting these small requests.
Moreover, these tasks are usually small, they rarely take more than an hour or two. If you compare the time spent with the possible negative consequences, may be you'll find it better to participate, at least from time to time.

Thanks for your answer. I will take the middle ground as people have mentioned, definitely not back to the "yes" person I used to be, but also not to swing to the other extreme.

Thanks, I think your answer is very good. By the way, preparing for the departmental party takes 10 hours hence I was extremely reluctant to do it.

Yes, that's not always piece of cake)) but, in this case, as xLetrix points out, consider the feelings of your mates who have to do it. It's just one of those things where you need to find balance

If you are asked to do a task that you think will take too long, why not offer to do part of the task? For example, if asked to prepare for the departmental party, you might offer to arrange the refreshments.

What you must consider is not just the total time the extra tasks take but also if your regular Ph.D. work is not interrupted too often. As a rule, it should be possible in  general to start work and not have to do anything else for several hours. If this is not the case, then that's a problem. You have to consider how to organize the tasks that you are supposed to be doing in such a way that both the time and the quality of the time you are working on your Ph.D work is sufficient. If no reasonable planning can accommodate for some extra tasks, then you need to raise that with your advisor.
In this case, you may actually find that the irregular activities like organizing a party are not really a big deal. The more routine tasks like tutoring (that you must of course do) are actually more of a burden. You may not experience it that way, but that's exactly part of the problem. We tend to not notice that we didn't start rigorous time consuming work to explore something that had a small chance of yielding an interesting result. If you have to teach in 90 minutes and it takes a few hours of work to get started on something then you tend to take the decision to do something else instead. And, of course, you won't miss the results you never found.

This is a good exposition of why to say no and a guide as to what sorts of things should be turned down if possible (things that will interrupt repeatedly rather than things where the work is constrained to a limited time). But getting your work done is only one side of the equation. Office society is always there, and like other societies it has ways of punishing people who won't keep up their end.

I would like to add a pragmatic note that applies to most international students in the US, and probably in some other countries in a similar fashion. If you are under F1 visa, and get paid through RA or TA (most common sources of income), they likely eat up your 20hrs/week on-campus employment quota, and subsequently you are not allow to work for anything other than your research/coursework. Organizing parties and working as a tour guide may not be viewed as part of your research/coursework by some immigration officers. So you can simply recall your F1 status, should you wish to decline such tasks.

authors: คนึง งามศรีสวัสดิ์


text:
Why is having multiple college majors seen as a bad thing when applying to graduate school?
I have been told that triple (or more) majoring and/or taking numerous minors is seen as a bad quality when applying to graduate school. Can anybody explain we why they do not want academically oriented students that like to learn stuff?

why they do not want academically oriented students that like to learn stuff That's pretty tendentious, dude.

*Tendentious*: expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one. (in case you didn't know, I didn't) cool word

It can often be that liking to learn stuff is actually detrimental to doing research.  I remember a friend that finished a PhD but found the experience something of an ordeal telling me, "I discovered I liked reading about beautiful theories in books but not actually creating my own, messy theory."

You can ask people who have already been there. I think most of them will tell you that it's not a good thing. I had a double major in my undergraduate era, and whenever someone asks my guidance on taking a double major, I strongly discourage him. Because I think you are more likely to reach water by digging a 30-meters deep well, than by digging two 5-meters deep holes.

It seems to be a common fallacy among undergraduate students that completing more majors and/or minors means that you have learned more in college.  I think this comes from the mistaken belief that completing the coursework required for a major in a subject means that you have mastered the subject.
In actuality, the coursework required for a major in a subject should be viewed as the minimum amount of coursework necessary to be able to claim any expertise in the subject.  If your goal is to study a subject at the graduate level, you typically want to take many additional undergraduate courses in the field beyond those required for a degree before you can reasonably begin graduate work.  Graduate schools look for this sort of deep experience in potential applicants, and tend to frown on those who have completed only the minimum requirements for a major.
So graduate schools don't see extra majors and minors as bad, exactly.  But if you spend time completing lots of extra majors and minors you probably won't have enough time to develop the expertise in your primary subject that you need for graduate school.  Instead of taking on a third major, you should plan to take roughly six extra courses in your primary field.  This might seem like it doesn't accomplish anything since it doesn't help you satisfy any official requirement, but it's exactly the sort of coursework that graduate schools are looking for.

So, I'm being encouraged to spend at least a few thousand more and spending 18 more credit hours in classes I don't need just to get a shot at graduate-level work? Further, in the US school that I attended, those six extra classes would be mid-high level, so it would require at least an additional semester to accomplish. That doesn't sound right at all.

@GGMG: I don't think he's saying you should spend extra time as an undergrad just to get into grad school.  He's saying that, with the electives you already need to take anyway, it's better to spend most of them on advanced classes in your major rather than picking up an extra major or a minor.

@GGMC - Exactly what Henry said. Instead of taking classes for that third major, take more electives related to your first major/minor. In the end, it's the same number of classes, but different focus. You can spend your time going wide or deep, and since graduate study is primarily about going deep, you may be better off focusing on a more limited subject area.

Okay, I understand. My apologies, the undergraduate school I attended worked differently and split the classes strictly into "Classes related to your major" and "Classes not related to your major." If you wanted more classes related to your major, you had to pay extra.

@GGMG Relevant. Welcome to Academia SE!

I disagree with "the coursework required for a major in a subject should be viewed as the minimum amount of coursework necessary to be able to claim any expertise in the subject".  Coursework is not the only way to gain expertise and is probably not the best way.  Many experts are not college graduates.

@emory That's a fair point, but the context of this question is to help a beginning college student plan their coursework.  For the most part, the way that undergraduate college students gain expertise in subjects is by taking courses.

@emory Also, this is in the context of a graduate school application, where in many cases coursework is the best indicator of expertise the grad school is going to get (obviously depending on what the major is and where the application is going).

@GGMG I'd quibble with the claim that you don't need the 6 extra classes. They may not be required to claim an undergraduate level qualification, but you will almost certainly have to learn much of the same material anyway in the process of doing your graduate work. Having a guide to take you through what's still fairly basic knowledge in your focus can make the process much faster and easier.

What if my university (and department in it) is small and doesn't offer enough extra courses?  I took every class available to me in my major except the intro class I tested out of, and the two every-other-year classes I was abroad for.  Should I have missed out on the amazing opportunity and experience of studying abroad for a better chance at grad school?

@senschen: To your first question, it means you're at a disadvantage in grad school applications (though a smaller one than if those courses were available and you didn't take them). Your second question seems strange; Jim isn't saying people should give up all other opportunities for marginal benefits at getting into grad school, he's pointing out how those decisions will affect their chances. (And, surely, people should make those decisions aware of that impact.)

@Henry  How do they know what classes were available? Do they really look that info up for every applicant? The second bit is what I was really confused about, though, because that was how I read the answer-- like, if I really wanted to go to grad school, I shouldn't have taken my other majors and I should have taken all three of those other classes to make some extra credits in the field. Which didn't seem right to me-- like its saying that I can't possibly be passionate about more than one field. I wish I'd read this question/answer in my first semester. Things might have gone differently.

As an addendum to what was already suggested here, make sure you take as many courses as possible in the given subject you want to pursue which are cross-listed as (post-)graduate-level courses: There is a world of difference between bog-standard undergraduate courses and (post-)graduate-level ones, and the former are often more or less seen as fluff.

@senschen I'm being brief; this is a lot to answer in comments. Most grad school admits have taken significantly more than the minimum number of upper level courses in their major (or closely related majors). More is a plus, none is a minus. If a student is close to getting in, coming from a school without many courses is a mitigating factor; they can probably tell just from knowing about the school, but might look up the website if needed. It's also might get pointed out in a recommendation letter; faculty at small schools with success getting people into grad school know about these issues.

@senschen These are small effects, and there are other factors: a related double major can be a plus, other things can make up for weak course work, etc. It’s not counting credits, it’s looking at what you’ve learned; the intro class you skipped wouldn’t have mattered, two more upper level courses might have on the margin. It’s not at all like saying you can't be passionate about more than one field; grad admissions is not a holistic evaluation of you as a person. The committee is looking for evidence you’ll do well in grad school, and courses in your major are a good source of evidence.

So, it basically transmits the message that you are a "jack of all trades, master of none", which is frowned upon in academia.

@vsz People always forget the rest of that saying: jack of all trades, master of none, but better than master of one.  Obviously academia doesn't agree, but still.

"spend at least a few thousand more and spending 18 more credit hours in classes I don't need"  This is a terrible point of view ... if you are truly interested in graduate level courses taking these classes shouldn't be a "need" but rather a "want" ... if you are just ticking off the boxes for another expensive piece of paper ... you are doing it wrong.

Can anybody explain we why they do not want academically oriented students that like to learn stuff

Jim Belk basically answered this, but I want to point out this line, because the implicit assumption here is wrong.  Taking an extra major or a minor isn't the only way to express being academically oriented; choosing courses involves a trade-off between breadth - taking courses in a lot of subject - and depth - taking more and more advanced courses in a single subject.  An academically oriented student might find either appealing (and most have at least some inclination in both directions and have to make hard choices).
An unfortunate consequence of the way most multiple major/minor programs is that they incentivize breadth by giving students tangible recognition for it.  Unfortunately, if instead of taking extra courses in a different subject to get another major, you take a bunch of advanced courses in your only major, you're learning just as much, but you don't get a certificate to show that.
But grad schools typically prefer depth, because that's what you do in grad school - delving to the frontier of research in a single subject - and beginning that process as an undergrad both shows the right attitude and gives you a head start.

One possible exception to this general perception would be research areas that are intrinsically interdisciplinary.  There are niche positions in both research and industry where people who can 'translate' between normally quite distinct disciplines and assist with integrating across them are highly valued.  I've seen this particularly in engineering, but there are potentially some interesting crossovers in even things like philosophy with neurology or mathematics with history.  In some cases these crossovers become the seeds for entirely new fields of study, as we discover new connections and hence the possibility for new specializations.
If you do want to make this a perceived asset rather than a perceived risk, it helps if the broad degree is accompanied by a clear focus and interest in an interdisciplinary research topic that combines the areas of study.  Find out what kind of research is being done in your overlapping areas of interest and find a graduate program where this kind of research is being done.  The right spin and extracurricular background could change the impression from "professional student unsure of what to study" to "focused individual willing to pursue a challenging and unique interdisciplinary research career."

+1 for bringing this up. In my CS grad program I met a lot of students who had minored or double majored in linguistics or cogsci, to give them a better background for AI / NLP.

I definitely agree with this for double-majors and/or minors (it's a large part of why I double-majored), but I don't know of any field where triple isn't just excessive.

@BrianDHall, CS+linguistics+stats for example if aiming at AI

Jim Belk's and Henry's answers are quite good. I certainly agree that required coursework is a minimal set of skills necessary to succeed in a field, and that depth is important to acquire and to convey. I disagree, however, with the other answers' emphasis on more advanced coursework as the way to attain depth. That's certainly fine, but I think the more important route is research. If I saw a graduate school application from someone with three majors but little research experience, I would wonder: "why, if this person has so smart, and has so much time, is he/she not diving into research?"
There are two reasons for this. First, research is where you really learn what contemporary science is, and this is quite different from coursework -- it's more difficult, more open-ended, and (in my opinion) more exciting. Second, graduate school is about research, and the most common "failure mode" I see among new graduate students is an inability to transition from being students to being researchers. Doing undergraduate research, and doing it well, shows that you can make this transition.

Many uni students, especially those for whom mommy & daddy are footing the bill, often have no idea what they want to do, but they do enjoy "student life".  And so they take lots of courses in different fields, hoping something will strike their fancy while at the same time enabling them to continue to enjoy the good life without worries.
Since grad school is intensely focused, that kind of dilettantism does not impress the grad admissions people.

Adding to the other excellent answers: It is often the result of personal experience. While it may not be statistically sound, coming up through the academic system in my country (in more than one discipline, actually; but not multi-majoring; and up to a PhD) I noticed more multi-major undergrads who are not serious about their studies and do not pursue any of their majors seriously than the other way around. Although, frankly, there's a correlation between this impression and what the majors actually are, and what major people want to continue in. So, I've not encountered many Law + Psychology majors I thought highly of relative to pure Psychologists or Lawyers/Juris Doctors. X + business for different values of X - experience has made me quite suspicious of that choice. Or, for another example, Math+CS dual-majors I've met tend to be mathematicians 'at heart' who do well in Comp Sci theory but not so well (or poorly) as effective programmers.