text:
Is it appropriate to ask a sick student to leave the classroom?
Say you're teaching a class and a student shows symptoms of the common cold (cough, runny nose, etc.).
They might be contagious. Is it appropriate to ask them to leave?

For reference, if you have guests at your home and one of them shows symptoms of the common cold, how would you handle that situation? I suppose a difference would be that the student is paying to attend, so the comparison isn’t quite right.

I think this heavily depends on the culture and thus, at the very least, on the country. @Aruralreader: " that the student is paying to attend" This also depends on the country.

I agree with @DanielHatton I had symptom of a common cold for 19 years now due to my allergy. While very mild most of the time, I have period where it is indistinguishable from a bad cold.

@JochenGlueck, yes, and in that case the comparison might be more appropriate. I agree there is a strong cultural aspect to this, and it would be clarifying to know how OP would handle it in other circumstances.

I think Covid has shown that contagious infection shouldn't be ignored because of standing on ceremony. It can make a disaster. Some other students may have weak immune problem and get scarified. additionally, some may have someone with weak immune system at home. Asking one sick student to be out is better that forcing all others to choose between their course/life. You can later help the absent student to learn the courses which hasn't attended to the class. I also agree with @Buffy that it is better that universities make some rules for this,since some lecturers might have a different idea.

I’m pretty sure English scarified isn’t what you intended.

I think the answer here has to be "Ask your institution. If you can't ask the institution, ask the community. If the community provides no guidance, decide what you want to do and ask the parents of the students in your class if that's OK with them." It used to be appropriate to send a kid to the school medical staff to be checked over, and have them make the recommendation and take the flack for it.

@Aruralreader (A link to such as Wiktionary would help those who aren't familiar with that fairly obscure word.)

Yes, please let every amateur make medical decisions whenever they want and wherever they want. Now you can pretty much ban anyone for whatever reason! You see the slippery slope right there, don't you? Of course you don't!

In the UK, the guidance for young people attending education settings, including universities, is that people who have the symptoms you've described ("cough, runny nose, etc") should not be excluded as a matter of course.

"Individuals with mild symptoms such as runny nose, and headache who are otherwise well can continue to attend their setting.
Children and young people settings: tools and resources

If they have additional symptoms then they should be advised to stay off as a matter of course, and can be temporarily excluded in an educational sense (e.g. ordered not to attend) if they do so.

Individuals should not attend if they have a high temperature and are unwell.
Individuals who have a positive test result for COVID-19 should not attend the setting for 3 days after the day of the test.
[Individuals should not attend if they have] Flu (influenza) or influenza like illness.

"Cough" doesn't seem to be listed here.

@Buffy - That would come under the heading of a "mild symptom". Unless they're coughing up blood or can't stop coughing, in which case they're "unwell".

Actually, I don't think so. Coughing spreads droplets, etc. Sneezing is worse, of course.

This is depressing. Around March 2020, everyone agreed that one permanent change in society would be that people who had these kinds of symptoms would stay at home and not go to school/work - because (among other reasons) it was obvious that If people had done that from February 2020, many lives would have been saved. And then huge numbers of people died, more than anyone expected. But now people seem to have forgotten all that and believe that not even the simplest and easiest public health measures are worth taking.

@Buffy - Children are taught to cough into their elbows nowadays, alleviating most of the worst effects of airborne disease-spreading. It's surprisingly effective.

Coughing into the elbow is effective only if it is universally practiced at each instance. It requires actions. Masking is more passive and can protect others.

@toby544 unfortunately the huge over reaction to the pandemic meant sensible changes like the one you posit have been lumped in with all the other nonsense and now consigned to history.

@deep64blue - Indeed. Children and young adults suffered almost no deaths as a result of COVID. The greater injury (to mental health and educational development) was as a result of the lockdowns.

@Valorum just because few children or young adults died doesn't mean there weren't a large number of people who did die whose infection went via a child or young adult, or that locking them down was an overreaction

@deep64blue I expect you are right that some people think like that. But in some countries there was a huge under-reaction, or a disastrously misjudged reaction, leading to large numbers of avoidable deaths. So if we have another situation like 2020 I think doctors, people whose family members died from covid, and others will rightly argue that public health measures are essential.

@Valorum Yes, children and others suffered from the lockdowns. But let's not forget that millions of people died, and most of them were not very sick or close to death to start with. In the UK, the government only imposed lockdowns very reluctantly, when it was forced to (twice) by the threat of overwhelming amounts of sickness and death due to the virus.

@toby544 I wish that was true re the UK ...

Yes, it is appropriate unless you can have them mask and isolate somewhat from the others. Covid isn't gone yet and can have symptoms like those of a cold. But a cold can also be debilitating for some, especially those with any susceptibilities to other things.
Let them know, however, how you can bring them up to date for the missed lecture. Or have them contact you to obtain any needed information.
It is probably worth the effort to carry a few fresh N95 masks for such situations. It is probably also worth the effort for the university to have a published policy about this.

Edited to add: It probably isn't appropriate to "order them out" of the classroom. If they have evidence that the symptoms are not contagious then there is no need. But it is appropriate to ask them to leave or mask or take other precautions if they do, indeed, have a cold and are coughing or sneezing, possibly spreading infections. People need to take some responsibility for others around them.
If other students feel "at risk" from being around someone who might give them a disease then they might want to leave themselves. That is a bit harder to mitigate. And possibly more disruptive.

+1 for the policy from the university. While we are discussing about "asking" the student to leave and not forcing them, there's the possibility a student might feel like it is unfair and want to protest about the lecturer

And handling the request in as private a conversation as possible with the student would be appropriate.

@Carol, agreed, though it might not be entirely possible.

They may have a runny nose because they are allergic to pollen. They may cough because they smoke a lot. There are lots of possible reasons for cold-like symptoms and not all involve a contagious disease. "If they have evidence that the symptoms are not contagious" - will you ask them for a certificate from a doctor that they have asthma?

"If they have evidence that the symptoms are not contagious" Do keep in mind that in some jurisdictions, you're not allowed to just ask about medical conditions. In those jurisdictions you'll need a very good reason. Being scared they might infect somebody probably is not a good enough reason to ask for such proof.

@gaazkam - "Oh don't worry, I just have hayfever" is evidence that it's not a cold...

MY lived experience as a teacher is that the boundary between appropriate and in appropriate is less about what you do and more about how you do it.
It is usually appropriate to express concerns for the welfare of a student and to suggest that going to see the nurse might be a really good ideal, and that they could catch up on anything that they missed rather than forcing themselves to struggle on.
It's usually inappropriate to order a student with a cold out in case they infect other students. Or you.
The way that you make the suggestion is everything.

Please be careful about singling out students based on perceived symptoms.  Some students, for example, may have seasonal allergies that will manifest as cold-like symptoms (cough, runny nose, etc.) for several months in the spring and/or fall.  Students may also have a persistent cough for other reasons, such as a previous illness, asthma, chronic bronchitis, or acid reflux.  If you are concerned about a student's symptoms, make sure to raise the issue privately, and try to avoid an accusatory or annoyed tone until you have all the facts.
In addition, please be aware that it may not be practical for students who have small children to avoid attending class when they have a respiratory infection.  For example, the first year that each of my children started going to day care they brought home a new cold every few weeks for six months.  I'm sure these were contagious viruses, but it's not really practical to stay home for months on end to avoid spreading colds.

It is practical to mask, however, as is done in much of Asia in such circumstances and has been for a long time.

@Buffy That is certainly true, and I think it's very reasonable to ask students who have a respiratory infection to mask.  However, students who have seasonal allergies or other persistent conditions should not be expected to mask just because they are exhibiting symptoms.

Your answer describes colds. Your comment is about other things.

@Buffy The first paragraph of my answer is about other things, and the second paragraph is about colds.

During the pandemic of Covid, some infected people just claimed to have allergy at the time of coughing in public. Many didn't like to believe that they got infected and consequently they persisted against others' advices. Some even were eager to go to public, not wearing mask,... because they see it as the acceptance of the infection.

@Buffy the problem is it's not appropriate to ask someone suffering from asthma to make it worse by wearing a mask.

@deep64blue there is no evidence that someone's asthma is made worse by wearing a mask


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How are US schools prioritizing students from India over China?
Source

The Institute of International Education, which publishes annual reports on international students, has found that U.S. schools are prioritizing students from India over China, especially for graduate programs. However, it also found that 36% of schools reported increases in new Chinese students in fall 2023.

How does this work in practice? Are US schools actively discriminating based on national origin, or are they doing something else like dispatch staff for outreach events in India?

Possibly not directly related to this current phenomenon (with which I'm unacquainted), but, at least for Teaching Assistant positions (in Math, for example), the general English fluency of students from India has been better than that of students from PRC, for some years. (I witnessed this as Dir Grad Studies in math in two different episodes.) Anecdotally-statistically, the PRC students' English has improved in the last few decades. I think English fluency is also relevant to discussion with one's advisor, to talk about nuances. E.g., math is not just symbols. :)

It is unclear which statements by The Institute of International Education this refers to, but the IIE Fall 2023 Snapshot on International Student Enrollment  report (which contains that 36% figure) focuses on outreach activities:

Among all places of origin, India continues to be the
highest priority for undergraduate and graduate
recruitment:

Institutions are prioritizing undergraduate outreach in India (70%), Vietnam (66%), China (53%), and South Korea (53%). Graduate recruitment is focused on India (80%), China (46%), Vietnam (42%), and Nigeria (40%).
85% of reporting institutions indicate that financial support for their international student recruitment efforts was the same or higher than
in the previous year.
U.S. institutions report working with current international students, building international partnerships, and conducting in-person recruitment events to support outreach and
recruitment.

My understanding is that the percentages refer to which fraction of institutions conduct outreach activities in that country.

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


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How long does it usually take for journals to resolve 'expressions of concern'?
The 'expression of concern' in question is this one. It says:

The journal and publisher have been alerted to concerns about this article, and an investigation is in progress. In the interim, we alert readers that these concerns have been raised.

How long does this kind of issue usually take to resolve? The expression of concern was originally published on 1 September 2021, or more than six months ago, and it feels unusual for an investigation to still be ongoing.
I am not asking for a prediction as to how long this particular investigation will take (although that would answer the question), only for how long it usually took to resolve similar expressions of concern in the past.

@Roland e.g. the last paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI#Controversial_articles discusses an article which had an expression of concern addressed and resolved in a week. I don't have general statistics.

I am not aware of any comprehensive study that can authoritatively answer the general question

How long does this kind of issue usually take to resolve?

across all fields. (There likely is field variation both in the incidence of expressions of concerns, as well as the time to resolution.) That said, here are two studies that may offer at least an idea.

Vaught, M., Jordan, D.C. & Bastian, H. Concern noted: a descriptive study of editorial expressions of concern in PubMed and PubMed Central, Res. Integr. Peer Rev. 2, 10 (2017) studied the biomedical literature up to 2016 and found that around 25% of cases where an editorial expression of concern (EEoC) was issued lead to a retraction within the time period. With regards to these retractions, the authors write:

More than half of these retractions occurred within the year after the primary EEoC was issued (n = 38, 61%), and 57 publications (92%) were retracted within 2 years of primary EEoC. The mean time from EEoC to retraction was 299 ± 245 days, and the median was 263 days with an IQR of 333. The longest gap between original EEoC and retraction was just under 3 years.

Note that Vaught, Jordan, and Bastian remain quiet on the time delay from an issued expression of concern to other resolutions. One issue they found is that publishers sometimes quietly remove expressions of concern, making it difficult to be sure just how many have been issued. This should be kept in mind when interpreting the statistical results.

Jaime A.Teixeira da Silva & Yuki Yamada An extended state of uncertainty: A snap-shot of expressions of concern in neuroscience, Current Research in Behavioral Sciences 2, 100045 (2021) considered a smaller sample:

Using the Retraction Watch database until April 20, 2021, we assessed 20 cases of EoCs in the neuroscience literature to appreciate how EoCs have been processed. After excluding one author-issued EoC, from 19 editor-issued EoCs, 10 were resolved in an average of 220 days while nine remain unresolved.

These authors also note that some expressions of concerns are not clearly labeled as such, complicating data collection.

In light of these numbers, an investigation taking more than six months would not be at all unusual. At the time of writing this answer, the expression of concern you cite was issued 236 days ago, which is also consistent with these averages. However, given the sample sizes and potential field variation, I would not necessarily assume that these averages would apply to the field of the article you mention. Further, as @Roland mentions in a comment, such numbers anecdotally agrees with what a reader of the Retraction Watch blog might expect, where investigations are often reported to take years.  I think the takeaway here and more generally is that the publishing system often appears to be slow in taking decisions regarding scientific errors in the published literature.

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Are there grants that work at any accredited university?
There are scholarships for PhD students that work at any accredited university, sometimes in a particular zone. Example.

Applications may be submitted by full-time students who desire to study propose to pursue lighting education or research as part of their undergraduate, graduate or doctoral studies. Applications for the Alan Lucas Memorial Educational Scholarships may be made by those who will be a junior, senior, or graduate student in an accredited four year college or university located in Northern California (including San Luis Obispo, Fresno and north). All applications should be submitted before April 1.  The scholarships to be awarded will be at least $1,500.00.  The student must submit an application, a statement of purpose, a description of work in progress, transcripts, three recommendations and a scholar agreement form. Copies of all enclosed documents should be photo-copied for interested students.

Does something similar exist for postdocs or tenured professors? In particular, can an applicant for postdocs/tenured positions feasibly say "I will bring my own funding"? If the answer is "yes", is this a powerful advantage in the application process (I know it is for PhD students)?

Is the question limited to the US, like the example for a PhD scholarship?

@Snijderfrey no. Also there should be such PhD scholarships in countries other than the US right? E.g. https://www.zonta.org/Web/Our_Programs/Education/Amelia_Earhart_Fellowship/Web/Programs/Education/Amelia_Earhart_Fellowship.aspx "[The Amelia Earhart Fellowship] may be used at any university or college offering accredited post-graduate courses and degrees in these fields."

Yes, such funding possibilities exist although the situation is different between postdocs and tenured professors.
For postdocs for example the Humboldt Foundation offers the Humboldt Research Fellowship for a research stay in Germany. They state on their website:

A researcher from an academic institution of your choice in Germany will provide you with a mentoring agreement and written confirmation that research facilities are available, and will compile a detailed review for you.

So you need support from an institution, but you can choose the institution. You will have to find this support before the application. But you will usually have no big problem to find support, given that your research profile is competitive, because you would bring your own money. If the application for the scholarship is not successful, then the supporting institution does not have to hire you, obviously. So bringing your own money is a big plus because it basically creates your own position.
For tenured professors, the amount of external funding they bring is an important criterium. It may not be the money needed for your own salary, but that should be covered by the institution. So if you can say during an application process that you will bring 20 PhD students with you who are fully funded, that is a big plus. It is not uncommon that it is possible to transfer third-party funded research from one institution to another. It might take some negotiating with the funders, though.
And the Humboldt Foundation also offers something for professors.

I understand that NSF grants are transferable by PIs and co-PIs with consent of NSF and the original receiving institution. I’ve only had one employee go through this process for a grant he was a co-PI on when he left the original institution to come to work for us. You can’t force the other personnel or students to move, though you may be able to take that funding along if they do want to move and hiring procedures are followed exactly.
Regardless, talk to your Program Officer/Director and see what they say.
I presume you have discussed leaving your university with your department chair, too. The award from the agency (in the US) was probably to the university. And definitely not to you personally. I wouldn’t talk to your agency project officer or director unless you’re ready to be accidentally outed about your move.
I can’t say anything about what other US agencies allow.


text:
When all the experts of a field collaborate, who peer-reviews the article?
Here's an example of the kind of paper I'm thinking of: Quantum gravity phenomenology at the dawn of the multi-messenger era—A review. The scope of the review is grand (1578 references cited) and pretty much every expert in the field is an author (100+ authors total).
When every expert in the field is an author, who peer reviews the article?

Related: How does peer-review work for "gigantic" collaboration projects?

Does this answer your question? How does peer-review work for "gigantic" collaboration projects?

Note, this is not a CERN-style mega-collaboration (which would be a duplicate of the linked question); rather, this seems to be a much looser confederation of authors organized through a “COST Action” (which funds networking only)

I don't think this is a duplicate, per cag51. The linked question is very similar, but this paper looks like a collaboration between people who wanted to set out a vision for the field in the future. Furthermore, the linked question doesn't have a relevant answer.

So the start of that question mentions large particle physics experiments, but I think the both the actual question there and the top answer (which is specifically not about physics) apply to broader contexts.

In my area, many papers are 'invited papers'.  They are written by 'top' experts, and they are not reviewed; the term 'invited' signals this fact.

This seems to be a hypothetical scenario. In reality there are always experts that are not on the paper.
Take the example posted in the OP. This is a typical review paper produced by a COST action, an EU funding schemes aimed at building international collaborations. As such, the author list is very EU centric. I can easily think of a few names of US based scientists that could referee this particular paper.
I posit that this will generally be the case. There will always be experts that were not part of this group effort. Sometimes because of geographical reasons, sometimes because of sociological reasons, and sometimes because some people just actively avoid this type of large group activity.

As this has still no answer here are a few possible explanations:

One logical answer would be that the authors suggested potential
peer-reviewer in their submission letter because they would know
which other experts exist in the field that are (for whatever reason) not part of this consortium.
If a paper is written by almost all the top experts of the field than a high quality of the paper is already guaranteed as they will kind of "review" each other anyway as nobody wants to put their established name on a paper that they do not fully agree with.
In rare cases top level papers are only reviewed by the editors. I
think that this happened for example for the DNA structure paper.
As mentioned in the comments this post might also help: How does peer-review work for "gigantic" collaboration projects?


text:
Is it ethical to share a controversial reason for declining to review with other editors/journals?
This question is a follow up to How to handle a paper by a reviewer who wants to be paid? Most actions by a reviewer are logged in the editorial management system, such as:

Whenever a reviewer agrees or declines to review
Reasons for declining (if given)
The text of the review itself
The date of submission of the review, which allows one to work out whether the review was early or late.

This information is visible to other editors of the journal. Depending on settings, it can also be visible to editors of other journals who are sharing the reviewer pool. Quite often, other editors are appreciative of this data, for example the following things are all things an editor would want to know before inviting a reviewer:

If the reviewer says "I can't review this paper because my research interests have changed".
If the reviewer says "I can't review this paper because I'm busy until [this date]".
If the reviewer has an ongoing review.
If the reviewer has reviewed five papers in the last five months.
If the reviewer says "This paper is acceptable, but you should cite these papers written by me". The review itself might not be visible, but the editor can leave a note on the reviewer's profile that this happened as a warning to the next editor.

For the first two points, the reviewer is likely to appreciate editors sharing the data, since it saves his time. #3 and #4 helps editors not overload a reviewer, #5 helps get a constructive review.
In this case the reviewer left a controversial reason to decline to review, and I'm wondering if it's ethical to share it, especially with other journals. If I share it, then who knows how far it'll spread, and other journals might wind up dealing with the same issue as in the linked question. It could give others negative impressions of the reviewer (c.f. Fortnite's answer), even though the reviewer might have expected them not be aware of the decline reason.
On the other hand I can't tell the scope of the reviewer's intention. It's possible he only wants to be paid to review for this journal or publisher. It's possible he wants to be paid to review for all subscription journals (this wouldn't make sense, but not mine to reason why). It's possible he's declining for all journals. If any of these are true, then the other journals will want to know, so they can save time. It could even be that he would rather we broadcast his decline reason so he can inspire other reviewers to follow his example.
Some of the things I can do are:

Delete his reviewer profile, leaving only a note not to invite this reviewer again.
Keep the decline reason, but for editors of this journal only. No other journal will learn about this (via the system at least - they still might via word of mouth, or e.g. if the same person is an editor for two different journals).
Do nothing, and if another editor/journal discovers it, let them figure out what to do.

Interesting question. I suppose that if the reason for declining is sufficiently contentious (e.g. sexist or racist reasons) one can even make an argument that it'd be unethical not to share this information as a warning for others.

@Anyon For another realistic example, it could be political reasons. For instance, Elsevier has suggested in the past that US reviewers avoid papers by Iranian authors to conform to trade sanctions.

I think that the journal needs a written policy on what they retain and it should be visible and obvious to all, especially all reviewers. A request to review can/should point to the policy.
Then there should be no issue at all here. If a reviewer wants to make a statement about why they refuse they know beforehand whether it will be public or not.
If an editor gets a reason that they think should be handled differently (outside the policy), then it can be negotiated with the reviewer. In an extreme case, the review, itself, could be rejected. But a notice of "outside the policy handling" is part of the stated policy as well.
If you make it clear and flexible there won't be an ethical issue.


text:
Is there a correlation between how enthusiastic reviewers are and how much impact a paper has?
If I have a paper which five reviewers agree is good, does that mean it'll probably also have high impact? Both reviewer enthusiasm and impact can be difficult to measure objectively, so I'm thinking of indicators such as the language used by the reviewers, the number of reviewers, whether the paper is accepted outright instead of revised, and the number of citations it generates.
From personal experience the answer seems to be "not really", but I don't have a lot of data, and I'm wondering if editors see a correlation or (even better) if there's been a study on this.

I doubt there could possibly be a measurable correlation. I don't know of anyone collecting data on "reviewer enthusiasm". But even informally, can you expect that in general enthusiastic reviewers is likely to result in more citations?
Here I doubt it also, but only because the number of researchers in arcane subfields of a field isn't uniformly distributed. Your profile suggest that you work in Physics, which has a lot of quite different subfields. Some of those have a lot of current activity and others are more arcane. If you work in a popular field you are much more likely to get citations than if you don't.
My own early work, for example, was rarely cited, but there were only about five people worldwide who worked in that tiny subfield. That was true even though the main result was very interesting. A lesser result in a more popular subfield would have likely generated more citations because more people could make use of it.
However, there is enthusiasm and there is enthusiasm. If you prove a long studied conjecture that has been a bottleneck in your field, reviewers will be enthusiastic and the nature of the work will generate the citations. On the other hand, a great result the completes a field, meaning that there can be little follow up (rare, I know) would generate citations in the popular press, but, since there isn't any follow up, few in the scientific literature.


text:
What does a dean do?
This is a follow-up question to What does a head of department do?
The University of Waterloo has a document that describes the answer to this question; however the document is rather vague, and it seems to imply that if all the individual heads of departments have their departments in order (which they presumably will most of the time), the dean barely has to do anything. That's at odds with how most deans don't seem to teach/conduct research anymore however. It also seems awkward to be dean unless one is also head of department: the two people would be subordinate to each other depending on situation.

The job specification for a Dean is what that particular institution decides it is... No one single document will give you a definitive answer...

The term "dean" is used for many different kinds of academic administrators.  A Dean is often the head of an academic unit that is composed of several academic departments, with department chairs reporting to the dean and the dean reporting to a provost.  However, it's not uncommon to have other deans such as a "Graduate Dean" who administers graduate programs, a "Dean of Students" who handles disicipline matters, and so on.

Our dean spends his/her day being a busybody :)

They're middle management, so they do what middle management always does.


text:
Why do departments hire GTAs instead of more permanent faculty?
I notice departments often hire graduate students as teaching assistants.
I'm curious why departments do this instead of hire a lecturer to do the teaching. I'm sure this is helpful for the GTAs, since they're 1) getting paid and 2) getting teaching experience, but if the department is hiring GTAs to give the students teaching experience, then why not require students to teach as part of their programme? If one is concerned about "free labor" being exploitative, then one can also just add the extra money that would've gone to the GTA's salary to the student's stipend.
The only other reason I can think of is cost, and full-time lecturers are more expensive than part-time GTAs. Is this the case?
Edit: In the arrangement I'm familiar with, the students (which can be undergraduate, Masters level, or PhD) are funded separately. They could, e.g., be funded by a department scholarship or by their professor's grant. They are then offered TA positions in the department, which they are free to accept or decline. If they accept, they are paid a salary, effectively making them employees of the university.
This question applies to any country in which this is practiced.

(sigh) is this is a USA question?

Is this about teaching quality, hiring or exploitation?

@YemonChoi does it matter? If it does then assume the US, although I'd also be curious if things are different in other countries from Vietnam to Portugal.

@SolarMike which part of the question is unclear? I read it very clearly as a question on hiring, and I don't see where you are getting the impression it's about teaching quality or exploitation.

In many cases the student's GTA salary is their stipend.  So "we hire you to teach" is functionally equivalent to "we pay you a stipend and require you to teach as part of your education".  But it sounds a lot better politically to say "students work in exchange for their education and a modest salary" than "we give students an education for free and pay them besides".

Your own phrase gives that impression "if one is concerned about “free labor” being exploitative..” I would say you made it very clear.

I don't understand your math. Consider 20 students working for you teaching, and 20 students on stipends with 10 additional lecturers. Even if lecturers cost the same as students, the second case would be nearly 1.5 times as expensive as the first.

I don't think this is true for "every country," but in the US adjunct instructors and even career NTT faculty are usually cheaper per course than grad students. The reason schools don't dispense with grad students altogether is that it's otherwise advantageous to have a grad program, especially a PhD program.

What is with people voting to close without giving comments? Two of the five who voted to close did leave comments, yet neither of those comments actually described why the question is too broad.

@PeterShor you're presumably thinking of a different model - see the edit - in the second case the students don't cost anything since the department is not paying them (or they are good enough that they're on scholarship).

@Allure: do you mean that in your model, the students get teaching salaries in addition to their stipends? If not, then hiring them instead of lecturers saves somebody money.

@PeterShor yes, that's what happens.

Yes, full time lecturers cost more than graduate teaching assistants.  In addition, if they are hired with permanent contracts, then it is a long term financial commitment, which is more risky financially than a short term contract.

Do they though? GSRs in STEM in the US typically get 20-30K per year and only TA for two courses per year (in a semester system) -- and that's setting aside "funny money" like tuition reimbursement.  Full-time lecturers might make more than this, but they also teach many more courses -- and adjunct faculty generally get paid per course (no contract) and make way less than 10-15K per course.

Not all schools give lecturers permanent contracts. I have a 12 month contract -- I can qualify for a 3 year contract after teaching a certain number of units per semester (I think 9? Something more than I want to teach) for 6 years.

....one can also just add the extra money that would've gone to the GTA's salary to the student's stipend.

I think there is a miscommunication about where the stipend comes from. In most cases, the student earns the stipend for either teaching or doing research. Particularly in the first year or two, research positions will not yet be generally available, and so students much teach to earn their stipend. If a student chooses not to teach, or is fired from teaching, there is no "stipend" to "add to".

I'm curious why departments do this instead of hire a lecturer to do the teaching.

Still, I think there is an interesting question here -- the university could hire professional lecturers to do the teaching and not pay its grad students until they start doing research. Whether this is more cost-effective or would lead to higher-quality teaching is debatable. However, it would create a huge problem in that the university would find it much more difficult to attract qualified grad students. This would affect the professors' research output, which would lead to wide-ranging consequences.

Edit: In the arrangement I'm familiar with, ... students ... could, ... be funded by a department scholarship or by their professor's grant. They are then offered TA positions in the department, which they are free to accept or decline.

In my experience, it is unusual for students to be allowed to have a fellowship/RAship and also a TAship, since having the latter generally makes the former less productive. Regardless, yes, they could simply require students with fellowships or RAships to teach, but I suspect the cost savings would be outweighed by the adverse affects.

Unless you have been living under a rock, then you will have noticed that this is far from being a problem exclusive to academia... Welcome to the 21st century! Under the guise of "flexibility" and "efficient" (some even dare use the word "rationalization"), managers everywhere are reluctant to hire permanent personnel and instead want to hire temporary workers. This makes it much easier to fire people, because you don't even have to; you can simply wait them  out. Never mind the personal toll it takes on the people hired, or the loss of productivity because workers have to spend time looking for and applying to jobs, adapting to a new working environment every time they change, etc.
If you have been paying close attention to the news, you will also have remarked that a new trend is emerging. It's only a matter of time before TAs are required to setup their own personal LLC and are pompously rebranded as "Teaching Consultants", who are hired on a lecture-to-lecture basis and paid as contractors, getting a star rating from students after every session, and "losing their job" with no explanation (because their star rating is too low, or they've offended someone high up, or whatever) – concretely, they just stop received teaching contract offers through the app for no apparent reason.

You are also not seeing the obvious: there is nowhere else but a university to learn how to become a university teacher. If universities as a whole stopped hiring TAs and only hired permanent lecturers (presumably more experienced), then in five years the supply of university teachers would just dry up, and they would need to train fresh PhD's at a higher cost. It makes no sense. Not to mention that when one teaches, one also learns, and teaching is an integral part of a graduate student's curriculum.

why not require students to teach as part of their programme

That's already often the case.

If one is concerned about "free labor" being exploitative, then one can also just add the extra money that would've gone to the GTA's salary to the student's stipend.

What free labor? The graduate students teach as part of their contract and they are paid for their duties.

That should have read "cheap labor", not "free labor". Grad students get paid. Just not very much. And certainly much less than a university would have to pay a full-time employee, or even a part-time employee.

I'm not certain that my experience is still completely valid as it was very long ago that I entered graduate school in math. I'm now retired and have been for several years. But I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't have earned a doctorate under a different system.
I entered an R1 program in the mid 1960's with a full fellowship. It had the requirement that I spend one year as a TA, to get some teaching experience. This fellowship program was part of the push by the US to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. It no longer exists.
I made relatively little progress, other than coursework, during four years and left with a masters for another R1 where I completed the PhD. Before I discuss the latter program, let me give a few reasons why a fellowship without teaching duties doesn't make it quicker or easer to get a degree. I was limited by a few things. The low income from the fellowship wasn't one of them, and I was one of the few to hold one. I had an advisor who wasn't sufficiently helpful as he was, at the time, up for tenure and worried more about his future than mine. I also didn't yet have the required insight into the deep nature of mathematics, though I was pretty good at solving problems and passing courses (high GPA). It turns out that in most research (I think) but especially in mathematics, more time in the office doesn't equal more insight or more progress. Getting that insight requires "seasoning" and it can't be scheduled. I had few duties, other than making progress toward the degree, but made little progress. No more than my peers who were TA's. I think it might have been different if I'd had the courage to switch to another advisor, but my basic introversion (worse then than now) made that impossible for me to do.
Eventually, after getting a bit burned out, I switched to another university and had a TA position and completed the degree in three years. I had a better advisor and conquered the burnout, but made better progress even though I had teaching duties. I also gained better insight into a small area of math and became, in the words of my advisor, "the most knowledgeable person in the world in ..." (paraphrase).
But, also, let me say some things about that second university. It was, like the first, a large US State university. As such it was partly supported by tax revenues, as well as grant funding from various places. The student tuition, at the time, was fairly low, and it was not paid by TAs. The stipend we got was very low - about the same as the fellowship I'd had earlier, but there were few expenses and I was able to graduate with a family, supporting them from the TA income.
The math department at the second place had about 60 full time regular faculty and about 180 full time grad students, almost all of which were TAs. The TAs normally helped a professor in a course for a year or so and "graduated" to teaching our own courses, say in calculus. But the system as a whole wouldn't have worked any other way. If those grad students were replaced with regular faculty (doubling the size of the regular faculty), if you extrapolate that to the whole university (about 40,000 students), there wouldn't be room for everyone, either in office space or in housing in the local area. Moreover, the students would need some sort of funding. If they had to rely on outside funding it would have been impossible to support even a small fraction of them in the local economy. Funding them with grants or stipends without work would have been infeasible as the governments had no interest in expanding to such an extent, nor could the grant funding agencies taken up the slack to such an extent. And the commitment of state governments to supply funding has only gotten worse in recent years in many places. This has been supplanted by increases in tuition fees, mostly paid by undergraduates and funded through a loan system that has many issues of its own.
So, working as a TA did many things. It gave me a small, but adequate, stipend, without which I'd have no place in academia. It gave me a bit of teaching experience, which also helped me learn how people learn (and don't). But it also gave me time. If it stretched out my education by a bit, that extra time allowed me to get the seasoning and insight that I probably wouldn't have achieved if I'd been on a more intensive "research only" regimen. As I said earlier, insight can't be scheduled. It takes time and reflection. It takes time away from the desk. So the time spent teaching and grading was just a break in the intense research that let ideas settle and integrate themselves into my thinking.
So, IMO, graduate schools don't use TAs because it is the expedient thing to do, but because it is a good thing to do. Give students a broad view of academia, even from the R1 standpoint, and the time in which to gain a bit of sophistication in their field. The low pay isn't such a terrible tradeoff unless money is your main driver. It isn't for most academics, I suspect.

This--it's a kind of workfare for graduate students, which allows the university to have students. Otherwise you would be limited to the ones who can support themselves independently, i.e. rich, or students would have to get outside jobs which might distract them from being students.

They do different kinds of work
Even ignore inappropriate composition of hires: A course's teaching assistant's work is typically different from the course teacher's.
The teacher decides what actually gets taught by reviewing the research literature, text books on the subject, their own knowledge, experience of teachers elsewhere and in previous semester etc. The teacher lays out how a course is structured. The teacher does most of the core frontal teaching work. The teacher is responsible for the homework, exams and such to be sufficiently but not overly challenging.
A teacher's assistnant (and note I'm not using the position title here) mostly assists the teacher: Grades homework, sets up and maintains a website, prepares physical objects for classes, handles communications with students (except on certain matters), teaches tutorial/recitation sessions, or perhaps supervised, limited, teaching in place of the teacher.
Permanent faculty are expensive
Often, especially over the past few decades, universities try to cut down on costs by hiring more people as official "teaching assistants" rather than fill permanent faculty positions since they're much cheaper, and the university doesn't have to pay that much for their - both per hour of teaching-related work and for non-teaching work like research. Also, teaching assistants are politically weaker, individually and as a group, so their employment conditions tend to be worn down more quickly and easily than that of senior faculty.
Teaching is actually part of the full-time position of a junior member of faculty
Decades ago (in some countries) it was much more commonplace to just hire both junior and senior faculty. A junior member of faculty would be a Ph.D. candidate (or less commonly an M.Sc. candidate) who would typically be hired as a full-time employee, with some of his time dedicated to research, some to attending a few courses and some to teaching - just like it is for senior faculty members (except that the latter also have official managerial/administrative work too).


text:
What happens if a department runs out of space?
I'm curious what happens if a department runs out of space - e.g. they are expanding, but they don't have enough rooms for their faculty, postdocs, visitors, etc. It's presumably possible to squeeze a bit, put many PhD students into the same room for example, but this would be a short-term solution.
The obvious thing to do seems like to petition the dean to allocate more space to the department, but this seems very nontrivial. For example say three departments currently occupy 3 floors each in a 9-floor building. If one department needs more room, the clearest way to do it is to give them another floor, but that would force the other two departments to contract and/or shift some of their personnel to a different building, which might negatively impact their performance.
Similar things must surely have happened multiple times in the past. What usually happens?

Giant political fight is what happens...

Those "short-term solutions" have a way of becoming the long-term solution.

Space is casus belli in academia.

Build yourself (the department) a new building... Increase number of floors upwards.. Reduce the size of desks (get more in each office)...

The factor 'space' should factor into the decision to expand in the first place.

What happens if you want to live in a bigger house?

The less successful departments can be eased out to the basement or boiler room.  Or shut down entirely.

Why Can't We Be Friends?

One example I experienced is the university gives room that are mostly likely ment for other departments or the rooms that are in a neutral building. This was in the form of humanities lecturers occupying space in Science buildings. Also some science lecturers had to have their rooms in buildings that does not seem to belong (by design) to any department. This building was built much later and is mostly (4) large classrooms open to all departments if needs be and (10-15) small rooms for lecturers / academics.

Somebody usually argues that PhD students only need enough room to physically fit their elbows into :-/ Or, they are asked to hotdesk.

Oh come ON, close-reviewers, please actually engage brain. If you want to close this as "too broad", fair enough. Maybe also as "too specific", because any answer would only correspond to one university. But "unclear what you're asking"? How is this unclear? And "off-topic because not to do with academia"? Really? This is specifically asking about something that happens in universities....

There is no "usually". There isn't a worldwide academic rulebook that states what happens when a department runs out of space. This is extremely dependent on the university, the department, who runs each, the current power balance between the different departments and the university, the university's budget, the culture of the research field and the country... Academia isn't different from the rest of the world, how would you even start to answer a question as vague as "what happens when a company's department runs out of space"?!

I think one could state with great certainty that, whatever actually happens, it won't be a smooth, simple, emotion-free process...

As someone whose department had the exact problem in the past I can say that things tend to get a little hairy. One issue is that different groups usually have their own offices and while most groups may have a lack of desk space, some have extra. The group leaders with extra space tend to be very territorial about it for various reasons (feelings of being taken advantage of, personal conflicts with other group leaders, anticipating new arrivals but not having anywhere to put them etc.).
The interim solution was to put up new desks in really awkward spaces (in corridors, under staircases) and splitting groups across multiple offices whenever group leaders could come to an agreement. Eventually the department managed to secure additional offices in another building and squeezed a few groups out. I was part of one of the outcast groups and as you pointed out it was in fact very inconvenient as we had to use the old department building for experimental work. Over the course of two years or so though, a few professors retired and their groups dissolved so they freed up some space in the deprtment.


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Is there a limit to how many full professors a department can have?
For example say a department has 5 full professors and 5 associate professors right now. Can we say that, assuming all the associate professors are good (and no retirements, institution changes, etc), the department will eventually have 10 full professors?
Or is there a hard limit that will stop the department from promoting everyone? If so, does it mean that it's possible to become an associate professor with no chance of further promotion?

The answer to this will depend on the country and possibly the specific university.

Do you have a particular country in mind? Germany and the US are probably quite different. Your question might actually seem odd in Germany.

Also, even if all associate professors ultimately become full professors the department will still not be made up of only full professors! That is because retiring full professors are being replaced with young assistant professors as associate professors get promoted to full professor. Just think about the age structure of populations!

@Buffy no particular country in mind - I'm perfectly happy with answers that say "in X country, Y, don't know about other countries".

Yes, it’s called the budget...

I'm perfectly happy with answers that say "in X country, Y, don't know about other countries". – Which makes answers incomparable and this question too broad. This question smells like an XY problem. Why do you wish to know this?

At the just-founded Custer University, I have appointed every human on the planet as a full professor in the Department of Life. Sadly, no salary or benefits (or even duties!) are attached to said appointment.

@Wrzlprmft FWIW, I think the question was wrongly closed and, again, don't understand the reason for down voting it.

And @Allure, perhaps tagging it with a country would make some of the complaints go away.

@JonCuster, Custer died for our sins, you realize..

@Buffy: There are several problems with this question, but let’s take your answer as an example. It could very well be that this is exactly what the asker wants to hear. But since we do not know to which country the asker is referring to (except that it should distinguish between associate and full professors in some way), why the asker is asking the question, it might as well be that the asker wants to hear “42” as an answer. As always, if you can edit the question into one that matches both answers and does not suffer from such issues, please do so.

@Wrzlprmft if that is the case, you should use your mod powers to close this question as too broad: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/assistant-professor-vs-associate-professor

At the just founded Custer university, assistant are expected to serve as personal housekeepers of associate professors. I wonder what the reaction would be if I wrote that as an answer to the question linked above.

@Allure: Indeed. That one is totally unsalvageable by any past and modern standard. By contrast, you can still [edit] your question to address its issues.

This will differ to a large extend from country to country. However, in all countries universities have budgets and professors tend to be more expensive than associate professors. You can deal with this limitation in different ways. You could ration the number of associate professors you hire such that you can make them all full professors eventually. You can make staying an associate professor a normal career option (e.g. the Netherlands). Less nice systems exist as well (e.g. Germany).

Thanks for answer. How is Germany less nice?

Most likely that refers to the fact that the normal way in Germany to be promoted to full professor as an associate prof. is to get an offer letter ("Ruf") for a full professorship from elsewhere. Without such a letter, promotions from associate to full professor without switching the University are usually not possible. In at least one state, switching institutions is even the only way to officially upgrade to full professor. Inofficial upgrades (getting as much as a full professor (PhD student positions...) without actually being one) may still be possible, though.

This answer is US centric.
For a lot of reasons, including some legal ones, this would be difficult to do as a matter of policy in the US. The legal reasons have to do with the fact that a person's employment advancement should depend on their own actions. It isn't a matter of criminal law, of course, but lawsuits can arise from someone being limited by such a policy. But it would also depend on the procedures used in the promotion process. (I'll say more below about this.)
Moreover, a university would find such a policy to be "unfortunate". Holding back your best associate professors is a great way to lose them. So, over time, you would expect that the quality of the faculty would decline. Only (or mostly) those associate professors with little ambition would choose to stay.
And, having everyone at full professor is also undesirable, as it makes it hard to bring in people with new ideas at the low end of the scale. Often those new faculty can revitalize a discipline locally.
But the university has a lot of levers it can pull to avoid such a stratification from happening, even by chance. If a place has "too many" full professors, then it can choose to hire fewer assistant professors and use adjuncts to control costs. It can also increase teaching loads, perhaps using subtle means like increasing class sizes.
Another solution for the too many professor problem is to offer incentives to retire. For example, a department might make an open offer to all full professors with a certain number of years of service (and perhaps an age limit) a full year's salary (or even two) if they retire now. In the US it has to be an open offer, not one made to an individual. So, a full professor over 70 with 20 years as a full professor might be offered such a buy-out.
Another "lever" at the control of administration is just to limit pay increases for everyone. This is fairly normal, in fact. It incentivizes grant writing, also. And it can increase turn-over of the faculty, but again, at the cost of the most desirable people having the most incentive to leave.
But one of the main reasons that this is unlikely to exist, or at least be common, is that the usual procedures for promotion to full professor are managed by the faculty itself, not by the administration. It isn't normally just a decision made by a dean that gets you promoted. It is on the recommendation of your peers. For promotion from assistant professor to associate it happens that the dean can veto a positive decision of the faculty for financial reasons (We'd like to keep you and you are great. We just can't afford it.). But I would find this sort of thing happening for promotion to full to be so rare as to be invisible. Hence, lawsuits.
But an additional lever comes in to play. If a university is truly in dire straits, they can disband an entire department leaving all faculty without contracts unless another department is willing to take them. This happens and is one of the ways tenured faculty might lose a job legally.
But, also note that once a person becomes an associate professor, the clock starts ticking for the administration to assure that in a few years, say ten or so, that the person will be due for promotion. So, they have adequate notice to assure that decisions are properly made so that it won't be a financial issue when it arises.


text:
Are there any great researchers who are terrible teachers?
I'm curious if there's been anyone who's really good at research but also really bad at teaching - for example traditionally, Nobel Prize winners are required to give a public lecture related to the topic that won them the prize. For the hypothetical winner, nobody would look forward to the lecture (or the requirement is even waived entirely).
I'm asking this because I've attended many lectures given by well-known researchers and somehow they're all surprisingly good. Some are better than others, of course, but nobody is so bad that people fall asleep during the lecture (which I've seen happen in high school). It makes sense that there is some level of self-selection, because universities would not hire really bad teachers, but presumably research output is also valuable, and one does not have to be at a university to perform research.

I'm not comfortable naming names - for obvious reasons - but yes. Very much yes.

Oh right. I didn't consider that when asking the question ...

This question is too open-ended.  Many great researchers had jobs that didn't involve teaching.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is open ended.

(If the person applies for a job, and the university does not hire them, that is not self-selection.)

If you ask are there "any" then the answer is clearly yes. But, like anything else, skills are learned. I turned out to be a good teacher, beloved by my students (mostly - some exceptions). But I started out as a terrible teacher with really poor ideas about how people learn.
If you don't do something (a lot) you aren't going to get very good at it. Being a "natural" researcher doesn't just happen either. But if you are allowed to spend all of your time on research and no one ever requires that you do any effective teaching, then you probably won't get good at it.
Some brilliant people make too many assumptions about others. If I have deep insight into some topic, I might, falsely, assume that my students do too. In particular, I might forget how long and hard it was for me to develop that insight.
But if your students turn out to be "just like you" then you can probably reach them ok. If you learned easily thorough lecture and you can lecture with some logic and completeness, then people like you will probably do ok. But, not all students are the same.
Your experience of hearing "good" lectures in public settings is, a lot, due to the fact that your general educational experiences are probably a lot like those of the speaker. And if they are established and experienced, then they probably have a lot of experience getting through to  people like you. But maybe not so much in a class of beginning undergraduates.

I'm asking this because I've attended many lectures given by well-known researchers and somehow they're all surprisingly good.

While I can't identify any academics that are good researchers and poor teachers, I will note that there is good reason to think that good research and good teaching would be (at least weakly) positively correlated, and therefore it should not be surprising that most well-known researchers are also good teachers.  Moreover, there is a self-selection effect in academia, whereby the most highly successful researchers often have the ability to negotiate away some or all of their teaching duties, and so those that remain as teachers tend to be the ones who are good at it (at least by self-perception).  (Note that there is quite a bit of meta-analysis on this subject in the education literature; see e.g., Hattie and Marsh 1996; Zaman 2004; Elken and Wollsheid 2016.)
In my experience, the main three elements that good teaching requires are: (1) having a comprehensive understanding of a subject from first principles; (2) the ability to be able to build the material up slowly and patiently, with respect for audience context and existing knowledge; and (3) the ability to anticipate and address common areas of confusion, misunderstanding, and other pitfalls.  Most of the best researchers have at least the first of these three traits, which already gives them the baseline requirement to be excellent teachers.  Also, most well-known researchers are highly experienced academics, so they have probably also taught a lot of courses, and have built up a good knowledge of how to go about explaining the basics, and anticipating the common confusions, misunderstandings and pitfalls.
In theory, it is possible that becoming an expert researcher on the "cutting edge" of a field could harm one's ability to be able to remember the common confusions that one suffered from as a novice, or harm one's patience in dealing with these confusions.  However, in practice, most academics do enough teaching from time-to-time that they maintain their ability to slowly and patiently explain material, and anticipate and address misunderstandings.  For those who do not have the patience and inclination to explain the basics in their subject, if they are successful academic researchers, then they have probably negotiated their way out of teaching duties, and thereby self-selected out of the teaching pool.


text:
How to handle reviewer who is unhappy their recommendation wasn't followed?
Inspired by this incident.

The story is a long one, and it’s a bit complicated. The peer reviewer, based at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, had served as a peer-reviewer for a poorly-handled review process earlier in 2015. He peer reviewed a manuscript and recommended that the paper be resubmitted after it was improved.
The paper went through two rounds of review and re-submit, but each time the paper’s scientific flaws were not addressed.
Next, the peer reviewer recommended that the paper be rejected. Following this, he received no communication from the journal or editor. Later, he discovered that [journal] had published the paper, in its original form, with the flaws unaddressed.
The peer reviewer asked to communicate with the other peer reviewers and the associate editor who accepted the paper for the journal, but [publisher] has so far refused to let him read the other reviews or provide contact information for the others.

(I obscured the name of the journal/publisher since it's irrelevant to the question)
In situations such as this one, should the journal:

Show the reviewer the other reviewers' reviews?
Reveal the identity of the other reviewers and/or associate editor to the reviewer and let them talk? (problem is the other people might not be very interested, since it is drama)
Serve as an intermediary between the reviewer and the other reviewers and/or associate editor while keeping the other people anonymous? (same problem as above)
Do nothing and suck up the reputational damage?

In this specific case, the reviewer has written (same source as above):

I regret that the authors of [paper] (some of who I do know not superficially) lost their reputation in (not only) my eyes subsequently. As to the lead author of [paper], Mr. [name], I cannot call him a scientist, as he betrays fundamental principles of Science.

Which makes me instinctively wary of dragging more people into the argument, but I don't see any other way to satisfy the reviewer.
Related: Why do editors sometimes accept a paper even if a reviewer recommends rejection?

@Libor They did reject-and-resubmit twice in this case (although I would again prefer to keep the name of the publisher out of the question).

@Libor I have known MDPI journals to reject after I recommended rejection.  But not always.

@Libor well if we are going to focus on this publisher and this paper, then we could say that the contested paper has as of time of writing 11 citations per Google Scholar, most of which are not self-citations. This should be a respectable number. One of the citing articles has 147 citations itself, as well. From there, one could argue that this reviewer was wrong - but again I don't consider it very relevant to the question.

@Libor I asked the MDPI employee about this (the refusal to share reviews with other reviewers) and they actually said reviewers are able to see each others' reviews, they practice open peer review ...

In general, any self-respecting journal would not allow a paper to get published if one of the reviewers has significant concerns about its scientific validity, assuming that reviewer’s competence is not in question.
In the situation you are describing, the journal would have to completely re-examine the decision to accept the paper. This would likely mean appointing a new editor to oversee it and sending it out to additional reviewers, and maybe holding an investigation into the earlier decision-making that led to the decision to accept the paper. If the decision turned out to be erroneous, the journal would issue a retraction.
Of course, if the journal really had those kinds of high standards and leve of integrity that I’m imagining would lead it to act in such a way, this unusual situation would almost certainly not have arisen in the first place. So I think asking “what should the journal do” is a bit moot, since a good journal would not need this sort of advice to begin with, and a bad/predatory journal would not be likely to heed it even if it were offered.

I don't agree. Reviewers often disagree with each other, and it is the editors job to look at the different judgements and come to their own conclusions based on this. I recently reviewed for a Nature family journal where I recommended some fairly minor revisions and the other two reviewers recommended rejection. The paper was sent for revisions.

@IanSudbery there are different types of disagreements, and for some of them I’d agree with you. To clarify, in the answer I’m assuming that the reviewer has a major disagreement to the point where they doubt the scientific validity of the paper’s findings. And as I said, I’m assuming the competence of the reviewer and consequently the reasonableness of their assessment is not in question. (I can’t say for sure if both assumptions are satisfied in the specific story being discussed.) In those circumstances, it’s hard for me to imagine the editor simply ignoring the reviewer’s concerns.

People often disagree even on matters of fundamental scientific validity.  Even more frequent might be a disagreement not whether some point is valid or not, but whether the validity of that point is central to the argument of the paper or not.  I often have long involved debates with colleagues about the validity of this or that work. That doesn't mean that one of us is incompetent - these things are generally subjective judgements. I'm not saying its impossible that there has been a poor review process here, and not seeing the other reviews is troubling. But it is no smoking gun.

@IanSudbery if there is no agreement by the reviewers on the paper’s basic scientific validity, I don’t see how a responsible journal could allow the paper to be published, at least not without appending an editorial note pointing out the disagreement so that readers are aware of the controversy. So yes, disagreements are common, and as an example, I disagree with your interpretation of the current situation.

I think this is what people mean when they say that peer review can't guarantee the quality of a paper. At a certain point everyone must read it for themselves and make there own judgements. In general I often find my self on the "this has serious flaws" side of the argument, but I'm well used to not always getting my way. Still, as you say, perhaps better to agree to disagree.


text:
Does economy of scale apply to universities?
On the one hand, it seems like "no" - hence some universities like Caltech choose to remain small, while others like Boston University & MIT don't merge into a single super-university in spite of having campuses that are side-by-side.
On the other hand, I don't see why it wouldn't apply. There should be an advantage to pooling resources, e.g. with library subscriptions, campus transport, and so on. At the academic level, more students/faculty would also allow the university to teach more specialized subjects.
Does economy of scale apply to universities? If yes, why are Caltech, Boston University/MIT etc (and Imperial/UCL for that matter) making the decisions they do? If not, why not?

BU and MIT are   "side by side" only if you count "across from each other on opposite sides of the Charles River".

There's already a glut of degree holders where jobs don't exist. Exclusivity is what makes these places prestigious, let a bunch more people in and nobody cares, you're no longer in an exclusive club. I should also add you can already buy into these places if you offer enough money. Donate a building.

@EthanBolker That's pretty side by side if you ask me ...

MIT combining with BU seems a bit far-fetched, maybe an alternate framing would be: why doesn't MIT double its size? It could double its admissions/hiring rates and still remain very, very selective.

Economy of scale naturally rears its head anywhere humans happen to be involved.

I doubt MIT could double admissions and remain very selective.   This is because the percentage of people who they want to attract is very small.  Also, top people have other choices too, e.g., Caltech, Stanford.  So the pool of students they attract is very small.  If MIT doubles in size, it'll start attracting 'above average' students as opposed to 'above above average' students.  As a result, its level drops.  I'm sure they are happy to cater for just the top 0.00....0001% of students given that they have all the resources they ever need.

Yes, economy of scale does apply to universities.  Having more students reduces the operating cost per student.
The universities you have listed are research universities.  They prioritise spending on research, and not students.  They do not care about revenue as they have plenty of money and do not exist for the purpose of gaining more money.
For institutions that have little money and get most of their money from students, I've sometimes heard it said that 300 students is "enough" to achieve economy of scale.
Some universities achieve economy of scale using purchasing consortia.  In these constoria, several universities work together to negotiate a favorable contract from a vendor.  This is quite common for public universities.

Its true for Caltech and perhaps MIT, but Imperial and UCL get most of their income from teaching.

@IanSudbery These pages seem to say teaching is <40% of revenue for both.  Also, this is about expenditure, and teaching revenue pays for nonteaching expenses at most universities.  https://issuu.com/imperialcollegelondon/docs/20_11_annual_report_and_accounts_tp_issuu/54  https://www.ucl.ac.uk/about/how/financial-information

I stand corrected, although those are figures for income from fees, rather than income from teaching. Its a bit hard to figure out from those statements - my own instution breaks down the "Funding body grants" and "Other income" into research and teaching in note 4. We have about the same fee income as imperial, but another £150m of the Other incomes is attributed to teaching, which would take both up to almost exactly 50%.

Universities are not for-profit organizations.
In fact, they are mostly purposely money-losing organizations.  The tuition they charge usually does not nearly cover their costs.
It is true that, if they were bigger, their losses would be smaller per student because of efficiency of scale.  However, their total losses would be bigger.
Universities cover their losses through investment income from past donations that are invested.  (This is called an endowment.)  If a university were to expand, their endowment would no longer cover their total losses.

Just a quick remark: while the original question is quite generalizable to all countries, this answer is not, because not all universities are allowed to do investment or receive donations worthy of being mentioned.

This answer contains a lot of generalities that are simply untrue. Some universities are for-profit. Some universities, even nonprofit universities, make more money through tuition than what student cost. Some universities are not funded through endowments.

I'm not convinced that any of the for profit universities are legitimate.

"If a university were to expand, their endowment would no longer cover their total losses."  This is not consistent with the few universities who have rapidly growing endowments.  They could incur more losses.


text:
Tenure-track offer with other applications in progress
I am an academic in computer science in Europe, just completed my Ph.D. and applied for tenure-track positions in Europe. I received a very early offer in the UK more than a month ago and the negotiation stretched until now. Given the overal small startup packages in the UK, I managed to negotiate for a decent startup budget. However, as the department has no presence nor material for the research I am doing, the deal is more average/minimal. Apart from the details in the offer, the thing that is holding me back is that my partner also has a good career here but in the UK, she would have a very hard time and probably have to go back to university to make her degree compatible. We discussed all of this and I would take the offer if all other applications do not work out. Now the university really wants me to make a decision this week.
I have a tenure-track application running at my home university where I did my studies, grew up, and I am still living. The place is quite decent and despite the down-sides of staying at the same place, I would be very happy with the position as I was able to do good work here in the past, and my partner would be able to continue her career as well. I have a good chance of receiving an offer here but the interview and results will be out in 3-4 weeks. I contacted the university but they cannot speed-up the process. The other thing is that the position at the university here is quite exceptional in that a similar position will not be available anytime soon. As there not many/no universities that have a presence in my field nearby, this is the one opportunity for my partner and I to live in our hometown.
So I need to make a decision this week on an offer in the UK which I would totally take if the outcome on the other application would be negative. The application at my home university, which would be my preferred choice, will still take 3 weeks. If I say NO to the offer in the UK, I could end up with no position. The safest thing would be to say YES this week. But potentially canceling the offer in 3 weeks, when the results at my home university are out, is probably not very ethical?
Just for completeness, I have another tenure-track application at a university nearby, this could be a backup, but is very uncertain as it is not specifically focusing on my area of research.
I would welcome any advise or hear about similar experiences.

I have a tenure-track application running at my home university where I did my studies, grew up, and I am still living Is this possible?

As far as I am aware, there is no tenure track in the UK, as there is no tenure. I hope you haven't misinterpreted the offer.

You are right, in the UK it is called a probation period.  But in many ways the terms are better compared to the one for a tenure-track.

I think what you are asking is if there is an ethical way to accept a position and then bail if you get a better position. Ethics are often very personal, but I think most people would conclude that this is unethical. That said, potentially the more important question, is can you get away with the behavior. From a legal standpoint, there is likely very little that can be done to punish you.
From a career standpoint accepting an offer and then turning it down tends to be a recipe for creating academic enemies. In your case, however, I think you can get away with it because of the Brexit and the fact you have a partner. If in the next month you get a better offer, you can tell the UK university that your partner has had a change of heart. Yes, I am advocating blaming it all on your partner to keep you from making enemies. Explain that your partner is concerned about moving to the UK because of Brexit and their treatment of foreigners. Yes, I am advocating telling a straight up lie. UK academics are generally up in arms about the Brexit. Having a change of heart because of the Brexit will be totally believable to them.

Having accepted the offer and a couple of weeks later changing the mind "because of BREXIT" is an obvious straight lie and might create opposite effect even if UK academics are up in arms about it.  I am not sure that's a good advice.

@PsySp as I said it is a lie, but it is believable and no one can prove it is a lie.

Yes. I get your point. But it has a high risk to be an obvious lie (since this was not an issue during their preliminary discussions) and it might backfire. Personally, I would not find it very believable given the circumstances, but that's my personal feeling.

Thank you for this discussion. What if I would go for this option and next week they already want me to sign a contract? Can I still turn down everything later or would that be harder with a signature?

@J.McCabe it is unlikely they can legally make you work or even impose large payback penalties on any relocation money (beyond the actual money). The further down the road you go, the more likely they will hold you leaving against you. Remember, that despite a limited ability to "punish" you, lying to them is unethical.

Whether it's a lie or not, you are breaking a promise you made to colleagues you may encounter many times over your professional career. In other words, you are doing damage to your reputation before you even getting started with your professional career. Think carefully whether that is the right approach.

@WolfgangBangerth I think you are overstating the frequency you run into departmental colleagues (current or former, or in this case potential). At least in my field departments are very diverse and at all but the biggest conferences I and my advisees are the only representatives of my department. At the biggest conferences, there may be a few PIs from the same department, but they could easily be avoided.

I think your decision should hinge on what your fallback position would be if you turn down your current offer and don't get an offer from your ideal school. Would you work in a postdoc? Industry? Do you want an academic career, or an ideal academic career?
For context, I will explain the situation I had. I had an offer at a less-than-ideal place and a flyout scheduled at the institution where I had done my MA. I had many contacts there (the flyout felt like a family reunion) and my husband also had an offer in town. I did not get that job. However, the fact that I was competitive for both and had many other outstanding flyouts/applicaitons made me feel confident enough to turn down the first offer.
I later got an offer at a third institution, which is a bit better than the first, but certainly not as good as the MA institution. However, I think I would have been less confident in this strategy if I had not completed 40+ applications and already had 3 future flyouts scheduled when I turned down the first offer.

Update based on his response: Strategically, it seems like it could make sense to turn down the current UK job. If you turn it down, one of two things happens: Either you get the job you want, or you do a post-doc in your current location and go on the market again. If you go on the market again, then I don't see why you would expect worse options than you currently have. If you think of game theory, you need to decide if you are maximizing expected payoffs or playing a maximin strategy

Thank you for sharing your experience and for highlighting the aspects I should take into account. To answer your question in the first paragraph, I would really like to stay in academia for various reasons. It should be possible to stay here as a postdoc for a while but I would probably face the same challenges during the interview season next year.
In industry, I would face similar challenges as many interesting jobs would require me and my partner to move abroad as well.

Based on your response, it seems like there is little risk to turning down the current UK job. You may get the job you want, or you may be able to do a post-doc and go on the market again. If you go on the market again, then I don't see why you would expect worse options than you currently have. If you think of game theory, you need to decide if you are maximizing expected payoffs or playing a maximin strategy.

I get your point and I think it makes sense. However, I have a decent track record now. Hence I received some offers without real post-doc experience. If I would apply next year, I would be evaluated as a post-doc and one could evaluate my resume very different. Of course, my resume will strengthen this year but you never know.  I just feel that I have more momentum now than I will probably have next year.

That makes sense too. I think in my field people have a difficult time mentally down-weighting the number of publicaitons on post-doc applications. For the job I wanted, I was told that the person who got it did a postdoc, and therefore had more papers than me. I felt like yelling - "That is because they had a postdoc!"

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Publishing a paper that's already been cited
I do theoretical CS. A few years ago, I did some research and wrote a paper on my results, posting it on arXiv. I thought about getting it published, but between applying to programs after graduation and starting my new job, it fell by the wayside. Recently, I found a new paper is coming out that cites mine, disproves a conjecture, and extends a result.
Does the existence of the new paper hurt or help my chances of eventually getting the paper published? More likely, I would aim to present it at a conference because I've been told that that's much easier in theoretical computer science, especially for unknown authors or niche topics. Does the new paper hurt or help me chances of presenting the paper at a conference? It would feel weird presenting research that's no longer the state-of-the-art. Should the paper be modified to acknowledge the existence of the citing paper?

I think it should do more good than harm. The fact that you have been cited and your results extended means that your paper was relevant, which is a good thing. You definitely need to modify the paper though, not only to acknowledge the citing paper, but because you shouldn't publish a conjecture that is now known to be false.
Disclaimer: although I think the citation should help, this may be quite dependent on the particular reviewer(s) you get. The popularization of arXiv has been relatively recent in the CS field, and at least in many subcommunities the issues that come with it are still subject to debate and the "codes of conduct" are a bit blurry.

I've been told that that's much easier in theoretical computer science, especially for unknown authors or niche topics

This is not entirely true. Conferences are very well regarded in TCS, sometimes even more than journals. In general it is harder to publish in a respected conference than a journal of roughly the same level. Of course it depends on the level. There are some quite non-selective conferences but so there are journals. The question is: do you want to publish in these venues? Depends on your motivation but I would strongly advice NO.

Does the existence of the new paper hurt or help my chances of eventually getting the paper published?

If your result is obsolete because of the presence of the new paper that refutes your conjectures and expands your analysis, then I do not see how your paper could be published in any venue.

Should the paper be modified to acknowledge the existence of the citing paper?

Definitely YES. Otherwise, you enter in a very unethically gray area to put it mildly.

It would feel weird presenting research that's no longer the state-of-the-art.

From your description, your paper is far from state of the art since it is clearly Obsolete. I do not see how your community would benefit from your paper and I also do not see how you would benefit by submitting it anywhere (unless your only goal is any publication.)

I'd say that if there is an incoming paper that "extends a result" of theirs, that's the very definition of "not obsolete".
It's the conjecture that is obsolete, but they make it sound as a minor result (if it's the major point of the paper, then I'd agree with you).

Theoretical CS papers can't be "obsolete". At worst, they can be "stale".

@Al-Khwarizmi True. But there is a paper that disproves a conjecture (as OP says). Now, if it's minor result or not, I cannot judge. As such, the only purpose that OP's paper can serve is as a reference ("we disprove the conjecture posed in that paper and we extend the results").

@JeffE Depends who you ask. It's a choice of words but the essence remains the same: scientifically the result does not advance the science because there is a new paper that extends, expands and refutes assertions made in OP's paper. I do not know how this can be published in conference. If you know, please post it as an answer! (I have many conjectures that were disproved one way or another in recent years)

I downvoted this answer because it expresses the opinion that the OP's work is of not publishable.  If the arxiv preprint led to another published paper, then the OP's work manifestly was of interest to the community.  The whole point of putting things on the arxiv is to advance the field more quickly.  In order for this to work in the long term, the field has to be willing to publish papers like the OP's (otherwise uploading to the arxiv would be too risky).  Academia should not just publish whatever is best at the moment; they should publish the record of advancements in the field.

@PeteL.Clark Thank you for the comment. In principle, I agree with you (I never claimed that the work would not be publishable). It is my opinion however, that ArXiv is the best place the paper can be published and evidently it received notice. This is also to avoid inevitable review comments "this is already done, see []". Want or not, this is how the review system works but not how it should work (that's why in principle we strongly agree).

@PeteL.Clark Note also that my answer had 2 segments: the 1st one was to correct the OP's misconception that "conferences in TCS are much easier" and 2nd to provide an opinion on why such a submission would not be viewed warmly, at best, by the PC/editorial. Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it seems that the OP just wants to have an extra publication (I got that feeling from his description)

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What is an academic's responsibility when a high-level administrator makes false statements to the media?
In a recent media article on the quality of education and curricular changes at our university (elimination of remedial courses), a high-ranking administrator asserted that no changes to any credit-bearing courses would be made. However, I have an internal memo from this same administrator demanding that new, easier, credit-bearing courses be developed by our department and others, so as to facilitate graduation by the student population in question.
I'm at a large public university in the U.S. I do not yet have tenure. Should I respond to this, perhaps anyonymously?

Sure you have colleagues at your university who are interested in this issue.  Some of them might even have tenure.  What do they think?  2) Go on the job market yesterday.

Sounds like a another "student success" initiative to me.

You might wish to leak the internal memo confidentially to a reliable journalist.

You should think carefully before leaking the memo.  It will embarrass the administrator (even though they technically did not contradict themselves), but it will also make the faculty look a little worse for fighting the issue through leaks.  The administration might even convince the public that the egghead faculty are making university too hard for no good reason rather than accommodating the needs of the students for "education".

Presumably the administrator asserted that "no changes to any credit-bearing courses would be made" in the short-term, which is entirely compatible with the a medium-term decision to "[develop] new, easier, credit-bearing courses." Thus, the public statement was true... Albeit, political.

Could you elaborate on why you might have an ethical duty to "respond" to what seems like a political move? Or why you feel you don't have an ethical duty to remain silent on what seems like a political move?

@user2768: It seems corrupt to be granting college degrees to people lacking 6th- or 8th-grade skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic. More broadly, I feel like taxpayers, policy setters, prior degree holders, and future incoming students should not be deceived about the quality of education and preparation being given to our graduates.

@user2768: Also, all the changes mentioned are in regards to the next academic year.

@AimWrack, thanks for the clarification. It now sounds like the administrator blatantly lied. If I were in your position and I had concerns over the quality of my institute, then I think I would consider moving. I wouldn't see an ethical need to highlight the lie, because it seems to be relatively minor, in particular, the administrator seems to be claiming that the institute is better than what it is, but surely all administrators do that? Thus, highlighting the lie might look like you're being petty, which is bad for your reputation. (I fully acknowledge that the issues might go far deeper.)

no changes to any [current] credit-bearing courses

but

new, easier, credit-bearing courses be developed by our department and others

is not precisely a contradiction. Though in the context of academic integrity, it's certainly misleading to the public.

You didn't ask, but your ethical duty is first to your own behavior. So long as you're not creating/teaching courses which don't merit their credits, you'll be OK on that front. I wanted to mention this because it's simple, and it provides a good contrast for the answer to your question:

Your ethical duty with respect to the administrator's misleading public statements are a responsibility shared by the entire group of university staff. Note the distinction between something that's your personal responsibility and something that's the responsibility of a group you belong to. Because this is a group responsibility, you need to try handle this as a group. If the group disagrees with you, and you feel the lie was significant enough, your only real option may be to leave the group or leak, but that should definitely be a last resort.
Things do first:
First talk to other professors (especially tenured ones) and see how they feel about it. Maybe you missed some things and they can point those out. Or maybe everyone agrees with you and you can approach this collectively which will help avoid costing you your job.
IFF you have a good enough relationship to do it effectively (and avoid getting yourself fired), it would also be best to talk to the administrator personally. Be sympathetic to their need to portray the university in a positive light both in words to the media and in graduation rates, but share your unease with the contradiction in message. Listen to their response, try to understand their viewpoint and how they rationalized their behavior as acceptable. It sounds like the best case would be for the administrator to change the internal behavior to match what was shared with the press. Persuasion is hard, but it really is the best option.

If other professors feel you're overreacting, but have no new information or can't convince you things are fine, and if you can't reach an understanding with the administrator in private, then you have to decide whether this is ethically compelling enough to require yourself to risk your career. There's no hard and fast answer for that. You have to weigh your ability to be successful against your need to not associate with people who aren't flawlessly honest/upright.
If you do decide you must risk your job, I would recommend roughly this order of operations:

Internally (but public to other professors), point out the contradiction as kindly as possible and ask the administrator for a solution. Don't threaten to leak or quit yet. Explain you want to understand and keep things internal.
If your concerns are dismissed, either resign quietly or leak the memo AND all internal communications about it to journalists you believe will be able to present the story well. And expect to be fired.

It's hard to predict what effect this may have on future employers, as that will mostly depend on the fallout and how well you're able to convince future employers both that it was the right choice and that nothing they do is likely to require you to do it again. Try to be as complete and fair to the other side as possible as that will help somewhat. Remember that the goal here isn't to expose a liar or shame the university, but to promote academic quality and accountability.
It sounds like a tough position to be in. Good luck.

Large public universities in the US generally have Faculty Senates or Councils some similar faculty committee that has representation from all the colleges within the university and which serves as some sort of advisory body or voting body for policies. As an untenured faculty (and new kid focusing on your own department) you might not know much about that side of faculty service.  Talking to senior faculty who are currently in those bodies might be useful to get some advice or perspective on how best to proceed.

A semi-non-answer: in my experience, "high-level" administrators are constantly making PR-oriented statements externally, which, if taken literally, are wildly false... but are sufficiently ambiguous so that it would be hard to "prove" a deliberate lie. The details of wording of your situation strike me as typical in this regard.
To my mind, the real question is about what this translates into "on the ground". That is, apart from persiflage, what will really happen? If the reality amounts to a significant degradation of standards (although that, too, is riddled with difficulties-of-concept) then one might take action... though more strategically than merely pointing out the hypocrisy of central administration.
That is, I think everyone either explicitly or implicitly recognizes the inevitable and typical hypocrisy of central administrations in universities. The operational question is about the degree of it, and how it actually plays out in reality. It is typically difficult to anticipate this...

Should I respond to this, perhaps anonymously?

People are different (e.g. see the quotations from Grigori Perelman). There is no single answer to your question. In my case, and this is NOT any advice, I always acted very straight, and I have payed dearly for this. I am happy about it anyway, I like it. However, and now this is an advice, try to follow common sense. For instance, if you decide to react ethically, i.e. adequately, then perhaps you should line up a new job for yourself, just in case. Etc.