text:
Advisor says I shouldn't expect to finish thesis soon, but won't offer specific feedback on what is missing; how to react?
I have a rough draft of my PhD dissertation, on which I was working on and off for about a year, but mostly I was doing other coursework. I have about 90 pages so far.
My dissertation advisor tells me that what I should do is pretty much make sure it is well-written and apply the theory to a few examples. By my estimates, if I go berserk on this, I can finish all that in under one month.
However, the dissertation advisor says that usually, it takes about 3 years to complete a dissertation in my department, and I should not expect to complete it soon. Also, he says that the level of my draft was intermediate (some time ago) and not yet advanced (but he hasn't reviewed the current one yet).
When I ask or suggest about expanding the scope of the dissertation / adding additional chapters, the dissertation advisor says he does not think it is necessary.
So, it appears that the dissertation is almost complete, but I should not expect to complete it soon. How should I interpret this apparent contradiction?

What field are we talking about?

The field is physics.

How long have you been working on your dissertation and did it lead to any publication? Also, depending on your subfield, “applying your theory to some examples” is the major, time-consuming challenge.

I started working on it last year, but most of the time I was doing a large number of courses, so the effective time would be more like 5 months, which is of course not much. I wrote a technical report and an article during this time. The article is yet to be reviewed by the advisor.

I looked at previous dissertations completed in my department, and in similar cases, application of the theory to some examples is something like 20 pages and can be a relatively trivial task. This is further confirmed by the advisor's suggestions.

How many pages it is when written up does not necessarily correspond to how much work it was to get it all done right. Having the basic idea and theory may be easy and one is tempted to say "Here's the theory, the rest is trivial", but often only when you try to apply it, you will see the flaws and issues it has. Getting that fixed can be really time-consuming...

if I go berserk on this, I can finish all that in under one month. — So three years sound about right, then. (Ha ha only serious.)

So, you actually want to do a PHD without not even a peer-reviewed publication? In Physics? Not possible. First publish. More than once. Then write dissertation. Then get a PHD. A PHD is not a MSc, where you pass some courses, write a thesis that just makes your advisor and your committee happy (without the prerequisite of a peer-reviewed publication) and instant PHD in less than two years.

To all those focusing on publishing: in some fields (e.g. math) people have gotten tenure-track or tenured positions without publishing a paper.  It's extremely rare, and maybe it couldn't happen in the current state of affairs.  But there is precedent, so I wouldn't say "impossible".  Just very unlikely.

@JeffE Indeed, for various reasons, students often take more time than necessary to complete their thesis, and what you said makes sense.

@Alexandros Actually, I would prefer to have a peer-reviewed publication before graduating, but my advisor does not want me to worry about that. However, there is a possibility of publishing the paper I have completed, as well as papers based on material in my thesis draft. In my department, the expectation is about one paper per year if not enough progress is being made on the thesis, or something like that.

@DavidKetcheson Indeed, it is very possible to get the PhD without publishing a single paper, although I would prefer to have some publications.

@Jake It is not really a matter of preference. Have you ever considered that your paper might get rejected? Or the peer-review process reveals some subtle mistake you have missed and ruins your results? Then your thesis will document what? Your possibly faulty results?

Indeed, for various reasons, students often take more time than necessary — Actually my point was exactly the opposite: For various reasons, students often want to take less time than necessary.

@JeffE: There's a rule I once heard: "To determine how long a task will actually take: make your best estimate, double it, and switch to the next higher unit of time."  So "two hours" becomes "four days", and "one month" becomes "two years".  It should be Somebody's Law but I don't know whose.  (Hofstadter's Law is closely related.)

@Alexandros I have considered that. In fact, I knew that my previous version of the paper I have just submitted to the advisor would not be published; right now it is likely to be publishable after major revisions. However, I am sure that there are no substantial errors in my research, as the concept is sound, straightforward, and already tested. There are many small items to be taken care of, and that is what my advisor refers to, saying that I should have a well-written version of what I have already done.

@JeffE I think that both statements are true in different ways. Students often underestimate the time required to complete work, but they often work with very low efficiency, and especially so if they have unclear understanding of the dissertation process.

@NateEldredge In the formulations of this that I have encountered, the actual time to completion is about twice the estimated time. However, one day effectively consists of about 8 hours, according to a popular convention based on practice, so it is easy to see how a 2 hour task can be stretched out over several days.

In my department we require 4 publications to get a PhD. When I started, the head of studies said that even if I get there very much ahead of time, he would not let me graduate too soon, as an important part of PhD studies are just being in a scientific environment. One year is definitely not enough.

My PhD advisor once told me that one aspect he considers when rating a thesis is how much the candidate did try to go beyond the initial idea or goal. If they are like "I solved the initial problem, here's the thesis, I just want to finish a fast as possible" then they will earn an intermediate grade at the end. Only if they try to go beyond the initial problem, try to at least estimate the further implications or steps or apply the outcome of the initial problem to further problems, they really can earn a top grade.
To my experience, to successfully finish a physics PhD within roughly a year, you have to have had really great luck to find something really excitingly new that provided a huge progress to your specific field. In most cases after one year you can't even tell for sure what the final focus of the thesis will be. Those applications of the theory to some example cases can easily take up more time than the whole development of the theory as there might come up issues and flaws that you were not expecting. Also their importance is not necessarily reflected in the number of pages they make up in the final thesis.
Therefore it seems to me, that you are somewhat belonging to the first type of people mentioned above who are just heading to leave before really having understood the implications of what they were working on.

The topic I am working on is considered to be quite "hot", and the theory I have developed is substantially new. It would be directly applicable to some high-profile research currently in progress at certain major laboratories.

The objective I have in mind for the dissertation is to complete it as quickly as possible, because I have lots of plans and ideas I can't wait to start working on after that, but I will take as long as it takes in order to not compromise on quality and scope.

@user162562 Then contacting some people there and asking for a collaboration to get your theory applied to their stuff should be an easy thing. If the theory is that good and new they should be glad to set up a collaboration and some high-profile publications should result from it. This is finally what academic work is about.

"Those applications of the theory to some example cases can easily take up more time than the whole development of the theory as there might come up issues and flaws that you were not expecting." -- I agree; however, I've already done testing on a few examples, and everything appears to work as it should so far. Also, the advisor is actually recommending me to focus on simply having a well-written version of part of the theory and not to extend the scope + the application to examples, of course.

"Then contacting some people there and asking for a collaboration to get your theory applied to their stuff should be an easy thing."
Thanks for the answer and for this suggestion. I think that it is a good idea, and I will work on that.

PhDs are pass/fail so I'm not sure what you mean for a thesis to "earn an intermediate grade".

What you describe sound like a paper, not a thesis. By all means, finish your current work, publish it, and move on. But that's independent from finishing your thesis.  (Warning: I work in a different field with different cultural expectations.)

@DavidRicherby That depends, here in Germany they are graded and the first sentences don't just refer to PhDs but also bachelor's and master's theses.

@DavidRicherby Indeed, in my case the thesis is assigned a pass/failed grade.

@JeffE I am doing exactly what was agreed upon with the advisor for the thesis. On average, in my department dissertations are about 150 pages long (doublespaced), 20 of which is implicit content. Papers, on the other hand, are usually 3-15 pages long, sometimes up to about 30.  I am speaking of my field, of course. Right now, both in terms of content and length, the draft is more than a paper, but less than a thesis.

@Jake You seem to be viewing a PhD thesis as being merely a document that meets some specific set of criteria. It isn't. I think you should have a discussion with your adviser about what exactly a PhD is and what is expected of a thesis.

@Jake To build on David's comment, you also seem to be viewing a paper as being merely a document that meets some specific set of criteria.  It isn't.

@DavidRicherby That's one of the possible ways to look at it, as form is often correlated to its content. I did discuss this with my advisor, and I read some literature on PhD and dissertations.

@JeffE Quite apparently, a paper is a piece of scientific content, which satisfies conventional requirements for its form. There is often a correlation between content and form, which is why one may speak of content as well as of form. It is often  convenient to briefly mention form and management parameters, content being idiosyncratic and specialized.

Science is really a publication driven field, not a dissertation driven one. I would highly encourage to you to put your time in to turning your research into peer-reviewed scientific publication, instead of doing just enough for a dissertation. If you can publish 2-4 papers out of what you have written in established journals your adviser will most likely graduate you. However, I imagine, since this was my experience too, that as you start to write your papers you will find holes that need to be fixed, etc., and fixing those holes will be a substantial part of the work.
Bottom line: focus on doing publishable research and getting published first! After you've done that, the dissertation will be easy and you'll graduate without a problem.

I agree that it would be best to publish 2-4 papers. The subject matter in my case is pretty straightforward, but you are right about certain seemingly small items that may require substantial work. I have a list of such items, and on average, each of them takes about 1-3 days to be addressed. The advisor and I agree that the main concern is that my draft is not very well-written yet, and for the same reason, I don't have much publishable material at the moment.

Trying to get a PhD in a year or two is a bad idea, because employers will not take such a degree seriously. The only exception is if you're a once-in-a-generation talent (and the odds are you're not the next Albert Einstein or Lev Landau), in which case you'd already have a number of publications to your credit and enough work to justify a PhD.
So I would echo Benedikt Bauer's advice and not try to rush through things. Instead, focus on the quality of your thesis project. Have you completed publications? Have you personally explored the ramifications of the work you've already done? What else have you done "beyond the basics" of the original problem?

"Have you completed publications?"
I wrote a technical report and an article during this time. The article is yet to be reviewed by the advisor.

"Have you personally explored the ramifications of the work you've already done?"
Yes, I have done that, but the only thing I head from the advisor on that is that he thinks I should not over-do things like that.

"What else have you done "beyond the basics" of the original problem?"
The advisor wants me to have a well-written version of what I've done, plus application of theory to a few examples, which is pretty much feeding certain data to the method and analyzing the output; this should take about 20 pages, and I can imagine in detail how it will look. There are a lot of ideas that I mentioned, but the advisor does not want me to explore too many of them.

"Trying to get a PhD in a year or two is a bad idea, because employers will not take such a degree seriously." I suppose that maybe my advisor wants me to take time with the dissertations for reasons such as this one.

One paper in any event is not really sufficient for a PhD. Even for a three-year PhD, one would normally require output corresponding to multiple journal papers (or the equivalent in your field). For instance, I expect my students to have completed work roughly equivalent to three papers.

@DavidKetcheson Basically that's true, but getting a PhD is also not a drive-by task. And the attitude that shines through the OP is something like "I was attending some courses the last year and the time remaining beside the course work I wrote a bit on my thesis." It's unquestioned that some famous people may have achieved their successful work in a similar way (as aeismail noted already), but it's quite unlikely that this happened to the OP as well. Also if the OP was one of those talents, I guess their supervisor would show some more enthusiasm about their work.

@aeismail I heard that in some countries like Finland, publishing three papers is considered to be equivalent to completing a thesis. I agree with you on the advisable number of publications. Right now, the content of my draft is roughly equivalent to one "average" paper and one "very good" paper, with lots of extra material that is not yet detailed enough to be equivalent to any number of papers. By the time I complete in its present scope at the expected quality level, it will be indeed roughly equivalent to 3-4, maybe 5 papers.

@DavidKetcheson I agree.

@BenediktBauer In my opinion, I am not one of those once-in-a-generation talents, but I am quite unique and unusual (not necessarily in an exclusively positive way; more like in a mixed way with a lot of positive), which was noted by my advisor and other people. My question is mostly motivated by search of clarity, and I objectively noted that at the moment, I have so far committed relatively little time to the thesis.

I think that I can perhaps technically complete the thesis within a few months of normal-paced work, and the advisor understands that, but spending an additional year or two would guarantee a substantial improvement in its quality, and perhaps that's what the advisor wants me to do.

In all the programs I am familiar with, you become a "doctoral candidate" (or something similar) only after having successfully proposed a topic for your dissertation.  Usually that proposal includes several pages of detail regarding what will be accepted by your committee as successful completion.  Of course, research is uncertain and there must be some flexibility, but your proposal can be viewed as the basis for deciding when you are done.
If you have such a document, you should reference it specifically in discussions with your advisor.  If you do not, perhaps you should create one and iterate with your advisor until he/she is willing to agree to it.

The confusing thing is that what remains to be done is simply brushing up the existing draft, perhaps even deleting some extra material, and adding application of theory to some examples, the latter being already done to a small extent for proof of concept purposes. So it would appear that although I have recently started, I am almost done, but at the same time, the expected timeframe remains about 3 years in total. Perhaps I can practically complete the thesis in a few months and spend an additional year simply improving its "awesomeness" factor.

Do you have a proposal document that defines what remains to be done?  If not, your perception and your advisor's may be vastly different.

A formal thesis proposal is not required in my department, but I have discussed this in maximal possible detail with the advisor, which is limited by his time availability and willingness to discuss those details. In the latest discussions, it was apparent that his expectations for scope are somewhat smaller than mine. I can easily satisfy all of the requirements he mentioned perhaps even all too quickly, and he does not think I should be concerned about anything else.

All I can think of is that he wants me to do a lot of additional unspecified work on the thesis, which would be pretty much reworking every detail to a higher quality, and that I should take time doing it, and not merely complete the dissertation plan with sufficient quality.


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Do Master of Research programs require prior research experience?
I have a research question that I want to explore, so am considering completing a Master of Research (MRes) degree in the UK. I will soon finish a terminal master's program by coursework (in the US), with no thesis option, so I do not have a research background. Is research experience a typical prerequisite for an MRes?

No, you do not need research experience to get on a UK MRes progamme. Though it will help.
It may vary by institution; this answer is based on the one MRes from my subject area.
The UCL MRes in Energy Demand Studies has the following prerequisites (taken from that linked page):

Good numeracy and literacy and an ability to present ideas clearly
An appreciation of the importance of behaviour and society in energy demand
An understanding of or ability to learn basic physics and engineering concepts
Strong performance in a science, engineering or social sciences discipline

The course, in its first half, contains a lot of taught material. This covers, amongst other things, research skills.
Having research skills, or a research track record, will help you with getting onto the more competitive courses, such as this one; and it will improve your chances of getting your study funded too.
One of the selection criteria is (ibid):

how your academic and professional background meets the demands of this challenging programme

so if you can show a research track record, that will help fulfill that criterion.

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How does the PhD experience differ for paying students?
Some PhD programs offer students an opportunity to either pay for the PhD themselves or to take a teaching assistantship in exchange for a tuition waiver.
Aside from a lack of teaching duties, are the work requirements and responsibilities of a paid PhD student any different from those of the teaching assistantship students?

I think you need to provide more background information. What kind of differences are you looking at: Profile after PhD? Time available for the research? Performance?

I cannot find any way to narrow the question down, because I have not completed a PhD before and do not know what to expect. I'll try to adjust my question to be more specific though.

But are you trying to choose yourself between those 2 options? Or is this question asked from an adviser point of view? Or you want to hire some one with such background and try to assess his/her profile?

I'm asking from the perspective of a student with the two choices.

I've never heard of a student taking a teaching assistant position as payment for their program. Usually the student is covered by a scholarship and their advisors organises teaching jobs to help the students usually meagre income.

@StephenTierney I have a few friends in the US, and they are paid this way, at least the first years. Sometimes, the advisor has funding to free them from teaching.

@Stephen Tierney: In the US this is extremely common, and in my field in particular (mathematics) almost all students are funded this way. It's very different from paying your own way (which is very rare in my field) and it seems odd to me that the question lumps these together.

There are usually 4 ways to pay for a PhD in my experience in the US:

Out of pocket with your own money or with loans
Get a fellowship or scholarship
Be a Teaching Assistant
Be a Graduate Research Assistant

None of these are necessarily mutually exclusive. TA and GRAships usually come with a whole or partial tuition waiver or payment of tuition. Fellowships and scholarships may come from the university, another government entity (e.g. the US National Science Foundation or Department of Energy), or a private source.
In my estimation, a GRA or fully-funded private fellowship is the best way to pay for graduate school for those whose focus is research because there are no teaching or grading responsibilities to take time away from working on your research. If you intend to go on to a professorship, starting with a TA for the first few semesters or years may help you learn something about teaching, but I wouldn't have wanted the TA responsibilities during the time I was writing up my dissertation.
Myself, I had a GRA with my full tuition paid plus a small privately endowed fellowship administered by my university which supplemented my income. Also, at the time, having a GRA position gave me health insurance. TA and GRA jobs are usually limited to 20 hours a week during the long semesters in the US since you are likely to be in classes at the same time. My advisor frequently upped me to 40 hours per week during the summer and winter breaks to supplement my income further.
Paying your own way, whether with fellowships, loans, or your own personal savings means that you aren't being paid by the advisor. A GRA position may be required to focus on a particular research project that funds the existence of the position. If the money comes from their start-up package or a private source, then you may be given much more freedom in your choice of research work, but either way, the GRA position is a job that allows the advisor to direct your work much more than if you fund yourself.

It should be noted that this is pretty US-specific. Things differ a lot in Europe. Most people in the sciences here are a mixture of GRAs and TAs, but with more substantial salary. Further, it is not uncommon to work at a company and do your PhD as an "external" student.

A fifth option, as hinted to by @xLeitix, is to take advantage of work-sponsored education benefits where one has a full-time industry position while being enrolled in a graduate program on a part-time basis. In the U.S., employers that offer this benefit
(such as most "high-tech" companies that I'm familiar with) cover tuition costs for their employee so long as the area of study is "closely" related to their job duties.

Agreed with both comments. I thought it was clear that my post was for the US, but I have edited to clarify. I lumped employer-sponsored PhDs into the private funding category, but it's definitely worth noting. The other side of this is a model where the employer pays but the employee is on leave. They commit (via contract) to come back to the employer for a guaranteed period after the PhD is done.

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Is printed the same as published?
Many teachers at my university have produced custom course books for their students. These books contain all original content, written by the teacher, and tailored specifically for the course and students. The school does publish a trade journal, but to provide the lowest costs available, and perhaps to keep things simple, the school administrators always simply takes the teachers' course books to the school's print center, photocopies them in the necessary numbers, and staples the pages together with a cheap construction paper cover. I am currently preparing some custom textbooks for my own courses.

If these books are prepared in this same way by the university, is it considered “published”?
How might such a work be presented in an academic CV?

If it's a textbook with no ISBN, I think the accepted term is "privately printed."  Note that if it is a monograph published by the university, you might want to call it a "technical report."

I don't understand the first question.  Is it considered "published" by whom, and for what purpose?  I have no idea whether my lecture notes count as a "publication" in any formal sense, but I do include them in my CV (under "Other publications") and I'm certain they helped my recent promotion.

I'd answer Question 2 by a general rule that seems to summarize the corresponding part of Anonymous Mathematician's answer: Tell the truth. In more (perhaps unnecessary) detail: Don't lead the reader to think it's refereed if it isn't. Don't lead the reader to think it's more widely distributed than it actually is. Don't do anything else that makes it look better or more important than it actually is.

"Published" is a vague word, since for example you can even self-publish a book.
Ideally, a published book will have been carefully selected and edited, widely distributed, archived in many libraries, etc.  How close it comes to this ideal varies, of course.
I don't know whether what you are describing would meet a formal definition of publication, but I'd be careful about how you describe it.
For example, if your book has an ISBN, is labeled with a publisher like "X University Press", and is publicly offered for sale (perhaps only through the university's website and university bookstore), then I would consider it published, even if only on a small scale.  (It may be cheap, but there's no requirement that a published book must have gilded pages.)  However, that sounds unlikely to be true in the case you've described.
Instead, you could describe it in other ways:
If anyone who wants a copy can buy one by getting in touch with your department, then you could describe it as a "book distributed by the Department of ... at University X".
If your book is not offered for sale to anyone except students in the course, then you might describe it as a "book prepared as course materials for ... at University X".
You might also want to specify something like the number of pages, to help distinguish between a lengthy book and shorter lecture notes.

The "vernacular" meanings of "publish" and "print" overlap quite a bit, but academically and legally, there are significant differences. Academically, "publish" implies a level of peer review, endorsement, and selectivity that "print" does not. Otherwise, the term "published author" would be a meaningless term. Legally, "publish" also implies a level of editorial discretion and endorsement that "print" does not. If you write a book making a bunch of assertions about someone, then not only you but also its publisher are liable in a libel suit if the claims can be shown false. But if the "publisher" is simply a print shop that allows the general public to print anything for a fee, and it does not exercise any control over the content of the material, then it will not be liable. An issue in the early days of the internet was in what category sites like Stack Exchange fall: is this answer that you are now reading "printed" by SE, or is it "published" by SE? This has been largely resolved towards "printed" by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.


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Conference paper rejected after positive review and TPC comments
I submitted a paper to an IEEE conference, and this paper was rejected despite of almost all of the reviewers’ comments being positive. In particular, all three of the reviewers recommend to weak accept the paper, and even the TPC chair recommend to weak accept it. However, the paper has been rejected.
Due to this weirdness, I asked for the chair’s motivations for this decision, and he answered

Your paper didn’t make the conference capacity line. Please resubmit to another venue.

What does this mean? What is the conference capacity line? Does that mean that there were not enough slots, or something else?
I have never encountered this kind of situation before.

Yes, the phrase seems pretty unambiguous to me. The conference has a certain capacity, and your paper did not make it. Having 3 weak accepts is not that great if it is a competitive conference, so it does not look strange to me at all that the final result was a reject.

Yes, I partially agree with you. Partially. However, weak accept (rev.1) + weak accept (rev.2) + weak accept (rev.3) + weak accept (TPC) = reject , it sounds very unfair, almost ridiculous.

I don't see why that would be unfair. All of the accepts were weak.

In my opinion, a week accept is much more near to an accept rather than to a reject (usually the scale is: accept, weak accept, borderline,weak reject, reject). Even more so if all are weak accept. I can understand if there are at least a borderline or a weak reject, but all recommendations tend to accept; I find that so contradictory

This is a competition. It might be clearer if the grades were named A, B, C, instead of "strong accept", "accept", etc. What matters isn't your grade but your ranking compared to other papers.

the person that said this (We reached the capacity line)... was (s)he unwilling to define what they meant more precisely? Is this a round about way of saying "We had room for 10 papers and you were spot #12"? You finished the marathon... did a good job... and simply didn't place?

In 2009, Tyson Gay broke 100m men's world record. But he was not awarded with a gold medal.

The text of the review is more important than the headline rating. Weak accept usually means that the reviewer was not excited about your paper. For a competitive conference, someone needs to be excited about your paper.

3 reviewers recommended "weak accept," as did the chair, but the paper was rejected.

This is a common situation. Other papers probably got better reviews or your paper was perceived negatively during the discussion phase or ...

I asked the chair why and he said "your paper didn't make the conference capacity line. Please resubmit to another venue."

Conferences have upper-bounds on the number of papers they can accept due to time constraints.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.  In essence, papers were prioritized based up the enthusiasm level of the reviewers, a threshold was set, and your paper was on the wrong side of it.  No weirdness.

sums it up rather well...

It sounds like none of the reviewers was willing to champion your paper during the discussion.
Background: The decision on each paper is based on a discussion between the program committee members.  This discussion usually takes the review scores into account.
However, strong conferences often apply a process called identify the champion. The underlying assumption is that an acceptance-worthy paper will have at least one proponent who will champion the paper during the discussion.

It is not clear to me what "capacity line" means. However, please note that each conference can only accept a fixed number of papers.
You can do the math yourself, if a conference lasts for, say, 5 days, each day has 8 hours. It takes 30 minutes to present a long paper, and 20 minutes to present a short paper etc. You can compute the number N of papers that they can accept.
If your paper is good, but there are N better papers, then your paper will not be accepted. On the other hand, if your paper is not that good, but still in top N papers, then it will be likely accepted.


text:
TA for the class versus taking the class?
My Ph.D. advisor and I are trying to decide whether I should take his class this Fall or be the TA for it (I have not had this class before).
My question is, shouldn't one have already mastered the class material inside-out to become a TA?  It appears that my advisor expects me to "learn as I go." Is this usual?
Second question, how is the workload between the two? I'm thinking to be the TA, I will have to be a step ahead of the game and rather than doing the assignments, I will be designing the assignments (which requires more understanding).  Which would you prefer based on what circumstances?

Talk carefully with your advisor and/or previous TAs for your advisor about what's involved in this. You're unlikely to be designing assignments unless it's an entirely new class. You may have to prepare section material/reviews, but that should not be too bad if you have prior TAs' materials and/or the class follows a textbook with exercises (and perhaps pre-made slides).

Not sure how usual it is -- but it happened to me, and I wasn't given a choice.  A more senior grad student met with me once a week and I sort of survived to tell the tale. In that case it was particularly tough because the material was kind of out in left field. Anyway,there are other factors to consider, such as, will you need to know this material thoroughly anyway for your own development; how busy will you be with other responsibilities; will you just be grading or will you be expected to hold office hours; will the professor provide you with an official Solution to use in your grading.

Wow thanks, @aparente001 those are indeed crucial factors to consider.  Is it the norm to piggyback on another senior student's previous material?  I could probably ask around... About the time investment, I know being TA is only 1 unit versus 4 units as a student...  is that something to keep in mind?  Thanks

@oikos99 - Sorry, I don't know what the norm is there either; she didn't give me material, she explained things, and gave me a helpful reality check ("yes, the way this professor teaches this is rather out in left field, it's not just you").  She was an angel.

Note, as a professor you will sometimes be asked to teach a class you haven't taken before: depending on the class, it may or may not be much more work than preparing for a class you have taken before.

Some classes are more about the skills than the material. For example, I was once a TA for astronomy 1, despite never having taken astronomy -- but I knew the math, physics, problem solving, etc., and so the actual "content" was trivial for me to pick up. I do not know what this class may be, but if you are a grad student in CS and this is an undergraduate CS class, it may be similar in that you already know how the "big ideas" and how to program, so it will be trivial to learn the course-specific content.
Being a TA can be more efficient. I assume the alternative is (a) TAing a different course, where you would learn nothing, and (b) taking this as a class, which would require doing the learning and the homework. Combining these into one activity could save nearly 50% of your effort.
Of course, you do have an ethical obligation to your students to be informed. Your graduate-level experience in this field combined with reading ahead will put you head and shoulders above freshman/sophomore students, even if you're not an expert in this particular course material. Conversely, if this is an honors course for senior CS students (for example), then it does seem unlikely that you would be able to offer them much guidance.

thanks for the response.  although I can't be both TA and a student concurrently, I think you have a good point about picking up the material faster.  :)

Glad to be helpful. Though, I'm not sure what "I can't be both TA and a student concurrently" is referring to -- I certainly never suggested that you should TA for a class that you are enrolled in!

I would add that, in my experience, you get a deeper knowledge of the material when you have to explain it to others.


text:
I self plagiarized most of my work
I submitted my final assignment on SafeAssign with 67% plagiarized and I plagiarized the work from me because two parts from my prievious assignment were needed to fulfill the requirements for my final assignment. Should I let my professor know or what should I do now?

Talk to your professor.

Please give more details about this question.

Change your user name here if you have any serious concern about wrongdoing.

This will depend on the rules of your institution, and possibly even your professor. Some will consider it fine, because you've done the required work, but others specify that work can only be used to gain academic credit once.

Seems more or less the same question as https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/104839/plagiarism-or-not-plagiarism#comment275604_104839

Fun fact: I once read a legal paper whether self-plagiarism is right on wrong. The conclusion was: it's hard to say.
In my opinion you should let your instructor know of your concern.
Personally, I think you should be OK, especially if the problematic assignment really depends on the previous ones. If a student approached me with this kind of problem I would rather enjoy that he has seen the connections between the problems. If you were to submit other people's work as your own, that would be problematic. However, it's always academically wise to mark the places that are based on your prior work as well.
As a personal experience: when I was studying at the uni we were once tasked with a problem and I said aloud: "Great, I can submit my solution from other class". Instructor's answer was: "The assignments that can be submitted to pass different classes are the best. I once submitted same solution to three different instructors". YMMV, but I think you'd be on the safe side if you make your instructor aware of the circumstances.


text:
How much of my ongoing unpublished research should I disclose to others?
As part of my PhD, I have already published a paper and am working to expand it further. Recently, a PhD student (who I didn't know) from another university contacted me regarding my paper. He showed interest in the paper and the direction that I'm working on, wanted me to explain it further and, if possible, share the framework that I developed and used for experiment so that he could use it for his own research.
Although I like to help him as it will be nice if we can come up with some collaboration, I'm afraid that it might turn into an competition instead if he decides to pursue the same direction as mine alone. Since I'm still working on it without any concrete result, it is possible for him to solve it first and publish papers. I'm not saying that he might steal my ideas/tools since he can put my name in an acknowledgement.
So, my question is to what extent I should share or disclose my current research which is in progress.

Nothing. Wait until you are done, and then he can read the published paper.

Also see: How much information should I divulge about on-going unpublished research at a conference?

Does your advisor know this student's advisor? Talking to your advisor about this might be a good way to start a collaboration between all of you, and take care of things like ownership.

Everything. Then work together and publish lots of joint papers.

I have the same problem, in business. I have an idea, I taught my ex employee the idea. We are mortal enemies now.

@JeffE: what if he just wants to know about my research without any intention to work with me. I believe that he has no obligation to do that.

Great question! I found myself in similar situations as a student and likewise as a mentor for other students when talking with people working on similar topics.
A favourite quote of mine is from George Bernard Shaw:

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

I believe this is an ideal philosophy for research in a sense that ideally, everyone should gain from the free exchange of ideas.
However, as you gain experience, you realize that it can be just an ideal.

My first experience concerning the cost of openly sharing results was when I was a PhD student. Early on, I had the basics of what seemed like an important result for the community and had some initial results. My supervisor urged me to try and publish but the paper was borderline rejected from the conference with comments like "nice idea but still too early". I thus published it as a poster in the informal proceedings. In the meanwhile, my supervisor and I had been in conversation about how to progress further, get more results and mature the work. He presented the poster, spoke with various people and told me that he had had lots of interesting conversations: lengthy conversations with two senior researchers in particular.
I continued working on the problem. My supervisor and I had some difference of opinion on the direction the work should go in (theoretical vs. applied CS basically). We got bogged down in some theoretical questions where I felt the impact could be on simplifying the problem and working on the applied side. I missed the next deadline for the conference in our area but lo and behold, two papers were published that pretty much had developed the applied side of the idea. I read the two papers and realized that both had, in parallel, at the same venue, developed the ideas I had been working on ... with one or two interesting side observations. Both works were from groups of the two senior researchers my supervisor had talked to. One cited my informal/preliminary results as an inspiration, the other didn't cite it at all.
Four years later, the first paper now has 175 citations in Google Scholar, the second paper has 100, my paper has 41. I published a later paper on the topic that's doing a little better, but for sure, the early birds had taken the worm.
In part I'm happy that the idea was developed and they did add new ideas, and I've worked on various things since, but I honestly still regret not having formally marked the idea further before my supervisor exposed it. I also regret not being more urgent in getting the full work published.

This is not to suggest that you should stay tight-lipped at conferences or turn down all collaborations, but if you're worried about someone entering into competition with you, you might want to listen to that concern. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to not share every idea you have when you attend a conference. There are plenty of anecdotes of tight-lipped researchers: for example, nobody knew what Andrew Wiles was working on for several years while he was working towards a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
If you think the person is someone you can trust and someone who could help in a collaboration, listen to your gut. Test the water and see how knowledgeable they are or how they could contribute. Be careful if you have co-authors, not to talk about their ideas. If you want to collaborate, perhaps publish a technical report or a pre-print to mark your ideas first.
If in doubt, you don't have to tell them about your ideas straight away. Maybe stay quiet for the conference and email them later if you think you want to work together or to tell them about your ideas.

You certainly have no obligation to share your work before you've published it. So you can feel completely free to say "Sorry, this work is still in 'stealth' mode, I'll let you know when I can share more."
It's helpful to collaborate with someone you know and trust, if you know the collaborative direction will not conflict with your independent work. (For example, I sometimes collaborate with members of my same research group, and share with them ongoing findings on related work that I wouldn't share with outsiders.)
But otherwise, you can keep your findings to yourself until you are ready to publish, or until you feel confident that you have enough of a head start that you won't risk getting scooped.

Let me offer another perspective.

... to what extent I should share or disclose my current research which is in progress.

To the extent you would like our society to improve, or the body of human knowledge to grow.
Having other people interested in our ideas means that our ideas are confirmed by others to be promising. Among these people, there could be those who are more capable, more intellectually gifted, more persistent, more enthusiastic than we are.
I would expect that the more people are involved in attacking a particular problem or working on a solution, the higher the chance or the faster it would take to solve that problem.
So if we think of the big picture, I believe we should share as much as possible our ideas. True, other people would probably get greater recognition than we do, but that is all right. Others' gain might be our loss, but in the end, the society benefits. And that is exactly why academic community exists---to serve our society.

True, other people would probably get greater recognition than we do, but that is all right. Others' gain might be our loss, but in the end, the society benefits. I think my advisor (and our project's funding agency) would have a problem with this philosophy on sharing.

As others have noted, the free sharing of ideas is the epitome of what the academic community is all about. However, as was also noted, we soon learn that this is only an ideal; reality often isn't quite like that, for many reasons.
Without getting into the many reasons--mostly involving fear of getting scooped-- for not sharing much (if at all) about your ongoing research, there are several ways to manage this situation.
First, if you truly don't want to share your ideas and/or pursue possible collaboration, figure out how to (preferably nicely!) turn someone down. Try something along these lines:
"Sorry, that's still classified information. Would you like me to let you know when I can tell you more?"
However, in those cases in which you do want to exchange ideas, perhaps with the goal of assessing the potential for future collaboration, you obviously need a slightly different approach. One approach is to share one interesting 'nugget' of what you have found/are working on, and then turn the conversation to their work.
"How do you think that might fit in with what you are doing? Do you see any other ways in which x might apply to y?"
Ask for their input on a small piece of the current puzzle;
"What could you tell me about z, in the light of what I've told you about x?"
Your milage may vary, of course, but this approach can get you many fruitful ideas (Be sure to attribute them to the proper source!), interesting responses, and even valuable collaborations. You can often get a gut feeling for whether or not you are  or should be comfortable with responding frankly or whether you want to be more circumspect. In general, the value of sharing with others outweighs the potential risk, though again, YMMV!

Did he offer you something interesting about his research? Just wait until you have finished and published. Then you can send him a copy.


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Do I need a conference paper to vouch for a tool I built in my undergrad when applying for a PhD?
So basically, as an undergrad it's quite expensive to attend conferences. My paper got accepted to a more specialized IEEE conference. I had previously built simulation tools from scratch for computational EM (a more graduate-oriented topic), however I hadn't quite discovered anything new. I am also quite confused if having a conference paper to vouch for these tools will provide any additional benefit when applying for PhD as opposed to just showing that they indeed do work. If yes, then is it worth spending the money to present my work?

What does your research advisor say? (You did ask your research advisor, right?)

@MadJack not quite, I was sort of like afraid that the advisor might interpret it in the wrong sense and view me as someone who tries to lowball. I'm merely confused as to whether or not a paper would add anything to a tool. The advisor was impressed by the tool considering that I had about a week to do it.

If you're asking about a recommendation of a specific conference, that's off-topic; asking if you need a conference paper to apply to grad school is on-topic, and perhaps you should edit the question to reflect that.

@aeismail edited it

Having published a paper does have a positive impact on PhD applications. (But you don't "need" one in the strict sense - it is quite possible to get into grad school without having published.) But the reason is not because it "vouches for" your tool working. In most cases, the reviewers never get to try to execute your code, so it can hardly speak to that.
It does, however, indicate your ability to produce something novel, of interest, and to describe it in a manner that receives the approval of other scientists in the area - in other words, your ability to do research. Which is exactly what the PhD admissions committee will be looking for.
Whether you think that is worth the conference costs is a matter of personal judgement - but you should first look for other avenues of funding, such as your advisor or a travel grant from your university or the conference or a third party promoting undergraduate research etc.


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Very odd interview/hiring timeline for physical science field
Due to the circumstances surrounding my graduation and other factors, I didn't apply in the Fall of 2013 for any jobs. I did happen to see an opening that was still posted in February and applied on a whim. In a short period of time I was asked to do a phone interview followed by campus interview followed by request for more info from my references. At this point it was summer and quite a bit of time went by before I was asked for some start up costs (nothing substantial for my field) at which point the dean said it shouldn't be a problem.
Fast forward 2 months and all I've heard is "you'll hear from us soon" and that the process is moving slowly. Every time I think they must have filled the position they tell me just enough to make me think I am still in the running. At this point we are way off of the normal hiring schedule so I do not know what to think.
Does anyone have any thoughts--is it likely that they have offered the position to someone else and are in negotiations? Why bother getting all of my startup details? Has anyone else had any experiences with a super long, off-schedule hiring timetable?

Which country? What kind of position?

What do you mean that you were "asked for some start up costs"? Do you mean that you applied for a job with them, and they've asked for some money from you?

@EnergyNumbers: I believe that they mean how much money the candidate would need to start up the research group. ("Startup funds" might have been a more accurate term.)

No, he means that they asked how big his startup package should be (seed money for summer salary, students, and equipment).

If you are unsure as to the current status of the job, it is always fine to contact the search committee chair and ask.

All I can say is that different universities can take different amounts of time to process things. The process can take even longer when the process drags out over the summer, as many of the key people who need to approve such a hire (and usually there are several) are often out on vacation, which can drag the process out even further.
I know, for instance, that there was nearly a five-month gap between the time I had my interview and was told I'd be getting an offer and actually receiving it. So delays are possible.
However, it may also be possible that you were not the top-ranked candidate after the search, and they are currently waiting to hear back from that candidate before deciding whether or not to make you an offer.

Also possible they're holding out to see if they can find someone better (perhaps waiting for the normal hiring cycle for next year, though that would be extreme).

This is definitely an unusual schedule and I'm not entirely sure what to think.
My first advice is that if you haven't heard "yes" or "no," then they haven't closed the search. You may be right that they made an offer to someone else, but once an offer is accepted, everyone else is notified "no."
My best guess is that there may be other factors at work in the university. For example, sometimes our Dean will tell us that we can have a search, but he would prefer if the hire arrived a year later. In my department (chemistry), we typically have early searches, but with the University's financial year beginning in July, the Dean will let us post advertisements before there's official approval from the Provost's office. So we include language about the opening "pending budgetary approval."
We have been caught sometimes where the Dean approves, but the Provost wants to postpone for financial reasons. (I don't envy having to balance multi-million budgets.)
As another example, sometimes searches may span more than one year (e.g., an open-rank search for both junior and senior faculty). It may take that long to negotiate with a senior hire. Since the posting was in February, that might be the case here.. the department wants to make a senior hire, needs to post (and interview) publicly, but is stuck negotiating.
I agree with the comment above that it's always fine to contact the chair of the search committee and ask for an update. Particularly with the long delay, this is a good idea.


text:
The phd advisor copied my thesis to another's
I have a fairly unique situation going on that I'm not quite sure how to handle. A colleague of mine completed her PhD two years ago on the topic of arts and the local community. Since she was computer illiterate, she hand-wrote her entire thesis. Her advisor delayed in reviewing her work, asking for money from the student before beginning to review but she refused to pay (according to her). After a while, the advisor told my colleague that he would take care of having the thesis typed up himself, and did so. She paid the typing and printing cost. (Also, for context, it's fairly common not to know how to operate a computer in my region.)
At that point, this advisor asked for my PhD thesis, which I had recently completed. I handed him a soft copy.
Recently, my colleague and I were reviewing our theses, we noticed blatant plagiarism between the two versions. My colleague then remembered that her advisor has mentioned that he "edited" her thesis to "make it more informative". She immediately informed the university about the plagiarism and has put in a request to rescind the degree, as the no longer feels she deserves it. Unfortunately, the press found out about this story, and it's now in the public eye.
My question is, what can I do to protect my reputation at this point? I've since done some research and believe I have found other examples of this advisor both demanding money from students before graduating them and plagiarizing work on PhD papers. I've presented this to the Vice Chancellor, and he seems to believe the evidence, as we're not the first ones to complain about this type of behavior from this advisor. Still, with all that said, is there anything I can do to clear my name and expose the advisor?

I'm just staring at the screen saying "What?  What?! WHAT?"  I can't decide which is more ridiculous: A PhD student who can't type, a PhD student who is willing to let anyone else change the content of her thesis, a PhD student handing over a handwritten thesis to anyone without making photocopies first, an advisor who's willing to type (let alone "finish") his students' theses, an advisor that asks for money to review his students' theses.  This is a circus.  Get out.

I live in Taiwan. Yes, I do understand what South Asian mind is (there are plenty of South Asians in Taiwan around me). Let me be honest with you. I do think Tara should take the responsibility. The reason I am saying this is beacuse: She should realize that part of her PhD thesis was not her writing when she got it back from her advisor. And she should have said that when she had the oral defense. So, she has least 80% fault because it is her thesis, not anybody else's.

She already submitted a written statement about it. explaining that those were not her writings and she is responsible for not noticing before and therefore she requested to withdraw her degree as she feels she does not deserve it.

Too late now. She should have said it before the oral defense. That is the point.

I agree. I will ask what she said in the oral viva.

Given that English is not your first language, I've completely rewritten this question to both make it more concise and to highlight the more salient points. This is a very large rewrite; please either edit or call out in the comments any inaccuracies introduced by my rewrite. Just trying to help, I do apologize in advance for any mistakes I introduced.

@eykanal Thank you so much for the editing. I think it totally sums up what I wanted to say. I wrote too many lines making it complicated.

I've cleaned up a lot of the comments and integrated them into the question itself. Please let me know via a comment here if I deleted something you'd like restored (make sure to include @eykanal in the comment).

@qsp my reading is that she refused to pay her advisor to review the thesis; it says she paid the typing and printing costs.

@LindaJeanne my comment is for the original question.

@qsp ah, of course. I should have checked the history before commenting. =^)

Your colleague handed her hand-written thesis to her PhD advisor.  She couldn't graduate without bribing him.  He should have had it typed out as-is, but instead he took the liberty to edit it, and added plagiarism from your thesis, then published it.
He is behaving wrongly on many levels:

He should not ask a bribe.
He should not edit her thesis text.
He should not have sent in her edited thesis as her authorship.
He should not plagiarise your thesis.

The people involved:

The advisor is engaging in severe misconduct and should be fired and criminally prosecuted.
Your colleague has been uncareful to not have complete documentation.  She must retract her PhD thesis, because she did not approve the final text and should not bear responsibility for its contents.  She is a victim of the advisor but she is at a large risk of being accused of plagiarism and bribery herself, which makes her situation tricky.
Your PhD thesis still stands.  For you, it should be easy to provide evidence of plagiarism and evidence that you were the original author, for your PhD thesis was already published a year earlier.  The damage to your reputation is much less than to the other people involved, as you are exclusively a victim.

What to do:

Make sure you keep written copies of everything you do.
She has apparently already spoken to the Vice Chancellor, who believes her.  That is good.  Go there together, along with anyone else who has been wrongly treated by the advisor, and ask what formal steps you can take to make him face consequences.
If the vice chancellor is unwilling to proceed, you might threaten with publicity, but I would not do so before.
She needs to retract her PhD thesis because the text is not her responsibility and she did not approve the final version.

P.S. The advice above may be naive.  I am from a society where corruption is not considered normal (when it does happen, it is considered a scandal) and where a situation such as you describe would be unheard of in a university.  I hope the advice is still useful and perhaps the follow-up to these incidents can help improve academic culture overall.
P.P.S. If you know anyone else who hand-writes their thesis, strongly recommend them to contact a computer-literate friend to scan each page soon after it is written and keep this backed up in a safe place.

I think your reputation is not ruined at all. You completed your PhD thesis before your colleague sent her thesis draft to the advisor for review. As long as you can show this time-line to the Vice Chancellor, the investigation committee (if there is any) and the public, you are clean.
In my opinion, your colleague will have hard time to prove her innocence. She needs to prove that her advisor edited her thesis to add materials from your thesis without her consent.
It can be reasonably concluded from your question that the advisor is in this plagiarism scheme based on the fact that you gave him the soft copy of your thesis. I cannot say he did it on his own because lack of evidence. How do we know your colleagues did not pressure him? (Why did he type her thesis in the first place? Whose idea was it?)   But, he is the advisor who does have responsibility to ensure his student's thesis meets the academic standards. In that regard, he failed to be an advisor.
Again, based on your question, I do not have enough evidence to say that the advisor is corrupted. To say that he is corrupted, you'll need more concrete evidence. Just a few people say he took bribes is not enough. So far, your colleague said she did not pay him the bribe. Others say the advisor demanded money, would they come forward and testify against him? You'll need to take the case to the authority and let them figure it out as this is a serious accusation and it’s crime in many countries (It would be a crime if the advisor works in a public university in my location and takes bribes.)
P.S. I believe that there are many people in the world who are computer illiterate. I myself don't use smart phone. But, I don't think this question has much to do with computer illiterate. Your colleague really should photocopy her thesis draft before she handed it to her advisor.

Regarding photocopies: Honestly I'd never have thought to photocopy my thesis draft before handing it to the advisor because I don't trust him. Can't imagine what I'd do in her situation.
OTOH, if anybody else typed up my thesis, I'd be responsible to fix any mistake, and I'd have to actually check because typos are likely.

@Blaisorblade I suggested photocopying because the OP's colleague hand-wrote the draft. In these days, almost everybody uses computer to write the thesis. Everybody would have the draft on her computer, no need to photocopy. The suggestion was for this case and others in similar situation.


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Do I need to change my CV when a former school changes affiliations?
Some years ago, I studied in a small training center that had a "cooperative arrangement" with a larger university. I earned a graduate certificate bearing the name of the university along with graduate credits and a transcript from the university, but attended courses in the training center. I put these details on my CV:
2005        Graduate Certificate in X        <location>, University of X

Recently, the training center and university ended their cooperative arrangement and the training center has a new partnership with another university. Do I need to adjust my CV to reflect the change?

Why would you change? The current change in the training center's affiliation does not change the education you got in the past.

Actually, if you got the exact same training as in the university (same examinations, same courses,...), maybe    it would not be unethical to suppress the name of the training center on your CV. The exact location of your classroom does not matter! Granted (again) you got the exact same education as at the university... You have a transcript from the university, which means THEY certify that the quality of your education was at the same level than the one they offer on their main campus.

I think the best approach is to keep the original CV entry, as this represents the actual qualification that you received. However, you might choose to add a note explaining the history, if you think this is likely to be helpful to prospective readers.
I agree that in the case described by @brechmos, where a university has changed its name, providing this information is likely to be useful. It's less clear to me that this is true in the OP's case: it seems (essentially) that the qualification he has used to be accredited by University X, and is now accredited by University Y. It's not clear to me why this would be useful information to someone reading the CV. I guess it might be relevant if the training centre has a high enough profile that people now naturally associate it with University Y, and would think that something listed with University X must be a different centre. Otherwise, I suspect noting the change is more likely to confuse people than help them...

This is correct: your CV should reflect the actual degrees received, from the institutions that awarded them. The clarification would be needed if the institute change is not recent, and would thus have fallen out of memory.

To add to this: I'd even think it possibly detrimental to your application if the institution on the copies of the degree certificates you hand in seem to differ from those on the CV.

Funny, this just happened to me!
On my CV/resume I now have the title of the section as":
Masters of Science, University of XXXXX (now called XXXX University)
My degree is from "University of XXXX" and so I feel that should go first.  BUT, it would be a good idea to acknowledge the name change, as people will get confused, and so I added it as a parenthetical comment.

This applies to a name change, but would be misleading in the case of a change of affiliation (as in the OP's case)

True.  I would still leave the original affiliation as that was the case while the OP was there.  A note below on the CV might be helpful to say the affiliation ended - that way it is clear (and if someone is Google'ing around they aren't going to get confused).

I would be so temped to use "née" even though it does not quite fit...

To use the example provided by brechmos.

Master of Science, XXXX University (formerly University of XXXXX)

Have used this alternative in my cv.

2005   Graduate Certificate in X   <location>, at that time affiliated with University of Y

This answer does not look right. My understanding is that the training center was affiliated with University of X at that time. Also, the OP is asking  if he needs to adjust his CV, you did not address his question.

@scaaahu The question uses X for both the subject studied and the affiliated university; I've used X for the subject and Y for the university. No material difference.

Can you add some explanation as to what reasoning is behind the answer.

@StrongBad What part needs explaining?

Umm, the whole thing. It is not that big of an answer. You leave out the research center name and do not list the new university name. Why is that? As it stands, the answer feels like a comment.

@StrongBad I'd assumed that "location" (copy-pasted from the question) included the name of the centre. It seems unlikely that the asker's current CV includes only the name of the city, and not the institution, doesn't it? And how is the new university's name relevant? If your PhD advisor had moved to a different university after you graduated, would you put "PhD at X university, advisor Prof Y (now at Z university)"?


text:
What is the typical payment arrangement for course design?
Occasionally, my university gives me outside work to design courses for other teachers or graduate students. This includes course books and other complete materials so that teachers using them have little to prepare.
How do schools typically arrange the payments for course designs?

Are course designs typically only made in a one-time payment, with intellectual property transferred to the university?
Is it at all typical for course designers to ask to retain intellectual property rights and to receive continued fees for each semester that a course is used?

As you changed the question to be more specific, I'll add a separate answer:

How do schools typically arrange the payments for course designs?

At the universities I have been associated with, a course is designed by the professor that teaches it, or as a collaboration between multiple faculty that are teaching separate sections.  Many times you will find that intro courses that are taught by multiple faculty are still independently created -- a Calculus I course can be drastically different when taught by two different professors even if they are teaching it during the same semester.  I would not recommend this, but it is frequently done this way.  Savvy students will try to take the section with the professor who has the best reviews.  Depending on the school, this is one forcing function for better teaching, although not a particularly good one.
To answer the question (Peter Shor's comment notwithstanding), course design is generally part of the duties associated with being a professor, and no extra payment or duty relief is garnered.  I have never seen a case where payment is given for course design at the collegiate level.  That is not to say that it isn't done, but I haven't seen it.  I have, however, seen many cases where one professor will give all class notes, homework assignments, and tests to another professor in order to build his or her course from those materials, but this is done out of good will and not for payment.

Are course designs typically only made in a one-time payment, with intellectual property transferred to the university?

I have never heard of a royalty agreement for course design, and I would be very surprised if you could get such a deal.  Universities do work out deals with textbook publishers for reduced rates on course materials if the book will be required for a class, but that is different from asking a particular professor/instructor to design a course.

Is it at all typical for course designers to ask to retain intellectual property rights and to receive continued fees for each semester that a course is used?

No.  The bottom line is that courses are (read: should be) mutable entities that change with the times, and with the person teaching them.  This is not to say that there shouldn't be a standard for a course, but I find it hard to believe that a college or university department would hand an instructor a set of materials and dictate that the course must be taught exactly in accordance with the set of lesson plans, with the same materials.  I am all for providing helpful materials for instructors (as well as standards), but dictating them removes the creativity from the act of teaching, and limits the ability to prepare new material for the class.
To get off my soapbox: if you can design a course that your department will buy lock, stock, and barrel, and then you can convince them to pay you each time the course is used, go for it.  You'll have to convince them that the course will indeed be viable next year and the year after, etc., but they may be willing to buy your argument.  My suggestion is to work out the best deal you can for a one time payment, and move on.

Did you agree to design the courses before talking about payment?  I don't know if you have any recourse at this point as there was never a contract in place.  I would guess that had you inquired ahead of time, your superiors would probably have asked someone else to do it for free, as that is probably what they were expecting.
If there is a system in place for paying you for the course design, I would assume it would be a one-time payment with no residual payments, and you should work that out before beginning design.  If you can work something out where you do get royalties down the road, that also needs to be in a contract, and I would be very surprised if you were able to pull it off (but good luck!).

+1 for "...asked someone else to do it for free, as that is probably what they were expecting".

Excellent answer. They will likely want it for free (but you might be able to get a one time payment for it). I can't imagine you could get royalties each time it is used. At least I've never heard of a school agreeing to something like that.

You should be paid for course design; it's a lot of work. Tenured professors at universities, whose job descriptions include a lot of other duties besides teaching, often get teaching relief when they are doing course design.

I have edited my question so less emphasis is placed on my personal situation, as I simply want to know how universities typically arrange payment for course designs.

I think they typically don't arrange payment for course designs.  (Most of my colleagues have designed courses, but I don't know anyone who was paid for their course design.  It's just part of he normal faculty workload.)

@JeffE: yes, it's not typical to get payment if you're designing the courses you'll be teaching or have taught in the past (it's part of the job). But this sounds like the OP is designing courses that he will not be teaching. That's not usual.

I think the main dividing line in cases as you describe would be between if you had your own company producing courses and "licensing" them to the university and being contracted as a consultant for doing what you are doing. In the latter case you are being paid to produce something for the university and in doing so waive rights to the product. I do not want to get into the copyright regulations because you will need to find out what the university and your contract says (and that may not be very clear). If you licensed a course, things would be different since then your license would state under what conditions the product can be used and you could ask for a fee every time the course is given.
The main unclear part of all of this is where the intellectual rights (immaterial property) lie. I think you could produce a course under your current contract but retain copyright on materials in the course. Again you probably need the help of a lawyer to find out what is possible. Again you need t look at how the contract or university regulations stipulate such rights. If they do not then national or international laws apply.


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How to protect against the theft of a paper?
A professor requested that I exchange my paper with another student, to get their suggestions. Every student in the course must exchange their papers in this way, before the teacher will look at it. I have never encountered another professor with such a policy and am concerned of the possibility that a student might claim my paper to be their own. What steps can I take to guard against such a possibility?

What kind of paper? Is this some kind of undergraduate/graduate assignment or a research paper?

It is a graduate assignment. It does not contain research, or anything I will publish in journals, but it is nonetheless an important part of my degree program.

Email the work to someone (or yourself) well before you hand it over.
Also, try to relax. It is not likely someone will try to pass your work off as theirs because they would be aware that you were going to hand the same piece of writing in and that would lead to trouble for both of you.
I think the reason he is getting you to do it is to get you used to how things work in a research environment. So it is not such a bad thing, maybe.

This seems like a reasonable request by the instructor. Without understanding why you are feeling vulnerable, it is not possible to provide an answer. It is worth talking to someone (possibly the instructor or maybe your advisor or a therapist) about why you are feeling vulnerable.
As for protecting yourself, emailing the document to/from your university email account is probably sufficient as documentation. The next level up would be to email the student the document with the instructor cc'd. This way you are proving you shared your paper (and gaining documentation). Anything more and you will likely be revealing your insecurities, which might lead to more insecurities.

Sign and date a copy of your work, seal it in an envelope (using tamper-evident seals) and have it received by your teacher (that is, give it to your teacher then have your teacher sign a note that he/she received the envelope).  This will serve as evidence in case another student claims your work is his/hers.

Unless you have suspicion that the student you are switching with intends to cheat, I would simply follow the “standard” procedure. If there is reason to suspect treachery, then contact the teacher about it, ask for switching partner, or use a simpler device to time-stamp your work (sending an email with the attached file would work). Part of the reason why the professor asks that might be to judge how students cooperate to work in pairs… in which case an overcautious reaction (unless justified) might not score well!

@F'x, thanks.  I agree that e-mailing the teacher an electronic copy of your work would be a much easier thing to do.

After the first half of your first sentence, I half expected you to tell the OP to mail it to the académie française.

You could ask the other student to be part of the study. If he/she does some substantial thinking about methods, content, writing etc., you can offer him/her to be co-author.


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Is publishing a graduation requirement in many master's programs?
I know a student in a linguistics master's program (in East Asia). He told me that in his country, most master's programs require students to publish a certain number of papers in academic journals in order to graduate. I want to study a linguistics-related degree in the US. Is such a requirement common there as well?

In the US, does "thesis-option" generally imply that one "must publish a thesis to graduate" or does it just mean "must write a thesis"?
Are such publishing requirements common enough in graduate programs in the US that it should be a question I ask schools when I apply?

Not sure what you're trying to assess here, as answers can really only be either a "yes" or a "no", and will only reflect the experience/knowledge of the answerer. I'm tempted to close this question as "not a real question", but I want to see if the community agrees with my take.

I think it's a reasonable question.  Unlike many questions here, this one has a correct, factual answer, which can be defended with data.  An ideal answer should have the form "Out of the top twenty linguistics programs in the US, only five have such a requirement: (list with links)."

Some clarification should also be provided on what is meant by"publishing the thesis." if the original document is meant, the answer is almost always "no."

I've never heard of a publication requirement for a masters degree in the USA or UK.  There is not even a novelty requirement for a masters dissertation, that's what makes it different from a PhD.  Obviously publishing is a good idea if you want to continue on to a PhD, it makes your CV look much stronger and shows your promise as a researcher.  But frankly, in the UK at least there is no time to publish before you finish your dissertation (Masters degrees are very compressed one year degrees) and most publications follow the formal completion of the degree.

It probably depends on the school. I don't remember seeing this as a requirement for any of the US schools I looked at.
At my school in the US, our Master's thesis must be published by the university and presented at a graduate forum held twice a year. We are also encouraged to present at conferences or submit to technical journals, but that is optional.

In my experience it varies by discipline and institution.  I know of some MS programs where a student might graduate without publishing, but this would be viewed as a very poor performance.  I know of others where publishing or even presenting at a conference would set you apart as a very successful student.  If you want to go on for a PhD, then I would encourage you to make publishing at the MS level a goal.  It will help in moving on to a HD program.

Which kind of program requires publishing? In all the programs I have seen there is just no time for a publication. You can produce an article, but it will not go through peer review before you have to graduate.

In the US, many MS programs take two years (or more) to complete.  In disciplines with small publishable units, publishing a paper (typically with the advisor and other coauthors) based on work done during the first year isn't too hard.  In my experience it's more typical for the paper to appear after the student completes the degree- I'd still consider that to be a case of the MS student completing a paper during the MS.  I also know of programs where most MS theses never result in a publication.


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Is publishing a selection of conference articles into a single massive journal article "surveying the latest results" just gaming the system?
QUESTIONS:
Is publishing a selection of articles presented at a conference into a single massive journal article "surveying the latest results" in an area just a way to game the system (and has it become more common lately)?
CONTEXT:
I came across (what seems to be) one such case recently (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2023.101945), a journal article of 63 pages (accepted 38 days after reception!) with 78 authors, explicitly combining a quite diverse (education, bio informatics, quantum computing, etc.) set of results presented at a conference. The journal's scope (Hardware and Architecture, Information Systems, Signal Processing, Software according to https://www.resurchify.com/impact/details/26099) does not have much to do with the keywords of the article (Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Data science, Computational approaches, Machine learning, Deep learning, Neuroscience, Robotics, Biomedical applications, Computer-aided diagnosis systems), and the results within have a very wide range, the common denominator being "artificial intelligence" and the fact that they are recent.
It occurred to me that, in a context where the research productivity of researchers and research institutions is measured in terms of citation numbers and impact factors, such massive articles present some "advantages" to the authors compared to traditional, separated journal publications: among other things, any citation to a subpart of the massive journal yields a citation to all the authors of the massive article, and the number of citations to the single massive article is the sum of the numbers of citations to its sub-parts. Unsurprisingly, the journal itself has relatively high bibliometrics (Impact Factor: 23.14, h-index: 136, Rank: 296, SJR: 4.756, h-index: 136 according to https://www.resurchify.com/impact/details/26099).
Without objecting in any way to the fact that the authors are getting recognition for their work (they should!), I am wondering

if the way institutions measure researcher's and institution's "research production" is giving incentives to produce such massive articles; and
whether such practice truly benefits the research community in particular and the scientific research process in general.

Among other worries, I would highlight two drawbacks of a system where conference proceedings are replaced by such massive journal articles (especially if accepted after a reviewing process of less than two months):

it is not just a change of format if this removes the incentive for researchers to present longer, more mature and complete "journal" version of their work than what they presented at the conference; and
citations will lose their accuracy and need to be extended if each citation refers to the massive article.

DISCLAIMER:
This is not an attack on the authors of the article cited, nor on their editors or on the (Artificial Intelligence) community in which such article was produced, and not even against the publishers (Elsevier). I am just wondering if this is common, and if this has become more common over time (potentially because of new incentives).

Question of the sort "How common is it to ...?" are often not useful because you're asking for a specific frequency when nobody has statistics about this. So the best anyone can say is (i) well, it happens, as you found out, and (ii) but not very often because I, for example, have never come across such a paper.
Perhaps a better question is whether this is a useful style to publish results. It may be to the authors, as you already understand. It probably isn't very much for the progress of science. But then the journal seems a bit questionable to me anyway (considering the generic journal Aims & Scope, and the size of the editorial board; the number of volumes they publish; etc.). To me, this then appears as simply another way someone has discovered to game the "publish or perish" system we have.

You are right: I edited the title and introduction to refocus the question. I think (as you do) that it is just a strategy to game the system, but I am curious of other people's opinion (before potentially searching for other examples and trying to draw some statistics about the prevalence of such practice and its evolution over time in distinct communities).

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