text:
Is it valid to modify a student's exam grade if you feel they did not earn it?
I am a graduate student who teaches their own class. I have a supervisor who I report to for everything, including final grades. We have a meeting every semester at the end to review our final grades and for my supervisor to see that I did everything correctly.
In my second semester, my supervisor looked through my grades before they were submitted or published.
At the end, she said: “Let’s look at your borderline students.”
She noticed that a student had a borderline C, say 73.5%, which is barely above the passing threshold of 73% for this course, and had us look at his final exam. The student got 66.5% on the exam, and she said to me: “Are you sure you want to pass him?” At the time I was thinking: “Well, the student did earn the passing score.” However, my supervisor kept suggesting: “Are you sure?” I looked up to my supervisor who was the one who taught me to be a teacher, and like anyone at their job listening to their superior, I felt pressured to say yes, because you do what your supervisor tells you to do, and I was told to take off points from his final exam to lower his final grade to 72.36%. The sole reason for this was not to let the student pass. My supervisor also mentioned specifically not to keep it higher than 72.5%, because students will ask for a bump.
So, in the end, I ended up giving him that 72.36%, a C−, which is a failing grade: They cannot move on the the next-level class.
The discussion happened before the grades were submitted or published, so the student never knew he originally scored 66.5% on the exam. There were no other students with borderline scores.
I felt extremely guilty because I knew who this student was; they didn’t do much of the work, they didn’t always come to class, but they knew the topic and did the bare minimum to pass. I went back to my office right after our meeting and was tempted to change it back to a C. But knowing my supervisor, I knew there was a chance I could’ve gotten in trouble because my supervisor might’ve noticed.
I feel extremely bad for doing this, I felt like I was pressured to do this and couldn’t turn back.
Was the supervisor's decision ethical, academically, and legally sound?

Answers in comments and presumably answered requests for clarification have been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment. Also please check the chat whether you concern has already been voiced.

Responders seem to be assuming that your supervisor knew that student -- that she looked at the name on the final exam and personally didn't want him to pass. The other alternative is it was simply the low score. Maybe clarify that?

In my undergraduate Mathematics degree, we were warned this could happen from the outset (albeit in the course's equivalent of small text) and, if I recall correctly, set out a formal framework for it happening. It is possible this behaviour is mentioned somewhere in the written material, or elsewhere, that is given to students?

Please note the above FAQ about Why do moderators move comments to chat and how should I behave afterwords? In particular, there is no way to move comments to chat more than once, so we have no choice but to delete additional discussions or answers-in-comments (whereas comments posted to the chat are essentially permanent).

What subject was this in? How subjective is the exam mark?

It seems quite certain that the exam in question could not be graded purely objectively (like a multiple choice test), or changing of the points would not have peen possible. - So it is likely the grading of partially correct answers already included a subjective part, where the OP tried to gauge the understanding of the student. So if you would have had the talk with your superior before grading the exams, could you have come to the same result with a clear conscience?

Since you ask, specifically, about legality, I'll say that it is unlikely that it would be a matter of criminal law anywhere, though, of course, I can't know the laws of every jurisdiction. But it could well be a matter of civil law and if this were known could easily generate a lawsuit against everyone involved.
I think that a person would be very hesitant to apply such a "rule" to the child of some powerful person. It depends, I think, on people either not knowing what really occurred or being so powerless as to be completely unable to prevent it.
But, as I've been saying in comments here, it is a profoundly unethical act and would, in my view be grounds for at least a reprimand, and even termination as an act of moral turpitude if repeated. It turns what should be a well determined process in to a form of chaos where we are just at the mercy of the powers.
An instructor needs to set a standard before the course begins and needs to make that public. You can make it as hard as you like and you can interpret it as strictly as you like, but you can't deviate from it to the detriment of an individual. I have no complaint about generous interpretations as most of us, I hope, consider generosity to be laudable and to believe that students can learn and improve.
I won't condemn you personally, however, since you may have had no agency here and may be as much a victim as the student involved. But I will condemn the professor, who should, at a minimum be reported to the dean for this behavior. Especially since the course is a gateway course and changing their grade to make it failing when it was not also denies them the opportunity to go on and, one hopes, improve.
It was especially pernicious, here, that the induced change in the average was set not only to unethically push the student below the passing grade, but further down so that it would be less likely they could appeal.
My advice to you personally, is to find a better mentor as soon as you can. This person is teaching you to do harm.
And, I don't know how you can make it up to the person you damaged. It may be too late, even to request a grade change. But the dean should be informed and if it is only you that knows that the professor is behaving this way, it is probably your responsibility to so inform them. I won't suggest that you do, of course, since it might have too adverse an effect on your own career, but there is an imbalance in justice that hasn't been corrected.

Turpitude, pernicious, agency, lol. I love the writing. I suppose I should expect this from academia stack exchange.

@Joel that is why Buffy has earned the rep shown....

Even if some of your arguments are thrown out (and I wouldn't), it seems to me that this specific situation heavily inflates the importance of one single test taken during a single day of what one would expect to have been a semester filled with homework, short quizzes, major tests, and other grading activities, and if not filled in this manner, then I would have concerns about whether the professor has enough input about the student's understanding to capably be taking another look at the student's final exam.

This may not take into account the cultural setting.  There are definitely cultures where grades are expected to be invented by the instructor based on a number of factors of which the mathematical points - on a published scale or not - are only one factor.  That isn't something I personally like or would choose to participate in if at all possible, but it exists.  This question does ask about the US and I might say this answer fits the US --  perhaps it might make that clear.

Agreed. Capricious punishment, where someone gets punished even though they could reasonably surmise that they wouldn't be, is very wrong indeed.

I discussed this question and the comments and answers with a co-worker. Neither of us are academicians, and in fact both of us are older and each have only associates. What completely took me by surprise is that we are diametrically opposed on our thoughts of the ethics here. He takes no issue in removing a sub-standard representative of a field, freeing up a seat for a (more) deserving student, while I find the act to be completely offensive (changing a grade to purposefully fail).

@CGCampbell, and others. Note that there is one data point here. One grade in one course has ended the potential career of someone. One can certainly advise a person that a field may not be right for them, but this was something else. I've actually had students with a very poor academic history turn into superstars in a difficult course.

The University of Alabama in Huntsville is far from above taking points from students' grades arbitrarily, particularly in the case that the student is handicapped and is being discriminated against for it.  Colleges need to start being held accountable for this kind of thing.

Disagree about the lack of agency - the question clearly states they had multiple opportunities to take a stand and instead caved to "pressure". They are partially culpable for the result.

@Chris, you may be right of course, but I can't tell. I worry about suggesting people in subordinate positions challenge superiors who they depend upon in too many ways. A challenge has to be effective to give you agency. But like I imply above, I just don't know.

@MikeM: Such "cultures" are unethical and do not need to be taken into account as a mitigating effect.

@R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE: Of course some kinds of grading criteria are clearly unethical — e.g. bribery, nepotism, and so on — I don’t think MikeM is defending those.  But the idea that only objective, numerical, essentially mechanical grading is acceptable is quite recent, culturally-specific, and field-specific (concentrated in STEM in particular) — many meaningful aspects of student learning are difficult to assess in such a way.  The benefits of this approach are clear (better transparency + accountability), but it’s pretty narrow-minded to write off all other approaches as unethical.

Any you in my answer is general. I am discussing the general ethics or the ethics of your professor’s actions here, not yours.
You have a formal grading system (exams with points, a grading rubric mapping percentages to grades, some formula to derive the final percentage from the exam and other contributions, etc.) to make grading transparent and thus more objective and fair. The alternative is determining the grade by gut feeling only, which you would probably not be allowed to and which opens the door for numerous unfair biases, be they conscious or not. You can regard this system as an imposed control mechanism, but you can also regard it as a tool to control your own inevitable biases. Like the state’s legal system you want to uphold this system for its own intrinsic value.
The grading system is inevitably far from perfect and there are already plenty of ways to be unfair within the system.
However, going outside the system is a good indicator that you are being unfair.
This does not only work as a sanity check for yourself, but also for any internal or legal procedures:
Breaking this system could be considered to evidence what is called consciousness of guilt; it is similar to destroying evidence.
At the very least it shifts the burden of proof to you that you had good reasons to break the system.
Now, I am not very familiar with the internal and legal requirements for courses in the US, but I would roughly expect them to require that every course has the requirements for passing set out beforehand or similar thus providing a formal and possibly legal foundation for the grading system and with it a point of attack for internal and legal action.
In your case, your professor explicitly and clearly ignored the system because she did not like the result.
She did not even bother to revisit the student’s exam with extra scrutiny – which would still be problematic unless she did it for everybody with borderline grades in every exam and made this transparent.
By lowering the grade even further than necessary for failure, she even took extra steps so the exam would not be revisited (another evidence for consciousness of guilt).
This is clearly unethical by the Golden Rule or Categorical Imperative:
You do not want to be a student in a system where professors can arbitrarily lower your grades because they think you do not deserve them.
If you conclude that your grading system was too lenient because it let a student pass who should not have, the right course of action is to change the difficulty next time.
Having one student pass a single course they shouldn’t have is not the end of the world.

+1 for the last sentence. Usually, people on this site give instead the nonsense argument "if a student passes who don't deserve, they could cause the death of millions".

@user111388: The argument that I often see is that systematically having students get away with incompetence, cheating, etc. is bad and I concur with that. However, this is not systematic.

@user111388 this seems to imply that "gaming the system" is a valid approach for students and should not be reprimanded - and the only course of action is applying increasingly more difficult patches to your grading system to make it airtight against cheaters and probably worse for it. I seriously cannot say if this kind of system leads to overall better education than a system which relies more on individual subjective treatment of students. Both bring their own problems.

@Wrzlprmft calling this behavior intransparent hinges on the definition of grading which is presented to the students. If the formulation is "If your answer is not strictly 100% correct, I will try to gauge the correctness of your answer by gauging your understanding of the material and guessing 'how right' you are" - the behavior seems transparent and ethical. - And I know not many exams, where a partially correct written answer can be graded objectively.

@Falco: Sure, but that’s not the case here.

@Wrzlprmft Not? How was the formulation given to the students then how partial answers will be graded?

@Falco: The question is not about grading partial answers or individual exam tasks; the question is about grading the entire course performance. In the situation in question, the grade was determined by “the student does not deserve to pass” and setting the exam grade to an arbitrary value to achieve this (without caring about the contents of the exam).

TLDR: it’s not technically illegal, but as for whether it is ethical and/or academically appropriate, it’s complicated. (That’s why the answer below is longer than I normally like answers to be — sorry for that.)

Your story reflects a tension that exists between two different notions that one might define for what it means for a student to “deserve” to pass a class:

The student satisfies an objective, formal set of criteria: that is, the student jumps through a predefined set of hoops (exams, homework etc) and produces a set of grades that according to some numerical averaging scheme gives a number that’s higher than some predefined threshold like “73”.
The student performs in a way that actually satisfies the professor that the student understood the material at a minimal level that will enable them to keep progressing in their studies by taking and doing reasonably well in follow-up courses, applying the knowledge they learned , and finishing their degree without the degree being a worthless piece of paper.

Students invariably interpret “deserving” to pass in the first sense of satisfying a formal set of criteria. But anyone who’s been teaching for more than a couple of years has encountered cases where a student just barely satisfied the formal criteria for passing, but left the professor with grave doubts as to whether the student actually learned enough to deserve to pass in the second sense of making the professor feel it is “right” to pass them. In some cases the professor will seriously wonder if the student has learned anything at all.
The point is that this formal system of exams and grading and passing thresholds is imperfect and can be “hacked”, and some students (a small minority, to be sure) in fact get by by making supreme efforts to hack it and obtain passing grades by faking a semblance of knowledge rather than acquiring actual, genuine knowledge. The result is that at the end of the day the professor might look at a student’s grades, look at their exam, and see an inconsistency between what the grades tell them should happen and what the professor believes in their heart should happen.
(Note: this inconsistency can happen in both directions. In your story the grades said to pass and the supervisor thought the student should fail, but in other cases the professor might want to pass someone who has a just barely failing grade.)
Now, this poses a real dilemma for professors, and they develop different strategies for dealing with this problem. Some possible ways include:

Grade on a curve. That is, decide what the passing threshold is only at the end of the semester. This gives you the ability to decide where in the ranked list of students to draw the line between “deserves to pass” and “doesn’t deserve to pass”, so it offers a partial solution to this dilemma.
On the other hand, this method doesn’t let you tweak the pass/fail outcome of an individual student in a way that doesn’t affect any other students.
There are other problems associated with grading on a curve. Both many students and many professors don’t like the concept and feel it is ethically and pedagogically flawed.
Do what your supervisor did. That is, allow yourself to tweak the grade of the student in your question a little bit, “fixing” the inconsistency in a way that causes the formal pass/fail outcome to match with your gut feeling of what is the “right” outcome.
The drawback here is that you are breaking an implicit promise you are making to your students that grading will be done impartially, with each question being graded independently of any other question. This is ethically fraught, and if a student finds out their grade has been tweaked in such a way, they are likely to be extremely upset and aggrieved.
On the other hand, if I’m being completely honest, changing a point or two here or there is essentially a meaningless operation. If a student got 14 points out of 20 on a question, who is to say that that’s a more “scientific” or accurate measurement of their knowledge than giving them 13 or 15 points instead? (I’m imagining a scenario where the student’s mistake is slightly different than the mistake of any other student, so that by making this change you are not creating unequal treatment of different students.) So I cannot unequivocally declare that it is blatantly unethical to go back and review a student’s exam, ask yourself “are you sure that this student really deserves to pass?” and allow the answer to dictate a 1-point change to the grade in a question somewhere, when this is done in a good faith attempt to produce the most just outcome.
Do nothing. That is, accept that whatever formal criteria you defined for passing in your syllabus represent your best approximation, flawed and hackable though it might be, for what it means to “deserve” to pass. If a student satisfies the criteria, you let them pass and ignore your inner gut feeling.
The disadvantage is that in some cases you may indeed let an undeserving student “get away” with passing when they shouldn’t (which  by the way may not be doing them any favors, and may be setting them up for larger failures down the road in their studies and in their career). But the big appeal is that this is an “honest”, objective approach that doesn’t require subterfuge or covert manipulation of grades as your supervisor pressured you into using.

Summary. As you can see, decisions about passing and failing students are ultimately very complicated. Every strategy one chooses for dealing with this situation ends up being problematic in some way and causes some measure of injustice. I don’t think there is a unique set of ethical principles by which one can decide whether your supervisor’s approach is right or wrong. At best, one can say that this approach is somewhat ill-advised and violates the principle that in a modern university grading should be done as impartially as possible. Personally I can’t bring myself to condemn the behavior more severely than that; perhaps others might.
If it’s any consolation regarding your sense of guilt about that incident, consider the very real possibility that passing the student in that scenario might not have been in their own best interest.

Like others, you are suggesting that your "gut feeling" is more important and even more valid than what the students actually do. This is a recipe for discrimination and other pernicious acts.

@Buffy you’re twisting my words. I never said gut feeling is “more important”. I also never said gut feeling is more valid, although since you bring it up, yes, sometimes it’s more valid (and other times it’s less valid). I also never denied that the professor’s behavior is problematic, although I don’t quite get what you mean about “discrimination and other pernicious acts”. Yes, obviously discrimination is unethical, but that’s not what’s being discussed here. My answer is premised on a professor changing the student’s grade because they sincerely believe the student did not deserve to pass,

... not on a bigoted professor arbitrarily failing a student for being a member of some minority group or other irrelevant information. (And if you’re jumping to the conclusion of discrimination, couldn’t the professor discriminate against the student while grading the student’s exam? Why wait until the scenario in the question came up?) Anyway, thanks for your feedback.

I think @Buffy is making the point that when you add subjective judgement into the grading system (including grading non-anonymously or the more specific instance of judgement here), there is the potential for subconscious biases to impact that judgement in ways you may not even be aware of.

@Dawn thanks, that’s a reasonable criticism and I mostly agree. And yet, if you take this logic to an extreme, grading cannot be truly objective unless it is assigned to a computer. Is there not a “potential” for human graders to be subconsciously influenced by a student’s handwriting, grammar, punctuation or any number of other things that in (say) a math exam ought to be irrelevant? At what point do we allow professors to exercise subjective judgment? Isn’t that what we pay them to do in the first place? Otherwise, why aren’t exams graded algorithmically?

@Titus, but not this discipline apparently. There was a standard. It was met. It was overridden after the fact. And even in the arts there are standards and they are understood by students. It isn't all just a chaotic mess. If it were, there would be no incentive to participate. I studied most of those things, some more intensely than others. I was never much in doubt about what was expected and I wasn't stabbed after the course ended and the evidence showed that I'd met the standards.

@Titus good point, and moreover, you can add certain types of advanced math classes to your list of subjectively marked areas. What the right answer is in a calculus volume-calculation exercise may be an objective question, but what should be accepted in an exam setting as a correct proof of, say, a subtle theorem in algebraic topology, is a highly subjective question that depends on many nuances of language, meaning, and contextual information about the student’s background and assumed knowledge.

I think the discussion of "objective" versus "subjective" is a false dichotomy.  Unless you are teaching a course where all work can be graded by brute-force pattern matching, there is always room—indeed, there is always need —for human judgment in grading.  How close is this answer to correct? How far off a completely formal proof does an argument have to be before it doesn't support its conclusion? How do you grade non-standard but nearly correct solutions?  How do you grade quality of writing, or quality of design, or creativity, or novelty, or beauty, or elegance?

(Cont'd) Having and following a narrowly defined grading rubric doesn't remove subjectivity from grading.  At most it moves the subjectivity to the rubric design.

I'm not sure if this is just a difference in culture or in discipline/industry, but I can't help but feel a bit confused why there's such a varied spectrum of reactions?  First and formost, isn't the procedure for grading a fully quantified process?  Regardless of how much subjectivity can be attributed to the subject matter, there are an abundance of methodologies to quantify data sets, and even reduce the tolerance margin for interpretive variability (if you don't believe me, just look up "fuzzy logic").  And with modern data traceability...

In my experience, even grading calculus classes leaves a lot of margin for subjectivity: exactly how many points you should take away for a specific mistake isn't something that can be fixed in advance (it's impressive how "creative" the students are with their mistakes...)

@Titus Even in softer fields where subjectivity comes into play in grading, if you revise one of your previous subjective grades retroactively to make sure a student does not receive a high enough "average subjective grade" to pass, you are not grading in good faith but with malice.

As far as I understood the question, the superior evaluated the students work, presumably without knowing the student personally. So any student producing subpar work over the whole year would presumably have gotten the same treatment, which is subjective and possibly intransparent for the students but still fair and not discriminatory.

This is of course why many systems (but not commonly in the US I understand) insist on blind double marking: that is, all marking is done by two people, neither of whom know the identity of the student they are grading. All of our systems and samples of our marking are inspected by "External Examiners": that is respected academics in the same field, but from a different university. These examiners will also look carefully at the work and marking of students classed as borderline (you need at least 69.5 for a 1st class mark, but less than 68.5 for a 2nd class mark - 68.5-69.5 is officially "borderline") - and various factors might come into play - records of illness or personal problems, etc.
I say all this because it demostrates the lengths some systems go to avoid exactly the situation described, and should tell you something about the implied desirability of academics applying their judgement to something other than the piece of work in front of them.
How to prevent people passing when they don't genuinely understand? Setting assessments where you can't pass without understand is a start. But we generally include a grading criteria along the lines of "Student clearly demonstrates undrstanding", but works as long as you don't know how the student is, but wouldn't work well in an unblinded situation.
Grades can only be appealed on the basis of process - the academic judgement of the grader is absolute, but you'd better follow proceedure to the letter.

This doesn't answer the question at all.

So are you saying that by adding a “student clearly demonstrates understanding” requirement to my syllabus I will have secured for myself a blanket permission fail any student I feel like failing (based on their anonymizes exam and other assignments) without further explanation and regardless of their actual grades? If that’s not what you meant, can you clarify how exactly this requirement is used in practice?

Each question  is marked on a rubric with 6 criteria: 1. Coverage of areas relevant to the question, 2. Information is accurate 3. Sufficiently detailed information provided, 4. Answer structured in a way to bring out relevance and actaully answer the question 5. Demonstrates understanding 6. Provides evidence of reading beyond the lecture material. The grade in each criteria must be explained/evidenced with a written explaination at the end of each answer and examples highlighted in the students work. I teach biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology BTW.

@usr1234567 Its an example of the lengths that we go to to avoid the possibility of what has happened here, thus providing evidence for how we regard such actions.

@DanRomik "adding a “student clearly demonstrates understanding” requirement to my syllabus I will have secured for myself a blanket permission fail any student I feel like failing" - I did not read the answer like that. I read that it would be okay, as long as you did not know whose work you are marking. So you can't fail any student you (don't) like, but rather any work that doesn't show understanding. I agree that it should be okay iff the marking is done in a blind way, so it's impossible for you to be biased by student's character. That is unless the course is supposed to test character.

Echoing some others' remarks: no, this is unethical, immoral, and unfair. The course materials should have described the rules of the game, and if someone scored certain points according to those rules, then, ... well, they did.
Yes, it is true that "grading systems" do not reliably reflect "mastery of material" (whatever that supposedly means, anyway!), but that is insufficient reason to change the rules of the game after people have already signed on.
Yes, it is true, especially, that single numbers do not readily reflect what we'd like them to. Hm. Ok, so if we do want them to reflect something-or-other, such as "adequacy to follow the subsequent course", etc., then serious rethinking of the grading scheme is necessary. (This is apart from "gaming the system", but, yes, "gaming the system" is another consideration!)
But, in any case, from my viewpoint (in math, in the U.S.), changing the rules at the very end is crazily unfair, ... Don't do it. (Especially not if there is potentially some personal aspect...)

My apologies for the length and the style of what follows, but the questioner seems to be concerned about something I myself have struggled with for many years of teaching, namely, how to give just and fair grades.
It is certainly valid, because the grade will stand.
A grade is also a certificate, to the student, to the administration (who will give a degree or admit to examinations based on fulfilling requirements) and to the consumers, such as grant agencies who want to restrict funding to "good" students, or to future employers.
Even in the hard sciences, grading has a subjective component, especially when it comes to partial credit. Not too many people who grade are aware how an unacknowledged bias can influence their decisions and personally, I am worried about this.
Even with the best of efforts, grades are not an accurate representation of a students capabilities.  Sometimes, we faculty even use "effort" in our grading decisions, whether we explicitly admit this on the syllabus or not. Anyone who is graded will be influenced on how the grades are calculated and so sometimes grades egregiously fail to reflect the student's capability in -- let's say -- ordinary differential equations and rather their capability to "game the system".
All this being said: In your situation, you were involved in the manipulation of a grade that took out-of-scheme information into account, namely your impression of the student, based on the final exam. If pressed, you and your supervisor can presumably justify your grading decision without admitting the manipulation.
You can argue that the grade is a means to a goal, namely to obtain information on how the student did and whether the student needs to repeat the class. Your impression is that the means failed to reach the goal. Therefore, you substituted for the failure by correcting the outcome. In fact, you could have done the student a favor. (I still remember vividly at the beginning of my teaching career of hearing another faculty describe the situation of a student who had passed Calc 1 and Calc 2 by learning all procedures by heart, but then was unable to perform in Calc 3, because their memory did not suffice. The advise was for the student to start over again. This could have been avoided by failing the student who was gaming the grading system to his ultimate disadvantage.) Now, if I teach the class that comes afterwards, I would be unhappy of having students who only formally require the prerequisites, because much more likely than not, I have to fail them, they will repeat the class, and they are still set up for failure. Or I might not care at all, because the prerequisite is really one of "academic maturity".
You can also argue, as you seem inclined to do, that manipulating grades breaks the implicit or explicit contract in the syllabus that promises students to get a passing grade for doing certain things. Allowing yourself to break the contract allows all sorts of mischief such as punishment for obnoxiousness up to discrimination based on irrelevant criteria such as gender or race.
In a situation like the one you were in (about to pass a student who in your best opinion should not be passed), you were in a dilemma. In an oral exam such as a Ph.D. qualifier, committees tend to use their knowledge of the student's capabilities in coming to a decision, whether they admit it or not, though some institutions go to great length to "objectify" the decision. In a large class, when personal knowledge of the student is sketchy, I personally would be very hesitant of using it, just because I am aware that I might have unrecognized biases. From my personal experience (assigning grades for almost forty years) I do not think your question can be answered definitely. However, it seems to me that the intentions of your supervisor were beneficial, asking you to consider the consequences of your action. Besides, if you are new to the game, failing someone should be very hard for you and it should never get much better. Thus, you might have a bias towards lenient grading that your supervisor recognized. Of course, this starts to be all speculation.
Manipulating a grade away from the borderline is common practice to prevent being exposed to the pressure from the student who sees the passing grade in reach. I consider it to be a bit cowardly, but certainly understandable.
A final piece of advice from someone who agonized over grades. You can only do your best, and after you have done your best, you just stop agonizing.

One way to describe the course of events presented by the OP: "They preliminary graded the exams, their superior asked them to reevaluate the exams of cases where a small difference in grading would decide pass/fail. The exam was re-evaluated and a previously wrong grade was rectified to the correct grade." - the old grade is not necessarily more "right" just because it was your first opinion.

Looking at the final exams of barely passing students is a thing. It's done for just the reason your supervisor said: we don't want students moving onto the next required course if they're completely unprepared. My first supervisor did the same thing. Obviously this is when the course is part of a sequence and the first day of the next will absolutely require they know certain fundamentals. And also when the final is comprehensive -- looking it over gives a decent sense.
The easiest, fairest-seeming way is playing with the curve. You get a clump of 5 students near a 71% final percent and pull their final exams. 4 are merely bad, and 1 is from a student with suspiciously good homework and 35% on the final. Oh, well. 71% passes. Then you go down to the students with 69%. Their finals are all shockingly bad. Maybe the scores weren't so low, but the grading system gave far too much partial credit. You're not sure they understood many of the questions. So 69% is a fail. In fact, as your supervisor notes, you set 71.1% as the lowest passing score. That way the 69%'s don't feel as bad.
In theory, you're doing the same thing, but backwards. I assume this is the one student near the cutoff. For whatever reason, you can't raise the curve, so you cheat a little to lower the score. It's icky, but the end result is the same. It sounds like standard practice in your dept (but I've never heard of it being done). If another student with a lower final % didn't receive the same treatment -- that's more dubious.
In my case, I've never done heroic, slightly questionable efforts like that. I'll let them pass by the numbers, but often write to let them know they failed the final and why that matters. But since they got a terrible grade, they were often planning to retake or switch majors.
My other bit of advice, which is too late: don't look at who the student is until you've definitely decided either way.

If they have a system in place already, which they do since there are specific percent grades that signify passing, then deviating from that system cannot be ethically justified. If one wanted to have that kind of authority, then they should say explicitly in their syllabus something like "The final decision of passing or failing a student is solely at the discretion of the professor and may not be strictly reflected by the grade earned in the class through homework and exams". I don't think such a standard would fly, but at least it would be honest

I would like to offer a dissenting perspective. Sure, it's bad optics and all that, but in the end of the day, making a correct, just decision cannot be all that unethical. And borderline cases are, by their nature, those where both letting the student pass and failing them are correct and just. Some elaboration:

grading is an extremely noisy procedure, especially if it involves human judgement. When grading final exam (in math), I quite often can justify giving anywhere between 25% and 75% of credit for a partial solution, at my discretion. BTW, I do grade inconsistently unless I make special effort to check myself.
therefore, when people are saying "the rules are set in advance", that's wishful thinking. The rules might say "73% is are enough", but the only thing this means for sure is that if a student submits perfect solutions to >73% problems, they've passed. For weaker students bordering on a fail, this is a moot point - they earn a lot on partial credit.
consequently, the scenario of a student who "studied just enough to pass the course, but to their astonishment failed and now feels robbed" has nothing to do with reality. If a student has studied just about enough, in practice they are accepting a gamble, in which luck with the questions, with who are grading, and whether they do it before or after lunch, can have major consequences. To be on the safe side, study a bit more!
there's no meaningful difference between 72% and 73% that's not erased by the noise. It's amazing that people here see no wrong in allowing 1% of the grade have major consequences, and are so eager to judge the ethics of a poor TA without questioning why the system that forced him or her into this situation is allowed to exist in the first place.
in view of the above, reviewing student's work in the borderline case, to try and decrease the noise effect, makes much sense. The measures like "the overall impression of the exam paper" and "the overall impression of the teacher on the student" surely are bad optics and have shortcomings, but practically they may be valuable inputs, much, much more significant than the difference of 1% in the score.
if in the end it's still borderline, then so it be, both failing and passing are just. It's not your fault you are forced to make decisions of major consequences in the situation where you can't decide meaningfully.

I disagree with the conclusion that the decision made was the ethical choice (largely because the intent was to make the student fail), but you raise some very important points here that should absolutely be considered when making the decision. +1

It is true that marking is noisy but that’s why most instructors will have a “bump zone” that will allow students just under threshold to pass if they are in this zone.  But you’re suggesting that, even if a student passes prima fasciae on merit, one should use the noise argument to fail this student.  This simply invalidates the required passing grade.

@ZeroTheHero, having a "bump zone" is no different from just lowering the threshold to the lower boundary of that zone, so that does literally nothing meaningful. Also, you seem to miss the point: there's no "required pass grade" to invalidate. A pass grade of 73% means nothing unless we specify in advance how difficult will the test be and how strict the grading, which is never done to the degree of detail sufficient to distinguish 72% from 73%.

there is a important distinction: students are who passed “on their own” are not made to fail, i.e. students always get the benefit of the doubt.   But there is (presumably) a published passing grade: the minimum grade is not decided “on the spot”.

The last two bullets are about discretion. There can be a small range ("bump zone"?) of scores where we look closer -- maybe one student with a 69% did poorly at first, but got stronger (pass them); another did the opposite (fail that one). The rest is optics: if we said 70% was passing, it's a bump-up zone. If we said 69% was passing, it's a bump-down. If 68% or less is a D and 70% is a C, it's a bump-either-way zone (which I've never heard of, but don't hate).

Grading is a noisy process, but that was already accounted for by the process that led to the student's existing final average before revision.  Deliberately and specifically setting out to change it after the fact means that the entire exercise was conducted in bad faith.

@tbrookside, sorry, there is nothing in the post that indicates that noisyness has been accounted for (and it's intrinsically impossible to "account for" it - what would it even mean?), nor any indication of bad faith or conflict of interests.

It's per se bad faith to proffer a grading system containing a minimum passing grade and then to renege on that system because you don't like that it resulted in a particular individual exceeding that minimum and passing.  And the "noiseyness" of the subjective element in grading was already imposed during every individual act of grading a particular assignment during the semester; to retroactively go back, after the fact, and deliberately lower a grade you already gave is no longer subjectivity but deliberate, motivated malice.

Ethical it is not. It is only ethical to grade a student for their performance. Everything else is personal - and pretty much wrong. In your case, you will discriminate a student for their perceived attitude.
Imagine the distribution of the student grades. It will be some smooth distribution. Now, draw the "passing" line. Is there a significant inflection around it? Well, you can't analyse a single class this way, but still...

It is indeed extremely ethically murky to assign a grade based on how an individual student should have performed rather actual performance.  The instructor should be wiser than support (much less suggest) this.

I doesn't sound personal: the OP didn't seem to know the name until afterwards, and the supervisor picked "borderline" students (so based on final %'s, right?) Or do you mean wanting  to help the student once they looked at who it was?

@OwenReynolds  “ Are you sure you want to pass him?” certainly sounds like they knew who the student was.  Moreover, there is no reason to revise down unless it’s personal, else the pass grade is effectively inoperative.

I think you're reading into the "him", which may have been misquoted. What's the proper way to say "based on this failing exam score, should whomever this is pass?"

@OwenReynolds If you are right then passing the final exam should be a requirement for passing the course, and it should be stated as such.

"Imagine the distribution of the student grades. It will be some smooth distribution." False.

I disagree with those who say this is a complicated issue, this is flatly unethical. I cannot speak to legality, but I would say that this is more than likely illegal if the student is a part of any protected group.
There was a standard set at the beginning of the course. That standard said, "if you score x% at the end of the course, you can move on." Unless there was a specific provision built in for scoring a low final exam score, then you broke the contract made at the beginning of the semester. The proper approach moving forward would be to express your discomfort with breaking the rules you set, and escalating to a higher level supervisor or HR department if you feel that strongly.

The point of my “it’s complicated” argument is that while the behavior is problematic (I called it “ethically fraught”), the alternatives are also problematic in different ways. Thus, whether it’s perceived as ethical or not depends on the framing of the question. Suppose I asked “is it ethical for a professor to give a student a grade the professor sincerely does not believe, after a careful evaluation of the student’s work, that the student has earned?” I bet a lot of people would have a problem with that. A lot of people have ethical problems with grading on a curve, which is another ...

... of the standard solutions to the quandary in the question. My conclusion is therefore that it’s not a black or white issue. Professors agonize over failing and passing students because it’s such a consequential decision, where a mistake on either the side of wrongly failing or wrongly passing someone can be harmful to them. Each strategy for dealing with these decisions has problematic aspects to it and can be seen as at least mildly unethical in its own way. Perhaps the supervisor’s strategy is more unethical than the other options, I don’t know. But “flatly unethical”? I’m not seeing it.

Yes, and we can argue from here to the end of time whether or not grading on a curve and what not is unethical, but that ignores my reasoning for why this is flatly unethical. The rules set up were changed at the witching hour for this student. While I would argue that being this arbitrary is always more unethical than grading on a curve, that is completely beside my main issue with the actions taken.

Sorry, I’m unconvinced. You cannot weigh the ethics of an action without considering the alternatives. If I am forced to choose between actions X, Y and Z, you are not going to convince me that I must avoid X by arguing that X is “flatly unethical” but refusing to discuss the possibility that Y and Z may also be unethical and that therefore the correct question is really about weighing the trade offs between the different actions. (But you may end up convincing me if you are willing to discuss that more nuanced question.)

Unfortunately, I think we won't see eye to eye here. My point is completely unrelated to the other options, so I can't argue them. If he told the students at the beginning of the semester he wasn't going to grade on a curve, and then arbitrarily threw in a curve on the final exam, then my point would still hold. We create contracts with students to define our expectations. They can be as vague or as specific as you want, but you have to stick with the expectations you laid out for your students. At the very least, they need advance notice of changes to those expectations.

no worries, we can agree to disagree, though I think your point of view is very reasonable. Thanks for a fun debate :-)

"There was a standard set at the beginning of the course." -  that is simply not true. Suppose I make one of the four problems on the test so difficult that only 10% of the students are able to make progress. For the rest 90%, this will bring the required score of 73% effectively close to 100%. That's also perfectly ethical, and can be done the night before the exam. Therefore, in practice, nothing has been set in the beginning of the course, and any arguments claiming otherwise are invalid.

I agree with this answer. Because as is, that poor student has been graded DIFFERENTLY than all other students, because it's the only student whose score was influenced by another grader. This is clearly unethical, there is no way around this fact. This sucks.

My syllabus says explicitly that my grades are assigned by my best judgement of what the student learned, and the numbers are a strong guide to that judgement, not a replacement for it.

Fine. Clear. I suspect you get arguments, though.

While this may be how you run things, that isn't how their syllabus was set up. They have a specific percent grade that represents passing or failing. They didn't just give the student a failing grade, they retroactively graded their exam lower than was deserved in order to drop them below that pass/fail line. Saying that other people run their classes in other ways doesn't address the morality of the act the OP is discussing

That’s very interesting. Can you say something about how often you use this discretion to deviate from what the dry numbers say? And, as @Buffy said, when you do that, how do the students for whom you did that react, if they are even aware that that’s what you did?

In practice, I deviate up regularly - probably something like 5% of students.  I deviate down from the numbers very rarely, only once I can remember in 15 years of teaching.  I deviate up inconsistently - in the sense that someone with a lower number gets a higher grade - around once every 3 or 4 years.  I don't think it's been noticed.  (This is not counting academic dishonesty cases, where the numbers are just thrown out the window.)

Another point I feel is very relevant to the issue was only addressed by one poster. It is what is going to happen after the student passes? I believe this was primarily on the mind of the supervisor when this decision was made.
It is the specifics of this that need to be answered in order to really pass judgement here. Was the student about to graduate and then go into the workforce with subpar skills? Was the student about to go into an extremely difficult course for which the current class is a prerequisite? I feel like either of these cases could give a professor pause to examine the performance of the student. This is also dependent on the academic standards of the university/school in question.
In summary, I side fully with people saying this is not a black and white issue. I come from college education in hard sciences/mathematics, and I feel like this opinion will likely be the majority in these departments. Personally, I feel like my primary ethical concern is to produce qualified individuals. If there is some ethical dilemma where this concern conflicts with another, then producing qualified individuals is likely to be the winner.

If you think it is ethical, you should tell the student about it. If you think it is not ethical, you should definitely tell the student about it. What’s the worst that can happen?
(I know people who would take you to court or have their parents take you to court. I also know people how would meet you in a dark alley way. Don’t do things that you wouldn’t want the other person to know).

If you think it is ethical, you should tell the student about it. Why? There isn’t a universal principle that students deserve to know about any ethical decision a professor makes while running their class. Professors have all sorts of completely ethical tricks to manage students’ unrealistic expectations and sometimes outright delusional and/or manipulative tendencies. As one example, when grading on a curve, there is a certain technique to set grade cutoffs in a way that minimizes student complaints and feelings of disappointment. That’s ethical, but students don’t need or deserve to know.

The things you should consider:

How much has the student and/or his family invested in this training? Not just money, but effort and time.
What has your decision cost the student? Include the ongoing costs.
Did the published criteria for passing the exam include your feelings?

As a teenager, I had my maths exam decreased due to the teacher not liking my writing (minor disability, tremors in fingers). This in turn nearly made me miss out on an apprenticeship. Fortunately for me, the teacher wrote this on the exam, and I was able to show this to my prospective employer.

Passing a course is not based on (real or perceived) effort.  It is based on proficiency (or at least approximate proficiency) in the topic.  The cost to the student should not be a factor.

@ZeroTheHero, actually if falsely failing them forces them to change the course of their lives then it is relevant. That should be their choice, not that of some person in authority. They have stolen an investment in time and money.

@ZeroTheHero I agree, and that's part of what makes OP's action here unethical.  It's clear they made their decision based on their feeling that the student could have made a greater effort.  It's clear that if they had the feeling that the student had made the maximum possible effort and worked at the limit of their abilities, the exact same course work would have merited a passing grade.

It depends on the syllabus and protocol. In principle, it is widely accepted that borderline cases can be revisited. As long as the process for doing so is still based on academic merit, reasonably consistent between candidates in similar borderline situations (this is not to say that the outcomes must be the same), and carried-out without fear or favour, such practice seems ethical.
In fact, I happen to know of one examination protocol that requires the examiner to change the raw marks if the total of all components sums to just below a grade boundary (as a result, it is impossible for anyone to get a total mark one point below the amount needed for the next grade up). The rationale, as I understand it, is that numerical scores are not absolutely infalliable, so, where the total is borderline, the examiner is required to go back and reconsider carefully whether he/she may have been slightly too harsh or slightly too generous, and ask himself/herself "overall, is this candidate worth a pass?". That is to say, a holistic re-evaluation is almost encouraged.


text:
Masters in pure mathematics at a college in us/uk
So,
I am a final (5th) year integrated msc mathematics student at National Institute Of Technology, Surat. I aspire to do a masters in pure mathematics before finally doing a phd. I am pretty clear about my goal.
My college is not reputed in mathematics specially pure mathematics. It doesn’t even have graduate courses like algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory etc.. I have performed somewhat well in the past 4 years and have a CGPA of 8.6/10 with much better grade in pure math courses like number theory, complex analysis etc. Since I am interested in number theory, I have done two internships one in some topics in analytical number theory like dirichlet’s theorem and arithmetic functions and the other in p-Adic numbers and Automorphic forms. I have some experience in undergraduate math competitions (even winning a diploma in one of them). But I feel like I won’t make it into any top math phd programs in us, uk or any other places, because I am guessing they obviously require much more.
Now currently I am very interested in studying algebraic number theory and local fields and am currently studying Cassels book.
I need some serious advice on what I should do? The application fees is huge for every college.
What I really want to ask is, Looking at these things do I have any shot at getting into mathematics masters programs in colleges like imperial, Kings, Nottingham or other colleges at similar level to these? Any advice would be helpful.

I don't think that it is possible to answer without knowing a lot more background. But you also need to ask yourself how you are to finance this: if the application fee (about £100) is "huge", what about the course fee (about £35,000 p.a.) and living/travel costs?

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Writing a Master's thesis "pre-proposal" in pure math
I've recently learned that I have to write a Master's thesis pre-proposal for my application to the ETH Zürich scholarship program ESOP. This is basically a thesis proposal, but written before one even starts the Master's degree. The issue is that my intent is to apply to a pure math program and I imagine a thesis in this to be significantly different than a thesis in, say, some natural science.
For one, I'd imagine a lot of prerequisite knowledge is required to even understand what my thesis is aiming for. For example, if I wanted to write a thesis on the implications of some advanced theorem, a big part of my Master's would presumably be getting familiar with that theorem, learning the proof, etc. I can maybe get a "big picture" understanding in a short amount of time, but would this be an acceptable thing to do? I am basically saying that I plan to do work on this topic without even knowing much of anything about the topic.
Also, I'm not sure where I could arrive at an idea for the proposal. I've heard that one could read papers in the field, but what concretely am I supposed to do? The paper could say: "This result of ours poses an interesting question: [question]" and I'd presumably have no way of evaluating how difficult it could be to answer that question without getting intimately familiar with the topic, which I can not do, as I'm not even supposed to know much about the topic yet. Or are there cases where this is not an issue? You can see how this is not a big problem in, say, biology. If a paper said that it'd be interesting to study certain proteins of whatever, I can be confident that I can measure and observe some stuff under a microscope in a 6-month timeframe. Not so much here.
As a related question, what role does previous research experience play in math? I see it talked about a lot, but someone currently doing a Bachelor's degree in math seems to me unable to contribute in any meaningful way to research.

Will ETH give you a sample from the past?

This was one of my first ideas, too, but they don't provide anything publicly and I doubt that they'd give such "inside information" then if asked privately.

@Buffy on second thought, perhaps sending an email is not the worst idea. Do you think this would be acceptable or would it come off as trying to "cheat"?

This is an unusual requirement, but ETH guidelines for this program say that "the Master’s thesis has to be completed within a given time (4-6 months depending on the Master’s programme)," meaning that they expect you to have very strong background in the type of math you are going to work on when at ETH. I am in the US and almost none of the applicants to our math PhD program would be able to do it in a meaningful way. But there are exceptions and my guess is that ESOP fellowship program at ETH is aiming for this kind of exceptional students. Talk to your undergraduate advisor (if you have any) about this. If you can come up with something reasonable, then write down such a proposal. Otherwise, consider applying for different fellowships and maybe even to different institutions.
Regarding your last question: Most of PhD applicants in my department do not have serious math research experience as undergraduates. But, again, there are exceptions, some applicants already have papers submitted to some very good math journals.

I'm unsure as to what exactly you mean by your first paragraph, but I'm pretty sure that the 4-6 months come at the end of the Master's program, so you actually have 1.5 years to learn the material up to this point. This 1.5 years worth of knowledge is where my problem lies. It seems that your interpretation is that this is a proposal for a thesis to be worked on immediately after getting accepted, but I don't think this is the case.

@InformalWay: Then write to the chair of the graduate program at the ETH math department and ask for a clarification. And I am quoting directly from their official document which you should read in any case.

Sorry, but I don't think it's an unclear specification. You probably just misinterpreted because you're not familiar with the specific system, but the Master's program is outlined to be 1.5 years of study and then 6 months for a Master's thesis. This pre-proposal also isn't "binding", after the 1.5 years I will be able to change my mind and submit a totally different proposal for the thesis (in general the pre-proposal can't even serve as a substitute for the real proposal). It's more of a test, the idea being to test whether you can do research well or whatever...

...but AFAIK I will have to prove I actually know something about the topic as there are interviews later where you are asked questions about the pre-proposal. So I have to know something, but not as much as you thought, but, then again, I don't know how much I have to know, and that's a problem.

As a student at ETH, I can confirm that you (typically) have 1.5 years before you start your thesis. This answer is based on a misunderstanding and should be removed.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How to get an academic position when your post-doc supervisor gives you a terrible reference?
I am in conflict with my post-doc advisor. I am leaving the lab and trying to find new positions, but all my applications die when prospective advisors talk to my current post-doc advisor.
Since the beginning of my post-doc, the projects and collaborations that I have been working on were totally different than those described when I accepted the position. Further, my advisor learned that I had had an issue with a big-shot professor (they sexually harassed me) and immediately formed a collaboration with this person. Despite this, and despite receiving literally no mentorship or advise whatsoever, I have mentored multiple students successfully and  received some small awards.
Since this first award, my advisor announced that they will not be able to extend my contract. Since then, they have become extremely hostile and have even started to monitor my internet, and turning other post-docs against me, creating competition by telling them that I will steal their projects when I am gone. They also went out of their way to reject my application to a summer school, instead accepting students who applied after the deadline. Many of the summer school attendees would have been good supervisors for me, but she falsely told them that I falsified my CV.
Since then, I have applied many times to positions that seem promising, but as soon as the PI talks to my advisor, I am rejected. I did receive one offer, but I suspect my advisor falsely told them that there was probably some issue with my PhD degree, because my department secretary told me that they had called to confirm that I have been awarded a PhD. On another occasion, I tried to collaborate with some young PIs, but my advisor swooped in and began collaborating with one of them themselves, at which point my attempt to collaborate fell apart.
How do I move forward? It does not seem like I will able to get another position if my advisor keeps lying about me and undermining me.
My current strategy is to add links with proofs of whatever I mention on my CV, so that if my PI accuses me of falsifying my CV, she will get exposed of lying.

Frankly, if you believe that an agent of a university shared information about you that they were not entitled to share, and that has been damaging to your education and your career, you should be talking to a lawyer.

Your location is very important. In some countries, some of the actions described here are flat-out illegal.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

OK, I've attempted to move all the important clarifications from the comments into the main post. You may make further edits if I botched anything, but please try to control the length and readability; the previous version probably would have been closed eventually. Also, I agree with the others that you need to (1) state the part of the world you are in (as this could very well be a legal issue, in which case jurisdiction matters), and (2) be very clear about what you are sure about and can prove vs. what you are assuming or speculating.

Maybe you mentioned it and I didn’t pick up on it, but what was the outcome of sitting down and discussing the situation and your concerns with your advisor?

@Aruralreader When I discussed with her that she doesn't give opportunities to me like she gives to other students and postdocs, she mentioned my "personality". And when I asked what exactly in my personality bothers her she didn't answer. I usually try to deal with my issues internally, so up to that point I haven't discussed with her any issue I had with her, I have never complained or argued with her up to that point. However that discussion was intense because I pulled out or the instances of unfair treatment I could remember and compared it to other postdocs. She was refusing everything..

Q: How to get an academic position when...  A: Publish strong research.

@GEdgar Yes but how if your advisor blocks your way ? Also obviously I am leaving before publishing anything because my contract was for one year

How did your PI know who you collaborate with, when they swoop in?

Because when I apply for positions they contact my PI to ask why I am leaving so early. In that occasion the PI had an announcement on their webside advertising the position as part of a collaboration mentioning the names of the other PIs, and I assume she read it from the website, or even asked them on the phone, and then approached one of those PIs to collaborate with her instead of the other younger ones (& me). The PI she contacted had an ERC grant under review.


text:
Advisor miscalculated the personnel budget for research grant
I am a PhD student directly employed by a German university, this means my salary is paid directly by the federal government.
In Germany, the salary of PhD students is (often and in my case, definitely) determined by the TVöD. This is the tariff negotiated between public sector workers and the state. The tariff contract deals not only with salary levels, but also on salary increments. These take place automatically after a fixed amount of years (one, three, six years, etc). Everything is practically set in stone.
It appears my advisor forgot to take into account the TVöD and the automatic salary increments when making the personnel budget for the grant for my research project (which is kind of funny since he is also subjected to them, and they are a big deal in Germany).
I will be shortly starting my third year. The matter came up after he reviewed the project finances and noticed the automatic and mandatory (please correct me if I am wrong) salary increment after the first year. In his own words: “you are earning too much money”. Just to be clear, all PhD students at our chair have the same salary level (E13, 100%) and are subjected to the same TVöD. This is in no way a surprise or something unexpected. The personnel budget was calculated as if my salary remained unchanged for the entire project duration.
This miscalculation means that the funds obtained form the research grant for personnel costs will not cover my salary until the end of my third year.
I have a contract directly with the German government up to the end of my third year, and I am outside my probation period (Probezeit). I have had no problems at all, and the chairing professor of my committee (not my advisor, these are two different persons) seems pleased with my progress.
I am looking for any legal and practical advice:

Is it possible for them to “demote” me to a lower level, part time, or similar?
This was an error from my advisor. I can imagine that eventually I will have a meeting with the chairing professor and my advisor to discuss this. What can they ask from me? What can they legally ask/demand from me?
If I have learned something in the past two years is that just as in companies, academia is a boy’s club (not in the sexist sense) in which you do not want to rock the boat. I do not want to burn bridges or have unnecessary legal confrontations. But I also refuse to being taken advantage of, specially since PhD students already work a lot of unpaid overtime, and this would set a terrible precedent for future colleagues. How should I go about dealing with this?

Just to be absolutely clear: you have a contract with a fixed end date? (In my organisation in the UK most contracts of that length are technically indefinite but specify an expected period of funding, and this could be changed without a change of contract as long as an appropriate notice period is given.)

@arboviral yes, it is a fixed end date contract. As far as I know, all PhD students in Germany that are employed by the state have a fixed-term contract.

@Roland the contract covers this last year (my third year). It is usual that PhD students get a short extension (4-6 months) after the third year, but it is something "extra".

@Roland you are absolutely right, I mixed those terms in my rush to write the question.

I did not anticipate "gross miscalculation" to mean "neglected to account for a pay raise of a few percent". Surely this error is a tiny fraction of the overall budget?

As @NuclearWang writes: the annual increments are peanuts, and likely enough, not even the funding agency will bat an eye if your PI overshoots the budget by a few percent. I'll take the liberty of editing "grossly" out of the title.

@Stephan Kolassa - as an EU based research funder (though not in Germany) we would not pay more than the contracted value of a project unless a variation to contract was pre-agreed. If a contractor goes over budget without agreeing with us first it’s completely their problem. We won’t be making up the shortfall. I know other funders in the EU who take a similar view... assuming the funder wouldn’t “bat an eye” might be taking a bit of a risk.

Are you sure this is actually your advisor’s mistake? At my university all the costs are worked out by accountants - I list the resources I want (RA, PhD student, MRI scanner etc) and they give me the exact figures to put in the application form. If I forget to ask for something that’s my fault, but if the accountant gives me the wrong price that’s theirs and the central university will sort it out.

@rhialto he wrote the proposal, including the budget. He also came to me wondering why I was earning more than budgeted, and explained how he calculated the personal budget. Of course he never said it was "his" mistake, only "a" mistake. It was obvious though.

Is it possible for them to “demote” me to a lower level, part time, or similar?

In my experience, it is much less complicated (legally and bureaucratically) to transfer the required money from other sections of the grant such as travel or publication costs.

How should I go about dealing with this?

There are usually many culprits in such a situation (and you are not amongst them):

The funding organisation should have noticed that the alloted personal costs do not suffice for a PhD student (assuming that 100 % is the standard for PhDs in your field).
In fact, I have heard that some funding agencies explicitly fund a PhD position with a certain part-time level or full-time (depending on the field) for a certain period of time – as opposed to funding a certain amount of money that exactly suffices for this.
This way, the detailed sums (which not only depend on your level, but on many other factors such as location and similar) are left to the bureaucrats to determine and to move and scientific personnel (such as your supervisor) should never have to worry about this.
When issuing your contract, your university’s administration should have checked that they have the required funds to pay your salary for the duration of your contract.
Your supervisor may or may not have had the responsibility to check this.

So, even if your supervisor made a mistake, so did the others.
However in contrast to your supervisor, those are trained bureaucrats whose job only exist to do things like these and who do this on a daily basis. Hence, I suggest to try to unite against these with your supervisor. Not only do they have no real power over you (not being members of your “boys’ club”), but they also have access to general funds to cover for such mistakes¹.

¹ I witnessed a case where a PhD student got paid too much over a year due to being assigned to the wrong level (i.e., a situation similar to yours) and they did not have to pay back more than legally required (the past few months) nor was this money deduced from the grant that paid them.

I'm sure there's more to the existence of a bureaucrat - or in fact anyone - than their work. Maybe you mean "trained bureaucrats whose only role is (...)"?

"I have heard that some funding agencies explicitly fund a PhD position with a certain part-time level or full-time (depending on the field) for a certain period of time – as opposed to funding a certain amount of money that exactly suffices for this" - seeing how dynamically this kind of money was shifted around between employees at vastly different stages of their TV-L E13, split up to include some student research assistants, month by month, by my institute, in the projects I've been part of, the model you describe apparently cannot be taken for granted.

@O.R.Mapper: the model you describe apparently cannot be taken for granted. – No, but it illustrates that at least some funding organisations consider it their (and not the PI’s) responsibility to care about such things. Moreover, there are efforts towards longer contracts for PhD students and similar that at least managed to reduce these cases.

Let me summarize the key points of your situation:

You have an employment contract over the full period of the project at a German university.
The tariff you're employed under (which should be defined in your contract) stipulates a salary increase after a certain number of years in the same position.

In that case neither you nor your advisor can prevent that you get the salary rise that the tariff agreement stipulates here. The contract can not be changed against your will, and the salary increase can not be ignored. The staff administration of your institution will automatically adjust your salary when it's time to do this, and it will be up to the financial department of your institution, potentially in coordination with your advisor, to find additional money to pay your increased salary. Remember, it's not your advisor who pays you, it's the institution that is employing you.
In fact, while you interpret this to be your advisors fault, the final responsibility is with the financial / personnel department of your institution. They should have verified that the project has enough budget before giving you the contract they have given you. In my experience, all universities I've worked at in Germany were very careful (sometimes overly careful) in getting these things right. Apart from this department having made an error, another reason I can think of is that your advisor might have proposed also another budget for this at the time your employment contract was being prepared, and then they will just make use of that.
My advice for further action would be to do nothing at the moment and to not worry about this. When it's time for your salary increase to come into effect, check that this is indeed adjusted. If this should not be the case, communicate to the staff administration, and ask them why they didn't adjust it. There's no need to get into a discussion with your advisor about this - it's not an issue between him and you.

I think this issue should not be solved on the legal layer, thus, this is no legal advice here.

Is it possible for them to “demote” me to a lower level, part time, or similar?

As far as I know: NO. However, you should have a look into the contract between you and your employer. Usually, it says something like payment according to TVÖD and full-time employment. So they cannot change this simply without your agreement, as far as I know.

This was an error from my advisor. I can imagine that eventually I will have a meeting with the chairing professor and my advisor to discuss this. What can they ask from me? What can they legally ask/demand from me?

It's not about "who made an error". The error has happened and you should try to solve it together. How it can be solved depends largely on your institute's financial situation.

[...] But I also refuse to being taken advantage of, specially since PhD students already work a lot of unpaid overtime, and this would set a terrible precedent for future colleagues. How should I go about dealing with this?

You should not have to bear large disadvantages, that should be your goal.
However, you could end up with something like: You work on your project as long as funding is available. After the money has run out, you are (forcefully) shifted to another project that is not even barely related to your research (e.g., some industry project). If that is the only option due to financial shorts in your institute, there might not be much you could do against it.
BUT: Talk to your advisor, talk to your professor, etc. etc. Try to find a solution together. Your main goal must always be to advance in your research and to finish your PhD. In many cases, there may be additional funds available. In some cases this might not be possible, unfortunately. So if your advisor is very satisfied with your research and money is available, he might continue funding your work with other money. If have seen these cases, where the original funding has run out but the professor and/or advisor made it possible for the PhD student to continue and finish the topic. Be prepared to present good results of your work and show that investing additional money is a good idea!

Your advisor will surely acknowledge fault; there seems to be no other option. Money will surely be found (begged, borrowed, ...) to pay you; again there seems to be no other option (there's a legal obligation to pay you). There is no need for you to act and the situation should be resolved without your input.

Academia.SE is not the place for legal advice.

It's not a substitute for personal advice from a qualified legal practitioner (and FWIW neither is Law.SE) but as long as that's clear I see no problem with this question, and it's a sensible place to ask it.

@arboviral I don't dispute that (nor do I object to the question), I'm merely reiterating

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


text:
How to proceed if someone is working on an idea you shared with them without telling you?
I discovered someone working under the ex-boss of my boss is working on an idea I discussed with them a few months ago (something I wanted to do and was happy to collaborate on, for more manpower).
The idea is not revolutionary. But it is something I ran by some people to check if it made sense (even my boss, though I am not sure if they remember or even care).
Though, that person (more junior than myself) is working on something I proposed. They have worked on something tangential, and this was the reason for which I was discussing with them. At the time, they told me it was a nice idea and worth trying (it seems even their boss was fine).
Actually their boss was talking about the projects of this person. I did not say anything at the moment, but mentioned later I discussed with their associate that idea to which I had done some simple crunching of numbers.
Now, I find myself in a very weird position.

what if they completely forgot that I told them about this?
what if their boss, someone really expert, mentioned this to them?
what if they just went ahead, and took the idea?

In all of the cases, what pisses me off is that they did not reach out to me.

Shall I play dumb and contact them and ask how it is going to see if they wanna do the project together?
Shall I talk to them directly by email?
Shall I tell my boss? Especially when things are unclear I am not sure it is the right idea.

I tried to make a mental table of the cases, and I feel the best way is to write them a direct email mentioning the fact of not contacting me. But then, I am not sure how to proceed. My goal is still to collaborate, as the goal is to do science.
It is not the first time that someone works on something I suggested (or maybe I wanted to do myself sometime in the future).
I am a junior scientist, and need to make my name. I think collaborating is really important. But I a keep getting amazed by the behavior of other junior scientists (and half of the time I am amazed, by senior ones).

EDIT:
(changed title to reflect better the question)
Thanks everybody for your answers. I think in the end I was just a bit upset for not being contacted, as at the time I suggested to collaborate. Obviously nobody owns ideas, and hard work is more important. And kudos to them for going on.
Your input was very appreciated. Hard work is one of the most important things in the end of the day, and not just talking.

Are you working on this idea?

Are you working in industry or academia or at a lab or … ?

When you say "boss" do you mean your doctoral advisor and their doctoral advisor  or some employment relationship other than that?

Did you talk with any of the people involved in this about collaborating when you discussed the idea with them a few months ago?

Your post might benefit from proofreading for grammar and spelling.

yes. I literally suggested to collaborate (but could not have time to do this at the time. still not now, but in a couple of months yes, as I lack man power) WhatTheDuck
I am working in academia @Buffy . I am a postdoc. The other person a phd student.
It is not really about the idea (anyway, I have and have many more). But about the behavior of people that go to do behind your back something you suggest. If this is the right way to look at things. I know these kind of things can happen, but I would like to see if there is a way I can hold my ground here. (if it makes sense).

@QuestioningAcademia It really sounds like you just said "It would be pretty cool if X, Y and Z," and the PhD student said, "oh yeah, that's a good idea" and added it to what they were working on. Coming at this as "someone stole my idea" is likely to be counterproductive.

In answer to the question "How to proceed if I think someone stole my idea" - there's probably not a whole lot to be done here.
The fact that you discussed an idea with someone a few months ago does not mean that they are required to contact you and work with you while they investigate that idea, even if you suggested a collaboration, particularly because you were not planning on working on it then. Research is fast-paced. If you have a good idea and talk about it with other researchers, it is unreasonable to expect them to ignore that idea for however long it takes you to get around to actually doing something with it. If you were showing them your prior work on this and they were incorporating it into their own work, that would be a different, more actionable situation, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
As to the rest of your post - if you want to collaborate with this person on this idea, then simply email them and tell them that you heard they were working on this idea, you are also really interested in it (per that conversation you had a few months ago), and would they be open to collaborating on it. Emailing them and starting off hostile off the bat ("Why didn't you contact me about this idea?") is not conducive to making people want to work with you, no matter how much in the right (you feel) you are in the situation.

And you don't need to "play dumb".

I'll note here since this answer covers most of my points, that you don't and can't "own" ideas, so no one can "steal" them from you.

I agree to some extent. But not completely. Getting the best ideas is also a skill itself that might have taken lots of hard work. And it is important for science that you can 'bounce' ideas to get other's feedback without fearing that they'd just run off with it. Imo, if they were aware still that it was your idea, they should offer you to collaborate or at least acknowledge you. On the other hand, sometimes, the time can just be right for several people to have the idea at the same time

I have similar fears with you when discussing potential project ideas with more senior researchers, especially when looking for postdoc positions, where one usually proposes an idea to work on during the interview/application, but there is no guarantee that they will get an offer for a position.
The issue with "ideas" is that once they are out no one owns them.
Very often I will read a paper and be enthusiastic about a new idea the paper proposes, then forget about it, and then "come up" with same idea the paper proposed 6 months later, only to later find out that this was not my idea, but something I read about.
What I mean with this, is that once you discuss or read about an idea, you accumulate that new piece of information in your internal knowledge system or way of thinking. If the idea for example proposes route III for going from result A to result B, and until now you only knew the tedious routes I and II to connect A to B, that avenue has been opened in your head from now on. You saw an alternative way of thinking for tackling this problem and you can't unsee it.
A few months later you may forget about the source of the idea and whether someone told you about it, the identity of the person, or whether you came up alone with it.
In your current situation I totally understand your frustration. However  I would propose to contact the people to work on this, remind that you discussed something similar with them, and that you would be willing to collaborate  because you have similar interests and you were also about to work on the same thing.
Often someone comes up with an idea, not because they were the only person who could think about it, but because the substrate in terms of prior work is there to facilitate the emergence of this idea. Thus is quite common that often a couple of people around the world (who do not even know each other) come up with the same or very similar idea to tackle a problem simultaneously. That doesn't mean that someone stole the idea from the other, but that the route for that idea has been carved out from prior work and it was the right time for that idea to come out.
I mention this because it could be also probable that the former boos of your current boss was playing in their head with similar thought before you discussed your idea with them.

Ideas alone are worthless.
Simply put, people have a million ideas every day - whether those are ideas for artistic endeavours like books or video games they think would be cool to make, or ideas for scientific investigations.
Ideas alone have no real value. If you're open to them, you'll be bombarded with a torrent of them from people.
The thing that is actually valuable isn't the idea itself, but the hard work spent making the idea into a reality, and the skills required to do so. It doesn't matter how cool your idea for a painting is if you can't paint and don't put the effort into actually painting.


text:
Will my chances of admission to PhD programs decrease if two of my recommendation letter writers are senior preceptors instead of tenured professors?
I'm applying to Molecular biology, Chemical biology, and Computational bio PhD programs this year. I have a letter of recommendation from my PI (worked in his lab for three years) but am struggling to get letters from other tenured professors.
I have reached out to two professors who I took classes with and they are very famous in our field. A week went by, no response. I sent another reminder today, no response yet (they both have seen the email, one sent an automatic email that said she is traveling and might have a limited bandwidth to respond to emails)
Now, I took a general chemistry course that I TAed for as well and the lecturer (has a PhD and completed a postdoc in 2013) knows me from that course (she was also my supervisor for the TA jobs I had)
I can also ask another lecturer whom I took a biology course with and he was my advisor throughout undergrad (he also has a PhD and completed a postdoc)
But my question is, does the fact that these two people aren't tenured professors/well-known hurt my chances of getting into grad school? I believe the other pieces of my application are strong (GPA: 3.86, one PNAS publication, a senior thesis, TAed Organic Chem, Gen Chem, Stats, Calculus, and Molecular Biology for three years) but I have heard the reputation of letter writers matter a lot in these programs.
I would appreciate any help!

What is a preceptor?

Individuals with a PhD (who have completed a postdoc in the past most of the time) that are the main instructors in a course. In my college, besides the basic science courses, almost all the other science courses are led and taught by preceptors rather than tenured professors

This is a bit of a special case, but if a person holds a PhD and has done a post doc also knows you well, and not just from a single course, then they should be fine as a letter writer (US perspective).
The letter writer needs to be able to predict your success in graduate study and beyond. It is difficult or impossible to do that without their own experience of earning a doctorate. But, holding a PhD suggests that they know what it takes to succeed.
However, one course's worth of experience with you may not be enough. The best writers are people you have worked with over time and have had a chance to get a sophisticated view of your academic "character" and drive.
Also, it is far better to ask for letters in person, not by email. Whenever possible make an office visit to explore the subject. It might even be useful to first ask the person how they think you would do in graduate study. If they hesitate in any way, look elsewhere. A lukewarm letter isn't helpful, especially in US.

Thank you so much for your response! The problem is that the well-known, tenured professors in my schools only teach large introductory classes (luckily, my PI is one so I'm confident that his letter will hold the most weight.) The preceptors I mentioned know me in the context of courses and also my teaching experiences. Since I was only in one lab for my entire undergraduate career, I don't know any other tenured professors who could comment on my research abilities. I truly hope this doesn't lower my chances of getting into a good program

@tm1053  While each case is special, my experience shows that, most likely, the preceptors should be fine as letter writers. Put yourself in the shoes of those who gonna read the letters. To them, what counts most is how informative these letters are. The recommenders' positions not totally irrelevant, but are of a lower importance. Good luck with your applications!

Thank you so much!!! that makes me feel much better. The preceptors actually know me much better than the other two tenured ones so I'm sure the content of their letter will be stronger


text:
Is it allowed to publish an explanation of someone's thesis?
Last spring, I did a research project where I tried to develop code, modelling a physical system using a method developed by a researcher and presented as his PhD. thesis.
Now I have completed my work and am required to present documentation of the theory used and the performance of code. Now, while I was explaining that paper, I did detailed derivations of all the steps taken which had been omitted from papers for brevity. These derivations I have put in the manual as well so that any other undergraduate trying to work with same paper can quickly get started.
However, is it plagiarism to upload such a manual on my homepage and GitHub repository where someone else did the hard work of deriving concepts in the thesis and I just present proof of intermediate steps?
I am unsure if this is a right practice even if I state that I am only explaining his derivation.
What else can be done to mitigate the copyright infringement? One option, I think, is to submit the report to my supervisor and he will personally distribute it to students in his research group who he thinks will benefit from it.

Posting something on the internet is not publication.  Plagiarism and copyright infringement are not the same.

@AnonymousPhysicist, I think that the major publishers would disagree that "posting something on the internet is not publication".

Copyright infringement is verbatim copying of other people's work. Hence the name.

@Buffy I've read those license agreements, and they are quite clear that some posting is allowed and other posting is not, but it's a matter of copyright, not a matter of publication.  We're talking about academic culture, not publisher's business models.

@Buffy: Conversely, I think most hiring committees reading a CV would agree that “posting something on the internet is not publication”.  “Publication” has several different meanings in academic contexts, sometimes overlapping and sometimes conflicting; posting work online is publication in some senses, not in others.

@Karl: Copyright infringement includes more that just "verbatim copying of other people's work".  Creating a derivative work without permission may also be a violation of copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work

You are using the word explication in a way that suggests you actually mean explanation.  The former would imply a significant injection of new concepts on your part - taking a vague or empirical theorem and developing it into a more precise or quantitative form.  This is a value-added transformation that would make the work your own.  An explanation, however, is simply a didactic exercise where you do not add new work but simply teach someone else's work.  Which meaning is your intention here?

Sorry for wrong choice of words, I meant explanation

@AnonymousPhysicist, "Posting something on the internet" is publication when it comes to legalistic issues such as plagiarism and copyright. If someone ripped off my thesis I'd be annoyed and raise a complaint; I wouldn't accept "But it's only arXiv..." as an excuse! (That's not to say that the OP can't, with care, write this up - see answers below.)

Thanks for so many views, for time being, I am not uploading it, I will try to contact the author to get his views on it

Properly credited, posting a piece that fills in all the details of a published paper (or thesis) should be fine. Indicate clearly that  the ideas are not your own - that you are just hoping to help others read the original work.
You should probably write the person who did the original research, thanking them for their theorems and telling them what you hope to do with your work filling in details. They will probably be delighted that someone has read their thesis.

This is good advice. Note that when you contact the authors you (the OP) might learn that they are planning to publish something themselves. And it might open the door to future collaboration.

Have had similar experiences. People do indeed like when their work is useful to others.

If you give the original creator credit with a citation, and direct quotes are indicated with quotation marks, it is not plagiarism.
If you are unsure, ask your supervisor.

True, but copyright is another issue altogether as you note in your comment on the question. It is possible to avoid plagiarism but still infringe copyright.

Copyright is a legal issue not an academic one, so I ignored that part of the question.

The copyright angle appears mitigated by the fact that the thesis documents a physical system. Physics itself is not subject to copyright, so only the specific thesis wording would be subject to copyright. "The hard work of deriving concepts" is not.

It's certainly allowed, in fact full papers have been published in this way. Example, as the abstract itself makes clear:

In this paper, we provide an essentially self-contained and detailed account of the fundamental works of Hamilton and the recent breakthrough of Perelman on the Ricci flow and their application to the geometrization of three-manifolds. In particular, we give a detailed exposition of a complete proof of the Poincaré conjecture due to Hamilton and Perelman.

You should make clear what exactly your contribution is, however - this particular paper was criticized because the original wording of the abstract made it sound like the authors were claiming that they are the ones to actually prove the conjecture.

It really depends. I take here a different point of view then the other answers. If it is basically an (extensively) annotated copy of the original work then you need to have permission of the copyright holder.

THANK YOU. GOD BLESS YOU. for saying 'I find this a bit dodgy. Why not point to the official regulations of the university.' https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/144597/revisions https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/144597/do-students-have-the-right-to-see-how-their-papers-were-graded LOL

also in re the dodgy thingy, do you think it's also kinda gaslighting? like as if it's the student's responsibility to know about a university policy that is apparently done by asking professors/teachers/instructors individually instead of that the university disseminates the policy via some handbook or something containing official regulations