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Should a TA position which requires teaching a class offer more money than one that doesn't?
I am currently a PhD student (international) at a University in the US (TX). I was offered a TA position, however the position requires me to work as an instructor of the course. I worked before as well with a similar opportunity.
Being an instructor I have more work responsibilities compared to only being a TA. But for the instructor work I get paid the same as what I used to get for a TA.
Is this correct? If not, what should I do from my end as I feel this is unfair? I talked about this with my research advisor but he was not very helpful.

How exactly are you paid? In the models I know you have a TA position that is meant to take a certain amount of hours per week and comes with a fixed pay. Standing in front of a class as a TA counts for less hours that standing in front of class as an instructor and both cases count more hours than just the time standing in front of class because you also need to grade, hold office hours etc.

"I was offered a TA position, however the position requires me to work as an instructor of the course." Something's wrong here. By being an instructor (managing the course curriculum, dealing with the admins of setting up a course with the uni, coordinating the TAs) you're not being a TA by definition. If you meant that you got assigned some hours to lead a few sessions of the class, and there is still another dedicated instructor who manages the TAs, then you're not an instructor, you're a TA.

"should?" Is a subjective question. One argue that the more work you do, the now you should get paid. What does "more" here mean? Hard to say. Done can get done more in a shorter time and at a higher quality. Some work slower and output less quality. Just be sure to understand what is expected at minimum and what beyond the minimum is typical, and the pay, benefits, etc. Read your contract carefully and the relevant institutional policies.

What formal qualifications are needed to teach the class? Can any regular TA teach the class? Are similar classes usually taught by graduate lecturers or professors?

I made the syllabus, I instruct, recently got a grader assigned from the department after a long request and also maintain office hours. In total I manage everything except the departmental assignment. The model of payment is stipend based fixed for 20 hours.

It is not impossible the department has discretionary fund they could use, but typically if you're paid as a TA, you're a TA. Particularly because you're an international student, you may not be able to work as an instructor (as job which is not dependent on your student status) due to your student visa. But they may be able to secure a one time bonus amount; it's worth asking

I did this job as a graduate lecturer. This was after passing my Ph.D defense. In your position, I might want to talk to the ombudsman's office. Ask them if the everything is above board. Their office should be independent of any department and they can ask questions without ever revealing your identity.

Every time you are offered a job, you should ask for more pay.  If you are unionized, read the contract first to see what you are allowed to ask for.  Otherwise, find out what the market rate is and ask for a bit more than that.
Since you specified this is the United States, I can say that this answer
has several inaccuracies.
First, in the United States, employees do not need a union to bargain collectively.  You can organize the other employees "waiting in line behind you" and request higher pay as a group.
Second, depending on your individual situation, it's not certain anyone else can do the job.
Third, while administration probably will say no to an increase in pay, they might say yes.  You would need to find the right person to ask.
I should also add:  Some universities claim, implausibly, that graduate students are not employees and are not protected by labor law.  There has been litigation about this in the past few years.  Public universities are governed by different laws from private universities.
I think it is unfair for instructors and TAs to be paid the same amount.  I think your university will agree.  Universities care about supply and demand.  They care about negotiating leverage.  But they also care about fairness and their reputation for fairness. I do not know if they will fix unfair pay, but asking for more pay is in your interest.  If you do not want the work, refuse it.

Is it still unfair if TAs are deliberately overpaid?

@fectin I consider that question to be unrelated to the reality we live in.  The highest PhD student pay I could quickly find in the US is $47,000.  Usually it is much less than that, with no floor.  In my opinion the floor should be about $60,000.

@Anonymus Physicist Thanks for your answer. Unfortunately no union exists and I reached out to the Dean. Waiting for their response.

If graduate students at your institution have no union, you are out of luck. You can ask for more money, but as long as there's a line of people waiting behind you to teach for the same low pay, the university administration can just say no. Now, if all of you got together and refused to do extra work for no extra pay, the university would have to listen. That's what unions are for.
This is not to say that you should not ask. You should. A close friend of mine works at HR (pharma), and she tells me that they have employees side-by-side doing the same job making vastly different salaries. The difference is that one asked for more money, the other did not. So ask. What I am warning you is that over a long career in academia, I have never seen a graduate student successfully negotiate a higher salary, outside of a union context that is. I have even tried to negotiate on behalf of my students, and failed.
As in any negotiation, it boils down to leverage. The university has students to teach, and money in the bank. You have the ability to refuse to teach. If money is more scarce to you than TAs are to them, you lose. If you don't really need the money and they have a hard time finding TAs, you might be able to pry a salary increase from them. But don't count on it. At most universities, administrators will rather cancel a class than raise a salary.
On the merits of your argument, that being an instructor is more work than TAing, I'd say "it depends." When I was a grad student, I had to TA for a professor who pretty much abandoned the class to me, and that included lecturing, writing and grading exams, preparing labs from scratch, making and grading lab exams, etc. When I was an instructor for a lecture-only (ie no lab) course, the only work was to prep the lectures and grade the exams I wrote. So a lot less work. Since most institutions have non-negotiable TA rates (again, without unions), the battle among graduate students moves to who's teaching which class, as everybody wants the classes with a low workload.

As far as I know, our (unionized) graduate students get the same pay whether they teach a section of a course (as primary instructor) or just run recitation sections.

There are many things in this answer I disagree with, but I definitely agree unions are important.


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Is there a website that lists the journals that are actually scams?
I constantly receive emails from editors asking me to submit papers for their journals.
However, only a handful of them originate from a trustworthy source. The vast majority are just scams — journals with no reputation at all, willing to publish an(y) article for a fee.
My biggest problem with that is that I lost one or two real good opportunities to publish because I dismissed the email, thinking it was a scam.
Is there a list that I can use to easily check the reputation of a journal, in order to avoid this to happen?

It is approximately true that any journal that sends bulk emails soliciting papers is not one that you want to publish in.

Related: How to identify predatory publishers/journals?, With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam?

What about http://beallslist.weebly.com/ ? Is it genuine? It says "Last Update: December 31, 2016". But I think, more than a list, you're looking for a method, such as the one linked by @HeikkiMäenpää. That's way more efficient.

Can you explain what you mean when you say you “lost one or two real good opportunities to publish because you dismissed the email, thinking it was a scam?” My view on this is that if they ask you to publish with them (unless it’s a colleague you know personally), it is a scam almost by definition, so your statement does not really compute - if you have something to publish, you ask to be published and a good journal will never have to ask authors to publish their work there. But I’m wondering if I’m too narrow-minded about such things or if maybe things work differently in other areas.

@paulgarrett and Dan Romik: in 2014, I wrote an article about bitcoins. This article was accepted in a major brazilian journal of economics. Ever since, I have received a lot of emails like this. In the beginning, I read through them. But now, I just dismiss it as garbage.
Two months ago, I received an invitation to write a chapter of an online book about cryptocurrencies. I dismissed it as scam. However, the editor of the book is trustworthy, according to my thesis advisors. Unfortunately, the deadline is very close now. Probably, I am going to miss it. That's the full story.

Without considering very hot topics or a slight editorial line change I agree that journals worth to publish in do not solicit submission via email. Or it difficult to skip Nature if they want an highlight article

Perhaps the problem is driven by reputable journals charging $5,000/article or more when published as 'open access'.  While reputable journals do provide some proofreading and typesetting services, usually the referees and editors are unpaid, or paid nominal amounts (e.g., $50).  I daresay one could host all papers for a quarterly journal on a $5/month account at Amazon Lightsail or Digital Ocean.  Of course, the journals are guessing how many $29 or $49 access fees they'll lose with open access, but that leaves a big potential profit gap for entrepreneurs.

There used to be one, called Beall's list, which listed predatory journals. The author however took it offline, apparently partly because of legal threats. If you search online you will be able to find archived copies of the list, but as far as I know these are not updated any more. You can read about it here for example.

Link is broken :(

Is this the list? http://beallslist.weebly.com/

@EricDuminil: yes, that's based on an archived copy of the list. Under "Contact" on that page you can find more information.

@DavidRogers: It worked fine for me earlier yesterday, but it was a bit slow. They might have had some server trouble I suppose.

There are at least a couple of lists. You'd have to judge for yourself how much you trust them since apparently none of them is affiliated with a University or some other "reputable" curator:

List of Predatory Journals

This is a list of possibly predatory journals. The kernel for this list was extracted from the archive of Beall’s list at web.archive.org. It will be updated as new information or suggested edits are submitted or found by the maintainers of this site.

BEALL'S LIST OF PREDATORY JOURNALS AND PUBLISHERS (Last updated December 31, 2016)

This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards.  In a few cases, non-open access publishers whose practices match those of predatory publishers have been added to the list as well.

The Wikipedia entry Predatory open access publishing has some good information also.

While it does not specifically list journals as being predatory, "SCImago Journal Rank" is a good indicator of the reputation of a given journal. Their extensive listings can be found here:
http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php
It is a free alternative to the older "Impact Factor" rating system. The "SJR indicator" like "Impact Factor" uses the number of citations to articles in a given journal to rank the journal's importance. The difference is that in the SJR system a more prestigious journal citing another journal carries more weight in ranking that journal. Also only more recent citations are included in the ranking system. This is similar technology to Google's "PageRank" system.

While this may be useful for preserving the journal hegemony, it would only indirectly indicate predatory journals.

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Can I revise a part of the paper that the reviewer did not mention?
I received a major revision recently. However, as I was making revisions, I realized that my first draft from a few months ago is badly organized and poorly written.
I want to make some changes to a part that the reviews did not complain about.
My advisor told me to only focus on the question raised by the reviews. And reminded me that making unrequested changes is very dangerous and can even bring up rejection. His point was that the parts of the manuscript that the reviewers did not raise questions about proved to have been satisfactory and accepted.
I personally agree with my mentor in general. However, without changing the original purpose, I hope to improve the quality of the article by better writing and expression, or even new experiments. Is it acceptable?

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I realized that my first draft from a few months ago is badly organized and poorly written.

I think there is a fine line to be drawn here. Based only on your description, I do not think that this is the appropriate time to reorganize your paper, as your advisor said, parts of the manuscript that the reviewers did not raise questions about proved to have been satisfactory and accepted. If they did not ask you to reorganize your paper, then receiving a reorganized paper to review again might be frustrating.
Working on your phrasing in individual paragraphs is better, but again, you are asking the reviewers to reread the entire paper, and giving them a much bigger list of changes to work through. I think your advisor is overstating the risk of rejection (but I don't know the reviewers in your field).

However, without changing the original purpose, I hope to improve the quality of the article by better writing and expression, or even new experiments. Is it acceptable?

New experiments is a very different question, and a domain-specific one only your advisor can answer. You can (should?) perform new experiments to address specific problems the reviewers raised, but performing them only to enhance your paper at this stage raises an eyebrow.
In short, I would feel free to wordsmith as appropriate, but otherwise follow your advisor's advice carefully.

You can do this (but doing it well requires experience)
If you were an experienced researcher, rather than a PhD student, I would say that you should certainly revise in the way you think makes the paper better.  Since the paper has not yet been accepted, you are free to revise it in any way you think will improve it.  This includes making revisions that have not been suggested by the referees.  If you make your paper better somehow, they are unlikely to object, and at worst this might just require some more revisions in the next round of review.  I have made unrequested changes to papers a few time after receiving referee reports (just because I concurrently thought of an idea to make it better) and in all those cases the paper has still been accepted.
The only real issue here is that you are a novice researcher, so you probably do not yet have good judgment on what makes a paper better/worse.  (And the fact that you now think your previous draft was badly organised and poorly written also suggests this.)  Therefore, there is a danger that your proposed revisions might either make things worse, or at least move things around unecessarily without making things better.  If this were to occur then the referees might indeed be a bit chagrined, and it could reduce the likelihood of acceptance.
Fortunately, you have at your disposal a supervisor who is probably pretty good at determining better/worse on these matters.  In view of this, I recommend you write up a new draft with your proposed revisions and seek feedback from your supervisor on whether your (unrequested) changes have unambiguously improved the paper.  If you think you have a good idea to improve your paper, have a go at this.  Your supervisor should then be able to give you some guidance that is conditional on seeing the actual revisions you have made.

Yes, it is legal. The paper is yours until you give up copyright to it.
I think your advisor may be worried about the consequences if reviewers don't think your changes are actually improvements. Or worse, make the paper less publishable.
But since you were already asked for major changes I think the risk is small if you do a bigger revision. It might, probably will, slow the next review process, but if it does result in improvements that is better for everyone.
Adding new experiments, however, might best be saved for a follow-up paper. Changing the scope of the paper, in general, is likely to result in delays (at best).

Hello @Buffy,  What do you think if I amend or redo the experiment to better serve the objective of the paper.

Sorry, I can't judge from such a distance. You are the best judge of improvements. Changing the scope of the paper is a bit risky though if that is what you mean. Think also about the underlying intent that the past reviewers might have had in writing their comments. If you can get a feeling about that, then you might consider revising along those lines. Hard to do, I know.

My advisor told me to only focus on the question raised by the reviews.
Perhaps your advisor is worried that you will waste too much time on this, but other than that, it is not sound advice.
And reminded me that making unrequested changes is very dangerous and can even bring up rejection.
Very dangerous is an over-exaggeration. Only if you introduce entirely new material, or substantially alter the findings or, worse, change the data initially presented. Then you have some explaining to do!
His point was that the parts of the manuscript that the reviewers did not raise questions about proved to have been satisfactory and accepted.
Yeah, that's just not true. Reviewers point out the issues that were apparent and worthy of notice to them. They are not required to offer a definite stamp of approval on everything that they did not explicitly comment upon.

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Mediocre Thesis Topic. Does this Hurt my Reputation
Just curious as to the effects of publishing a mediocre PHD thesis:
After sitting down and taking a cold, detached, look at my thesis topic, I realized I was given a pair of coobook-style problems, i.e., in order to answer the questions I was given to answer, I just need to go over a list of requirements and see if the general results apply to my specific problems. Instead of research level, the problems I was given look more like exercises at the end of a book; a graduate-level book, but still, cookbook.
Question: Once I am done with this, which shouldn't take more than a few months, how will this look to anyone going over the thesis? Since I will be having some extra time, I am considering doing some extra research and tacking it into the thesis. Is there something else I can do?
I suspect my advisor may not have  a very high opinion of me and thought I could not likely handle anything more complicated. This itself brings issues as to the recommendations I may receive when someone asks my advisor for a recommendation.

Have you been publishing your results in decent conferences/journals?

@AustinHenley: frankly, this is my first (sort-of) research-level paper.

If you are still in the early stages then who knows what your dissertation may become over the next several years.

@AustinHenley: Still, how can I extract juice out of a rock? I can follow the recipe and answer, but I am trying to see how to tack-on new research as I go on. Any other way I can improve on it? Sorry, I am not looking for obstacles, I can see how to answer the questions I was given, not because I am brilliant, but because it is too easy. I don't see off hand how to turn this answer into something of higher quality.

This is exactly what your advisor is for. You should have a conversation with him or her. If you don't feel comfortable with that, then you should question why you are working with this person.

P.S. Anything can be made interesting so I don't buy that your thesis topic is mediocre. Simple or straight forward also don't mean mediocre.

As a PhD student, you should be trying to do research that you find interesting.  This is not necessarily just a matter of following your advisor's instructions.  It's convenient if it is, but if it is not, then you should take the opportunity to learn how to select topics for yourself and become an independent researcher.  You will need to do this after the PhD anyway, so why not before?

It sounds like you haven't actually worked out these problems, so it's not clear how simple they will be.  If they are indeed easy, they may just be stepping stones to a bigger problem.  But if your estimate is a few months, then these problems are probably not totally trivial.  In any case, if you're not clear about the motivation for doing these problems, ask your advisor.

I agree I am "guilty" (responsible): I have not taken the initiative to do my research and I have not received any mentoring: I think it is a shared responsibility here both  for me to take initiative and for the advisor to guide me through. I think we both failed. @Trevor: problem is that you have limited time to finish your PHD and if you select a research project that goes nowhere, you may end up going through the rabbit hole, and end up without a PHD. So it makes more sense to let someone more experienced--your advisor--select the topic initially.I think you should try to make

that transition ultimately, but ideally, your advisor should lead you through the first steps.

So it makes more sense to let someone more experienced--your advisor--select the topic initially. — [citation needed] And what if your advisor selects a research topic that goes nowhere? Recovering from blind alleys is an integral part of the research process.

@JeffE: It is a matter of probabilities, as with everything else in life, there are no guarantees. Someone who is more experienced and who has already done research is more likely to come up with something productive. If I knew how to do research on my own and I needed no help, I would not need to go to Grad School; I would already be out there publishing papers.

@NeedBetterThesis. From my own personal experience, my students are significantly better off developing their own research problems than having me assign them.

And ther's a huge soectrum between an advisor assigning a problem and the student needing no help. Advisors are supposed to advise.

@Jeff E: Yes, ideally it would be a combination of initiative by the student and mentoring. I think in my case both aspects; both of us , failed in this respect. I was too passive, and he was not very helpful; both wrong.

Getting a PHD without any publications is the thing you should worry about. If you publish more than one good papers in good journals or conferences (CS) then your problem and the solutions proposed by you are valuable. And what is this? "Once I am done with this". Done with what? Have you actually published anything? Or writing a "mediocre" thesis is enough to get a PHD on your department? If yes, then you will have no research reputation anyway.

You sound like you're at the very early stages of the research process. Perhaps these problems are not as simple as they appear to be.
In any case, I think you're fretting prematurely. If your research topic ends up being less-than-stellar, you'll have plenty of opportunities to redeem yourself by doing more exciting work after you're done. To answer your question, I don't think a "mediocre" thesis topic would have long-lasting effects on your overall reputation, which will ultimately be judged by a much larger body of work.
From one of your comments:

if you select a research project that goes nowhere, you may end up going through the rabbit hole, and end up without a PhD

This could happen if the project is too easy; this could happen if the problem is too hard. This could happen if someone else is doing research right now that will nullify your results before you're done. This could happen if you get burned out and don't finish your work. In some respects, completing a PhD is like a minefield; it's fraught with risk.
You can switch advisors, switch topics, or start doing the work your advisor assigned. Unless you have more than a hunch that this work will be fruitless, I'd recommend starting with the task you've been assigned, and not letting fears of your reputation 10 years down the road paralyze you from getting underway.

A PhD is documentation that you can do your own research.  You don't have to take what you're given.  That said, maybe your advisor considers the "toy problems" a warmup for more advanced research?  You should talk to your advisor and also to other faculty members you trust.  Let them know that you are concerned your topic may be weak.  Perhaps they will have some ideas on how you can make it stronger.  Depending on the outcome of these discussions, you may want to shop around for a different advisor who is a better fit for you, both in research interests and personality.  The key is to take charge of your own dissertation.

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Does it look bad to cite a single review paper repeatedly for many different things?
I am limited to a set number of pages for a research paper I am writing. One trick that I thought of was to find large 'review' papers that talk about a lot of things.
For instance:
Bubble sort [1] is a great tool for sorting.
So is merge sort [1] and also quick sort [1].
Make sure to understand the type of data you
have, because certain algorithms can take
advantage of that [1].

[1] Comparing different sorting algorithms - Peter

This is a bit of an exaggeration but - would my paper be negatively reviewed if I cited a single paper too many times? Again, I am really pressed for space.
Note: I am new to writing btw

First of all you should cite original sources. The review paper can be cited for whatever conclusions or original work stem from it, not for whatever sources it, in turn cites. In your example, citing the same sources over and over again in a single paragraph is unnecessary. You are better of starting the paragraphs stating that the information is sourced from [1] in some way.
In general, citing a single source can be reasonable if it is a really original work and the only possible source for much information. This is, however, rarely the case and so my thought is that regardless of the situation, most will see it as somewhat suspicious. It all depends on whether the paper really is the only source for the information.
So, general advice is: avoid doing what you outline, unless it is the only possible way (from the point of view that no other sources exist.
Despite having constraints on length, you should be able to fit a reasonable number of references in. I am sure that you may have to really think twice about your text. I have certainly been in situations where I have has to ask myself if each end every sentence written is () necessary and (b) concise enough.

I don't agree that you always need to cite the original. It depends on context. For example, this example uses stuff that's widely known. If you need to briefly reference lots of general stuff, pointing to a review is a good approach, rather than sending the reader all over the place for small points. I also often point to something other than the original because the result can't be easily be identified in the original. Survey articles are there to draw scattered ideas together into a coherent whole.

For (real) reason of space you can surely cite a review paper or a book, but, to reduce the number of citations, I would do it in a different way with respect to your example.
For instance:

Common sorting algorithms are the bubble, the merge and the quick sort
  (see [1] and references therein for more details).

or

Common sorting algorithms are the bubble, the merge and the quick sort
  (see [1] for a review of their properties).

Depending on the field, you can often find several pieces of research to support your point. Making your point by citing several pieces is probably stronger, in fact. Following your sample, if there were three pieces of research that supported bubble sorting, and two different pieces for quick sort, you might say this instead:
Bubble sort [1, 2, 3] is a great tool for sorting.
So is merge sort [1] and also quick sort [1, 4, 5].
Make sure to understand the type of data you
have, because certain algorithms can take
advantage of that [1].
[1] Comparing different sorting algorithms - Peter
[2] Bubble sorting algorithms - John
[3] More bubble algorithms - Leanne and Yari
[4] Only Quick sort - Paul
[5] Quick Sort is Great - Julia
^^ In the above, you maintain brevity, while keeping a strong argument. Hope this helps. Good luck.


text:
Non-academic positions after PhD in computer science
With the academic job situation so tight and uncertain, I am thinking of jobs outside academia (after a PhD in Computer Science). There are plenty of programming jobs that require an undergrad or even no degree. I tried some of them and they are so routine and so narrow that one gets frustrated easily. They also involve 8-5, M-F drudgery.
Can anyone suggest better alternatives. How do companies advertise for research positions? I haven't seen many ads for those. BTW, I live in Southeast of US and due to family reasons can not relocate far.

Do you hate coding in general? If you're a PhD doing BS/no-deg level software jobs, I'd wager that you just aren't being challenged at that job.

No, I don't hate coding. In fact, I love it. But many of the jobs I took had people "finding and fixing bugs" or doing very routine coding or migrating from one .NET version to another. I doubt you can call that real coding.

You should contact a tech recruiter. There's plenty of new development projects out there for you to try out as well, in addition to other answers. I had no luck finding a job until I got a recruiter and ended up getting a bunch of interviews at higher-level development places.

You should specify the field of your PhD in the title or ask the question not limited to the Computer Science field

I am surprised at "finding and fixing bugs" being too easy. The most difficult thinking I've ever had to do was some industry debug. I found subsequent PhD coursework and research relatively relaxing. The first debug jobs I got were easy, but as I showed I could solve the easy problems I kept being given harder ones.

Do you want to ever return to academia? I don't know much about CS, but from what I've seen, once you're out of academia, it's almost impossible to go back.

Patricia, I never said "finding and fixing bugs" was "easy". It doesn't give you the same satisfaction as building something new. The project I last worked on had a massive code base with lots of bugs, and I spent days and nights looking at old (Visual Studio 2005) code that had very poor design. @user137 - I like academia, but it's hard to find tenure track positions. Most jobs are post-doc or adjunct faculty.

Related, although in pure math rather than CS: Pure Math PhD Careers

It's my understanding that "finding and fixing bugs" is 80-90% of real coding.

@EnergyNumbers That's a poor use of a developer's time, IMO. If I spent 80-90% of my time fixing my work, I'd never get any actual coding done.

@Compass Thus, the difference between scientific code and high-quality production code, as discussed in this excellent question

@SamJones You, of course, know how you feel about debug, but don't tell me "It doesn't give you the same satisfaction as building something new." (emphasis added). I get a lot of satisfaction from tracking down bugs.

@Compass If you don't spend 80-90% of your time fixing your work, you aren't getting any real coding done.

@JeffE I have, of course, included compiling in my schedule. That takes up 30-40% of that 80-90%. I guess if you consider the compiling also counts as fixing, then yes, we're getting close to that.

@PatriciaShanahan, "you" was used in a generic way i.e. for most people I have interacted with. I didn't mean you  personally. :)

I have, of course, included compiling in my schedule. — What?  First, what kind of stone-age computer are you using?  Second, you don't at least think about how to fix X while you're compiling Y?

There is a large and active demand for computer science Ph.D. holds outside of academia. Some of the main classes of positions:

Contract R&D organizations like IHMC (near you in Florida) or my own employer, work a lot like soft-money academia.
Government laboratories are much the same, though the money works differently.
Government agencies need Ph.D.-level people to help manage their R&D portfolios, either directly as program managers or via private-sector contractors like Booz-Allen.
Giant companies like Lockheed-Martin, Pfizer, or Ford have high-tech or internal R&D sections that do Ph.D.-level computer science work.
Near any major tech university, you will find lots of startup companies and  consulting firms and other odd niches.
Finance companies and hedge funds will offer you lots of money in exchange for your immortal soul.

These are just a few of the more typical routes: the research ecosystem in the US is actually very complex and has a lot of strange niches; I don't have solid numbers, but I suspect the outside-of-academia R&D world is actually much larger than traditional academia, and that's even before we start counting non-R&D positions like hedge funds.
Some of these sorts of jobs, you can find via ordinary online job listings.  You'll likely do a lot better, though, if you reach out through your professional network and research community.  Your advisor and other faculty are one good place to start: they'll likely have former students and other colleagues to put you in touch with outside of academia.  Another good step is to go to the big conferences in your area, especially those with a more applied flavor, and look for the industry people there.  You'll likely find quite a number of good opportunities, especially if you are a US citizen.

"Finance companies and hedge funds will offer you lots of money in exchange for your immortal soul." Why is Lockheed Martin not included here?

@G.Bach Because they're such a complex company that they work on a lot of cool civilian aerospace stuff, like the Orion crew launch vehicle and the Hubble space telescope too.  Also, for the OP: they've got major operations in Alabama.  I can't say the same for hedge funds.

@jakebeal I have found most of my friends at Lockheed bailed out ASAP. While Lockheed does have cool projects, the chance of you getting put on one of those cool projects is not high.

@Compass Sad to hear... I've not worked with them personally, myself, so I don't know their culture.

If you're finding boring (to you) jobs, you're not looking in the right places. Off the top of my head I thought of SAS, which is located in North Carolina. One possibility is to look for companies that were spun off from university research.
Ask your professors--where did other master's and PhD graduates end up, if they didn't go into academia? Talk to the career center. Even though they may be focused on undergraduates, they may have some ideas.

I have found LinkedIn to be pretty good at recommending jobs for me, both with its own algorithms and with the occasional 'inmail' from a recruiter. Sometimes it's enough to make me wrestle with leaving academia, for the reasons you cite in the question.
Make sure you use it to its full potential by (signing up!), updating your profile and making it look amazing, following companies, joining groups, connecting with people you know, and connecting with tech recruiters.


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Will it hurt my masters application if SOP focuses on my research interests, but the program has only a few courses on that subject?
I want to pursue a master's in Computer Networks with an interest to learn Software Defined Networking. For some of the universities that I have applied, I have summarized like 'I would love to go deep into networking particularly software defined networking' Now will this be a negative if the colleges have only few courses on the subject?

Talking about your specific research interests in a SOP is great. If the specific interests are a good match for the program, they'll love it. If they are a poor match, you probably wouldn't have been happy or gotten the training you wanted in that program.
More importantly: Take a deep breath. (1) Your SOP for a masters program is not going to be scrutinized as closely as you seem to imagine. You are overthinking things. (2) It's too late to do anything.
Good luck!


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How do I stop feeling unwelcome in my department?
I could not find a PhD advisor and the person in charge of my PhD program suggested that I leave with a master's degree.  He said that I was good at carrying out tasks but I did not have the motivation to advance the state of the art in my field.  Some time later I found an advisor in a different department, and he seems to like me.  But I still cannot get over what the graduate coordinator said, and now I hate visiting the building because I feel I do not belong and I don't want to talk to anyone I know.  What should I do?
After I found an advisor the graduate coordinator said something like "I knew you had it in you, I just wanted to see how much you wanted it."  But I don't know if he really means it, and if he did, I think that's kind of a mean thing to do.

It seems like a big leap from "one person said something discouraging" to "the entire department hates me".

Believe me, if the coordinator thought that you would likely never graduate, the mean thing to do would be to keep on encouraging you to waste your time. Don't be mad that he had this opinion of you, be glad that you could prove him wrong.

Grad coordinator's a jerk.

It almost sounds like you're expecting to punish the advisor because of what he said, instead of finding ways to deal with it internally. If you had asked him for his opinion and he gave it to your frankly, I don't see anything wrong.

You mentioned that your new advisor is in a new department. So, can you cut the losses with the old department?
But, although the comment stings, and your feelings are understandable, being able to handle it is part of completing Ph.D. To complete a Ph.D., you need (within a reason) to go against the grain, latch onto something, not listen when you are told it can't be done, and pursue it against the odds. In the process you grow a thicker skin and not let doubtful comments get and define you.
So, it is possible that your advisor meant to test you, and see how determined you are to continue the process. I am not saying that it is the best approach, but I have seen this happen.

And even if the grad co-ordinator didn't mean to test you, it did test you, and you carried on and passed the test. Either way, you're on top!

Sports coaches use the technique of criticism to test athletes all the time. The best coaches know who they can use it on and who needs a different approach. The motivation is usually to take someone to a different level. It's a reverse psychology thing. You have someone who can obviously do better (at least in the coach's eyes) and you challenge them. Will it work? The ones who really want it will step up, those who don't won't.

Well, all you can really do is to clench your teeth and work. It may take a few months to a few years before you get to the point when you'll be certain that you are worth something and then a few more years before you finally realize that your brain is ridiculously slow, blind, and malfunctioning and you slide into the normal stable depression state any working mathematician lives in (I'm not so sure about other sciences but do not see why it should be any different there) :-).
The point is that what people see is what you produce: above a certain level, you are judged by your output, not by your working habits and other "test" criteria. On the other hand, above the same level, you spend the rest of your life walking a narrow path between being dissatisfied with yourself to the extent of quitting and being not enough dissatisfied with yourself to strive for improvement. You just have veered too much to the left, that's all.
As to the graduate coordinator, the second phrase puzzles me way more than the first (the first one makes sense and I can easily say it myself when I see that the things just do not work out after a few years, the second one looks more like a lame excuse for saying the first). Well, who cares? If you can do something, you'll see it yourself. If not, some other people will take care of showing it to you.
As to the feeling of "not belonging", the internet won't help here. Either talk to your psychiatrist (if you believe in psychiatry), of just take time out and do some physical activities on fresh air.
Above all, remember that we have all been there at the beginning of our careers: stupid worthless students struggling with the most routine homework and learning that the first problem of solving which they were proud was actually put on the test just to console those who cannot figure out anything interesting.
So, veer a bit to the right (not too much though) and continue walking forward (and, of course, as it was said in the final song of Monty Python's "Life of Brian", always look at the bright side of life...)

you spend the rest of your life walking a narrow path between being dissatisfied with yourself to the extent of quitting and being not enough dissatisfied with yourself to strive for improvement That is horribly accurate, did you come up with that?

That's an upbeat take on research. "the normal stable depression state any working mathematician lives in". Did you do a survey? :-)

In many departments, the ability to match up to a source of funding is a de facto qualifying exam.  If no adviser is stipending you, and the department needs to cover your stipend, you are a burden on the department.  In current funding environments, departments often need that money for other things -- especially carrying faculty salary during funding lapses.
This creates a funny situation for students who can't find an adviser.    They haven't failed a formal qualifier.  Is there something "wrong" about the student such that no adviser accepted them?  Maybe, maybe not.  Could be the research interests didn't match up.  Programs do their best to try to match the research areas of accepted students to those of faculty who can support students-- but sometimes they miss.  Could just also be that such a student isn't the best student, and that potential advisers feel that there will be too much work in dragging them through to a degree.  Could also just be that there were better students in the group who attracted the offers from advisers, and no one with funding was left to pick them up.
In any case, I recommend trying to be a little introspective about how you could have made yourself even more appealing to potential advisers such that you could have paired up earlier.  In the career path you've chosen, you'll perpetually be selling yourself.  Use this as an opportunity to figure out how to sell yourself better. If you want to feel more welcome, publish as much as you can, and early.  Apply for every funding opportunity you can reasonably apply for.  Take your teaching responsibilities seriously.  Show your department that you're the opposite of a burden.

Was kind of a weird story actually.  I originally worked in Field A with Prof A.  When I asked, he said he would like to be my advisor, and also that Field A was a good field for me (he's basically the only person in my department who works in Field A).  But he said I should work with other people first.  So I worked with Prof B in Field B.  In retrospect I was not very good at Field B and did not particularly like it.  But for silly reasons, I felt I did not belong in Field A, and I thought Prof B was more likely to accept me than Prof A.  So I asked Prof B to be my advisor.

Prof B said he was optimistic but he didn't have funding so he would ask for money from the department.  I didn't want to embarrass Prof B in front of the department by choosing Prof A, so I waited several weeks with no word from Prof B.  Eventually I told Prof B I would be looking for other people, but by that time Prof A had already filled all the slots in his lab, so I was left without an advisor.  Now I work in a field similar to Field A with Prof C in department Z


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Should I order open access if I've got the money?
A journal accepted a manuscript of mine. After acceptance they ask the author whether the author wants "to order Open Choice". Should I do so if I've got the money? What is it? Is it a way to make a peer-reviewed publication while retaining the copyright of your article? What are some pros and cons of it?

"Should I" is going to be a matter of opinion and depend on your personal philosophy and maybe the rules of your funding source.  As to "what is it", presumably you've read Springer's explanation of the scheme, so maybe you could ask a more specific question?

I was looking for a more plain and summative account by a peer...

Do you think you will get many citations from your manuscript? If you think it will be useful and will be cited, then it could be more worthwhile than articles that are more descriptive and illustrative probably. Your institutions may also contribute towards the open-access fee as well...

Springer Open Choice, aka. open access, is the "new" way to publish things. In the traditional model, the journal publishes the paper, and then charges readers a subscription fee to read it. With open access, the paper is freely available, but the authors have to pay the publisher to publish. Copyright in OA articles are generally retained by the author, and there is no print version.
Springer's webpage gives you the advantages of doing it:

It makes your paper freely accessible.
It increases citation counts & usage statistics. Note this is controversial. There's no doubt that open access increases usage statistics, but citation is a separate story.
It complies with funder mandates. If you're unfamiliar with open access I'll guess that your funders (if any) don't have require you to publish open access, so this is irrelevant.
You retain the copyright (if it matters to you for whatever reason).

There's really only one downside to open access: you have to pay for it. It's possible you have funding to do it (per point 3 above; also check with your library/supervisor if applicable). Otherwise there's the paperwork you have to do, and finally there's the danger intrinsic to open access. OA motivates the publisher to accept as many papers as possible (they make more money), which generates a conflict of interest. In your case you should be clear because 1) it's a hybrid journal, the offer of OA is only made after your paper is accepted + you don't have to take it up, and 2) it's Springer, which is a well-known publisher. But if you keep publishing OA then you'll inevitably encounter so-called predatory publishers with whom you should be careful.
Whether you should do it is up to you. I'll venture that most people would likely not pay for open access unless they had the funding to do so. If you don't have the money but want to publish open access anyway, you could try asking for a waiver/reduced charges, especially if you are based in a developing country.

Two points: i) What is a hybrid journal? ii) Am I going to be suspect of conflict of interest if I only publish with well-known publishers?

@Philosopherofscience a journal that is subscription based but also publishes open access articles, i.e. you can do both. A fully subscription journal does not publish open access articles (these journals are getting increasingly rare), while in a fully OA journal every article is OA (and there is no print version).

Am I going to be suspect of conflict of interest if I only publish OA with well-known publishers?

@Philosopherofscience probably not. The conflict of interest mainly affects the journal, not the authors who publish in them.

Great answers. Useful and direct to the point. Not having a print version is depressing, though.

@Philosopherofscience Do you read a lot of articles from their physical print copy?

@Bryan Krause Admittedly, not at all, but I'm not a digital native, so I still love paper. I do buy fiction on paper.

@Allure Is the Creative Commons license another downside? I don't want modifications introduced to the text by strangers...

@Philosopherofscience Yeah, digital has been the norm for me my entire academic career, and though I prefer to print out pdfs when I am actually reading a paper thoroughly cover-to-cover, I've only actually reached for a journal's print copy on the rare cases I was after an older article that my university library had in print but not digitally. I'd say in today's world the actual, physical, in-hand printed copy of journals is not that valuable.

@Philosopherofscience I don't understand. If you don't want people to change your work, choose the Creative Commons license that prevents it - CC-BY-NC-ND (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/).

@Allure Great to know, I'm perfectly ignorant about licenses.

I take Allure's answer to imply that I should, since s/he indicates that the only downside is having to pay the money, and I explicitly introduced the "if I've got the money" clause in the original question.

@Philosopherofscience well, unless you have more money than you know what to do with, money spent on open access is money that cannot be used elsewhere. It's up to you though, I don't know the details.

@Allure I wish I could give you more upvotes.

@Allure are there any benefits of going Open Choice over publishing a preprint over Arxiv

@BoatyMcboatface In that case the preprint is now available for free, but the paper isn't. If there's nothing in the paper that isn't in the preprint, then the first advantage is largely irrelevant, but the other three persist.

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


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IEEE rejects my paper saying that it is plagiarised
I submitted a paper to one of the journals in IEEE and editor responded with a rejection letter saying that it is plagiarized. But am very sure I have not copied any content or idea from other authors and have cited all references correctly.
I had submitted the paper in another journal of IEEE ( Transactions in Vehicular Technology) and the editor wrote back advising me to submit in a different journal as this was a survey paper.
What might be the reason? Can I write back to the editor?
Please help.

Perhaps there is a paper you don't know about. Inadvertent plagiarism, perhaps.

I have reviewed papers where the authors have original good results but they copy material (as is) from  the introduction or some other content they they think are mostly explanatory and not relevant to the original results.. Unfortunately, those papers also has to be rejected, even though the authors feel there is no plagiarism as the idea was not copied. Is there any chance you did something like that?

No, for definitions and other content, I have provided the references from the papers where I referred. And this one is completely a new paper compared to any of my own previous research papers  that I had worked before.

I think that isn't normal to tell an author s/he is guilty of plagiarism without providing the evidence at least in form of refs to the plagiarised works. Are you sure that you don't have simply rewrote with your own words existing surveys?  Citing them might exclude plagiarism but surely the review paper can be rejected as substantially plagiarism, ie not covering new or different results and not providing new insights nor perspectives. ..

You should ask for evidence. Professionally, but firmly.

No, for definitions and other content, I have provided the references from the papers where I referred. — That might not be sufficient.  Did you copy the text of those papers verbatim, or did you rewrite whatever content you took from those papers in your own words?

I wrote the content in my own words after referring the content

To answer your question, yes you can and should write back to the editor and request that they provide the information related to this accusation of plagiarism. Such accusations are quite serious and they should not make them without being willing to provide support for their claims. It would be entirely unreasonable for them to refuse to produce evidence.
In the event that they will not detail why they are making claims of plagiarism, and you are absolutely sure you have not inadvertently plagiarised,  I would suggest you bring the matter to whatever office or work group in your University deals with aspects of academic integrity. They may be able to put more pressure on the journal to produce evidence.

I've reviewed papers for journals where the authors had plagiarised, but very clearly did not realise that they had done so. Usually this was in the providing of background/introductory information and the authors couldn't tell that what seems like accepted reality about an issue was the result of someone's published empirical work (in most cases, mine!), and that bringing it nearly word for word in to their paper was improper. I'm not saying you did this, but it is very easy to confuse "general background info" with "these words are someone's creative output and copying them is a no no"

They might have run your paper through a plagiarism-detection service such as Turnitin and the figure it came up with was too high for them.
Or maybe it is a case of "self-plagiarism." Perhaps you have published this paper before or have published similar papers before.


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Are management courses useless?
As a business students I have taken tons of management courses - from marketing theories to company strategies to human resources. But I feel I literally got nothing out of them. What we have done is just to study by rote, sit for exams and forget 99% of the content two weeking later. Are they useless or should I have studied them in the other ways?
Here is a bit of my thought: let's take Cousera as an example. It offers degree courses in business, by completing which you could earn a diploma just as on-campus students do. However, they are video-based and lack interactions among students themselves and between professors and students. More importantly, you cannot network as those actually studying on the campus do, which renders them even more useless and in reality these types of degree are not even half as valuable as a full time on-campus degree. So, let's say, if management courses are really useful, why do online degrees still have not got recognition from the industry?

" forget 99% of the content two weeks later". That's probably why you think it's useless. Any course you take and forget immediately is useless.

@Erwan so what are your solution and personal experience about this?

I think that if you have no interest at all in a major part of your studies you might want to revise your orientation; students who are the most successful in the long term are the ones who are motivated in their field and don't learn only for the exam; actually some of them go beyond the curriculum just because they are interested. Business is not my field, but I would assume that knowing stuff about marketing theories, company strategies and human resources is useful for somebody who wants to have a career in business.

Courses that are taught badly can be useless.

@Erwan yep I agree that it's important to have some knowledge about these topics. But as they go into something deeper they become overwhelming and theoretical since you don't really have chances to apply them in real life until you find a job and are promoted to a leadership role. For example we studied strategic management, which is something that concerns only senior executives and board members and on which we could probably never have a say. Btw I have chosen to study something more technical (BA) for my master's! Much more tangible for me!

This question is probably too opinion-based to be useful, but my impression has been that most undergraduate management classes are, indeed, not really worth anything in terms of the content, as opposed to signaling diligence and providing a convenient opportunity for networking. Of course is less or nonapplicable to courses with concrete content like accounting, computing, economics, etc, as you seem to have realized.

I won't comment on whether management courses are useless. But the way you approached them certainly made them so. Learning by rote the day before the exam and forgetting everything afterwards is a complete waste of time, unless your one and only goal is to get a degree at the end. If that's your only objective, then any course you take at the university is useless, really. If your objectives include learning, though, then you did a pretty poor job at it, and that's mostly on you. Yes, a bad course does not help. But there are plenty of things you could have done to make use of the lost time. Interact with students, ask the professor for more reading material, look for it yourself...

Yep I know that was my fault. Most of my classmates did the same thing though. Fortunately I have changed my area of studies for my master's so now I am much more motivated! But, ignoring my bad way of dealing with them and focusing on just the management courses themselves, do you think they are useful for students? I want to limit the context to undergrads who have little or no professional experience and who have never been managers before and are not going to have managing power soon.

Oops there should be a comma after undergrads.

Having taken some management courses at the undergraduate level, as well as many mathematics and computer science courses and some in cognitive science and economics, I would suggest that while it's true that no course can be useful if the material is immediately forgotten, courses that are useful tend to be almost impossible to successfully approach in this way.

@Mone: I want to limit the context to undergrads who have little or no professional experience and who have never been managers before and are not going to have managing power soon. --- Even if the student never reaches the level at which some of the management theory could be applied, it seems to me that having some knowledge of (and appreciation for) what upper level management deals with would be useful. Perhaps the rational for these courses is more for this reason.

@KevinCarlson That's true but the problem is that management is much more unapproachable than the other fields. It is subjective (as compared to math, which you could learn by solving objective problems) and hardly applicable(as compared to art, which you could learn by creating your artworks). That makes it so easily get forgotten.

@DaveLRenfro yep I agree with you. A basic understanding of management surely helps. However, do you think people should study a whole degree of management courses, from the perspective of course content itself?

@Mone: I don't know much of anything about business or business degrees (despite this), so my comment was just an educated guess. However, this is almost certainly a battle well outside your present purview. You have my sympathy, however, as I've felt similarly about the onerous non-math educational requirements needed to teach high school in the U.S. (see this), although I managed to avoid much of it


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Teaching advanced courses in a specialized area of math
Today mathematics (and probably also other sciences) became very specialized: every researcher works in their own narrow field which usually hardly interacts with fields of other colleagues, even on the same department.
At the same time every researcher is often expected to accept PhD students and introduce them into his/her field. Some mathematical fields (e.g. algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory) require significant background before starting the research, and hence teaching quite a few advanced courses.

How this problem of regular teaching of many advanced courses on a certain  subject is resolved on your math department? Who teaches all of them? Does there always exist a group in your area on your department so that the teaching load can be shared? How it is decided who teaches what? (Please indicate your country.)

Likely math isn't essential to the question. Pretty much every field requires deep dives into narrow canyons.

@Buffy I worked in pure math and also very applied math. The amount of prerequisites to really start doing research was vastly different.

@J.FabianMeier, so did I, actually. Classical Real Analysis. But I think you will find the same order of specialization in most fields. Even Literary Criticism has its own very specialized vocabulary and way of thinking. While we mathematicians like to think we are "special", we probably aren't that different.

I know that I could just compare two fields. But when I worked in applied discrete optimization, it was relatively easy to understand problems and methods from other people. It was even possible to explain my research to my girlfriend who did Algebraic Topology. In pure math, I was often lost in research seminars when the topic was about another subfield.

@J.FabianMeier: Here's a different way of looking at it.  Let's define a subsubfield to be a group of people who mutually all understand each other's research.  Then, in applied mathematics, subsubfields are large, because there is quite a bit of funding to look into any particular topic, and it's possible to have a research seminar series where everyone is in your subsubfield (and hence, by definition, understand each other's work).  In comparison, pure math is poorly funded, so subsubfields are small, so any particular seminar series is going to have speakers from many subsubfields.

@AlexanderWoo It is not just that. If you compare the number of years you need to study until you hit the cutting edge of research, you find huge differences.

@J.FabianMeier: I disagree.  I don't think one needs to study as much as you think to be able to hit the cutting edge of research.  Rather, the difference is that (for good reasons) pure mathematicians are generally expected to understand neighboring subsubfields (and traditionally are educated so that they do), whereas (for good reasons) applied mathematicians are not.

@Buffy Those subfields within other fields are way more broad than in math, though, which is completely unique in the way I find it described here on this stack. In other fields, you may be the only person studying some particular combination of things, but your work would be immediately understandable to hundreds if not thousands of people doing related work. It's about having dove into many different lakes that makes someones' expertise unique, rather than diving to the bottom of one particular sea.

As a combinatorial algebraic geometer in a small, not highly ranked department who currently has a PhD advisee, I think I can say something about our experience.
We do not get to regularly schedule advanced courses.  With 14 grad students total, there aren't enough students to make teaching algebraic geometry viable.  We offer a 2 year sequence in general algebra, commutative algebra, and algebraic geometry on an alternate year basis, organizing the courses so that it is possible to start midway at the commutative algebra entry point.  When we have a relatively capable group of students, we just might be able to get to the definition of a scheme in the last 2 or 3 weeks of the last semester.
If we happen to have 2 or 3 graduate students at the same time who are interested in a particular topic (for example algebraic topology, or more advanced algebraic geometry, or algebraic number theory), we may organize a course for them, but faculty usually have to do this "for free" - in the sense that whomever is doing this teaching is teaching this as an extra course in addition to what he or she normally teaches.
My advisee has answered an algebraic geometry question well enough to write a dissertation.  He has not taken an algebraic geometry course.  How can he do this?  He has learned just enough of the specific bits of algebraic geometry (really just commutative algebra) he needs to tackle this specific question.  Fortunately my area attracts enough interest from combinatorialists and representation theorists that there are some reasonably accessible books and papers, but he has ended up learning what he needs to know mostly from me in our weekly meetings.  (Yes, I am disputing the claim that one needs a lot of background before starting research, even in a fairly esoteric field.)
Does he understand why the question he is working on is of interest to me and to other people I work with?  Not really.  Will he be able to find related questions and answer them in the future without my guidance?  I am skeptical he knows enough mathematics around his current problem to be able to do so, but maybe.  He is applying for teaching-oriented positions where the point of doing research is to provide research opportunities for (undergraduate) students rather than to advance knowledge, so maybe his research experience is sufficient.

Let me suggest that you help your advisee build a circle of collaboration with you and others with similar interests who you know. Even in a small department it is possible, today, to have such a synergistic group to share ideas. It would be of use to everyone involved, but especially to your student and his students.

In similar contexts, I think this happens very often. It's undesirable, but inescapable to some degree, hence, necessary. In a not-so-conducive environment it does take a lot of energy to promote ideas consistently, as I have noticed in various scenarios. And, indeed, other people are reasonably-enough looking after their own agendas, and perhaps do not have unlimited energy. Small departments are tricky in many ways.

That's a great answer, with a lot of local "color".

I personally think tough, good courses are the way to go, even in advanced fields.  Universities generally don't have the funding for such low course size work.  But let's not kid ourselves about the gap.  In contrast, you can look at how NASA, the military, and the NFL do hands on instruction even for advanced performers.  But of course this is very expensive.

In France, that's what the master's degree is for. More precisely, the second year of master (colloquially known as M2) with the specialization as research master degree, as opposed to teaching master degree or professional master degree.
Advanced courses are taught during the M2. There is a huge gap between the level of the licence (bachelor) and the first year of master (M1), and another huge gap between M1 and M2. Students are expected to work a lot on their own. Moreover, in every math M2 program, the student is expect to do a 3-4 months "internship" with a professor and write a "memoir" at the end, a mini PhD thesis. This is very often where you get to learn the very advanced, very specialized material necessary to start doing PhD level research.
I should now state that there is a very clear difference in organization between Paris and the rest of France. France is extremely centralized, and this shows in math too. There is very large supply of M2 students in Paris, with people coming from Grandes Écoles or abroad just for the M2; meanwhile, outside Paris, M2 programs usually barely manage to get by with 5-10 students a year. I've experienced both (as student and faculty) so I can comment on what I know.

How this problem of regular teaching of many advanced courses on a certain subject is resolved on your math department?

In Paris, there is a wide variety of M2 courses on most subjects. There are enough students and faculty for this.
Outside Paris, not all courses can be taught every year, as there aren't enough students and faculty: some classes would be empty, some would lack an instructor (thanks to massification of higher education, we have to teach a shit-ton of classes to 1st year undergrads). A usual deal is to do thematic years, for example "this year we'll do a number theory program and a stochastic equations program. Next year, algebraic topology and dynamics." If a student wants to study something not offered, they unfortunately have to move.
This difference is also magnified by the rarity of PhD stipends. What good is giving someone a research master's degree in math, a degree that only prepares you to become a professional mathematician, to someone who has no chance of getting a PhD stipend afterwards? As you can guess, some universities are richer than others and can offer more stipends.

Who teaches all of them?

Faculty…? Who else? I don't understand the question.

Does there always exist a group in your area on your department so that the teaching load can be shared?

In Paris, yes. Outside, no. As I said, we have to teach a ton of classes to undergrads. And somehow, no one in the government was able to divine that babies born in 2000 would be college students today, so they haven't had the foresight to increase budgets for faculty jobs. So we are stuck with a dilemma: enrolling students in undergrad is something that we have to do by law, the number of students increases every year, and the budget stays constant. Guess what part of higher education is slashed first?

How it is decided who teaches what?

There cannot be a single answer. Every department in France has statutes and bylaws that can be (democratically!) changed, and this includes how teaching loads are divided. Still, every university I've been to has had this model: the department director delegates the power to either a committee or even a single person depending on the size of the department and customs. This committee/person deliberates on what courses can be offered and who teaches what. It's often (but not always) taking into account the wishes of every member of the department. Large department (= Paris…) have even more complex procedures.

PS: I hope this does not come off as an answer from a Parisian snob. The math departments in hard science-intensive universities in Paris are about 2-3 times as large as the largest math department outside Paris; moreover, it's only a metro ride away to the other Parisian departments, who can thus coordinate among themselves to have a unified program with much wider breadth. I have many colleagues outside Paris who despair at the state of their M2 program (and this won't be helped by the current government's policies of creating monster universities on the one hand and defunding smaller ones on the other hand… if you know how to solve this problem, please tell us).
PPS: This answer is mainly about pure math. The situation is less bleak in applied math. ("What good is pure math for anyway? Pure mathematicians can't get a contract with Thales or Safran to co-supervise a PhD student who will help us sell bombs to Saudi Arabia." --some government official, probably.) Some smaller math departments are slowly transitioning to applied math only.

Perhaps there some of the curricular aspects are more manifest in mathematics than in some other subjects, namely, that "old things don't go away", for one. For another, the "going ever deeper into ever narrower topics" is not a good description of modern mathematics, considering that interconnections between ideas, especially seemingly disparate ideas, is a big part of modern mathematics. Also, there is a general tradition in mathematics in the U.S. that people have a bit broader background than just the minimum to scrape by in "their specialty", even if they are deliberately aiming for a narrow specialty.
With that in mind: also, basic courses in algebraic geometry or algebraic number theory or functional analysis or modular forms or Lie theory or... are not really "advanced" except in comparison to undergrad courses, after all. For example, my own PhD students would benefit from taking all these, and more.
And, yes, at my large-ish state university, there are rough groups of people interested to varying degrees in all these courses, so there's no lack of enthusiasm to teach them, although precise organization is always a minor issue. Many of us think of teaching such courses as quite a lot of fun, because these things verge on "real math", even if they are still introductory and worked-over.
But, yes, in a smaller department, and perhaps with less research emphasis, and perhaps a smaller PhD student population, the interest groups for many things might not quite reach a critical mass for such courses to be reliably viable.

While I don't disagree with the things you say, this seems more like a rebuttal of my comment than an answer to the question of the OP. "How does it work?" I suspect you have insight into that. Your profile suggests you are a denizen of the esoteric deep.

@Buffy, not intended necessarily as a rebuttal to your comment, but, yes, incidentally mildly so, while also mildly disagreeing with some of the premises of the question itself... I did attempt to answer the "how does it work?" or at least "how can it work?"

@Buffy "denizen of the esoteric deep" :)

You can put it on a T-shirt if you like.

In chemistry, classwork during the Ph.D. is pretty minimal and the emphasis is on doing lab work.  There is a vast amount of even foundational stuff that is not well covered (especially in instrumental analysis).  I believe the trend has been towards less courses over time.  This is generally perceived by students as a plus (not by me, see it as more technician work, less learning), and also by PIs, who are incented to run large groups of workers, rather than training scholars.
My impression is the same is true in biology.  [Lots of funding for grunt work...gotta cure cancer, right?]  Less so in physics, where there are tough qualifier exams.


text:
Is it common to apply for a tenure track position while having a tenured position?
A colleague of mine has a tenured position in mathematics in Europe. He is interested to move to another country (US, Canada). In order to increase his chances to find a job, he does not mind to apply not only for tenured positions, but also for tenure track positions.
Will that increase his chances for a job? How common is such situation?
ADD: I am wondering whether my colleague might be considered as overqualified for a tenure track position.

Somewhat related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/171352/if-a-tenure-track-position-has-been-advertised-at-the-assistant-professor-level

Of course it will increase his chances, just because there are loads more tenure-track openings.  As for how much, that depends on how attractive he is compared to the regular tenure track pool.

Most people (I'd guess) moving jobs in the US, even from tenured positions have to go through a probationary period, though for a shorter period of time, perhaps two years. I've done that. It is theoretically tenure track, though not necessarily at the Assistant Professor level. In particular I was a Full Professor and kept that rank.
But this is something that can possibly be negotiated with an institution, provided they are willing to accept someone at that level and have the funds and flexibility to do so.
There are exceptions for superstars in a field, of course.
If they've advertised for an Assistant Professor position on Tenure Track they may be bound by that, or not. But it is worth talking to them to see what the options are. With a decent publication record and recommendations from colleagues it might be possible, though not everywhere.

It is definitely possible to apply for such positions; in fact I know people who have exactly moved from a permanent position in Europe to a tenure-track position in NA.
Key points:

It is often possible to negotiate early consideration for tenure or even tenure on hire.  This can be brought up in the cover  letter, during the interview, or when negotiating the offer
In the cover letter the applicant must make it clear they understand what position they are applying for and what they want -- otherwise they could be ignored as too senior.  For example you can say "I understand this is a TT position and will definitely accept a TT offer".  You can also add "ideally I'd like to be offered a tenured position or, failing that, a promise to early consideration for promotion and tenure".  Conversely if you won't accept a TT offer you can say "I know this was advertised as a TT position -- would you consider making a tenured offer instead?" in which case the department will consider your case only if that is possible.

In US institutions, once you have tenure, it is up to you/the hiring institution to negotiate being hired with tenure. This is not at all uncommon, but if the position is advertised at the Assistant level, being hired with tenure is rare due to federal or state laws.
Of course, if the position is at the Assistant, Associate or Full Professor rank, it is assumed that the new colleague will join the institution at the rank they have already earned. If the position is at the Assistant professor level, and the applicant has tenure, I would advise having that conversation only after receiving an offer. A possibility could be to negotiate a quicker (up when ready) tenure clock where the new hire's existing CV is counted towards tenure at the new institution.

being hired with tenure is rare due to federal or state laws - I agree it's rare, but I don't think it's because of laws, but internal university reasons (budget being a large one).


text:
How to politely request to magazine editor for the following issue?
I have one article accepted in the magazine and the editorial team has send me the proof-read version. I have a little issue that I need to change the name of the article as the requirement of my thesis. The article was accepted with the name "Future trends in Personal indoor communication". I want to change it to "Future trends in indoor communication". I will really appreciate if the seniors can comment on my following response.

Dear Mr. Editor,
Thank you for accepting the article titled, “Future
trends in Personal Indoor Communication” for publication in IEEE
Potentials. As part of the proof-read stage, I would request a minor
change in the title. Since my modified PhD thesis title includes
“Indoor Communication”, instead of “Personal Indoor Communication”, I
will really appreciate if the editor allows me to reflect this change
in the mentioned article. This is important to maintain the coherency
between my published work and the PhD thesis.
The modification in the
title will subsequently require minor (editorial) changes in the text
as well. For example, Personal Indoor Communication (or PIC) should be
replaced by Indoor Communication (or IC) in the text. Likewise, Fig. 2
should be modified to reflect this change. For this purpose, I have
attached the new figure as the supplementary material.
Please do let me know if this is possible. I apologize for the
inconvenience it may cause to the publishing team.
Shan Jaffry
On behalf of the Authors

Changing a figure and / or title of a manuscript during proofreading isn't a problem. At most, the production team might wonder if you're changing something that shouldn't be changed (e.g. if the author amends the paper to conform to reviewer comments, and then changes it back during proofreading, we have a problem). However you've given a sensible reason to make the changes, so in all likelihood the production team will just make the changes and move on to the next paper.
As for the letter itself, it's a bit deferential, but journal production administrators see a lot of such letters and won't be fazed. The only thing I'd suggest is that, since you say minor editorial changes are necessary, to also include these in the email, e.g. "on page 2 line 5, change "delete the word 'personal'". This speeds things up: the JPA can make all the changes and the typesetter can implement them at once. Without these changes the JPA would have to write back asking what other changes you want to make before he can pass the manuscript to the typesetter.

So I don't need to upload the letter at all? note that there is a change in the figure as well which I need the publishing team to get noticed.

@Sjaffry you should upload the letter, I'm just saying that your letter is a bit deferential (i.e. you write as though the reader is your superior, when they are not). In your response to the journal production coordinator, give your reasons for making the change, a list of all changes, and the new figure.


text:
Plagiarism / citation standards in non-/less-scientific works
Yesterday night, a renowned Dutch newspaper published a long article on a former rector of one of the largest universities in the Netherlands. Research conducted by the paper shows she didn't take regular academic plagirism / citation standards into account in various important speeches, such as the ones for the university anniversary. Although it differs per speech, the paper has in some cases traced almost 60% of her literal text back to the work of others.
Citing the newspaper directly (well, translated):

Based on research of NRC it shows that, XXX, former rector of the University of Amsterdam, has used texts in speeches and in her dissertations without clearly indicating these were the work of others.
The plagiarism is remarkable, as the rector herself took various measures fighting plagiarism.
According to XXX, her speeches are unjustly compared to academic standards.
The university will start an investigation whether former rector XXX has violated standards of academic integrity.

Focusing on the accounts of plagiarism in speeches got me wondering what the citation standards are in non- or less-scientific work, and how that might differ per type of work. Specifically, I'm interested how this might differ in:

technical reports, written in a company context
policy documents
official speeches
blogs, columns, and other more personal writings

I'd personally say that attribution is required in all cases, but when is "as John Doe has put it: research is interesting" good enough, and when would you a proper academic citation, including a full reference (either in a bibliography, or in a footnote)?
In addition to the explicit standards prescribed by professional organisations or codes of conduct, I'm wondering to what extent reality indeed matches these standards -- or whether pragmatism at some point takes over. (That might be a little opinionated, but I'm hoping the community will allow it.)
Regardless of whether she was right or wrong, I think everybody will agree these actions are clumsy at best - as they in any case raise questions nobody would like to be raised. That's not what I'm hoping to discuss or establish here. Similarly (although I think this goes without saying here), I'm not interested in opinions on whether she is or was wrong, as we don't have all the facts to determine that.

Why do you expect a journalist to set / meet any standard? All they want is to max the sales of  the paper... They "say" they want "truth"...

As I already feel my question might be a bit too opinion-based for SE, let's leave the discussion on whether the press is trustworthy or not out of this. As I've noted in my question, the paper that's done this investigation is a renowned one. I trust their research, as does the rest of the general public in The Netherlands.
Also, I'm not so much interested in standards set by journalists, but by professionals in the field that write the texts I'm referring to.

The remove the paper from your question if you only want to focus on the professionals...

What do you mean with "the paper has in some cases traced over 2/3rds of her text back to the work of others"? That she copied several sentences in a row literally from them? Or just that she used the same topics and arguments? That's a very different thing in my view.

This is what the article says: "In her last speech, XXX reproduces many more passages without a correct reference to the source, a total of 97 of the 166 lines have been gathered together with cut and paste. Of these, 57 are from the book The university in the twenty-first century by German historian Yehuda Elkana and political scientist Hannes Klöpper, from which XXX literally reads complete parts without making this clear. She does, however, recommend the book as a 'must read'. Even in the digital version, she does not indicate that she has copied text on a large scale." (97/166 = 58%)

@SolarMike: Avoiding plagiarism/intellectual dishonesty is a core part of traditional ethics in journalism. Even video game journalists have recently been fired for violations of such: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45128537

It seems the article raises concern mainly about not indicating that certain passages in speeches are copied verbatim from a source, even though the source itself is mentioned (but not that the passages are copied). However, this aspect isn't really mentioned in this question. You may want to explicitly include that if you're interested in that part.

@Discretelizard, that is not true. Citing the article: "[...] without mentioning the souce [...]", "Also in the digital version [...], she does not mention these sources", "During here academic and administrative career, spanning 30 years, she copies texts and citations multiple times, without clearly indicating these ideas are other's."

@Bram Yes, there certainly were cases where she didn't mention the source at all. The article gave me the impression that in the speeches, not mentioning verbatim copies was the most common problem. But that could be wrong. Regardless, this is a part where the situation may be less clear-cut than the case where sources are not mentioned at all, so I thought it could be relevant to include here. But if you do not think it is relevant, then that is up to you, it's your question, after all.

You cannot include citations in speeches; no-one in the audience would stay awake if you tried to do so. And footnotes would be impossible.
The essence of plagiarism is passing off someone else's work as your own. You avoid that in an academic paper by giving full citations. In a speech it is enough to make clear that you are not claiming originality. "As Smith has shown...". "Numerous studies support the view that..." and so forth.

Speeches, delivered orally, do not come with footnotes.  So I think calling "plagiarism" on them is being too strict.  If you later collect your speeches and publish them, then you may get in trouble for plagiarism (unless you add the appropriate footnotes).
This came up some years ago when there was published a collection of the sermons by Martin Luther King, Jr.

For legal compliance, any written document---e.g., technical reports; policy documents; and blogs, columns, and other more personal writings---must abide copyright law, which would seemingly forbid many instances of plagiarism, e.g., verbatim copying without attribution.

No, copyright law does not forbid plagiarism. They are two very distinct things. For instance, "please write an article for me; I'll legally buy it from you and publish it as my own" is plagiarism, but not copyright violation.

@FedericoPoloni I've rephrased. My point is that copyright law forbids theft. If you agree with my core idea (which I'm struggling to express), perhaps you can edit my answer.

There are also many people who object to calling that thing "theft". The best way to put it, even if it's a bit tautological, is that copyright law forbids copyright violations. :)

@FedericoPoloni ;-) I can't immediately see a way to tease out the details into a story, so I'll leave it for now. (Others can edit if they see a way.)


text:
Would it be okay to reapply to a Ph.D. program after getting a Master's Degree elsewhere?
Let’s say person A has been accepted to a Ph.D. program at Harvard, MIT and Princeton. In addition to this, he has been accepted for a one-year Master’s Degree at Oxford University. If he decides to pursue the Master’s Degree because he wants to spend a year abroad in Europe, can he reapply to the Ph.D. programs he turned down?
How would an admissions committee react to this, given that the very same applicant applies one year after having been accepted, but didn’t accept the original admissions offer?
Note, that there are very similar question on stackexchange already. But they didn't ask for the situation I have described above.

How an admissions committee would react would depend heavily on how the applicant explains the situation in their statement. "In the middle of his studies" suggests dropping out from the master's - or are you saying the applicant will be completing the masters and thus applying to the PhD? It will also further depend on how the reference letters speak of this, how the person actually performed during the masters, and whether or not the rest of the application improved or not (a year at a top institution with nothing to speak of or show for it isn't a great sign). Too many factors to predict.

Yes, he would be completing his masters by the start of the PhD. I just thought that they might be offended that he rejected their admission offer and reapplies right during the next year.

I've never been on an admissions committee, but my guess is that they are professionals who do not get offended because someone accepted another competitive offer. That said, I view admissions to top tier schools as stochastic after the first few round of cutoffs, i.e. even excellent students must be turned down simply because of the number of applicants. If this student's top choice really is one of H/M/P, I personally would just accept rather than risk re-applying. You can always live abroad in other ways—internships, postdocs, jobs, etc.—if you prioritize it.

Is this all hypothetical, because you are currently agonizing about whether to attend one of the U.S. schools vs. take the offer from Oxford?  Or are you currently in fact halfway through the Oxford program?

@aparente001 This is all hypothetical

Thanks for clarifying.  I fixed the edits.  Sorry I made such a mess of it, I had not understood your current vantage point.

I think you should ask the three schools in the U.S. that offered you a spot.  But don't tell them the reason you shared with us for why you want to go to Oxford for a master's.  Just say it's an exciting opportunity.
Ask whether you can defer your admission for a year or whether you should reapply.  If they say you should reapply, then do so.

Good point on asking for a deferral of admission. Whether they will grant it will depend a lot on the program, but for a strong applicant (for example, someone good enough to be accepted to Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Oxford) they may consider it.


text:
Are letters of recommendation usually meant to be tailored to a specific programme?
I am hoping to be applying for a PhD programme in the UK in the next few months. I have already asked the appropriate people if they would be up to writing me letters of recommendation and they responded positively and enthusiastically.
Now, I am not fully certain about the exact programmes I'll apply to. I have a few picked out but I'm also looking into a couple others - not really related to my original picks (think research in A vs. research in B by means of A.
Question: should my referees tailor their letters of recommendation to the specific programmes I'll be applying to, or is the convention usually for letters to be more destination-agnostic? Is it ok to ask a letter-writer to make the letter relevant to many degrees or asking for multiple separate letters is the usual practice?

This only addresses one of your questions, so I'll leave it as a comment. It's not unusual for referees to welcome input from applicants about what should be focused upon in a letter of recommendation. Of course, if you're going to need a few letters written then they may be less keen to create multiple bespoke ones as that is going to become a little time consuming

When you ask a professor formally for a recommendation, it is reasonable to list the institutions you are applying to.  Hopefully when you get to that point you will have narrowed things down enough that you can list 3 to 5 schools.  For your top priority schools, you can include, next to the name of the institution, a brief idea about the strength of the school, and which strength(s) of yours match up best.  You would be expressing your own opinion.  The professor would be free to use that information, or not.

When applying to a UK university nowadays, student normally fill out an online application where they will input their referees' email addresses/contact details.
The institution will then contact them automatically, usually via email, with some kind of form asking things like what percentile the students was in their class, give detail of their relationship with them, for how long etc. and sometimes a tick box 'would you recommend them for this course' question yes or no.
They would also be asked for qualitative data in the form of a letter of recommendation.  The could be free text or upload for a PDF or word doc (in my exp. it's always both).
However, in my experience, the prompt for the recommendation will have specific questions related to the course/area of research - eg comment on their ability to research such and such, do they have potential to research such and such.
So, your referees would likely be asked to provide some kind of course dependent information anyway.  Whether they copy and paste a reference from a previous letter, add a few lines to it or do a brand new one afresh is entirely up to them.
If you are applying for a PhD, I personally would expect you to have a fairly solid research topic and proposal in mind already.  Therefore, your references are likely to all need to support you in more or less the same capacity, and of course, you are the same person, so have similar references across different applications would be expected.
The only difference could be if you are applying for a specific project that is very different to PhD applications you have already made.  In which case, I would explain this to your referee and allow them to make up their mind as to whether they need to provide an extra bits to their ref doc for you.
Telling someone what to put in a reference is bad!  But explaining if there is a key difference would be helpful - perhaps make it clear when you request it at the outset.
Finally, remember that your profs can be trusted to give an accurate and appropriate reference for you - they after all receiving references for other students, so they know what is expected!
In sum:
Should my referees tailor their letters of recommendation to the specific programmes I'll be applying to, or is the convention usually for letters to be more destination-agnostic?
Leave it to your referee to decide, they will probably be asked context specific questions anyway, and the potential for variation is probably overstated.
Is it ok to ask a letter-writer to make the letter relevant to many degrees or asking for multiple separate letters is the usual practice?
If there is a genuine need, make it clear to the referee that there is a specific difference with or more applications that you are making.  Don't tell them what to say, but highlight the areas of difference.