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PhD in Europe without scholarship from non-European homeland
I earned my bachelors in Computer Engineering from my home country. I am now enrolled in a Physics masters program in the same university. Next year I plan to find a different university in Europe in which to enroll in a Computer Engineering PhD program.
However I doubt that I'll receive any scholarships from my homeland's government when studying abroad. Can I survive if I start to live out of my own my pocket? Is that enough to live in Europe just for a half year. Are there any available funds that can supplement my income such as a TA/RA's salary?
My main question is:

How to survive if I want to study PhD in Europe without any scholarship from my home country?
Which country might provide sufficient support for a foreigner to study at graduate level?

I am interested to Germany and Finland but any European country would be acceptable!

Related: What strategy to follow for getting a funded PhD position?

University systems vary quite wildly between European countries (even if they've been converging during the last few years), as do standards of living.

@finitud just tell me a story of any country you have an experience. That's enough.

"Can I survive if I start to live with my pocket money?" Doesn't that mostly depend on how much "pocket money" you have available?

For some general info on PhDs in Europe see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23584/how-does-one-go-about-doing-a-ph-d-in-europe-as-an-american

I only know the situation in Germany:
In order to get a visa, you are required to show that you can fund your PhD study. Either by scholarship, salary, or your personal means.
Usually, at least in CS, PhD students are employees of the university. You don't sign a contract that you are going to do a PhD, instead, you sign a contract that you will work for the university, "and you will be supported for doing a PhD". Your salary will be more than enough to support yourself (and thus for visa regulations).
However, it is also possible to do an external PhD. In this case you will not be an employee, rather a PhD student. What you need would be to find a professor who is willing to advise your work. In this case, you might get some scholarship from institutions like DAAD.

I would like to emphasize reaching out the the DAAD (I am not affiliated with them). My experience was that they are quite eager to fund foreign students of all levels.

There are a few exceptions to what gefei wrote. Some universities or institutes offer graduate schools, where students are funded by the school, rather than  being employed by the university. They use a formal application proceedure to select students, who will then also be supported with invitation letters for Visa, etc. - so they are quite international. For CS, I know of two such examples in the German-speaking part of Europe: The Saarland University Graduate school of CS, and the IST Austria.

@CuriousCat How do you contact an university to ask them to work in their university to fund a PhD?

In Norway, and I believe in other Scandinavian countries, a PhD student is considered as a university employee. The salary is more than enough for you to support yourself, and even your family if you have one. In the UK, a PhD studentship is usually restricted only to UK and EU nationals.

How about in Germany or Finland?

@terces907 I don't know about Germany or Finland, unfortunately.

In Finland a PhD student is a university employee but whether the university will pay you with its own funds or you need to bring money yourself (with overcosts, perhaps up to 100%) depends on the specific case. The best bet anyway is contacting a professor/group leader that you're interested in working with (and who is willing to accept you) and from there explore possible funding solutions. For reference, the price of everything is outrageous compared to virtually any country in the world.

In Spain, enrolling in the PhD programme and getting funding are two independent processes (then there might be visa issues which I do not know about). I am going to tell you about my experience a few years ago (roughly 2005-2010).
Tuition fees for PhD are usually low, and any kind of financial support you can find will usually cover them.
In order to receive funding, you usually need to be enrolled, or at least admitted, in a PhD program, with an advisor and a strong research proposal. The typical PhD fellowship/contract used to be around 1000 euros per month, during a maximum of 4 years. This was just enough to live in Madrid, and a decent salary in many small towns. Both salaries and flat rents have gone down in the last few years, although other costs of living have been going up, but it's a good first estimate of how much money you will need. Sadly, with the crisis, the research budgets have been slashed and it's even more difficult to find financial support than it already was.
Cost of living can vary wildly even between Spanish cities, with Madrid and Barcelona among the most expensive, and smaller towns such as Oviedo or Granada much more affordable.
All in all, while Spain is probably not the best bet in terms of receiving financial support for research at the moment, it does have lower costs of living than other European countries. Since I don't know where you're at the moment, I can't compare how much your money will stretch in comparison.

Cost of living in european countries is extremely variable. E.g. being a student in Kiel, Germany, I was able to live for 500€ per month, living in comfortable single room in 2-3 rooms flat, and eating/drinking outside quite often. A friend of mine is doing her phd in Oulu, Finland. A salary is about 4 times higher, but it is all wasted for living costs. Every country has their own rules for medical insurance and taxes and so on, in some countries it can be very expensive.
My way would be seeking for a funded position, and based on contract decide whether you can live there for such money or not.
I would not recommend Spain for finding a position because you will get into troubles for getting work permit as you are not EU citizen.
Also, according to my own experience, EU countries usually give very limited work permits for PhD students, so funding your studies from other work in EU might be really an issue.

First of all it would be extremely helpful if you could provide some information about your homeland.
I'll give a general case of steps that you could do, and then a more specific case for Germany.
In general there are different possibilities to get funding for studies in EU.

Your government provides scholarships for studies in certain countries
The embassy/government of the country which you want to do your studies provides scholarships for foreign students
Some 3rd party organization (European Union, European Council, NGO etc)
The university itself has a scholarship program for foreign students

So basically what you will have to do, is visit the websites of the entities which I have listed above, and try to find the scholarships.
In the case of Germany that would be

(This is related to your government)
German Embassy in your country / DAAD
Erasmus plus / Erasmus mundus / programme
International office of your target univerisity

In general, do not hesitate to contact all the stakeholders (people etc.), that could provide you useful information; Also contact the Professor of the group that you would like to work your Phd at. They always have something in their hand.
The last and most obvious solution is getting a job. In the case of Germany as a student you are allowed to work up to 20 hours per week. If the living costs are not very expensive you can survive easily with that money. If you assume that you will be payed at least 9,5 euros per hour (this is really low), so you have the chance to go up to 13 euros per hour.
If you earn up to 450 euros per month, you don't have to pay taxes in Germany, anything more than that is subject to taxing.
Finally, in order to get the student visa in Germany you need to have 8000 eu in Bank upfront, or a documentation which confirms that you have the required funding to have at least 650 eu per month for living costs. 650 is the living cost calculated by the German government.
Have a look at this sites as well:
http://www.phdportal.eu/

As a Ph.D. student in (continental) Europe, you are an employee of the university (or other institution), and so you earn a salary. "Scholarships" are only for undergraduate and Master's students. Normally, the salary will be mentioned in the job postings you apply to (here's a typical one), this answers your question 1.
As for 2, the level of funding varies between positions, depending on available funding at the insitution, etc. This is not country-dependent.

Anyway, no tuition fee or cheap tuition fee university also help me right? Could you recommend me some of them?

@terces907 We don't allow "shopping" for universities here (see this meta post for more details)

Not completely true. In some countries/disciplines, it's still relatively common to do a PhD without funding (although not in CS, I think). Furthermore many people do a PhD using money from their home country. You might call it a grant instead of a scholarship but the important thing is that those people come with their own money instead of applying for some pre-existing job. Even if there might be further differences between universities in the same country, all this is very much country-dependent.


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Where in academia are HEA fellowships valued?
https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/fellowship#categories
Apparently these fellowships are popular in the UK?  What sorts of universities care about them?  And why?

what do you mean by care? Do you mean if it matters for an applicant to have it?

I would still be interested in a non-UK answer.

The HEA is a UK institution. It seems unlikely that non-UK universities will be interested in it? (unless there's a system of equivalent teaching qualifications in place)

(Nearly) all UK universities want to signal that they take teaching seriously, both for student recruitment and for the TEF, for the obvious financial reasons.
For this reason new faculty are typically required to undergo training to reach a qualification that either leads to an HEA fellowship or is equivalent to it. Thus HEA fellowships are the national standard for teaching. Typically new faculty are exempt from these training courses if they have an HEA fellowship.
Anecdotally various people within my own institution have said that the push to get more faculty accredited with HEA fellowships was important for an improvement in our TEF ranking. There continues to be a big push to get more existing faculty to do the paperwork for HEA fellowship, although I do not believe it is a requirement (or even mentioned as desirable) for job applications for the majority of posts.

From my very limited experience, I would say universities that participate in TEF would care about having academic staff with HEA fellowships (and there are many levels of fellowship). In my view, getting one will only work in your advantage. For what it is worth, I have been asked about having/willing to get the accreditation during job interviews, so I assume the universities (Russel Group) definitely care. I've also been told that having/on track to getting one will look good for annual review (it counts toward part of your personal development). Finally, getting a fellowship (above the Associate Fellow level) entitles you to add FHEA after your name. I personally find the process very rewarding, as it really forces you to reflect critically on how you teach (not just what you teach). As most PhD programmes don't teach you how to teach, going through the trouble of getting a fellowship provides that opportunity to be trained.

Could you add "where" to your answer?

Most universities in the UK get the majority of their income from undergraduate and postgraduate taught students. Even in a research intensive university most research and teaching (R&T) staff spend more time on teaching than on research. It therefore pays to be able to signal that you value teaching. One way to do that is to say that all/x% of your staff are qualified up to a certain level. As others have pointed out such statistics may affect a university's TEF score, but universities were trying to get everyone qualified well before TEF.
If you are applying for a R&T job at a research intensive university, already having AFHEA, FHEA or SFHEA is unlikely to be the decisive factor in hiring, although it can't hurt. As @DanielHatton pointed out, almost all universities will require R&T staff to gain FHEA or equivalent within the first 3 years on the job as a condition of passing probation.
However, if you are applying for a teaching focused position at a research intensive university, OR any position at a teaching focused university, being qualified might well improve your chances of getting the job significantly.
I guess even non-UK universities might care about it as a signifier of a serious commitment to teaching if you were applying for a primarily teaching focused position.

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is it good for academic path if I publish too many papers in arxiv
Currently, I am a PhD student from material science and I wish to become a TT professor in the future. When submitting papers, we see an option to submit it in arxiv and it seems to me that the acceptance to the arxiv would probably be much faster than usual journal. I want to ask if publishing articles in arxiv instead of usual journals would make my career less promising or not.... thank you:)

No, you shouldn't just submit to the arXiv instead of journals.
Articles in the arXiv are not considered published in the traditional sense, and they are not peer reviewed.  In fields that use the arXiv, papers are typically submitted there and to a journal (but you can do this only if the journal's policies permit it, so you should check if you aren't sure).  The role of the arXiv is then to provide access to preprints before publication and "green open access" to published papers.
You don't have to submit an arXiv paper for publication, and occasionally people use it to distribute papers they don't intend to publish (and for which they aren't looking for publication credit).  But you should be careful to avoid getting a reputation for putting mediocre papers on the arXiv.
There have been a few high-profile cases of great arXiv papers that were never published, like Perelman's work on the Poincaré conjecture.  However, you can't get away with that when starting an academic career (unless you are revolutionizing your field).  If you just submit papers to the arXiv and not to journals or conferences, it will destroy your career.  They will count for far less than published papers, and search committees will wonder about all sorts of explanations.  Are you profoundly eccentric?  Do you have no idea how academic careers work?  Are your papers just not good enough for journals?  Is there something you are hoping nobody finds out via peer review (e.g., that you plagiarized or rediscovered something already known)?  Basically, everyone will make uncharitable negative assumptions, in addition to considering the papers themselves as worth less.
The question you've asked is a perfectly reasonable thing to wonder about, but I find it a little alarming that you've basically proposed career suicide with no indication that your advisor has warned you.  This suggests that talking with your advisor more about career issues could be helpful, or attempting to find another mentor if your advisor is not so helpful.  Academic career paths can be narrow and demanding, and good advice is essential.

Actually, I haven't discussed with my advisor yet:) I just ponder about this and ask it here:) Thank you so much for alarming.

Career suicide is a bit overstated. In theoretical high energy physics (string theory in particular), the pace of progress is so much faster than the journal acceptance delay. Many times, the preprint will have been cited by other preprints many times before the journal version appears in print. Citation counts from arXiv is a pretty good proxy for quality. People are getting postdocs based on that.

@TemplateRex: You're right that it's perhaps stated a little too strongly, but I think not submitting the papers to journals would have really negative consequences in the long run.  You might get a postdoc position without anyone even noticing, thanks to the publication delay, but tenure-track search committees or tenure committees would be upset if no journal papers ever appeared.  Maybe this depends on the field, but certainly in mathematics only really remarkable candidates could have any confidence in being able to get away with this.

Submitting a paper to arXiv.org is not equivalent to publishing.  There is no peer-review process and no acceptance (well, apart from a lax moderation policy).
The arXiv is a preprint server.  It is not good practice to upload documents that you do not intend to submit (at least in my research area).
It will look rather suspicious if you have only a string of arXiv papers in your CV that have not been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal of good standing.

As the other posters have suggested, you should not rely exclusively on arXiv uploads as "publications."
However, if I understood your question correctly, the arXiv "option" is not an option to publish instead of, but rather in addition to, your submission. In effect, many journals allow you to upload to public repositories like arXiv while simultaneously submitting the article for consideration to the journal. For example, all of the APS and AIP journals allow for this option. This allows you to reach readers who may be interested in your journal but who do not have access to those journals for whatever reason. This can be a very effective strategy for maximizing "views" of your article.

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Double major in Physics and engineering for career safety
I am an Indian undergraduate student completing my BTech in Industrial Engineering in one of top three universities in India. I am planning to move on to physics for graduate school and I have a proper profile for it with research projects and internships in physics. I am confident I would get accepted to a good graduate program for physics, probably in the United States.
After browsing through the forums I found, it appears that a masters or PhD in physics is not a very lucrative option in terms of career. I in fact read that people are still in search of jobs after their PhD for three or four years. I also heard engineers have significantly greater career security after their graduation. So I am considering a double major in Physics as well as in Engineering to increase my future job prospects. I am determined focus on Physics in my masters program so it seems I should either to major in Physics and minor in Engineering or major in both. My primary job preference would be in the field of Physics academia, but wouldn't mind shifting to other areas.
What is the best choice of undergraduate major/minors to provide me the best career prospects?

It sounds like you've already thought this through on your own. What are you hoping we will tell you that you don't already know?

my question -  would double majoring in physics and engineering make me secure in terms of career ?

There is no degree, whether single or double major, that can guarantee a career. So nobody on this site (or any other) can assure you of career security, and if someone does, don't believe them.

You might consider an engineering specialization which leverages your physics background. This may be more practical with respect to prerequisites and learning curves.

At least in Europe, and probably in the US too, physicists are highly considered in industry, the unemployment rate is almost a technical zero. Doing research is another different beast: there are not so many positions, and you have to fight for them. Also, Academia not a very lucrative career path: a first job for a physicist or an engineer in industry may grant them 3-4 times more than in grad school (depending on the conditions), and it continues onwards.
I see you are eager to study both degrees, which is commendable, knowledge never hurts. What you need to consider is the costs, both economical (can you afford the university?) and in effort (can you really do both degrees at the same time?). Both degrees are difficult, and will take a great emotional toll.
Some universities offer double degrees, where you end having both titles, and the subjects are (hopefully) sorted and arranged in the most convenient way for the student. For example, in Physics and Maths you need linear algebra; in a double degree you would only take the courses from Maths, as the ones in Physics are a subset. If the university does not have this arrangement, you may find yourself doing the same subjects twice, that may lead to added frustration.
Another cost are the grades: doing two things means you cannot do them both so well. Some admission put hard thresholds on the grades, and they may or may not consider your second degree as a sufficient merit to lower it. On the other hand, and provided the grades are not very damaged, almost any employer will see it as a great CV boost and will make it easier to get an industrial job.
As a last advice: if you go for it, be aware of your limits and ready to drop one of them if things get difficult before it brings you down. A degree and a half is a merit, two three-quarter degrees are two failures.

I have heard that it is challenging to find academia jobs in physics in the US. However, industry may be very different. Financial firms, scientific modeling, consulting, and tech companies are very open to hiring physics grads. Having the degree shows that you're intelligent and can think critically, though you wouldn't necessarily be working on physics projects. Having another degree in engineering or cs would only help.

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Graduate school applications: Should your answers be exhaustive or selective?
Should you see graduate schol application questions as opportunities to provide relevant positive information about yourself, or as fiats to list absolutely everything in a category of your experience?
For example, here are a few questions from Harvard's GSAS application (I don't know what, if any, general instructions are given--such as whether it says "Provide complete answers to each question" or "Please provide the following information"):

Academic Honors/Fellowships
List any articles, books, and other material published, and any    inventions.
Other universities (Program/Department) to which applying
Employment experience (including part-time) since secondary school

With some of these (#1, #2) it seems easy to believe one could choose which examples to report. That is, you wouldn't be ethically obliged to list that you once published a crossword puzzle in your town's local paper, or that you won the Latin prize in high school, even if both are true. Instead, it seems reasonable one would list the honors and publications providing the best evidence of one's qualification for the program.
By contrast, some of these (#3 and the submission of transcripts, for example) would seem to suggest that a thoroughgoing answer is expected. Others (#4) are in a gray area--it's not clear to me which approach should be taken.
There is usually a statement at the end of the application where you must affirm that your responses are "complete and accurate." However, I don't really understand what this means in light of the nuances above, and in the absence of clearer specifications. Please help!

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5446/phd-application-asking-what-other-insitution-i-am-applying-to-how-to-answer

Should you see graduate schol application questions as opportunities
  to provide relevant positive information about yourself, or as fiats
  to list absolutely everything in a category of your experience?

From reading some other posts of yours, I am aware you are finding it quite tedious to fill out your applications.  Therefore, for you at least, it is easy to choose the right option:
opportunities to provide relevant positive information about yourself
Your motto should be
" Get 'er done."

Good answer, but I would worry very much about (accidentally) running afoul of ethics.

@SAH - What's unethical about neglecting to mention the wonderful job you did in an internship when you were 19 years old (for example)?  If there's something specific you would prefer to leave out of the application, but are unsure about the ethics of, please be more specific.

The unethical part would come at the signing to affirm "completeness and accuracy," I guess :(

@SAH - What they mean by that is that you shouldn't omit mention of the biggies in your academic autobiography, such as a college or university you were enrolled in.


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What if you love your field but can't take the heat of academia?
Imagine "a person" who may or may not be brilliant in her field, but certainly has new things to contribute, some of them (in her opinion) fascinating.
Imagine she adores her field, relates to it spiritually, and has been convinced for years that her life purpose is to do this research. She cannot imagine spending her time on this planet in any other way.
Of course, she has poured hours into it already, devoting her undergraduate career and much of her personal time to her area of interest. But she knows that it takes years of full-time commitment, study, and mentorship to become an expert in a field and to become qualified to break ground in a specific area.
But suppose it is not in her nature, nor particularly within her abilities, to meet the demands of today's academic culture. She is absent-minded and spacey; she is idealistic; she is in certain ways immature. She crumbles easily under stress and is psychologically vulnerable. She has difficulty making time for everything even without the demands of a graduate or postgraduate workload. She hates filling out forms and (especially) soliciting recommendations, even though her kind and charitable professors are always eager to write for her.
Please answer one or both of these questions:
A.
Should the person in my example "go into academe"--that is, should she go to graduate school for an academic PhD? If not, what should she do?
B.
Does the "absent-minded professor" exist anymore, and if so, how do/did they get through the hurdles?

She is absent-minded and spacey; [...] she is in certain ways immature. She crumbles easily under stress and is psychologically vulnerable For which other career do you believe this is not a problem?

@CapeCode Good point. It's a problem for everything, I suppose.

She crumbles easily under stress and is psychologically vulnerable. — I recommend therapy.

@JeffE not everything in life needs to be solved with therapy, or a lawsuit.

@CapeCode No, of course not.  But "crumbles easily under stress and is psychologically vulnerable" are not words one normally uses to describe healthy adults.  There is no shame or selfishness in seeking professional help for mental health issues; that's what therapists are for.

@CapeCode: Not everything by far, but severe anxiety issues frequently can be, if not solved, then assuaged by therapy. Even if a psychiatrist merely verifies that you're ill, it still can be rather helpful (or so I'm told).

the days of becoming an academic purely for the love of knowledge and the joy of discovering and transmitting knowledge, those days are over. the academic nowadays must be an entrepreneur able to do effective self-promotion, to manage underlings, and to generate their own grant funding. it doesn't matter how good one is, technically, in their field nor even how good they are teaching. there is a glut of PhDs out there in practically every field, all with starry eyes and hopes to be a professor. even the least prestigious schools will choose someone who looks good over someone who doesn't.

@robertbristow-johnson Then I guess the Academy has disappeared.

no, like everything else in the world, it ain't what it used to be.  the world (including the academe) is more about self-service and self-image than it used to be.

The world (and in particular academia) has never been "what it used to be". The shining city of Academia Pura has always been a myth, except for a rare privileged few.

@Cape Code It's worse for graduate students than it is for working professionals because graduate school is all-or-nothing. If you fail out after 5 years of graduate school, those 5 years basically go to waste. If you get fired after 5 years of working a job, then you at least have those 5 years of salary. The fact that grad school is all-or-nothing adds another level of stress.

@CapeCode Those sound like very desirable traits for the reality TV star profession.  But, otherwise, yeah, those things tend to be problematic in all situations.

@zibadawatimmy Good at least to hear there is another profession that would take me if the PhD thing doesn't work out

I do not have any answers with regard to academia, but your friend sounds like she has ADD, definitely should get checked. It's treatable. Don't let her go through life with that without her knowing, ADD is serious and terrible.

I think the heart of this question comes to what this hypothetical person actually wants when it comes to "doing research."  This could mean a lot of different things, but when I hear people speak vaguely in this manner, the notions often roughly categorize into three clusters:

Exploring ideas relating to a field of knowledge: To explore ideas and communicate about them a person can readily participate as an amateur, working at whatever level of intensity and engagement makes most sense.  There's nothing wrong with engaging on this level, and it can actually be quite important, especially when it comes to communication of scientific ideas (e.g., many science journalists can be considered to engage with research in this way).
Doing work that supports the advancement of knowledge: One can do work that supports research without actually signing up for the full primary investigator load.  Lab technicians, amateur astronomers, and industrial researchers are all people who "get things done" that directly contribute to research and the advancement of knowledge, yet rarely or never need face the challenges associated with publication and funding.  The bigger the research project, the more space there is for people of this sort: most of the people working on the Large Hadron Collider, for example, probably fall into this category.  Depending on the particulars, contributions might require no formal education at all anywhere up to a doctorate and postdoc specialization.
Organizing and leading investigations that advance knowledge: Leading research as a primary investigator is where the serious "heat" comes in, and where a doctorate is definitely required. Here one needs to have not only the technical training but also to be able to deal with strong criticism of one's ideas and to be well organized and capable of communicating scientifically.  Note, however, that "dealing with criticism" should not mean putting up with verbal abuse and ad hominem attacks.

Now, relating this to your hypothetical person.  The two key warning flags that I see in your statement are "crumbles easily under stress and is psychologically vulnerable" and "difficulty making time for everything."

If "difficulty making time" means the person cannot really commit to things, then only amateur work is likely to be a good path.
If "crumbles easily" means "cannot handle people challenging ideas", then leading investigations is definitely out, and any sort of doctoral program is likely problematic.  On the other hand, if it means "is easily hurt by verbal abuse" then graduate school is entirely possible---it would just be important to find a good advisor match and some sort of supportive personal network.

Thank you. I wonder how this all would translate into humanities disciplines. Let's say my great love is Chaucer. I know Chaucer front and back; all my time goes to Chaucer. My goal in life is to learn everything there is to know about Chaucer. Additionally, I think I have a new way of reading Chaucer. So I suppose I want to "lead my own investigation" in a sense. How do I do that? Can I?

@SAH Loving Chaucer, learning everything you can about Chaucer, and even reading Chaucer in a different way is not the same as leading scholarly research on Chaucer---everything you described is the first "exploring ideas" category.  Scholarly research on the subject is more like these references you might find on Google Scholar, which dig deeply into the relationship of the Canterbury Tales to other aspects of the era, development of ideas, or the human experiences in general.

Humanities scholarship need not be about the things you mentioned (although it often is). Reading texts themselves is a huge part of what humanitarians do. (Just see page 2 of your link!)

@SAH Not sure what you mean by "reading texts themselves"---typically "a reading" is actually an examination and interpretation of a text in service of some goal, even if that goal simply be to construct an experience for the modern reader that is equivalent of what contemporaries would have had.

The goal may be to see how the text is working, how it achieves its ends, how it is using language, how it establishes its internal order, and so on. Much of this requires language and philological expertise as well as training in the skills of reading. ..Not trying to suggest I'm not interested in the other goals of humanities scholarship, too, but I realize I have to pay my dues in order to get there.

is there any benefit to engage with the first level? Of course besides the satisfactory of gaining more knowledge

@Ooker Yes, there can be many practical benefits as well.  But is not satisfaction enough?

@jakebeal can you name some benefits? I guess money is not one.

@Ooker  A few of (many) examples: you can make a career out of it in science journalism or publishing.  You can get a comet named after yourself as an amateur astronomer. You can improve your parenting of your children by being better able to find good advice and ignore bad advice. You can participate politically in a better informed way and improve the community in which you live.  There's really no end of ways in which amateur engagement with science might be of value to a person, depending on their individual mix of goals, desires, and circumstances.

@jakebeal that's what I'm looking for. I think you can embed that into your answer

There's a third path possible here.  As an example -- I know a guy with a PhD in linguistics, who did his research on an obscure aspect of an obscure language.  He found it very satisfying.  But after graduating, he got a job as a database manager at a university.  I was surprised to hear that he likes the job!
Another example -- how many people went to school for music or dance, but ended up working in something either slightly or completely different?
Please don't feel that you have to work in the field that you pursue your studies in.
On the other hand, if you find that the academic environment is a mismatch for you, to such an extent that it makes you unhappy (despite the intellectual satisfactions it brings) -- then please first take care of yourself by getting yourself out of a destructive environment.

Before anyone becomes an "absent-minded" professor, they have to pass certain stages, including PhD, (several) postdocs, assistant professor role, associate professor and then full professor. The responsibilities, demands and dynamics in these roles is very different. Many people find it hard to cope with pressures and demands in competitive academic environment; many people really struggle to adjust when it comes to transition between roles.
For a person you described, I see no reason why she could not have the same difficulties as many people in academia have.
On the other hand, for someone "idealistic" and "slightly immature", academia is probably a better place than a position in competitive industry or business. Many academics are (to some extent) disorganised, many academics don't like doing their paperwork, many are idealistic or shy or introvert. However, despite these personal quirks, they managed to do some important contribution to the knowledge in their fields and convinced their colleagues and their universities that they deserve a place in academia.
Maybe to answer your question, you need to assess the ability of this person to "do the job", including research (can she write a paper and get it published), teaching (will she prepare for her class and show in time for it), and knowledge dissemination (can she explain the results to colleagues in conference). I think it can be in fact more important, that the personal features you described.

i don't think Freeman Dyson ever got an earned PhD.  (maybe some school by now gave him an honorary doctorate, just before he gave a commencement address.)

@robertbristow-johnson I don't think Isaac Newton has got PhD either. And Galileo Galilei has not got any degrees. But times are different now, aren't they?

yes they are Dmitry.  in some ways for the better.

Should the person under question "go into academe"? Let us preserve the (probably-fictive-here :-) use of the third person and refer to our subject as the PUQ. The question as asked presents a 3-relation between

the PUQ (a bundle of abilities and preferences)
a "field" (implicitly presented as a bundle of conceptual content and interests)
a role (called "academic," implicitly tenure-track but presently post-/graduate) "contributing to" or "participating in" that field

The dilemma as given is that the PUQ is strongly conceptually aligned with the field (pun intended :-) but strongly behaviorally misaligned with the academic role within that field. Yet the question as presented is merely, should the PUQ adopt that role?
ISTM the analysis provided ignores a dimension of the field which is strongly relevant for optimizing PUQ-role (and -life) outcomes: what is the resource-intensity of the field? Notably, does contributing to the field tend to require significant external resources, as with (e.g.) most computational or experimental physical science, or heavily-archival social science? Or not, as with (e.g.) much of humanities and mathematics?[1]
If the field is resource-intensive, the PUQ might seek a non-academic or non-TT-academic role within an organization able to provide the necessary resources. E.g.,

Find someone who is

researching in the domain
needs additional staff
can "make it rain" sufficiently to pay her bills

Work for them. She may need to volunteer for them first.

The role-containing organization will hopefully also provide sufficient personal income. If not, this role may require (as, increasingly, may the academic role) reducing personal expenses and (on conventional measures) standard-of-living.
If the field is not resource-intensive, the PUQ might seek the role of independent contributor, by

Working as little as possible at one or more temporary or permanent "gigs" used to "pay for the passion."
Fundraising to {add to earnings, create more spare time, fund contribution}.
Contributing (e.g., researching, publishing) "in spare time."

[1]: Note that resource-intensity is obviously a continuous dimension, not a discrete one. The binary analysis is presented here simply for brevity; extension for continuity is left as an exercise for the reader :-)

Imagine "a person" who may or may not be brilliant in her field, but certainly has new things to contribute, some of them (in her opinion) fascinating. Imagine she adores her field, relates to it spiritually, and has been convinced for years that her life purpose is to do this research. She cannot imagine spending her time on this planet in any other way.

This sounds like someone who is passionate about research.

Of course, she has poured hours into it already, devoting her undergraduate career and much of her personal time to her area of interest. But she is wise enough to know that it takes years of full-time commitment, study, and mentorship to become an expert in a field and to become qualified to break new ground in a specific area.

This sounds like someone who has already committed significantly, and who is fully aware of the long and arduous road ahead.

But suppose it is not in her nature, nor particularly within her abilities, to meet the demands of today's academic culture.

This would require some elaboration. But I sense a bit of an idealization of what professors are (see below).

She is absent-minded and spacey; she is idealistic; she is in certain ways immature. She crumbles easily under stress and is psychologically vulnerable. She has difficulty making time for everything even without the demands of a graduate or postgraduate workload.

I want to be cautious about interpreting this one. But it sounds like your typical overworked young college student.

She hates filling out forms and (especially) soliciting recommendations, even though her kind and charitable professors are always eager to write for her.

This sounds like someone who already has a good rapport with her instructors, and whom such instructors have a high opinion of.
Am I too off the mark so far?
To your questions:

Should the person in my example "go into academe"--that is, should she go to graduate school for an academic PhD?

Sounds like she might enjoy it very much.

Does the "absent-minded professor" exist anymore, and if so, how do/did they get through the hurdles?

I've gone to school wearing mismatched shoes; would that qualify?
Academics are people. Many, but not all, are very capable in and passionate about what they do. But without exception, they all have weaknesses, they all question themselves from time to time, and they all have had their confidence shaken in the face of adversity and/or criticism at some point.

If she were my constituent
We all only get 1 life to live - the most intelligent of us have a duty to our fellow man not to waste that time focusing our energies on anything other than solutions to life's big problems. In the words of Horace Mann:
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
If she were my friend
We only get 1 life to live - and we have a duty to ourselves to spend that time in accordance with our own beliefs. In the words of Vincent Van Gogh: “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.”

I love your answer. But do you have any tips on how to make this work against all odds of success in the 'biz?

P.S. I'm sorry but the jury is out about whether VvG spent his life well...

I'm sorry - I only know of the problem, not to solution :P

has been convinced for years that her life purpose is to do this research. She cannot imagine spending her time on this planet in any other way.
But she can imagine doing this research outside of academia? And if so, can it be done so it still has the same or better impact? Can the results of the research for instance be packaged as books aimed at a large audience, rather than articles in specialised journals? Can she support herself (and dependants) following this road less taken?

And does research in this area require an expensive lab?

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


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Should I ask a letter of recommendation from a prof who I rarely see?
I'm applying to grad school this fall for math PhD programs and I need to figure out who to ask for letters of rec. I'm doing a summer reading course which is technically under a professor, but since he is really busy it's actually under a grad student. I've seen the professor only once or twice for paperwork, but I mainly work with the grad student. At the end of the course, should I ask the grad student to write about me and give it to the professor for him to write me a letter of rec? Or is this a bad idea?

You really should only ask for letters from professors who can write a strong letter. So when you ask, word it that way: "Would you feel comfortable writing a strong letter of recommendation for me?"


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Background section for research statement
It is my understanding that the main sections in a research statement should address the following three main points: 1) research interests and skills; 2) past (and present, if any) research; 3) agenda for the future research. However, when I sat to write my research statement today, I started with a background section, where I briefly (half of a page) described how I have developed an interest for research and science from my high school years till Ph.D. program period. I think that it is a natural way to set the stage for the further discussion, which also allows for a smooth transition to my "Past Research" section, where I describe my dissertation research.
Question: does the background section make sense and is it beneficial to use such structure?
Note. In addition to "Background" and "Past Research", my research statement also contains "Present Research" and "Future Research" sections. Since currently (after recent graduation) I am busy performing a job search for postdoctoral and junior faculty positions, I just noted that in the "Present Research" section, adding that I am also doing preliminary planning of converting my dissertation into several research papers or book chapter as well as converting corresponding software into R packages. The total length of my research statement as of now is 2.5 pages (without references).

No, I don't think this is a good idea.
A similar issue arises with the "statement of purpose" essay for grad school applications: students often want to include stories about early experiences that were influential in their education.  But there seems to be a consensus among academics who actually read those applications that this is not helpful.  See for example this answer by aeismail.
So if this sort of thing would be unhelpful for a statement of purpose (which is intended to contain at least some amount of introspection) that goes double for a research statement (which really is not).
The people reading your research statement are trying to evaluate your potential to be a successful researcher.  They want to know:

what you work on
evidence that it is a worthwhile field (publishable, interesting to other researchers, likely to attract funding support, etc)
your research accomplishments to date
what you plan to do in the present and future
why they should believe your plan is likely to be successful.

Stories about how you got to where you are don't really add to any of these points, and I don't see how they are likely to convince someone of your potential to be a successful researcher now.  Maybe if you were conducting high-quality, publishable research as a high school student, and it has some connection to your current research program, you could mention it.  But even that is weak evidence at best: everyone in academia knows of young prodigies who went on to do nothing of note.  Who you were and what you did 10 years ago is irrelevant; concentrate on who you are and what you are doing now.
It is reasonable to have a "Background" section in a research statement.  But it should give background on your research, not on you.

Good advice - much appreciated (+1). Actually, just moments ago I thought about writing a comment that I realized that it is not a good idea. I realized that just by reading the statement again and looking at it from a reader's perspective. However, your answer contains many substantial points on why it is not a good idea. I guess, that initial revision was influenced remembering myself writing graduate school admission essays, where such background is indeed appropriate.

+1 I should add that adding the fluffy "How I became interested in research" section is arguably much, much more destructive in a faculty or postdoc application than in a grad student application, as one expects senior researchers to really know better.


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How did Academia create and/or solve the chicken-and-egg problem of having a PhD?
I've seen several English translations for "PhD", but seems to me that it did not originate from England.  Who introduced the term, what did it originally stand for and where did it originate from?  I'm curious where anyone has traced out this history.

You can find links to relevant information in my answer on this site.

Term Ph.D. is an abbreviation from Philosophy Doctor (also referred to as doctor of philosophy), an English language variant of the Latin phrase Doctor Philosophiae. Historically, the linguistic roots of the title can be traced back to early meaning of modern English language words doctor and philosophy. The former comes from Latin word for (license to) teach (see this Wikipedia article), while the former comes from Greek phrase for "love of wisdom", implying general knowledge acquisition. While I am not aware of who introduced the term "doctor of philosophy" (and, most likely, it cannot be proved accurately), if I can make an uneducated guess, it most likely has been introduced some time in medieval Europe. Interesting additional linguistic and historical support of the above-mentioned information can be found in this related discussion on StackExchange.

Interesting linguistic side note: In Denmark, the degree is also called a PhD (or sometimes "ph.d.") but it is not actually an acronym in Danish. So, someone who has a PhD is not a "doctor," they're just a "PhD graduate."

@Thomas: Thank you for the note. While the ancient meaning of the word doctor is still implied, it seems that some languages have interesting ways of assimilating and using certain foreign words and phrases.

Thank you.  Part of the impetus to my question was to bring to mind how the first PhD could come about, since it could not be conferred by a pre-existing PhD.

@TheDoctor: You're welcome. Chicken and egg problem? I think that you're over-complicating things. In reality, I think that it could have happened as simple as follows. Some respected smart and knowledgeable people (scholars) got together and said: "People! Why great noble warriors have a title that distinguishes them from others and we, scholars, don't. Let's create a title to recognize mastery in scholarly subjects and call it doctor of philosophy". Most likely, it hasn't been a single gathering, but after a number of them and, perhaps, some debate, a consensus has been reached. :-)

@AleksandrBlekh:  THAT was the exact concept I was looking for (chicken-and-egg), even if quite suboptimal and sophomoric -- yet I cannot seem to create another.  I have re-worded the title.

In the older English universities there had been for hundreds of years the senior doctoral degrees (Doctor of Science, Doctor of Letters, etc) that were broadly equivalent to habilitation in the universities of continental Europe. They were awarded in recognition of a very great mass of work, much more than a mere PhD dissertation. The holders of those degrees did not, in their opinion, NEED PhD degrees to decide to confer them on other people. When I was a post-graduate student at Cambridge 50 years ago there was a certain inverted snobbery amongst some of the teachers: I was taught Galois theory by Mr X FRS. Presumably he did not feel the need to prove himself by bothering with any postgraduate degree, and what is more, his senior colleagues presumably thought he did not need to do so either.

Possibly interruption to academic path due to WW2? (Frank Bonsall never received a PhD, if I recall correctly)

In the particular case that was not so. He was not the only such teacher at that time.


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What makes the title "PhD" valid?
What are the criteria for a PhD?  Is it mastery in a discipline? (But, then, what is a "Masters" degree?)
If one claims to have a PhD without an issuing institution, can that title be defended as legitimate?
This issue could be relevant in issues of employment (where an applicant has listed a PhD) and to challenge institutionalized PhDs to defend their position amidst a culture that is completely awash in questionable philosophy.
In other words, this is not a criticism of the University as a pedagogical concept.  It is a critique of current incumbents.
[Note:  This question was/is, practically, censored previously.]
[Edit:  Some people claimed that one can't decide what terms mean -- like "PhD", but then, this just pushes the question further: who gets to decide what terms mean?]

How is this different from “awarding” yourself a PhD?

Academic titles are conveyed by academic institutions. Note that the legal system in your locale may say more about this topic as well.

@JonCuster:  It may not be strictly an academic title.  A "doctor of philosophy" suggests a level of expertise in philosophy which is independent of an institution and started BEFORE such institutions.  Further the law should be independent of such a title, except a Doctor of Law.

No, not a battle of wits, @user37208, but a battle of REASON.

@thomas:  Well, I'd say IF you award yourself a PhD, you better be prepared to defend it.  Isn't that the essence of anyone who uses the term "doctor" in any field?

@JonCuster some countries (e.g. Germany) tightly regulate academic titles, but others (e.g. US) have essentially no rules. IANAL, but I think there would be no legal problem with claiming to have a PhD with no institution in the US.

What do you mean by "defend" the title?  I mean PhD students go through a defense process in which they defend their dissertation to demonstrate that they've satisfactorily met the standards that their committee would require to sign-off on their defense form, though it's unclear what alternative you might be proposing.

@Thomas - one could perhaps claim you have a PhD to your friends with no problem. Claiming in other contexts (such as meeting employment requirements) certainly could have ramifications, legally defensible by the company, at least up to and including termination for misrepresentation. Nobody would believe that somebody can just decide to award themselves a PhD and have it mean anything at all.

...honestly, I'm kinda imagining a Magic the Gathering tournament, only with some arm-wrestling and somehow a D&D-like theme worked into it, while people run around screaming like in Braveheart.  But that might be the extreme sleep deprivation talking.

@JonCuster:  Saying it "has no meaning at all" is not what the question implies.

@Nat  By "defend" I mean something more stringent than what issuing institutions require to defend their doctorates -- that ANY (other) PhD can attempt to defeat the title and render it contentious.

@TheDoctor - Then you should clarify exactly what you mean by the question. I'm really trying to come up with a scenario where a PhD not backed by an academic institution is meaningful in any way whatsoever, that is, is legitimate.

@JonCuster:  Let's say that the person has knowledge that no other human being has on a topic which is considered important within philosophy.  Fair enough?

Seems kinda dubious.  If holding a PhD meant having to match the best-and-brightest in some sort of competition, very few people would be able to hold 'em.  But that's simply not what they are.

@TheDoctor - Nope, not sufficient to claim to have a PhD. We all have knowledge that no other human being has on some topic or another.

@TheDoctor Holy bowtie! Two timelines crossing together!

@JonCuster:  I hereby reject your title of PhD, if you have such, as you have made an irresponsible counter-claim that did not address the second part of the sentence at all.  Hence, you have failed dielectic and reason itself.

@TheDoctor - yet I consider my secret knowledge at least as good as your secret knowledge, so I can claim a PhD in that just as easily as you can claim yours. No, I didn't explicitly address the second part of the sentence since I assumed you could take it to the correct logical conclusion.

I think this question is approximately meaningless and the OP belies a serious misunderstanding both of the meaning of the phrase “Doctor of Philosophy” and of how the academic world operates in the comments. As such I’ve voted to close it.

@TheDoctor ok, ok, I give up. In view of the learned discourse you presented in this thread and because of your strong defence against the opposing views therein, I herewith award you the title PhD. Now go and apply for a job. Also, I declare you president of the northern hemisphere.

No. Words don't mean whatever you want them to mean. PhDs generally require:

getting admitted
taking classes
doing research under the supervision of an advisor
writing that into a dissertation
defending the dissertation

In principle you could drop out of grad school and do the other steps on your own. While this might be a worthwhile endeavor for you, there is no quality control. A "crackpot" might convince himself and like-minded people (even those with PhDs) that his ideas are right, whereas they will not convince a reputable university to endorse their ideas.
In my office, some of the most experienced and smartest people never got the PhD. They certainly deserve it -- 30 years of research, conferences, grants etc. is a much better qualification than 5 years in grad school (and everyone who matters knows this). But a PhD is an academic qualification, not (only) an award for merit. If you award yourself a PhD and someone calls you on it, they are absolutely not going to buy your explanation about how a bunch of arXiv papers are equivalent to a PhD from a university.

"Quality control"?  How about the idea of giving a PhD without any requirement of philosophy at all?  Further, you miss the point, a crackpot may be able to convince the pablum that his ideas are right, but if he convinces other PhDs, is that not more than sufficient?  What higher standard could exist?

Words don't mean whatever you want them to mean. The term PhD refers to "natural philosophy", not philosophy in the modern sense, and is conferred by a university, not by other PhDs.

Can you defend that to any other PhD @cag51?

The status quo suggests that the majority of other PhDs agree with me! The onus is on you to convince other PhDs that the current system is broken. Certainly you have not convinced me! But I will not argue the point further here....best wishes.

Who gets to decide what terms, like "PhD", mean, then?  The onus will not be on me, when you can't answer simple philosophical questions.

No. In the same sense that not everyone has the legal power to marry two individuals, and not everyone can bid in an auction. It depends on the rules.

You are actually making an inappropriate legal claim here.  Two people can enter a mutual contract (like marriage) without the intervention of the State.

As far as I know, there is no legal issue with awarding yourself a PhD in many jurisdictions (e.g. much of the US), as long as you don't misrepresent who awarded it. There are many bogus universities in the US and they are legal -- free speech and all that.

@thedoctor I said not everyone. But Thomas' point is valid, ignore my answer. Within the social institution of academia, however, the story is likely to be different (declaring yourself to have a PhD does not constitute a PhD, for most people at least).


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What should I do if I think that a professor has graded a course based on his personal impressions of students?
I recently took an advanced course with a professor. The course had two exams, a final project and assignments. I got excellent marks in both the exams and assignments. At the beginning of the course, the professor stated that since the course is advanced, he'll keep some weight on the class performance of students, so that exams (which may be tough) don't decide your grade completely. I attended the first few lectures and no class ever involved any significant participation from any student.
The classes began with the professor asking people if they have solved any problems from the textbook and some students usually said yes. Ultimately, I received a very bad grade in the course and it seems that only those students whom the professor knew outside the classroom received good grades. The grading was ultimately made in such a way that the exams carried little weight (I even doubt the professor checked the papers) and most of the weight was on 'class participation' which, in my opinion, translated to personal impression. One of my friends, who was also a victim of this scheme of things, tried to reason with another teacher, only to receive 'A professor has full liberty to decide on grades' as a reply. I feel that he did not grade on any concrete activity at all, but simply on personal impressions. Students who often went to him to discuss (often materials outside the course) or whom he knew from before seem to have received the best grades. What should I preferably do in such a situation?
As a first step, I've asked him the grading policy and was told that he has graded on his own perceptions of who mastered how much. (As a side, he says that even the final project was immaterial, since everybody has done well on it). Let me repeat that none of his classes had any significant activity that could have substantiated such perceptions. The professor has asked me to treat the issue as closed and move on. Should I do so if I feel that there was some serious injustice involved? If not, what should I do in such a situation? How should I present a case if at all.
This is in one of the premier institutes in India. We do have a grade review committee. I just wonder if escalating it to them is advisable

After those first few lectures, did you stop attending?

No, I became irregular, since I found that self-study was proving to be more beneficial somehow. But my comment that the classes had no significant participation from most students is probably true-it's nearly impossible that students were not part of class discussions in only the lectures I attended after a certain point. And this is in one of the premier institutes in India. We do however have a grade review committee. I just wonder if escalating it to them is advisable.

@adrija: If an instructor tells you at the beginning of the course that part of your grade will be determined by class performance, it is a poor idea to stop attending class without having a careful discussion with your instructor on the consequences of this...

...Perhaps the instructor decided (for instance) that the performances on the exams were so similar that the grades would be mostly determined by class participation, which was itself determined by class attendance.  I don't claim that's a good grading policy...but it seems consistent with what you were told, which could weaken your case if you wanted to make an appeal.

Voted to close because this depends on the individual course policy too much to be generally informative. In particular, the student explicitly chose to ignore the stated class-participation rule, and really has no coherent case for grievance.

I've been in classes before where it was explicitly declared that grades would be primarily determined by class participation.  If there was a stated grading system that said something otherwise, there might be a reason to object; if the university does not required the grading system to be declared, then it's really just up to the professor, and this is within the realm of normal variation.  It might or might not be poor pedagogy, but that's beside the point for this question.


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Should I let my students know I don't mind their (perceived) underperformance?
When working as a class tutor, I quite often receive apologies from students for not solving all of the assigned exercises, not knowing how to solve a problem, being absent from the class, etc. This is not particularly surprising - the workload at my university is quite heavy, there is a lot of potential distractions, and people in the UK have a reputation for apologising more than is strictly necessary. I normally don't pay too much attention to this, beyond the factual information that is being conveyed (e.g. a specific exercise caused trouble to several students and so we should discuss it in detail during class), and I try to respond with something polite and reassuring (such as "No worries, this is a difficult problem sheet.").
However, in some cases the students seem to be genuinely quite apologetic, and seem to believe that (what they perceive as) their poor performance somehow troubles me. This makes me feel somewhat odd, because I really don't mind. They're all adults, it's their prerogative to decide how much to focus on each course. The way I see it, my job is to provide them with the opportunities to learn (have their homework checked, discuss problems in class, etc.) and if they don't take me up on it it's actually better for me - fewer submitted problems means less grading, fewer people at class means more relaxed atmosphere, and so on. At a stretch, I could imagine feeling bad if I was the lecturer and felt students' poor performance reflects badly on me somehow, but I'm just a tutor - my job is to grade students' solutions and discuss the problems during class, nothing more.
Would it be a bad idea to explain this to the students? I worry that being too honest about this might be perceived as demotivating or unprofessional. However, I also don't want my students to feel guilty, or to feel like they need to explain themselves to me.

it's actually better for me - fewer submitted problems means less grading, fewer people at class means more relaxed atmosphere, and so on. --- This probably depends too much on your personality and the specific culture there to be appropriate here, but that issue aside, from my experience there is a huge elephant in the room, namely to what extent your continued employment and reputation for later employment depends on student complaints and student evaluations (or even student attendance, if tracked).

I can't see how "I actually don't care  how you're doing" would improve interpersonal relationships with your students.

@AzorAhai-him- "I don't care" and "I don't mind" are two completely different sentiments. "I don't mind if we skip going out tonight, so you could stay home to support your ill family member" is quite different to "I don't care of we skip going out tonight"

@penelope Well, yes, I phrased it that way to illustrate that it would be really really easy to phrase this message the wrong way.

I can identify well with this question, and sometimes I think it would be nice if I could stop them apologising and feeling bad. I don't however think that it will make much of a difference either way. I doubt that the students who feel guilty feel guilty because they haven't been told before that it doesn't matter to you. And if you tell them, they may well feel guilty for having bugged you with this earlier (on top of still feeling guilty for not doing everything fine if this is how they are conditioned by family background or whatever). It may help a bit with some, it may make matters even a bit worse with others, so the bottom line is, you may do it or not, however you like.
(I'm not much worried about whether it could demotivate them. I find this hard to imagine, and even if it were true for certain students, I don't think trying to make the tutor happy would be a very good motivation that helps them in the long run.)

I think it depends somewhat on what your goals are. If your goal is:

I also don't want my students to feel guilty, or to feel like they need to explain themselves to me.

Well, it's possible you can change this with a speech, but probably not. Trying to control how other people feel is usually a path to disappointment and frustration.
If you just want to move on and spend your time working on the course material rather than hearing apologies, I think it's appropriate and professional to briefly deflect with a statement that the problems and assignments are for their learning so missed work hurts them and not you, and then transition to the next task at hand: "Let's talk about problem seven". Maybe they will "get it", maybe they won't (or won't until much, much later).

I think there are some nuances here that haven't come out in other answers. It is also important to note the context here: as a course tutor at a UK university (~ TA for the US audience) you are probably supporting students with homework assignments and general understanding of course material, but not responsible for anything related to assessment.
In my experience, there are two flavours of apologetic student:

"Sorry, I haven't really put any effort into attempting this problem set, I'm just here so you can give me the answers." - You need to decide how you want to tackle this kind of student (perhaps informed by an understanding of what your institution's official policies are). Options might include: escalating the issue to whoever is responsible for academic performance (e.g. a personal tutor); admonishing the student for their lack of work ethic; or shrugging and explaining the problems to them. Personally, my approach differs depending on whether these are first-years (who might benefit from a bit of 'tough love'), or further along in the career. For this kind of student, I can imagine saying "It's your own problem if you're not going to put the effort in; I get paid either way."

"Sorry, I'm completely adrift with this course and I haven't got a clue what I'm doing." - Here, the apology is often a veiled plea for help: "Sorry, I think I'm too stupid to be taking this course, but I'm doing my best...". For this student, telling them you don't care would be a bad approach. In fact, a better answer might be "You don't need to apologise, that's why I'm paid to help you!". You then need to look beyond the immediate challenge of the specific problem set, and try and work out how you can help them understand the course more generally.

I think it's probable that not every teacher has the same perspective as you.
Consider: you accept a Masters student with a strong track record and good recommendation letters, good enough that they might be competitive for the very rare MSc-level scholarships. Then they do badly in your course. Will you be disappointed, or would you say they're an adult and therefore it's up to them to decide how much to focus on your course?
The students are apologizing because they think you will be disappointed. Especially if you are at a top university, then it seems reasonable to suppose that you will be disappointed (since top universities attract students who are expected to do well). It's also very common for teachers to have a strong urge to educate - the moment when the student goes "aha, I get it now" is something every teacher recalls fondly, but since they are doing poorly, you don't get to experience it. Plus, which teacher doesn't like to see their students do well?
That said, it's still your perspective on teaching, and hence your prerogative.
The question is whether to tell students that your way of thinking is quite different from theirs. I suspect different students will react differently, but the reaction will be broadly negative. You'd probably come across as uncaring, since you appear to have no expectations of your students. You would not be someone they can confide in, and it seems unlikely that one day they'll ask you to supervise them. Still, from your perspective, it might be preferable to eliminate these incompatible students before you start working with them. Your call.

I suspect it may depend a lot on how exactly it is said, tone of the voice, exact wording etc. The message is not that the tutor doesn't care, the message is that it doesn't create a problem for the tutor if the students don't do well, so the students shouldn't worry about the tutor on top of worrying about their own limitations.

To me, this sounds like it might also be a mismatch in expectations based on the transition from secondary school to university. I think it might be worth making a general statement to clear the air. When I was teaching an exercise course for the local equivalent of 'freshers, we had an introductory spiel that covered these standard issues, which could be paraphrased as:
"Since this class does not have mandatory attendance, you do not need to notify me of or send excuses for your absences. It's your choice to come to class: I would encourage you to attend as much as possible, since we cover a lot of material very rapidly." (+ or whatever the attendance policy is)
and
"This course will have a mix of easier and more difficult exercises. I do not expect everyone to be able to solve all of them, but would recommend attempting as many as possible since you will learn the most by working on trickier problems." +some stuff about how grading works.
In cases when students got very nervous about their solutions being prodded at during presentations, I also had something like:
(+clarifying how their contributions fit into grading, then +) "I'm not asking these questions to try and trip you up: my job here is to help you get better at 'subject', and the more I understand about your approach and why you choose it, the better I can explain what works and what needs to be improved."
Obviously this will need to be adapted to your course and your perspective.  I agree with you culturally- they're adults, they should attend (or not) and solve problems (or not) however they choose, and ideally send fewer emails. But I've found that the best way to convey this as not to say "I don't care", but to position myself as "I don't care about your grades, I just care about 'subject' and I want you to learn something".

Would it be a bad idea to explain this to the students?

Yes.

I worry that being too honest about this might be perceived as demotivating or unprofessional.

Yes, that's exactly right. If you pointed out to students (or to anyone else for that matter) any little observation you have about some small misconception they have, that would end up being a major distraction. You would have less time to talk about the course material with them, and this could affect your relationship with them negatively and in turn cause all sorts of other negative consequences. It seems best to just let it slide.
Also, re: "if they don't take me up on it it's actually better for me": please never tell students that your life would be easier if they did less work! That is being way too honest, and again can cause all sorts of problems with how the students relate to you and poorly affect their learning outcomes. You never want students to think they are a burden on you in any way. (And ideally you would never even think of students as a burden on you, but if you must think that way occasionally, don't tell anyone except your spouse or therapist, or a very trusted colleague.)

However, I also don't want my students to feel guilty, or to feel like they need to explain themselves to me.

That seems reasonable, but is what you want the important thing here? You should choose the action that is best for the students, which is to neither actively affirm their guilt nor absolve them of it. The deflection strategy suggested in Bryan Krause's answer seems pretty effective to me. The way you described yourself dealing with the misguided apologies also sounds good, and is pretty close to how I deal with such things myself.
Also, while it may be a little uncomfortable for you to be in the position where someone thinks that you're upset with them when you actually aren't, I'd posit that the students are merely projecting their guilt on you. They are actually upset with themselves for not doing the work or for performing poorly, but it's easier for their psyches to maintain the illusion that it is someone else who is upset with them. You, a figure of authority, are a convenient target for that projection. But the guilt they are feeling may in fact be a useful feeling and even to some extent motivating, even if they are directing it in a misguided direction.
In other words, I think experienced teachers learn over time that it's not a bad thing if students overestimate at least a little bit how upset the teacher is with them when they don't live up to expectations. (That's probably true also for parents and their children.) So once again, the situation you're describing sounds healthy and normal, and there is no need to change your current approach.

There is an alternative that doesn't require explanation. It lets each student decide for themselves how much to put into each course and what grade might be acceptable to them and then work toward that goal. It is called cumulative grading.
Set a point total for the course, say 1000 points. Set a total for each grade level. Say 900 points for an "A" grade, etc. Whatever you think appropriate. Explain this in the syllabus.
Assign a point total for each piece of graded work, say 300 points for the term project, 200 for the final exam. Whatever, just let it come to the overall total. Explain the total for each piece when it is assigned. They need to know this for their own planning. Important things are worth more.
For each piece of graded work that they do, assign a value, up to the "value" of that piece: perhaps 285/300 for the term project.
The do enough work to earn their goal. Some might be encouraged to go beyond that goal.
I used this for many years successfully. But I added an additional element. If a student wasn't happy with the points I assigned, I permitted them to do the work again to earn part of the total back (not all, though). In order to ease my workload, each piece of work was submitted in a folder with the student's name and the previous marked work along with the new. In addition, they had to highlight the changes made from the original. This meant that I never got complaints about grading and those who needed extra work had a natural way to do it.
And, if they were happy with a B-, I didn't have to tell them I thought it was OK.
Extra Credit work is easy to assign for those falling short of their goals if you think this is needed. Give such things some points and grade as usual.
I didn't permit rework on exams, however, though exams weren't the largest part of their total workload. This was in CS.
It may be that not everyone in your course needs to understand the material at the same level. This might be especially true in the US where students have "majors" but also need to take courses outside the major to gain some general understanding. Such students have other, perhaps more pressing, needs.


text:
Citations - when should you add the initial?
It is common practice - at least in mathematics - to refer to people one cites in the paper simply by a surname. Hence, one could see sentences like "This awesome theorem is due to Smith.".
However, occasionally the initial is added, and so the above might turn into "This awesome theorem is due to J. Smith". The obvious reason might be that there is also a A. Smith who could be mixed up with J. Smith, but the phenomenon also occurs for people with unique surnames (within the field). Why? (In particular: When should I add the initial, if ever?)

I've recently come to think that one should always add an initial or two, just to reduce potential confusion. Also, doing so consistently is some push-back against the pop mythology that some people are in the special category that everyone knows who they are, and are referred-to in a different, more heroic style. (The simplistic, so-called "Great Man" theory of history of science and everything-else makes it harder to understand what actually happened and happens...)

Isn't this essentially as good as (consistently) not adding the initials at all? Confusion is hardly ever possible, and if it is, one can always take a look at the references.

@Feanor, maybe so, sure. However, to my perception, in my context, to refer to a person as "X. Smith" is far more mundane than the far-more-heroic-sounding "Smith". Perhaps it's just something in my own experience. The "X. Smith" seems more prosaic, more business-like, more modest. Heaven forbid that language subtleties should change with time! :)

I think you can stick to using only the author's surname (without the initial) as long as your citation number, in that particular document, is written alongside the (first) mention of the author, depending of course on your citation method.
The important thing to remember here is that your reader needs to be able to identify the source from your references.
In my work, I usually only mention the author where necessary. I mostly use the number (corresponding to my list of references) at the end of an idea or sentence where credit is due.

Question: What if there are two authors, namely, Jack Smith and a John Smith both published their papers in the same year?
Including initial and even year of the publication does not solve that problem. That is why I prefer to cite the publisher just after his name appears.
This awesome theorem is due to Smith [8].
or
Smith [5] disagrees with Smith [8] in his paper.
Of course the sentence written above is bad practice. There should be another way to express the same thing better. I just wanted to give an example to dissolve ambiguity.

Sure, quoting a relevant paper is a must, so probably my example sentence should actually look like what you suggest, i.e. "This awesome theorem is due to Smith [8]." (unless the reference to bibliography was given earlier, which I implicitily assumed). What I'm curious about is whether it should be "... due to Smith [8]. or "... due to J. Smith [8].

In that case, I would use only the surname (Smith). I don't think using only the initial serves a purpose.

I also don't think that - that's why I'm surprised at the initials popping up, seemingly at random!