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Inability to develop myself when working with strong co-author
I've been working with a (very good) co-author in the past. He is better than me at some things, and I'm better than him at others, so working together is great and fun. However, because he is good at X, when I work with him, it just usually turns out that I don't get to develop my skills at working on X (simply because he's faster and can get there before me when I'm still stumbling). I guess in the short run this is fine (because the papers come out faster), but it worries me in the long run.
And, because co-authoring is so fun, I don't get to work on things that I personally really like, because the other thing is taking up all my time.
So, is it possible to work with a co-author and develop my skills, without ignoring my own projects?

I think this is more about time management and priorities. You could try to publish a certain number of papers then take a break to work on that X.

Treasure this opportunity for now and pump out as many papers as possible whilst it last.  Your co-author may move on; in which case, you get to do what you like or find a new co-author.  Alternatively, both of you may decide to move into an unfamiliar area.  In this case, you get to learn something new together.

In order to develop your personal skills, you need to invest time, and the time that your coauthor spends on solving "your problems" doesn't count. The best way to use your coauthor to improve your skills  is to analyze everything they do and ask questions when you don't understand something. It's like having a free tutor (well, the price being having a coauthor)...


text:
Ethics of asking a colleague for a citation
A colleague scholar was an editor for my latest published article, in which I heavily used her work and cited it. She then sent me one of her papers, so I could review it informally and give her my comments on it.
At one point in the paper, one of my articles could fit perfectly as a citation. Is it ethical to suggest that she does cite my article? And how should I go about asking her? Directly in my comments to her paper?

Does this answer your question? Are 'please cite my paper' emails socially accepted?

If the reference is pertinent, it's perfectly fine to suggest it. "Suggest" is key, rather than "ask":

By the way, I've published a paper on the topic you're discussing in section three. Perhaps you'll find it useful. See attached.

Wait, did you just self-cite your answer about self-citations to answer a question about asking for citations? (Just kidding :D)

@Jamea Mishra As long as it's pertinent... :)

If this were a "professional" review situation, that is, if you would review the article for a journal in a peer review process, then it would not be very ethical to suggest such a citation. Especially if the author of the paper might feel pressured by such a comment to add the reference to avoid the paper being rejected.
In your mentioned, rather informal, review setting is is perfectly fine to tell your colleague that you think your paper might add valuable insight to their work—she asked you for your feedback, this might include citation suggestions.
As Henning has already mentioned, be polite and not too pushy about it.

I can't agree to your first paragraph. In a formal, "professional" review situation, it would most certainly be appropriate to suggest a reference that "could fit perfectly as a citation", regardless of the relationship between the reviewer and the authors of the suggested paper.

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Referencing material from an .edu worksheet
A worksheet from lmu.edu claims the LD50 of particular substances, are these numbers citeable?
I want to be able to say, "The LD50 of whatever is whatever because this worksheet from a website that ends in .edu said so," without looking silly.

Don’t do it. You will look not only silly but also wildly irresponsible, considering that you are talking about, literally, lethal doses of chemical substances. What if this authorless document contains a typo? What if your own document helps propagate false and dangerous information that will end up being cited by others and eventually used by someone? Do you see how this might be, um, just a little bit problematic?
My advice is, find an authoritative source on this topic and cite it instead. In addition, you should know that google isn’t the only research tool in existence, and web pages and publicly posted PDF documents aren’t the only type of information source, or the most reliable one (slightly relevant xkcd). For scientific and scholarly purposes, there are much higher quality information sources, and well-known methods for finding them. Your local library is a good resource to get started if you need help, or you can post a question on the relevant topical stack exchange (e.g., chemistry.stackexchange in the current case) where I’m sure someone will be able to suggest something useful.

Another relevant XKCD.

There's probably some authoritative toxicology handbook or database for this kind of information.

@henning - there are several sources which a local ES&H professional has on their bookshelf (or knows online). Although, of course, the LD50 of all substances has not been measured. The first place to look would be at an SDS or two on the chemical.

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Getting caught by plagiarism checkers
I've been writing for people but I'm sick of a plagiarism checker known as 1text. It gives plagiarism reports for words and I don't understand why a word can't be the same on different websites. Can anyone help me find an alternative to 1text?

What do you mean, exactly, by "I've been writing for people..."?

Means that I write for clients***

Does it mean you do homework that is assigned to students? Are the "clients" students at school or university?

Those are students for different universities

This sounds like you are aiding academic misconduct. If that is so, then this really isn't the place to come for help in doing it. Why would plagiarism detection be an issue for "honest" work?

What's the reason for the self-plagiarism tag on this post?

See https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/63719/68109

Sounds like the perfect storm combination of homework-for-hire with plagiarism. Add some fabricated data and the academic misconductometer hits the jackpot. </irony off>

I hope your question is about false positives, otherwise it sounds like "I've gained too much weight, I need new scales".

There is no need for a plagiarism checker on the author's side. Just follow the rules outlined by the institution/publisher, and that's it. Really!
It is perfectly normal for plagiarism checkers to catch some text as potentially plagiarised. This is not problematic, as the checker is only there to help the grader or the publisher to detect plagiarism.
For instance, my last IEEE paper had ~10% of the paper flagged as potentially plagiarised (the author gets a report). This was not problematic at all - it was mostly the bibliography, a few multi-word technical terms that were already in use, and some standard phrases. None of that is actually plagiarism, so there was no problem.
Note that it you "write for people", you should let the client know that he/she has to mark the parts that you wrote as not written by himself/herself, otherwise your client commits plagiarism regardless of whether the text is new or not (assuming an academic context). Plagiarism is, roughly, declaring the work of others as your own one.


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I am going to complete my PhD in Latin America soon, should I enroll for a second PhD in the US?
I am completing my PhD in Chemical Engineering at one of the best universities in Latin America. I was also a visiting scholar at a university in the US during my PhD studies. However, Brazil has recently had one of its highest budget cuts in research grants and scholarships. Many academics are leaving Brazil because of it. I have seen people with a PhD degree from Latin America coming to the US to work as postdoc researchers, but I have not yet seen one hired either as a researcher or on a tenure-track position.
After completing my PhD in Brazil, I am considering applying for a PhD program in the US because I have heard that it may be tough to find an opportunity in the US holding “only” a PhD degree from Latin America. Does it make sense, or do I have a misconception on that? Would it be wise to apply for a second PhD in the US, after having a PhD degree from another country?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29764/is-a-second-phd-ever-necessary

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path

Does this answer your question? Is doing two PhDs a good path?

Actually it is also hard to get an opportunity in the US if you hold a US doctorate. You won't really learn anything new. Why waste the time? Apply for positions.

"I have seen people with a PhD degree from Latin America coming to the US to work as postdoc researchers, but I have not yet seen one hired either as a researcher or on a tenure-track position."
Unless you have statistics to back this, you have only anedoctal evidence. It is however true that in some fields to be a researcher you have plenty of chances if you are an US citizen (national lab, federal bodies, etcetc) ... but the issue is not the where you got your PhD.

Just a comment that comes to mind, is it normal in Brazil to be hired into a lecturing or tenure track position straight out of PhD? In the US/Europe/Australia it is normal for people to take several years of contracts as post-docs before they are qualified to apply for full time lecturing or tenure-track (or equivalent) positions

Working toward a US doctorate seems to me like a sub-optimal plan. You already have a good degree (or will soon) and it has taught you what a doctoral program is supposed to teach. I see the following issues.
You might not get accepted to a doctoral program, not because you aren't worthy, but because slots are limited and others have greater need of what any program offers.
You delay your career by about three years without really getting much of any benefit other than some association with a US institution. But you already have that from your visiting scholar days.
The future is unknown and there is no guarantee that it will go easier for you in a few years. These are hard times for new scholars in US across many fields, though I know nothing of yours. Public support for education here is also weak, but perhaps not as bad as Brazil currently.
My suggestion is that you apply for whatever positions you are qualified for wherever you can (US or other). See what sort of reception you get. Your writing implies you are fluent in English so that won't be an issue.
When you do a search, make it a broad one. The US has a lot of colleges and universities. The all have somewhat unique missions. Don't focus only on "top" schools, which is an ill-defined concept in any case.
Being a bit "different" can be a strength if you make it so.
Try to exploit relationships in US that you already have from past associations. Get good letters of recommendation from professors/colleagues. Be clear about your career plans.
Think of another degree here only as a (deep) backup plan, not a real goal. The advantage it would give is, IMO, minimal.

Try expanding your options, and apply to institutions in other countries. They're all good, and in terms of pay or quality of life, some could be much better than the US. Places such as Canada, Australia, Europe, or the Middle eastern gulf states (UAE, Qatar; contrary to popular belief they're great places to live).


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Maintaining a list of minor errata / corrections / comments
I am wondering what options there are for maintaining a list of errata / minor misprints / clarifications to published research papers. Here, I mean errors/misprints that are not sufficiently serious that a journal would consider publishing an erratum, but whose correction would nonetheless be beneficial to readers.
I have in mind a system where authors (and possibly readers) can attach comments / list of corrections / clarifications to their papers in a straightforward way - ideally in a way that links to the relevant DOI / arXiv identifier.
It seems somewhat surprising that such a system is not already established - or perhaps it is and I have missed it? One concern is over the longevity of the system - I used to maintain some errata to my paper on my own wiki-style pages, but at some point this wiki folded and I lost all of the information (which I had unfortunately not backed up anywhere).

It is called PubPeer.
In my experience it is not very popular.  It seems mostly biomedical researchers use it.
If it's minor, why do it?

This is a useful answer, but OP did explain why they want to do it: "correction would nonetheless be beneficial to readers."


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Are part-time postdocs in Austria expected to work full time?
I am considering applying for a post-doc in the humanities at an Austrian university. The position is advertised as a "Postdoc University Assistant position (50%, 20 hrs., "Universitätsassistent/in", "Post-Doc")". The salary, accordingly, is lower than what one might expect from a full-time postdoc. Could those of you familiar with Austrian/Central European academia please advise me if this is indeed a part-time position (and I can e.g. look for another part-time postdoc), or if it is standard practice where one is expected to work full-time and receives half of the salary (as is often the case with PhD students in Germany)?

Comparing students in Germany with post-docs in Austria is probably not very useful. While I don't know the answer for Austria, I'd think that advertising a half time position but requiring a full time commitment would be likely illegal. Hopefully illegal, anyway.

I would suspect this means the PI only has funding for half a postdoc position. What else should they advertise? What they expect, or not expect, is something you can inquire with them. Legally, you can of course take another half job. And as long as you do your work, there is no way (afaik) to get you fired.

I'm not aware of a "standard practice" to employ postdocs for 20hrs and expect full-time work (disclaimer: familiar with Austria, but not the humanities). It is extremely common to work more than your official hours on paper though.
What I have seen before is postdocs combining part time positions across different funding sources, or having additional teaching (lecturer) contracts on top of a part-time salary. Depending on your contract, you might need approval from your employer before taking additional jobs in the same field, so this is usually coordinated with your supervisor.
I don't know the exact situation in the humanities, but I'd encourage you to ask your prospective PI about what they envision.


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Using figures from papers in PhD applications
Is it okay to use figures from other papers when writing a statement of purpose for a PhD application, after of course citing the paper? Or do I have to ask for permission from the author?

It would probably be fine, but I'm not sure I would

This would almost certainly be fair use. You aren't "publishing" by sharing with the application process. But, yes, citation is proper.
Note, however, that fair use is a variable (even non-existent) concept depending on the legal jurisdiction. If you are in a place with very strict rules you need to be a bit more careful, not that anyone is likely to object, even if they learn of it.


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How to communicate a late rejection of a PhD offer from a close contact?
My former supervisor from university offered me a PhD project two months ago. I gave it some thought, chatted with them once about the topic a month ago, talked to their current students, and then decided to instead take an industrial position, because of family reasons.
I cannot meet them in person, so I was thinking about writing a message to communicate my decision. Since I know the professor well I think that some personalization of the message is required here.
Would you advise to:

motivate why I decided to take the industry position (i.e. family/partner related issues) and if so, should I be detailed? For instance, is "I wanted to stay closer to my partner" out of place?
emphasize positive aspects of their offer that made the choice very tough? E.g. the topic was interesting, the past collaboration was good?
say that I took so long to be able to communicate a definite decision?

I think all the points you laid out in sequence are a good way to communicate your decision. After all your personal pathway for your future/life matters to you the most and your advisor will understand. You did not explain if your advisor offered you research because you asked if they could offer you a project or not. If your advisor offered a research project without you asking, they might be really impressed with your work or could not find the right candidate at the right time. Either way, the professor understands that you know your life aspirations.


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Writing to multiple PhD advisors in same group: a separate email?
I have contacted two potential PhD advisors in the same group, informing them that I also contacted the other one. They replied separately, one put the other in CC and the other mentioned having aligned with the first in his reply.
To e.g., ask for clarifications or a meeting, can I send a single email with them as recipients, or should I send the same email separately?

In my experience, once people start CCing others in an email chain, they want them to be involved in further communications. So with both advisors being in the same group, and them having actively started to include each other when talking to you, I suggest you just email them both.


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Quitting a postdoctoral fellowship
I was awarded a rather prestigious postdoctoral fellowship that guarantees a generous salary, research expenses etc. for 2 years. It is in the same institution where I am working as a postdoc now, but would increase my salary by quite a bit and of course give me complete freedom over my research. I have not yet accepted the offer because I am struggling with a particular problem.
It is likely that in a year's time I will need to relocate to another country (for personal reasons). How bad is it to take the fellowship, knowing that there is a chance I will have to quit early? How frowned upon is quitting in the middle of a fellowship that explicitly specifies a 2-year tenure? Of course quitting a regular contracted postdoc job is straightforward, but I am not sure how it works with a personal fellowship—are there any additional consequences I haven't considered?
Edit: Just to provide some additional context, this is an individual fellowship (i.e. awarded directly to me) and the funding is internal (i.e. comes from the university itself).

Some contracts will require you to pay the money back if you don't finish. Particularly if it involves some kind of "service", not just doing your thing. More likely, though, you just need to give some amount of notice, and I've seen anything between two weeks and 4 months (with most everyone consistently ignoring the latter).

The job of a postdoc is to get a job. If a funding agency holds getting a good job against you, well, why are they funding postdocs?

I commented on an answer below, but you really need to contact your local research administrator. There are policies and procedures that they will help you maneuver. Ask your PI if you don't know who this is.

@JonCuster The problem is that if the OP quits the fellowship, say 3 months into a year, government funding agencies don't get to fund a new position with those 9 unspent months or spend that money elsewhere. The funding agency has effectively lost that money from its budget. Arguably, it would be a better use of their limited resources to fund somebody who did stay the entire time, or at least leaving on a one year boundary, thereby producing 9 more months of research results.

Obviously, you need to see the contract, and preferably go over it with an attorney.  There may be a repayment agreement.  You don't know until you look.
As to whether you can leave this postdoc early, I recommend thinking about how public the info would be, and how your colleagues in your field would look at it if they knew about it.
Personally, I could never hold it against a postdoc if they left to grab a dream faculty position.  I imagine this happens with some regularity.  That said, I would personally think less of a person that accepted a two-year position with the secret intent of leaving after a year. An institution is making an investment in you, and you would be letting them down.  I would think of it as you entering an agreement in poor faith.
Needing to relocate for personal reasons after a year is a decision that only you can make. If it's important to you, you might consider honestly discussing your situation with the manager of whatever program you're involved with before you sign on the bottom line.  It may be fine with them.  They might even be amenable to some form of telecommuting! If you choose to do this, you should do it knowing that a revocation of the offer is a real possibility.

I wouldn't necessarily go to an attorney. Contact your local research administrator or go to your Office of Sponsored Projects (or equivalent). This is not their first rodeo; there are procedures for such things. It is important to know if the fellowship is made directly to the institution or the fellow. It also depends on who the sponsor is and where you relocate to. Research administrators deal with such complications all the time and must be consulted ASAP.  They need time to work out your exact situation.

"That said, I would personally think less of a person that accepted a two-year position with the secret intent of leaving after a year."  I disagree.  Leaving a job after one year is ordinary professional conduct.

Quitting a fellowship is the same as quitting any other job.  Your colleagues should congratulate you on finding a new opportunity which will let you move on to something better.
The ethical issue here is not quitting.  It is applying for a fellowship you do not intend to use.  Do not do that.  It wastes the funding agency's time.  Since you intend to use a major portion of the fellowship, your conduct is fine.
Since the funding agency has put effort into determining that you are the best person to take their money, you should view it as your responsibility to make maximum use of the fellowship between now and when you need to move on.

This poster specifically says they would not be leaving because they identified a better position.

@ScottSeidman Neither I nor the poster mentioned a "better position."  I said "something better" and they said wanted to move for "personal reasons," which can easily make "something" be better.

I left a very prestigious fellowship for a job, it was fine and they congratulated me. However, the research budget was pro-rated, (i.e. divided by number of days of my tenure). If I had spent more of the budget than allotted for based on the actual length of my time as a fellow, my host would have been responsible for reimbursing the over-spent amount. Just check to be clear how it works. Postdocs are pretty much always on the job market, so leaving before the end is super common.
Good luck!


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How do I gain back my faith in my PhD degree?
I am 3 years into a PhD program at a top North American university in STEM. My daily routine includes working on my research and preparing for courses I am assisting. In general, I would say that there is always work to keep me motivated. I have a good relationship with my supervisor. However, I don't feel valued by my department.
Recently an undergrad in one of my class had a chat with me about deciding on pursuing grad school. He asked me about my research and the courses that I took. I felt that he wasn't very impressed, as he was more industry-oriented and failed to see how real analysis can help anyone.
He then asked me couple things which left me even more self-conscious

I wish to go to graduate school, but I also fear that I will miss out opportunities to make hundreds of thousands of dollar per year
  working in industry. I also wish to be financially independent and
  have an early retirement. Can doing a PhD for five years offer this
  reality?

I had really no answer to this question, as I am in constant doubts myself over the rising opportunity cost of doing a PhD. There is a part of me that beckons me to leave academia immediately. It tells me that I could do so much better, be more free only if I had made the choice after I graduated with my Bachelors. Only if I knew how little I would be paid compared to my peers.

Programming and software development are highly valued skills in industry. Almost all jobs nowadays requires some form of it. Do you
  think your degree has prepared you to be competent in these areas?

I cannot say yes to this question either. I do use programming every now and then, but I am in no way comparable to a person who works solely in this field. It does seem that programming skill seems to be the only skill that employers value, a litmus or IQ test for a world of graduate students with questionable credentials. Even newly minted PhDs are directly sent to software developments, albeit more specialized. No, a graduate degree has not prepared me to be a competent coder, the one skill that would make transition from academia to industry so much more smoother.

Do you believe in the theory and methodology you are developing? How do you know that your model can be used by actual people, like the
  products people develop in industry?

I cannot answer this question either. All the techniques, theories I developed seemed to only produce more techniques and theories. None of which I can see or use to directly benefit anyone. That is not to say they are bad for publishing paper. In fact I feel that they might be too good for this narrow purpose, and I have lost sight in what excited me about research in the first place: the potential to have real-life impact on real actual people. No, I do not believe in my own research, or that of anyone else who are working in my department, aside from the few people who are doing it along with industry.

What do you do when you are not working on your research?

I paused for a second. I don't know what I am doing besides research and teaching assistance duties. While my peers on instagram or facebook are traveling all around the world, visiting new places, I am bound to my institution. I cannot leave it for there is always more work. It is like a full-time job except that it is from 9 in the morning to 9 in the evening, occupying weekends, holidays, and all the moments I could have spent with my loved ones. Have I made the wrong decision?

This conversation compounded on a few more I had in the past few weeks with fellow graduate students after the semester started to wind down. Each of them displayed pessimism over the rising cost of living, and missed opportunities. Yet they still have faith in their (however abstract) research, which I feel like act as more of a distraction than anything else.
I wonder if this is the start of a long descent towards regretting my PhD all together. I am really starting to feel that a PhD is a punishment towards my lack of conviction in my studies, or me being unable to develop a passion for something. "If only I was solely interested in anti-jamming self-packing oscillators! maybe I could have been working for the oscillator company and making bank! How do these people get interested in this esoteric thing?"
Am I even better than an undergrad student in any way?
Every day I wake up telling myself that the grass only looks greener on the other side, and I can't really tell if I could have been happier in industry. But there is always the lingering thought of what could have been.
Has anyone ever had these thoughts at some stage of their PhD career?
Is there any way to renew my faith in my PhD degree?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Oh man, where does one begin...
I am half-way in to my second postdoc at what I consider to be the best research facility in Northern Europe in my field. So take my advice as such, although where you work does not say so much about you, as one might think.

How do I gain back my faith in my PhD degree?

Short answer: you don't, as long as you are in status quo. If something changes by an act of serendipity, maybe you do..
Longer answer: you might regain some faith, by reframing your reference point. In other words, change your expectations and your feelings might change as well.
Regarding the questions the student asked you:

If optimizing your overall income is a primary concern, don't bother with a PhD. Yes, there are cases where having a phd might pay off by making a high-paid job available, but cumulative work experience, raises as well as the confidence and training you get on job will likely end up as a bigger plus.

... wish to be financially independent and have an early retirement. Can doing a PhD for five years offer this reality?

There is certainly no reason to panic if financial independency  is what you are striving towards, though. I have been financially independent from my family/loans the entirety of my graduate studies, and even managed to save enough money to get a mortgage loan to buy myself an apartment (small but more than decent) while I was a PhD student.
That might be more of a statement of which country you live in (e.g. Sweden vs USA) or which city you want to do pursue graduate studies (e.g. San Francisco vs San Diego). The point is that you do make a living, you are not an undergrad anymore.
Don't even get started with pension subject, that stuff is too complicated. Practically unless you are making a stupendous salary or some wicked investment decisions there is no guaranteed early and relaxed retirement. As populations get older on average, and indirectly their costs to the society increase, the pension systems will have to undergo a significant restructuring, and I for one am expecting that to create some very heated debates and go down not so easily.
Bottomline: Do a PhD if the subject interests you deeply, or if you think you will be gaining a skill that is highly valued in industry. I am working with bioinformatics, and if I want to get a job in this field, without a PhD you are not really respected. I have some friends that have done PhDs in economics, which were highly valued and allowed them to land jobs they would have otherwise. That may not translate to every field however.

Doing a PhD is not an education that prepares you for a profession. It's an academic degree not a professional one. You need to keep that in mind. Actually, write it on a post-it, put on your mirror at home and repeat it to yourself everyday. Twice, if you can, in the morning and evening when you brush your teeth...

It's so easy to lose track of that insight. Doing a PhD is education to become an academic, to think critically, to be able to read and teach (to some degree at least). You will get to be a better critique of others' work and your own. You will get training on reading and writing. You will most likely face the boundaries of your intellectual capabilities. But no it does not directly imply you will be better at a job, unless that job is specifically related to the things I mentioned above.

Do you think your degree has prepared you to be competent in these areas?

No, a graduate degree has not prepared me to be a competent coder, the one skill that would make transition from academia to industry so much more smoother.

No, it shouldn't either. That's why there are certificate programs, and bootcamps, Coursera and Khan Academy, and software carpentry etc etc.
However, did you stop to consider that doing a PhD might have you working on an actual problem, to which you get to design a novel algorithm to solve that problem, or to improve the solution? Or maybe a new protocol for networking/encryption etc? Having some specialized experience might make you an indispensable profile for a company looking for expertise in that field. But no by default, graduate studies do not make you a better professional.

Re: relevance

How do you know that your model can be used by actual people, like the products people develop in industry?

In most cases, you don't! At least not for sure... You can look at citations of your papers, although even that can be misleading as people cite other papers for many different reasons. I actually asked a question somewhat related to this a while back...
In some, rare, cases you might end up doing something that changes the landscape of the field; like writing a software that becomes the de facto gold standard for a particular type of analysis. You might come up with a technique or a protocol that is used by others. Or you might even stumble on some key result, by sheer luck.
More likely, you will provide incremental additions of knowledge into an ocean, most of which will go unnoticed, at least initially. If that bothers you, that is OK. It bothers me too, and I do consider my position in academia as well. But that should not cause you any despair. It only shows that you want to be proud of your work and get the acknowledgement you deserve. Unfortunately we don't always get what we want.

Re:Comparing yourself to the others especially on social media

While my peers on instagram or facebook are traveling all around the world, visiting new places...

Stop! Social media is literally designed to create that feeling. At the end of the day, you never know who goes home to cry about their day, no matter how amazing their Instagram photos may look, or how much "fun" they are having wherever they may be.
For many people their life online, or at least they portray their life online, has become their identity. There are many people who have analyzed this in great detail. I especially like this article (go ahead and listen to the talk in its entirety). Also read about online influencers (here's a starting point).
Edit: As @FrankHopkins pointed out in the comments, doing a PhD might actually take you to many exciting places for conferences or courses. I have been to a number of really cool places, most of which I would either not bother traveling on my own or would be able to afford at the time :)

Overall my answer(s) might appear very dystopian. But I would rather say realistic, and in any case, they are based on my experience.
I'd like to wrap it up on a positive tone, with hopefully concrete steps to help you find your way around, because ultimately, nobody can tell you if you have taken the right decision.
Here are some concrete steps I can suggest for you to feel a bit better:

Get a mentor! Someone at least 10 years your senior and ideally someone who has a life story that resembles your own. Of course finding a good match might be tricky but check whether or not there is a mentorship program provided by your university/faculty/student council etc.
Listen to that person's story, but make sure you don't fall into tutor-student relationship. How did s/he take the critical decisions in his/her life? What was valuable to them at that time, and how did that turn out later? How does the person define success?

Speaking of success, try to think real hard about what you define success to be. It's great to make lots of money, or have an h-index in the 100s but it's really not the whole picture. You might end up working yourself to the bone and still not be happy/successful enough. As a rule of thumb, I'd recommend avoiding taking anything quantifiable as a measure of success because anything that goes to n also goes to n+1.

Don't let others dictate your mindset, whether they are your peers or seniors. There is a lot of "fake it 'till you make it" out there.

Try to see where you make/made a difference. That could be helping a peer solve their problem, going to a meeting instead of your boss so that he can go take his/her sick kid from daycare. That could be helping a student in a lab, or writing to a fellow academic on the other side of the world, to help him/her sort out the mess that is a life in academia. ;)

Hope it helps!

@Masked now that i had a bit more time, here you go...

+1 for the social media remark. Social media posts are highly biased toward good appearances. All the sh*t life throws at you doesn't normally go on facebook and instagram, and people who don't have anything to show off don't participate in the my-car-my-hot-partner-my-house-my-fancy-vacation contest.

Nice answer, I'd add two points - feel free to take them up or not:

With regard to travelling the world: I've never travelled as much as during my time as PhD to places I've no particular inclination to go to and through that I've learned quite a bit about interesting places. Conferences and the benefit of your institute paying for the travel can make that easy - depending on the field / financial situation of your institute.  (Otherwise totally on point with regard to social media).
[cont]

About becoming a better coder / professional: I would not agree that getting a PhD doesn't help in that department. It doesn't turn you into a professional like industry experience would, but it can give you some skills that can be hard to come by for an industry coder, while you can gain industry coding skills relatively easily while on the job. And I don't mean specialised knowledge on particular algorithms but e.g. a more abstract approach for problem solving and the scientific foundation to write code that is scientifically correct. Similar for other professions.

People with industry experience will still have an advantage in the more technical aspects - perhaps to some degree for all of your life - but vice versa you may have a life-long fundamental advantage as well. It all depends on what kind of problems you like to handle, what job you want to do and what job you can find. Your scientific thinking can be wasted in a fast and furious coding startup with a simple application, but it can open you jobs in the R&D department that other professionals will find it hard to even get an interview for.

@FrankHopkins #1 is a good point, I'll add that bit, with your permission. Re #2, i didn't mean doing a PhD will not improve your technical skills, but rather it doesn't necessarily have to. It's not a technical education in that sense.

@posdef for #1: sure, go ahead, that's why I mentioned it ;) #2 Thanks for the clarification. Maybe you can make it more clear in your answer, butI may also have misinterpreted, it was late in my timezone^^ Have a nice day.

Re: stumbling on a key result by dumb luck - see the Fast Inverse Square Root stumbled upon by Quake 3 devs

Let me give you a perspective from someone who made the opposite choice.

I was a stellar undergrad in a top 10 engineering school, got perfect grades. I took a bunch of extra courses across many departments just because I was curious and knew I'd never get an other chance to learn things like chemistry so quickly and rigorously in a guided environment. I bounced around a few labs but always came to the conclusion that the research wasn't going to be worth as much as I'd like and moved on to the next exciting thing. Becoming a CS TA and honing my programming skills earned me one of those sexy internships at a Big 5 software company. But I realized "the real world" I'd been told to be so scared of was a cake walk. At the Institute I worked 60-70 hour weeks at least, every week. In industry all my smartest coworkers, even the full-timers were using 1/3 of their intellectual capacity. It was an easy, well-paid life, but they ultimately just kept the system running and didn't often have chances to be inventive.
So I applied to grad programs at the few universities considered to be a touch better than mine, but without published work I didn't get in to any. Ended up back at my same institution pursuing a Master's in my same discipline (Electrical Engineering), because the department was happy to give one of their best students a tuition waiver if he would TA for them. Got interested in Tissue Engineering, believing it to be the most important revolutionary technology of our age, and got in to a bioengineering PhD program. They used to pass around a list of projects new students could get involved in, just something compiled from all the PIs. I was excited and did the legwork running around talking to many of them, but their work was very much about low-level experimentation, growth factors, and live animal studies. The PhD would take 6-7 years, and I wouldn't be able to study the broader signaling/abstracted 'library' of cellular commands that I was interested in. The second year I saw the list, I went through crossing out thing after thing, now having enough knowledge to say "That will never work; that's ridiculous; there are more important questions that should be answered instead; we don't have nearly enough knowledge as a community to be able to succeed at this yet."
Jaded again, recognizing that a tax-break-friendly-science-antagonistic administration would be in control of government, still carrying a significant amount of student debt, and feeling like a child and a ghost to still be in the same place, I decided to take the EE MS and look for jobs. I'd found an ever deeper affinity for the math underlying controls, signal processing, and machine learning in those couple years, and I knew I hated vanilla software engineering, but still going up to companies and hearing "Well, with your experience you could probably do any of these things. So what do you want?" was a daunting question. I settled on AI-related software and did the coding interview circuit. In the end a defense company offered me a job in a new research division. But the VP who was pushing that got forced out, and the building never got built, and I ended up bounced around to a different site (which I was okay with) working on an ML-related project.
I loved it at first, got to build a few neat things and explore, and I was well-paid. But not all was roses. I discovered that people liked to look at the org chart to see who was right instead of valuing ideas. Certain bad actors craved control and didn't appreciate any work that didn't originate with themselves, actively stifled initiative and creativity. I'm a strong personality who stands up for himself, for coworkers, for solutions that will empirically save trouble, against bad character and denial. My immediate superiors didn't believe in healthy conflict, so it became an ugly cold war. A lead several layers up who had loved all my demonstrative and educational presentations eventually got involved, saw I was right to take a stand on certain things, and moved me to a different program, where I still get a chance to read papers and do academic things and be the "AI guru". I've watched the team I came from continue to devolve as more of my coworkers run up against the same problems and leave (9 so far out of a team of 3 in a <2 year span, many to other companies) while management refuses to admit their mistake and remove bad actors' authority.

I love my current group. They're good people, brilliant people, who work very well as a team. They're from diverse industries with complementary strengths, and they've been through a lot together. But they're jaded too! After exciting meetings with other smart groups across the company, they express pessimism that leadership will actually be able to knit efforts together. Time will tell whether that's justified and whether I'll feel the same.
I don't have to work that hard, but I'm not just keeping a system going. I'm designing, inventing, exploring. I've gotten in to skiing in the last year even though I live nowhere near mountains, because I have the time and money to go. I've been out of debt a while and am actually investing.
But I'm still dissatisfied. I worry that I lack the academic credentials (a body of published papers and a PhD) to really pursue the kinds of jobs I want later in my career. I feel like I'm left behind by an academia that moves apace. I don't have mentorship from real academics who are way smarter than I am. The climate is too hot. I'm not in a big city, and there are lots of engineers here, so my romantic prospects are limited by demographics--something that eats at my mind since the relationship I had in grad school fell apart, a particularly prolonged, painful process that took me a long time to understand and stop blaming myself for. (She still blames me for all her issues. Not healthy.) These days I've been getting in shape, reading more books, and trying to get back to a mental place where I could do a convincing round of coding interviews. I still want to go back to grad school, but I need to be positive the project I'll be working on is a good one in a good lab with good coworkers and a PI who won't abuse me, and I worry there's no way to get the letters of recommendation I would need to break in to such an environment.

The moral of the story is you will always question yourself. I and my brilliant CS friends who went and got jobs at Big 5 or elsewhere are doing work that's really no more meaningful than the arcane work you're doing. Sure, we as a society have decided we want the Systems to keep functioning or function better and are willing to throw money at the problem. But even if as a whole that's meaningful, a worker-bee's role is really small, and our products may come to nothing the moment we turn our backs, just like how the body of scientific work is meaningful, yet your role is really small, and maybe no one will read your papers. People are rarely given the chance to have or are fortunate enough to stumble in to those eureka moments that really make a difference. That's a heartbreaking reality, but we soldier on anyway, because to not do so would be giving up, because we want to be better people, because there is a chance we can make a difference, even if only as a tiny piece of that giant who's shoulders someone else gets to stand on, because "it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us." It's healthy to question yourself, even to become a little jaded, because it makes you wiser and keeps you on a path you actually think might go somewhere. We'd all rather you and the other bees be on those paths than ones you think are pointless and stand no chance of benefiting us, but we trust your hive-mind to make those decisions, and we'll accept long- as well as short-term benefits. Not all bees need to explore the same territory.
My advice is to excel for the 2 more years it takes to finish your PhD and be proud of what you've done, not because it's great, but because it made you intrinsically better. Sure, you've given up a lot of money, but a PhD carries respect with it because people know you made that sacrifice and walked through fire to get it, and that makes you tough, worthy of the really fulfilling inventive jobs out in the wider world. Instead of being like me, the most academic guy in a room with no others or the least academic guy in a room full of PhDs, you can belong. But also ask yourself the big questions: "What makes me happy?", "What do I want to do with my life?", "Who do I want to spend life with?", and don't neglect the answers no matter how busy you are, because otherwise you'll wake up and have a Catastrophe of Success moment when the pressure is gone. It happened to me after being so institutionalized for so long. It happens to everyone.

Welcome to the real world!
My read of your question is, your student is asking questions that you didn't think of before you started your PhD. In other words, you started your PhD without really thinking about why you're doing it. This is of course less than ideal - I firmly believe you should've thought about these questions before commencing the PhD - but that's in the past now, and figuring out what to do next is more important.
So now what? I recommend first to stop worrying about "gaining back faith" in your PhD. This wording makes it sound like you want to return to your old state where you just go about your PhD blissfully unaware of what happens after. Abandon this notion because after you graduate you are going to have to face the same questions. In other words, stop thinking about the PhD as though it is sacrosanct. You don't have to complete it! If you get less out of the PhD than the effort you put in to acquire it, you can (and perhaps should) leave! There is nothing wrong with leaving - this culture is prevalent in academia but you should still not feel obliged to stay.
Next, figure out why you're doing the PhD now. Better late than never. For example,

I had really no answer to this question, as I am in constant doubts myself over the rising opportunity cost of doing a PhD. There is a part of me that beckons me to leave academia immediately. It tells me that I could do so much better, be more free only if I had made the choice after I graduated with my Bachelors. Only if I knew how little I would be paid compared to my peers.

It's good that you're thinking about this now, but you still can't make an informed decision because you don't have the facts. You need to answer questions such as:

Is money all that important to you? Of course nobody can do without money, but if you're the kind of person for whom a $500k annual salary means a lot more than $100k/year, even though $100k/year is more than enough to live comfortably, then you want to figure that out now because it indicates you are on the wrong career path. It doesn't mean you should quit, but it does mean you'll be somewhat miserable the rest of your PhD knowing there's something "out there" that you want and can't have.
If the answer to the above is yes, then just how much money are you missing out on? How much are you being paid now, and how much can you earn if you moved to industry? This is again something to find out. Ask your peers in industry, perhaps other undergraduates you studied with.
If the answer to the above is no, then you know you can likely earn more elsewhere but you believe that the joys of academia more than compensate the monetary difference. In this case your financial situation isn't something to worry about (as long as you earn enough to get by) and you can put this concern out of your mind.

In conjunction with this I recommend checking out your local jobs portal for what positions you can get if you leave academia now. See if you like the jobs, see if you have the skills, see how much they pay.

I cannot say yes to this question either. I do use programming every now and then, but I am in no way comparable to a person who works solely in this field. It does seem that programming skill seems to be the only skill that employers value, a litmus or IQ test for a world of graduate students with questionable credentials. Even newly minted PhDs are directly sent to software developments, albeit more specialized. No, a graduate degree has not prepared me to be a competent coder, the one skill that would make transition from academia to industry so much more smoother.

This is another tough question that should be answered sooner rather than later. What exactly are you trying to learn? What skills do you acquire in the PhD that makes you more employable than a random MIT undergraduate with a BS degree? Figure it out because otherwise you're going to be in for a rude shock when you graduate.
If you've discovered that to succeed in industry the most important thing is to be a "competent coder", then you should absolutely focus your attention on getting as much coding experience as possible. Direct your PhD towards that. Choose a research direction that involves heavy coding. Write using different languages if you can.
Alternatively, if you're completely uninterested in industry, you can continue doing what you're doing. This commits you to the academic career path, with all its challenges and struggles. Are you game to compete against all the other PhD students out there looking for postdocs and tenure-track positions? Again this is something only you can answer. Think carefully before you answer because you'll feel truly miserable if you say yes, then discover five years in the future that the academic path isn't for you (and vice versa if you say no).
(Similar points apply to the rest of the questions you mention. Get a clear idea of what you want, and what you're missing out on if you stay in academia.)
Finally, after having amassed the facts, then you can decide what to do next. The factors involved in this decision are complex, and again only you can make the choice. You could, for example, decide that since 1) you're already 3 years into a 5-year program and 2) there are interesting jobs that require a PhD in your area, investing the two remaining years is worth it. Or maybe you could decide that it isn't worth it, in which case you can start looking for a job now and quit when you get one. Or maybe you could decide that yes, you can have a better-paying career if you quit, but you don't care about the money and would rather work on blue skies problems. Et cetera.
Good luck. Whatever you choose, it's a major life decision.

Here's my story. I hope it can be helpful.
My first few years in a STEM PhD program at a top-tier research university in the US were tough. I had breezed through college but struggled in grad school and felt the canonical imposter syndrome. I earned the MS when I passed the Qualifying Exams, but I had trouble settling into any particular research group or project. Like you, I wanted to do research that would improves lives around the world, but felt seriously disillusioned with the perception that most projects were doing little more than filling library shelves and advancing the reputations of the most ambitious and cut-throat careerist academics.
At one point I took leave for a term to figure things out. By this time I was married with two children. I came across Lee Smolin's book The Trouble With Physics, which opened my eyes to the serious sociological problems in STEM in general and physics in particular, but also reawakened my desire to pursue excellence in research. I spent a year and a half with a group doing research in how my discipline is taught to undergraduates, and that was very enjoyable for me.
After six years in the PhD program, and at a point where I was basically ABD, one night I looked at my wife and told her I thought it was time to walk away from the program and move to my home state. That's exactly what we did.
I had all sorts of friends and acquaintances telling me what a mistake I was making, and how much I would regret not finishing. I came under quite a bit of pressure that I didn't quite expect. But that gut feeling would not quit. It was almost a physical insistence that I no longer be there.
So we left. I got a job in my home state teaching my discipline, and eventually I made my way into semiconductors and later software development. Although there have been hard times and difficult decisions, careful consideration and honest thinking has inevitably served me well and brought me to a better spot time after time.
It's been almost a decade since I walked away from my PhD, and I can say honestly that not once have I regretted it. In fact I'm doing better than I have at any time in my life in various facets: financially, emotionally, and the degree to which I enjoy my work and feel that I am making a positive difference. I am content.
I also continue to come up with research ideas that I trust will have their time.
I would advise anyone in your spot to get somewhere quiet and carefully think about the situation and your deepest feelings about it. Whatever the nature of intuition, it will come and it is a trustworthy and reliable guide to what one should do next.
Whether it's renewed faith in your PhD or the space to allow yourself to move on, you'll find what you need, and I encourage you to trust that intuition.
All the best.

(These are not particularly much advice for getting a PhD at all but for life in general.)

You should work on stopping to focus on feeling "valued".
The point of doing a PhD is to get so damn good at something so most people have no idea what you know or what it signifies. The more you know the lonelier and further it will be between every new person you meet who happen to know the same thing and know how to value it.
So you should learn to find happiness in your work and focus on the excitement you have for your field and your subject. Strive to distance yourself from wanting praise - because if you get any good at your trade - most people will simply have no clue how good you are.
If all goes well, you are supposed to surpass your own teachers... perhaps by such a margin that they also don't know how good your work is or if it is worthy of praise. By that time you will have needed to learn how to find happiness in your own work and to trust your own skills and instincts enough to both value and verify it all on your own.

True. Value come from yourself not others.

As to software development, I was a Ph.D. in EE (Signal processing using MATLAB to support research).  Today, I am a professional programmer, working mostly with SQL, XML, classic-asp, asp.net, and Visual Studio.  {This is called 3-stack development, or N-stack development, sometimes web development).  In between, I did real-time firmware and C/C++/C# [even some assembly-language programming] and an occasional MATLAB job/project/task.
One can always learn programming if one has the desire and the time.
If you can think of a way to combine it with your research so much the better.
Even asking if your University has a website where you may post results and coding your own HTML and so forth can be good.
As for the long-term part, if you have begun the journey, I advise finishing it, but of course, that is just my opinion.

Thank you for your answer. There are many newly completed undergrads who are doing similar things in software and hardware development. How do you feel that a PhD have advantaged you when it comes to work as compared to the average undergrad?

I've taken a job where it was absolutely required and others where it was strongly preferred.  Sometimes it's actually a hindrance.  If you are not going to academia, you probably don't need it.

First, your reflection triggered by the undergrad's questions is in my view wide-spread among PhD students. I'd be inclined to say that far more than half run into such questions. I went through such thoughts by myself and have to say that there is unfortunately no easy answer, not at all. You basically have to decide on your own how to view and create your path, one way is to try to make the best out of what is there.
Second, I agree much with the 4 sub-answers of @posdef, adding to 1. and 2. my experience from two of my job interviews in industry: I was asked how I plan to compensate for the lack of professional experience caused by doing my PhD in computer science and how I plan to compete with usually experienced practitioners of my age that spent their postgrad work life in industry? I had a hard time in answering their question.
Point 3. is very difficult: You may have to convince yourself of your results, particularly, when nobody out there cares. It also depends on your own vision. If you don't have one, you can create one. Of course, it gets easier the more feedback you get, and by feedback I mean any kind of feedback. Negative feedback has proven most valuable to me as it helps to learn much much faster.
Regarding social media (4.), I have recently finished Jaron Lanier's book and conclude it to be a very nice guide to how to view social media. I still use it but with a drastically changed view. :)
My take-away as a computer scientist (!): a PhD in computer science by no means leads to great advantages for pursuing a career in industry, although it is surprisingly often seen primarily that way! However, as @posdef points out, it is a necessity in the training for a scientific career.  And I view it only as such.

The thing is that "training for a scientific career" is vague and sounds something that is potentially even more do-able in industry. There are research labs in industry, research teams, even professors who have left academia. Plus they have more funding to do bigger, more sophisticated projects. Many academicians lack scientific experience themselves having never worked on a large scale project. I feel like perhaps a PhD degree is no longer sensible in today's economy. This economy does not and has never rewarded scientific smarts.

I'd not be too negative about all this. It is just that we are confronted with a wide range of situations. E.g. I have been in an industrial research unit right after my Master's and wanted to do my PhD there. Because of loads of questionable project work, no leading-edge technology projects, little focus on proper research training and lack of mentoring, my first trial was entirely infeasible. In that case, I can't confirm your conclusion. It really depends! Overall, a PhD in my field mostly makes sense when pursuing a career in science. I don't see the point of losing that time otherwise.

There have been a lot of answers and I just want to share my experience in that academia-industry topic, However, I don't have a PhD, though.
TL; DR
You gave the answer: "the grass only looks greener on the other side". This applies both for the being on industry/being on academia discussion. But also in your specific question regarding your PhD degree, It might not have a clear or real impact for you (you are on this side), but someone outside the project, even outside the main field of your project (the other side), could find it useful and interesting, and could find a high value in it.

Since I while doing my bachelor degree, I had been changed my focus/field between industry and academia, not in a bad sense of indecision, but sometimes forced, sometimes aimed and found that there is a narrow, fuzzy band where the two can co-exist: R&D in industry, well-driven R&D.
My interest never was the money, but sometimes it was my need, but what I most value is to have life/work balance and to enjoy what I do.
Answering your student questions:

I wish to go to graduate school, but I also fear that I will miss out
  opportunities to make hundreds of thousands of dollar per year working
  in industry. I also wish to be financially independent and have an
  early retirement. Can doing a PhD for five years offer this reality?

If your priority is money in short-term, go to the industry as soon as you finish your undergraduate. The matter is that with postgraduate, you have chances to increase your income in the long-term and enter directly to a higher position than a junior one. But note this: chances.

Programming and software development are highly valued skills in
  industry. Almost all jobs nowadays requires some form of it. Do you
  think your degree has prepared you to be competent in these areas?

Just software related degrees prepare you to be a professional programmer. Experts and professional programmers make beautiful and excellent programs and applications. But someone who can code at a decebt level, and have experience in another field, could link these two skills to articulate a software solution for a non-software problem/opportunity. It is a personal decision which skills to improve and to what level.

Do you believe in the theory and methodology you are developing? How
  do you know that your model can be used by actual people, like the
  products people develop in industry?

When you plan a project in academia (Thesis, research, etc) and you like and enjoy your field, you could begin with higher expectations of your project and yourself. Even you could overestimate what you can achieve. But when you are executing the project, you could become the main critic of your work and think it is useless and has no impact. But as you said, "the grass only looks greener on the other side", others could see the value of your work more than yourself.

What do you do when you are not working on your research?

If at this stage of your life, your priority is your career, it is completely fine to have work/academia-related hobbies. If you are ok with your career and you want to spend your out-of-work time in gym, traveling, sports, family, sleeping, volunteer that is fine too.

Completely agree. There's an analogous set of soul-searching questions people ask themselves in every other career path too. Every hard decision can be viewed both as choosing to get something you want, and choosing to give up on something you also want. Otherwise it wouldn't be a hard decision.

Short life story that parallels the questions:
Q1. I wish to go to graduate school, but I also fear that I will miss out opportunities to make hundreds of thousands of dollar per year working in industry. I also wish to be financially independent and have an early retirement. Can doing a PhD for five years offer this reality?
A1.  Sort of.  Looking back, I was an okay grad in physics - took some time for a startup, but finished PhD, found my spouse along the way - the reality of post-doc was that life wasn't going to be real productive financially.  Applied to small colleges to teach, and got some very lovely rejection letters from a few Chairs that urged me to try again.  I had some experiences running the official campus tutoring for undergrad physics for the university which seemed to help, but not put me over the edge.  Anyhow, I quit pure academics and worked in a large scale academic simulation lab working on bleeding edge code that it productized and that is now widely used and considered a benchmark in the field.  Took that experience got an MBA and shortly after was making low six figures and as a consulting partner ended up much higher.  Not retired, but switched to startups and other paths recently.  A lot more fun than the grid of consulting.
Q2.  Programming and software development are highly valued skills in industry. Almost all jobs nowadays requires some form of it. Do you think your degree has prepared you to be competent in these areas?
Not directly.  I was always programming as a child and still program today.  I ended up doing a mix of hobby programming, research-academic programming, production programming, large systems programming along the way.  I feel like a competent-but-uninspired programmer.  I did mostly self-education and then demonstration through tangible projects over the years.  I was lucky to have coworkers who were in our CS department in grad school and later and learned a lot from them.  As a mgmt consultant, did not do any programming for the job but it helped me work with SW and SaaS companies on their ops and strategy.  Today, in my current path - I'm again semi-self taught in machine learning / AI / CV - and learning more all the time.  Its fun, but I still hate the act of programming.  However, Physics was good background.
Q3. Do you believe in the theory and methodology you are developing? How do you know that your model can be used by actual people, like the products people develop in industry?
Yes, but No, but then later Yes.  As a college student, I worked on product code for my startup.  In academics, my code worked fine and was performant, but was barely readable academic codes, not very practical in real life, but I learned a lot about simulation, numerical methods, and high performance computing along the way.  In the simulation lab, our code was used widely for large scale and nearly-production quality work - it was at the time very modern, distributed computing, OO design using a clever mix of C++ and Python - and is still widely used (and cited) today.
Q4. What do you do when you are not working on your research?
In retrospect, I should have stressed less, pursued studies more in things that just interested me even if off the beaten path, enjoyed other things, and invested the $ I had in Apple, Ebay, Google, and Amazon when I first started using their products or services...I would be retired :)  Today, I find a mix of talking with my family, taking piano lessons, doing photography, taking late night walks, talking to people about their business problems, hacking at the odd tech a lot of fun.
I look back and see things went pretty okay - could have been better, and could have been much worse.  I personally would do the PhD again - I would probably take it more seriously but also I would also know it wasn't a life commitment as much as a commitment to a life of thinking.  At least for me, I found over time many changes and opportunities that worked for me along the way.  It was good I found things through my MBA that (1) followed the money (2) had good demand (3) I did like (4) I was good at.  Consulting worked for me - but it was not a life goal, nor was it the 100% fulfilling passion of my life.  But it was a practical way to do well and like what I did.  I had lots of doubts along the way, and still do.  But my family is well, the kids are good, and I like what I'm doing - and I'm glad I had the modest academic career I did have.

It seems that you have mostly benefited from an early start in programming. That allowed you flexibility in different areas of work and to develop your interest, knowing that you will always have something to fall back on. This assurance is something that unfortunately a lot of people do not have. Is my assessment reasonable? I feel that perhaps if I were concentrating more on the software side of my degree, I would feel more assured in today's market. Unfortunately this is not the case for me. I will have to make my own opportunities in this domain.

Yourself and others here have pointed out the uncertainty in evaluating the direct opportunity cost of doing a PhD vs being in the industry. Clearly there's no right or wrong answer there and it really depends on the individual and many factors. I would just like to point out that there are some "indirect" benefits to doing a PhD, that I myself didn't realise until I was much older.
Depending on your background and circumstances, doing a PhD may be the most challenging thing that you have done in your young life, primarily due to the inherent uncertainty that exists within research. If this is the case, then what you're learning is also how to cope with and manage these challenges, and a good deal of self-knowledge. Once I mentioned in a conversation with a senior person in a company that I learnt exactly how my own learning curve looks like after doing a PhD, he was so impressed that he practically offered me a job there and then.
In addition, you're learning to solve problems using a high degree of intellectual capacity, so this is what you can eventually "sell". There are many programmers and, but if I was looking to hire one, I would probably pick someone who can understand and solve the bigger problem with less actual programming skill if the choice came down to that.
There is also an element of "moral" satisfaction you get from doing research, depending on your area, as it is not usually geared towards making more money for someone else - definitely possible to find this outside research but not that easily within the industries employing STEM professionals.

Remember why you ever pursued PhD and find happiness in what you do. Everyone in academia came for science and stayed for science. If you did not, then you should leave for academia has nothing to offer you. Academia is the place of science for the sake of science.


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Publication fee will not be paid at deadline – what will happen and how should I proceed?
My team's article was published online 2018, with me as the lead author and corresponding author. The print publication followed in early 2019. Shortly thereafter I received the bill for the publication fees. These should be paid by the institution where the working group is located (I am now working elsewhere). This was assured to me by my supervisor. I forwarded the mail with the invoice to him and was again promised that he would take care of the payment. As I learned a few weeks later, the head of the institution refused to pay, as there were currently no funds available. Last week I learned that such bills are not being paid at the moment, as the budget of the institution has not yet been released. The bill is due next week.

What does usually happen if such a bill is not paid on time?
Is my publication in danger?
Should I contact the publisher and inform them about the situation and ask for a respite?

@corey979 This is surely nothing that happens only to me, so it would be helpful to learn how publishers in general handle such problems.

So, contact the publishers... Why do you think we can answer?

@corey979 I changed the first question.

They can dump your paper (unlikely) or give you an extension to pay the fee (likely)

@SolarMike I have no idea, why people are so unfriendly here. The questions are quite clear: What does usually happen? Are papers retracted for this reason? What is your experience/opinion on contacting the publisher in such a case.

You post a question that can only be answered by contacting the relevant publisher about your specific paper expecting us to know what will happen, without giving us the title or anything, then moan that we cannot help. The first comment answered your 3 questions, which by the way, should have been only one, if you had read about what and how to post.... If publishers have put in the work to prepare your paper for publication, then they should be paid for that work... They will probably, organise an extension to the payment date... BUT YOU have to contact them and talk to them, we can't...

@corey979 This would have been a suitable answer for me. Obviously, I can't give the title of the paper (@Solar Mike) or expose the whole situation which extends beyond my person (colleagues, supervisor, institution). It wasn't clear to me that contacting the journal is obviously a good idea, so I asked here. I read quite a few posts and answers here and they were often on if and how to contact someone in academia.

Definitely contact the publisher about this. This is a publisher-level question, and likely not something the editorial board will be able to handle.
The good news is that the publisher is almost as interested as you are in getting the paper published. They (or the editorial board) have already put in the effort to get it peer reviewed, and from your description, they've likely also put in the effort to copyedit/typeset/get a DOI/etc. They have little to gain by not publishing the paper, and while putting a paper online for free is not ideal, there's something to be said for building goodwill as well.
I suspect the most likely result is that they'll hold off on Open Access. In other words, your paper will be available to subscribers only. If this isn't possible (the journal is open access only), they might delay publication until the payment is received. If the payment is never going to come, they might publish anyway but hold on to the copyright (free access, not open access), or provide a heavy discount or even just give free OA. For example, if the editorial board tells the publisher your paper is really good, they might be more inclined to give free OA.


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What is work-life balance like in academia in Japan?
I am a current PhD student, still a couple years off from graduation. I'm still keeping my options open, but I've started to idly consider interesting places to do a postdoc.
Fit with a mentor and relevance of research is of course the most important thing, but the postdoc period is also a chance to live in cool places for a few years at a time. Work-life balance is also pretty important to me, though, and I have heard some crazy stories about work-life balance in general in Japan.
How is it in Japanese academia as a postdoc from the west? Does it depend on who you work for/what university you are in, or where you're from?
For reference, I did a bachelors in the US and a masters and (currently) PhD in Finland, where home life is highly respected and you're basically not expected to work on weekends/evenings unless you want to.
Edit: If it's relevant, my field of study is genetics, but I mostly work on the computer and don't expect to have much to do with wet lab experiments in the future.

Have you read about work-life balance in Japan in general?

I have read that in companies in Japan there is a great expectation to spend 9+ hours at work and participate in after-work socialization, and some articles about how young people in Japan are 'working themselves to death' e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39981997. Of course, I don't know how typical this is, or applicable to academia. Hence the question.

I have read that the culture there does indeed extend to academia. Of course they are well aware that foreigners do not fit in well, so they try to be more accommodating. With varying degrees of success. Places that have lots of foreigners will be much better at it. But generally, if getting up early and staying late (and generally treating your boss like a god who's wishes are far more important than your own) is an anathema for you, I'd be cautious.

It really, really depends on where you are and which field you're working in. At Nagoya University, where I spent some time, it occurs to me that the balance is in general fairly good (I can probably say even better than the States); professors get a lot of time to spend w/ their family. OTOH, at some other universities which shall remain unnamed, I've heard that professors are known to work 14-hour days :-)

My personal experience is positive -- at least, in our institution, I don't really feel pressure from colleagues or management. However, I suspect it depends on a particular place. There are certain situations that I consider unavoidable, and thus I don't think people disrespect one's life-work balance, but unpleasant things happen.
For example, we might have grant deadlines or other paperwork in the middle of vacation, and of course, we are expected to get things done. Certain events like open campus, student competitons or entrance exams typically happen on weekends, and someone has to take care.
So, at least for me, most pressure comes from objective reality rather than someone's direct requests. When I have to work on a conference paper day and night to meet the deadline, that's for my own good, and I won't do myself a favor by missing it. The situation is more complicated in case of joint work when I can let down my colleagues, but perhaps Japan isn't special in such matters.
From the perspective of regulations, labor laws of course protect employees, and our administration actually asks us to take more vacation days to improve their stats, and they even offer additional vacations on top of what we have during the summer break. Your mileage may vary, but most professors around me don't push their students/postdocs too hard. I believe it might depend on the source of funding as well.

Very interesting! What I've heard from the US is very similar, it really depends on the lab, department, and university what the situation is like.
What are the official weeks of vacation per year, and what does the uni ask you to take in addition to improve their stats?

Annual paid leave is ~20 days/year, I think, plus you can take "self-study" (sort of stay home), plus "unofficial" holidays (6 days around Jan 1), plus 5 days extra if you take them between July and Sept. The university wants us to take these days. Paid leave sums up to 40 days per year max, so you have to take it anyway -- or it'll burn. If you have anything specific to ask, feel free to contact me, see mail in the profile. I must say though that my work experience is limited just to one university here.

Awesome, thanks for the information! I'm still several years out from my graduation, but if concrete plans are beginning to be made I'll send you a message.

I am currently a PhD student in Japan. I think if you work for the company, that would be stressful. However, working in university or academic institution, that may differ. With my experience here, I think it is not so hard. You don's have to work on the weekend unless you want.
Of course, it also depending on each laboratory or professor rule. Since, my lab now, they work from 9 am to 6 pm. But another lab I know is more stressful.


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Is the middle of May very late for graduate admissions in the same year?
Let me explain my situation a little bit, then I will try to make it more general for others to benefit.
I am graduating in a month and getting my bachelor degree in computer science. I did apply to graduate programs of US universities, and it did not end up as I expected. Right now, I am still looking for chances, graduate programs, to get in. I guess all the programs in US made their decisions already, and this is true for most of EU universities. But, still I want to check if I am missing anything.
More generally, consider an international student who wants to apply for graduate programs of computer science in EU/US. It is mid of May. Does this student still have chances to get in a graduate program with scholarship?

I guess you mean you have already applied and you wonder whether your pending decisions will be admits or rejects.

@Bravo No. I applied to US programs and got rejected. Currently I am looking for new programs to apply.

At my university (Bath), prestigious university scholarships are awarded through a competition that has its first rounds of evaluations in January, so we recommend submitting December of the year before.  However, in the UK and Europe generally much research is funded by grants from research councils and industry which may be awarded at any time.  These studentships are on particular topics and will be advertised on relevant mailing lists and sites like http://jobs.ac.uk.  In addition, often multiple universities offer the same top students studentships, so occasionally funding gets returned and reoffered to a new applicant.
Application times for American academic positions (both faculty and postgraduate) seem to be more structured, at least in my experience.  At MIT they said they had at least 120-150 fully-qualified applicants for the 30 slots they had the year I was lucky enough to get in (note: this means getting rejected does NOT necessarily mean you weren't good enough to get in!)  So I don't think there is any chance they would look at someone who missed their application deadline if they applied late.  But I could be wrong, and certainly it might be different at smaller universities.
In general though I'd recommend spending the time between now & the next deadline making yourself a better candidate, e.g. by publishing, working in a lab, or helping out with a conference or even just getting a job.   Even if you put in another application this year, this is still good advice in case you reapply for next year.

Yes, it's too late, at least in the US.
All the PhD programs I'm familiar with (mostly in North America, but a few European programs too) require admitted applicants to accept or decline admission offers by April 15.  The admission offers themselves are sent out weeks or even months earlier.  For example, my department tries to finalize all PhD admission offers by mid-February.  We get about 750 PhD applications every year, so to keep ourselves (relatively) sane, we don't even consider applications that arrive after the December deadline.
A few PhD programs do consider applicants for admission in the spring semester.  But I wouldn't recommend trying for spring admissions to the same programs that already turned you down.  In my experience, spring admission is more competitive.  Moreover, a few months is unlikely to significantly improve your application, especially since they've already formed an opinion.
I also agree with Joanna's recommendation: Your best bet is to strengthen your record and apply again next year, for admission in Fall 2013.  If possible, get involved in a research project with the goal of publication.  At a minimum, do something independent, creative, and technical to show off your potential for research.  Show your complete application to your letter writers (or other faculty mentors), especially your research statement, and ask for their detailed and brutally honest feedback.  Listen to them.  Finally, confirm with your references (by asking them directly) that they are willing to write you strong letters emphasizing your research potential.

At my university (KU Leuven, Belgium), PhD positions are available all year round, as admissions depend very strongly on faculty obtaining grants, and these are available at different times of the year. Faculty select their own PhD students individually, rather than depending on a centralised procedure. Just check the web site of the faculty you are interested in and look for open positions.
The same procedure may be used by other Flemish universities, but I cannot say for sure.

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Meaning of "delocalized campus"
While filling a PhD application for a European university, I came across a field  that needed to be filled. The field - to be filled by 'Yes or No' -  asked if my master's or bachelor's universities are 'delocalized campuses'. This is the first time I have come across this term. I am not a native English speaker.
What does 'delocalized campus' mean?

I guess it means if your studies were performed on a campus away from the central university.  For example, my PhD was at Kiruna Campus of Luleå University of Technology.  Why they would care is another question. (Note: I'm not sure, hence I post this as a comment, rather than as an answer).

Another possibility is that it might mean distance learning, for example the Open University.  I did a web search, and https://it4bi-dc.ulb.ac.be/emundus/images/stories/provided_documents/it4bi-dc_application_manual.pdf defines it to mean "an international campus abroad from your home university" (which is a special case of gerrit's definition).  However, I have no idea whether that meaning applies to your case.

look at the link below.
http://www.business-school-pgsm.com/delocalized-programs.html
for delocalized institutions….understand them as partner institutions.
Oxford Dictionary:delocalize
verb
[with object]
detach or remove (something) from a particular place or location, or from local limitations:
(as adjective delocalized)
Merriam-Webster: Delocalize:
to free from the limitations of locality; specifically :  to remove (a charge or charge carrier) from a particular position
Definitions aside:
Some smaller institutions/colleges have partnerships with big colleges/universities to confer degrees. For instance if you attended an institute that offers degrees with a bigger universities' name, then Yes your diplomas were obtained from a delocalized campus.
I attended a university with more than 7 campuses.
So if you attended any of the six campuses apart from the main campus or if you took your studies online; then Yes, your bachelors/masters degrees were obtained from a delocalized campus.

For a state like PA I can see how this works since State College is clearly the main campus. How does it work for a state like CA? Is UCLA or UC-Berkeley a delocalised campus?

@StrongBad A very old post, but no, I would never describe constituent members of the UC system as "delocalized." Dunno about PA.

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Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose
The internet is littered with information on what makes a good SOP, but I would like to ask a specific question regarding mentioning one's research interests in SOP.
What points should a student keep in mind while writing her statement of purpose? If there is exactly one specific professor the student is targeting, it makes sense to talk of one of his recent papers and ideas for extending its results in the SOP.

If 1) there are a couple of preferred professors or more, 2) each of them has multiple research interests and 3) the student is unable to zero in on a field or topic, how should the student tailor her SOP to make it appealing to more than one professor?
Should the student worry about the feasibility of her ideas in the SOP? Is an extensive literature survey in the relevant field necessary before putting anything in the SOP?

At the very least, don't try to convince us that you've been in love with your field ever since you could take your first trembling steps. No, I'm not joking.

@Bravo For "statement of purpose", do you intend "research plan"? "Research proposal"?

@DavideChicco.it Yes, in many US universities it is only known as SOP.

Your research statement (not "statement of purpose" as university administrators strangely insist on calling it) should be a description of your research experience, interests, and goals, as a supporting case for your potential for independent research.  If you were applying to work in my research area, I would much rather read about your research ideas than mine.
Here's what I like to see in research statements:

What have you already done? What problems have you solved, or at least worked on?  What independent projects have you been part of?  What were your key contributions?  What did you learn?  What did you teach the world?  How do your results compare to what was already known?  What original ideas are you most proud of?  Be specific, technical, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).  Refer the reader to your web page for more details.  Have a web page with more details: preprints, project reports, source code, videos, etc.
What are you working on now?  What problems are you currently trying to solve?  What are you currently trying to build?  What are the open research issues?  What intellectual tools are you using, or learning to use?  What are you reading?  What prior results are you building on?  How are you building on your own earlier work?  What is your current favorite half-baked idea?  Be specific, technical, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).  If you have partial results, refer the reader to your web page for more details.  Have a web page with more details.

You ask whether you should worry about the feasibility of your ideas.  No more or less than if you were actually doing research.  Ideally, I'd like to see both that you have good ideas and that you're not afraid to have bad ones.

What might you want to work on in the future? What problems you would like to solve?  What would you like to build?  Do you want to push your existing projects further?  If so, how?  What new areas are you interested in exploring?  What are your long-term career goals?  Convince the reader that you are  knowledgeable about your target area(s), but be honest about your ignorance.  Be specific, credible, and confident (but not arrogant).

No one will hold you to your stated plans.  You don't need to do an extensive literature survey (although it certainly can't hurt; put a copy on your web page), but at a minimum you should have had a strong undergraduate course on the topic.

How does my department fit your research goals?  (If the rest of your statement is well-written, the reader already knows the answer to this question, but you also need convince the reader that you know.)

A few sentences about motivation are worthwhile, but don't talk about how many programming languages you know, or about how you were a child prodigy, or how many contests you've won, or how many A+s you got, or how Alan Turing was your childhood hero, or how your research area will Change The World.  Write in simple, direct, flawless English.  Like Suresh, I have seen many phrases like "my first trembling steps", but never in successful applications.
The only credible reason to "target a particular professor" is if that professor's research interests already mirror your own.  If you try to craft the bulk of your statements to different professors in different departments, the result will be much shallower, and therefore much less persuasive, than if you describe your own well-developed research interests.
Yes, that means you have to have well-developed research interests.  That's the point.

Very interesting. Do these advices fit also for PostDoc research statement?

@DavideChicco.it   I think the four bullet points fit quite well, but of course one would expect very concrete answers backed up by actual papers and ideas.

@JeffE For situations where size restraints are imposed on the SOP, would you recommend the applicant to focus more on their own research ideas at the expense of explicitly expressing how the department fits their goals?

@HJM: Yes, definitely.

So would you say that it's mandatory for a potential student to have a very good idea about what they want to do?  I was under the impression that this did not have to be the case.

No, you dont't have to know exactly what you ant to do, but you do have to be interested enough in something to be able to talk about it in credible technical detail.

@DavideChicco.it Honestly I found the overall questions represent a good foundation of a research statement for even a tenure-track position.

If you are confused with the objections of the last two parts, see these two comments

In the part about my work I want to do in the future, do I need to talk about my postdoc plan if I'm applying to a PhD program? If so, how long and detail it should be?

@JeffE How exactly should you point to the webpage. I mean should it be a citation and then a link to the page in the references or rather, a direct hyperlink to the report? Moreover, do faculty on the committee have enough time to check out individual websites?

@TushantMittal Yes, exactly: Include a readable and clickable URL to the report (or better, to your web page listing all your projects). If the rest of your application is interesting enough, somebody will click on the link. But more importantly, the fact that you’ve included the link signals your confidence that your work will hold up under scrutiny. Even if nobody follows your link, that confidence signal will work in your favor.

@JeffE Does it still apply to Master's (MSc) applicants? I mean, they should talk about their research interests, but how important is the first part?
Also, for someone who is switching fields, maybe from ECE to CS, it is quite possible that they only have projects to talk about. Not research. How can they polish those first two paragraphs?


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Should I put my MCAT score on a CV for a sessional position?
I'm applying for a sessional lecturer position for an ethics course in a biology department heavy on pre-meds. I don't have a PhD but am an ideal candidate in every other respect. Will including my MCAT (medical school admissions) score demonstrate anything of value considering my biology background is light?

In your shoes, I would. The thing with Resumes and CVs is that what you include or don't changes as your career progresses. Putting MCAT scores would look silly when applying for a TT Assistant Professor position, but would be central for a grad student applying for a job in say, MCAT test prep. Since your Biology background is light and you say the department has a lot of pre-meds, a high MCAT is the sort of thing that might impress your premed students and thus the kind of thing those hiring might appreciate.