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Two-thirds of my class colluded. Should I report them to the academic offences committee?
I teach a module in an electrical engineering MSc programme in the UK for which the students are given a technical project that carries 25% of the total marks. The project is a group assignment and the students work in teams of 3-4 members.
This year, four out of six teams submitted identical assignments (the only differences were their names on the cover page).
In our school, we are expected to flag cases of suspected plagiarism and collusion to an internal academic offences committee. If I do that, the most likely scenario is that they will all get a zero mark in this assignment.
My main concern is that if this happens, the module will have a very high failure rate. These students will need to score at least 75% in the final exam and taking into account their progress hitherto (which has been disappointingly poor), it is more likely for a camel to... pass the module.
Moreover, I expect that the committee will rule that all students get a zero - both the ones who copied the answers, and the one(s) who provided them. At least this was the case last year when a similar case of collusion was taken to the academic offences committee. I'm not sure this is fair to those students who spend time and effort to do the assignment.
Some months ago I had a chat with a colleague, who suggested that there's a cultural aspect to the students' understanding of the concepts of collusion and plagiarism - an opinion that I also found in this blog post by TurnitIn and this paper that is cited therein. I'm mentioning this because the students who colluded in my class are all international. Although I'm not convinced by the idea that they may simply not understand that copying an other team's assignment is wrong (they are MSc students after all), I can acknowledge that I may be missing something. I should mention that at the beginning of the semester, there was a series of induction events in which we tried to define very clearly the concepts of plagiarism and collusion.
An additional complication is that high failure rates are frowned upon in our department. It's an unwritten rule that the ideal failure rate is 0% and I'm already feeling pressure from the other modules I teach where I get ~15% failures every year. This is also a new module and I don't want it to have a bad reputation.
My question is: should I should report them to the academic offences committee given that they will fail my module and as a result the MSc? If so, they will have the right to resit the final exam in October, but they'll still need to score >75%. My other option is to turn a blind eye (in principle we do that for minor infractions), but I don't think this is right. Besides, it may give them the message that they'll pass the final exam even if they don't put in any effort. I do not have the option to give them some other punishment without referring them to the committee.
Update: Many thanks for your answers. Today I reported this to the academic offences committee. I presented all the evidence to the committee, but I will not participate in the investigation, which I believe is fair. I think the university has unequivocally communicated its regulations regarding academic offences, so as @Allure wrote dura lex sed lex.  In my opinion it is both partonising and condescending to suggest that international students should be treated differently or more leniently and even that they cannot understand what collusion is; they have the right to chose to collude and should face the consequences. I do have some concerns about the severity of the consequences, but as it stands, these are the rules. Lastly - and this is a more philosophical question that has nothing to do with blatant verbatim copying - I wonder whether there is indeed a significant difference "across cultures," but this is a different topic altogether.

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To consolidate one question that keeps coming up -- it seems very strange that 16 students would submit word-for-word identical reports and not expect to get caught. Are you absolutely sure the students understood your expectations about working together? If so, do you have any theory for why they would would have expected to get away with this?

OP: I hope you'll return and post another update when the whole incident is resolved at the committee level -- that might help to address & document the situation for those in the "just can't believe it" camp, as per @cag51's comment above. It's interesting that the more brazen the cheating, the less inclination some people have for sanctioning it. (Although that might seem to be a separate question, my answer below does touch on such a theory as asked.)

In our school, we are expected to flag cases of suspected plagiarism
and collusion to an internal academic offences committee.

There's your answer.  It's your job to report the offense.

Moreover, the system is deliberately designed so that responsibility for investigating and penalising the plagiarism does not fall on your shoulders. You simply report the similarities and let other people worry about what consequences it has.

These are also MSc students, not green undergrads.  They really ought to know better by now.

@avid I feel like doing things to relieve yourself of responsibility and letting "other people worry about the consequences" is a very bad recipe for a system of ethics.  Although humans are easily lulled into this sort of thinking, I truly hope that you are not earnest in this remark.  Especially here on Academia StackExchange where there are perhaps many people engaging in human subjects research, this is an extremely dangerous attitude.

@Him It's not about relieving yourself of responsibility, it's about segregating responsibilities/powers, eliminating conflicts of interest, and ensuring students have the same due process regardless of the instructor.  You don't want one person to be judge, jury, and executioner.

@Him: “Relieving yourself of responsibility” in the sense of not questioning the system would be bad.  If they have reason to believe the committee would be unjust, then possibly yes, the instructor should disobey the reporting rule.  But there’s nothing here to suggest that — the whole setup sounds like a fair and reasonable system (at least, as much as one expects any disciplinary system to be), in which case the instructor is right to follow it.

@bta AFAIK it is never the case that the professor has powers above and beyond those of the academic offenses committee.  Therefore, there is no risk of the "judge, jury, executioner" scenario: the professor's powers are expressly limited to leniency.  Although there is a case to be made that this skips some sort of "investigation" step that the academic offenses committee will ostensibly engage in - but with literally identical submissions, I don't suspect that the investigation will involve much.

@PLL "reason to believe the committee would be unjust" but this is precisely the concern raised by the OP.  They have some confidence that these students will end up ejected from the MSc, and this result gives them some pause, suggesting that they think it may be unjust.

@Him I think that's a gross mischaracterisation of the situation. Allowing something to be handled through the established and published procedures is not abdication of responsibility. I do not see any indication that the rules OP is enforcing are inherently unjust. On the other hand it is unjust if individual professors start applying their own rules based on their own preferences and biases.

@avid Perhaps this specific scenario warrants these students' ejection from the MSc program.  My point is that this answer and your comment suggest that for the OP to reflect upon the justice of the consequences of their actions here would be incorrect.  It seems to me that in any circumstance where one's actions may have grave consequences for another human being (and being ejected from your MSc program are grave consequences) then carefully reflecting upon your actions is the least one should do.

@Him Is there no responsibility for preserving the trust in the educational system? If these people graduate without knowledge of the subject, the MSc will be worth less than the paper it's written on and no one will longer trust the school to give a good education.

@Him And what of the students who suffer when the value of their hard-earned qualification drops because employers discover that it does not guarantee the holder has any skills? What about the students who worked their socks off to pass their courses on their own merits?

@avid "the value of their hard-earned qualification drops" citation needed.  Also, you seem to suggest that I am advocating that the OP simply do nothing.  This is not the case.  I'm not even suggesting that the OP not turn these students into the committee.  So I'm not entirely sure at what point your comment is directed.

@pipe it has been my experience that most students are at school to learn, not to somehow simply acquire a piece of paper.  If stamps of approval is what the educational system has been reduced to then woe unto us...

@Him What you seem to be forgetting here, (and I believe avid is not) is the other 2 out of 6 groups who did their own work. If the single result, submitted by 4 of 6 groups is A worthy (or 4.0 or whatever) and the other two are something less, then 2/3's of the class would get excellent grades for what was essentially no original work. If I were one of those 1/3 of the class and somehow learned of this ... I'd be camping out the ombudsman and dean or whatever the correct office is....

I also suggest that you include a collusion blurb in the next iteration of your syllabus and when you set expectations on the first day of class make sure you talk about this experience.

@CGCampbell Sure.  I never claimed differently.

@Him: "it has been my experience that most students are at school to learn, not to somehow simply acquire a piece of paper" citation needed. My experience has been 100% the opposite. The OP's experience seems to be the precisely opposite.

You should. Dura lex sed lex. Not reporting it sends the message that plagiarism is OK if enough people do it.
The grim consequences you envisage (like departmental disapproval) might not come to pass - after all you can't control if your students decide to cheat. Conversely, I would feel disturbed if the instructor passed cheating students to avoid high failure rates.
As for the students failing the MSc because you failed them in your module, to quote from an answer to another question:

Sometimes a student's failure is a teaching success.
The lesson is just not the one you wished that you were teaching.

+1 "I would feel disturbed if the instructor passed cheating students to avoid high failure rates"

When I was in school, being caught cheating would result in automatically failing the entire course (not just the assignment). The second offense would result in failing the course and being suspended from the University for a semester. The third would result in outright expulsion. Point being, the policy in question actually isn't all that harsh - I've certainly heard of harsher policies.

@CaptainEmacs Especially engineering students! Along with doctors/pre-med, I hope the academic community is especially stringent with engineering students. The consequences of poorly educated engineers in the world can be deadly.

@ToddWilcox you're oversimplifying, but not wrong. Engineering has a much higher tolerance for and incidence of group work (in my experience). But, and this is key, it is absolutely fundamental to understand and apply the requirements specific to that project. More than mere academic dishonesty ("mere", ha!), failing to understand the requirements is a huge indictment of engineering students' competence as engineers.

@ToddWilcox I am an engineer and I can say that most of the course materials, i.e. education was useless in real world applications. And if you ask engineers, I bet many of them would side with this. Point being, I think mixing the ethical standards with real world consequences is not a fruitful argument in this case. The better lesson that engineers have to learn is, one must have some ethical principles and abide them even if it does not affect anyone in real world.

The way I see it, my employer pays me to evaluate my students’ knowledge of the material I taught them. I am ethically bound to give only grades that reflect my honest assessment.
In particular, if an assignment is turned in that I know to be plagiarized, I cannot in good faith give it a grade of more than zero. The student who submitted it has not credibly demonstrated any knowledge, so to do otherwise would be a betrayal of the trust my institution places in me to carry out the job I was assigned to do.
The distinction between students who copied and students who allowed others to copy from them is a bogus one. Both are cheaters, and in practice it is usually impossible to know to which of these two categories a student belongs. There is no logical policy other than to treat all students who participated in such a collusion scheme as if they cheated and did not do the assignment, even if in fact some of them did.
The allowance you are thinking of making for “cultural” values of “international” students is disrespectful to honest students, who hail from all different countries, including the same geographical regions as the cheating students who supposedly have a misguided understanding of what plagiarism is. You should treat people as individuals, who are adults capable of making their own decisions and need to live with the consequences of those decisions.
The argument that reporting the cheating students will result in a high failure rate is neither here nor there. Perhaps your program needs to do some soul searching about what they might be doing that results in such massive cheating scandals occurring (and the high failure rate that follows them), and what they can be doing to prevent them in the future. But it’s not your place as an individual instructor to take such high-level questions into account and substitute your own personal justice for whatever the institutional policies say needs to happen in such a situation.

it may be a cultrual thing, but it's not so much that they come from Elbonia that makes them think they can cheat with impugnity, rather it's that they come from money.

@Jasen I'm not so sure - there are countries where academic dishonesty is treated much more lightly than it is in developed countries.

@nick012000 It's not that it's treated lightly in these countries, but that academic achievements are treated as subject to negotiation and negotiation skills. And when an institution makes itself dependent on pass rates, it effectively imports that dilemma. The worst part is when it closes its eyes to this. It's not easy for an individual academic to help reopen them.

"The distinction between students who copied and students who allowed others to copy from them is a bogus one. Both are cheaters, and in practice it is usually impossible to know to which of these two categories a student belongs." Are you sure? Back in my time as a student, it was blatantly obvious who was who: The nerd who always sat in the first row and immediately knew the answer to all questions was the one who "allowed others to copy", and the slackers whose submissions were usually full of typos and barely comprehensible were the ones "copying". No detective work required.

@Jasen every cheater and every criminal have some background that led them to become the people they are. If they want to ask for lenience because they come from wealth (or from poverty for that matter), let them do it at the appropriate forum when they are summoned to account for their actions. I suspect it won’t matter then, and it certainly should not matter from OP’s point of view.

@Heinzi well, sometimes it may be possible to tell. In that case it would be logical to have different punishment and to potentially not give a zero grade to the student who shared their work. But unless you know beyond a reasonable doubt, you should treat them the same.

@DanRomik except that person is guilty of knowingly facilitating dishonesty -- arguably as bad (if not worse!) than the other offenders.

On the flip side, I suspect there are some isolated cases where someone's work may have been copied without their knowledge (such as if a student inadvertently used a file storage space for their own work that had previously been used as a collaborative workspace, and an unscrupulous student from the previous project swiped it and shared it with others) but I suspect this is a tiny minority of cases.

@DoktorJ You would hope that the school would provide the students with an opportunity to defend themselves against the charges - a case like what you describe might be able to be proven with other evidence, like local working copies or maybe system logs from the offending storage location.

@Kayndarr That's another reason why reporting this to the academic offenses committee is the right thing to do. Committee processes will ensure that each student has a fair chance to defend themselves. It's difficult to ensure that sort of due process if each professor handles situations ad-hoc.

Unfortunately, some academics have employers that are paying them in part to lend their credibility to a fraudulent enterprise.  If that were the situation, I would not feel comfortable advising people about which hill they wanted to die on.

+1 already for the quotable first sentence alone.

@AlexanderWoo That's why you have a separate committee. As a lecturer you should not be placed in the dilemma of making assessment offense decisions, especially if you have a conflict-of-interest between pass rates and ensuring honest assessments. Some places do not count withdrawn students,  into the failure rate. Maybe students failing due to assessment offences may also not be counted in the statistics.

Yes, you should report them. It's the official policy, and it's also the right thing to do. It helps you by spreading out the responsibility for the failures (or whatever). Given the academic level and introductory anti-cheating module, it's overwhelmingly likely that these students have been cheating through their entire academic career, and have grown accustomed to being given a pass every time in this same fashion.
As I wrote in this answer:

If these are university students, then it seems to me overwhelmingly
likely that what's happened is a reflection of prior habits they've
been following for... maybe 12+ years now? I'd say at this point it's
naive to think this is truly "the first offense". What if these
students are cheating at work in every single one of their college
courses, and then pleading "first offense" or "didn't know" (very
common, and should be disregarded as utterly unbelievable), and so are
given this allowance continually throughout their program sequence?

it's overwhelmingly likely that these students have been cheating through their entire academic career - I'm not totally convinced about this (I agree with the rest)--my impression is that cheating has increased significantly during the pandemic, especially with online activities.

@Kimball: Perhaps. But I've had online-submitted assignments before and after the start of the pandemic, and the frequency and reactions around cheating seem to be about the same. None of my students have pointed to the pandemic as an excuse of any sort.

Maybe cheating proportions haven't changed that much when just looking at online assignments/classes (though I imagine it could in situations where people get more disengaged/fatigued overall)---I personally didn't have online assignments pre-COVID.  What I meant is that the proportion of online assignments and classes greatly increased, which at least in my department coincided with a large uptick in cheating.

@Kimball: The number of assignment submissions where cheating occurred (i.e., attack surface) may have increased. But I suspect that number of students cheating (and how), which is distinct and what my answer is about, has remained about the same. Perhaps they were cheating on papers in courses other than yours -- e.g., it would be previously invisible to instructors who had mostly test-based coursework. Again, none of the students I've caught pointed to the pandemic as an exceptional reason for their cheating.

Something doesn't add up: Obviously, the students didn't think what they did was forbidden because they didn't try to hide the fact that the papers were identical. Probably, because they were supposed to cooperate to begin with, they falsely assumed it's OK to cooperate across groups. As with most misunderstandings the fault may not be exclusively on one side, which is the reason for my suggestion:
Have a session where you explain the rules in unambiguous terms. If there is a language barrier or something similar, make them take a 5 minute test afterwards that lets them decide whether a few choice scenarios are proper behavior or not.
Invalidate the project for all those who submitted the identical results. Have them retake an equivalent assignment or, if that's impossible due to time constraint or lab hours etc., an exam. Make it optional for the others, for fairness, to participate in the replacement project/test if they wish to improve their grades.

In my experience blatant cheating is a often because they were cheating before, hid it a little, got away with it, and then got lazy. And as things got more technical and they got further behind in the class, they didn't know how to hide copying even if they wanted -- they didn't know which words to change so it sounded different but was still correct.

I agree with Owen. The students sometimes cheat so blatantly that its insulting. One would want to give them negative marks if only for the insult (of course, we can't, and shan't).

I think blatant cheating is sometimes just a low-effort attempt. Maybe a lot of students underestimated the effort required, then found out very late that they couldn’t finish in time. Instead of handing in nothing (for which you certainly get zero points) they decided to try handing in a colleague’s copy (for which you only get zero points if it’s found out).

Obviously, the students didn't think what they did was forbidden because they didn't try to hide the fact that the papers were identical. - Or they all got the answer from the same 3rd party, unbeknownst to each other.

@Kimball I haven't thought of that. In a class that doesn't talk much to each other that's certainly a possibility.

You'd be surprised. I've had MS/PhD students copy entire wikipedia articles in their reports. I do believe there is a cultural issue.

@thc These are very easy to identify. They are surprisingly well and literately written and slightly (or blatantly) off the track. (On the other hand, we had a student who would write fantastically, and you would futilely look for the source he lifted it from - only to realise, yes, this is how he writes; after all, there must exist people who know how to write well-expressed articles :-)

It's intriguing that the more blatant the cheating, the less inclined many instructors are to sanction it. I would theorize there's a positive feedback loop there that partly explains the "Something doesn't add up" mystery.

Best answer IMO. Shows all the pros and cons and tries to be as fair as possible.

I know you already reported this (which I think was the right thing to do), but for future readers, let me take another angle on this. Specifically, I'd like to focus on this paragraph:

Moreover, I expect that the committee will rule that all students get a zero - both the ones who copied the answers, and the one(s) who provided them. At least this was the case last year when a similar case of collusion was taken to the academic offences committee. I'm not sure this is fair to those students who spend time and effort to do the assignment.

That being said, would it be fair to the students that were punished last year if these students received no penalty whatsoever for an identical offense? Policies need to be enforced uniformly (or not at all) to avoid arbitrariness.
It would also be unfair to the two teams that completed their own work, because the 3 teams that evidently put forth no effort whatsoever would be graded as if they had actually done the assignment.

"unfair to the two teams that completed their own work"  how so?  It's not clear to me how they would be harmed in any way.  Is it fair to me if you win the lottery?

@Him It is if I never actually purchased a ticket and won anyway.

@Him: unfair ≠ harm. This is basic stuff.

@DanielR.Collins Being arbitrarily punished seems like harm to me.

A few things:

it is important to report it, even if there is no punishment past "they have to redo the assignment and not collude" (which is more work for you of course) - reason being, there are serial cheaters and they "get by" by apologizing profusely if caught
no matter what they do, it will likely be more work for you OR you will be completely disillusioned (which happened to me when I reported multiple cheating incidents and they said "you didn't say explicitly they couldn't copy"...)
glad you actually care
finally, give them slightly different assignments - 3 vs. 4 variables, 100 vs. 200 ohm resistors, whatever.  It's a little more annoying to grade, but if they collude to get the right answers, they should be learning something!

What do you mean "redo"? You can't redo something you never did in the first place, so effectively their "punishment" would be to do what they were supposed to have done in the first place.

Sadly, "redo" is mostly on the part of the instructor, to have to regrade it.  Our university will do that sometimes, EVEN IF it is clearly plagiarism.  All they did originally was manage to copy and paste.

Yes, absolutely without question. In fact, I've seen situations where the majority of the class cheated. It's not pretty, but it's been done before.
This isn't playground hair-pulling or petty vengeance, academic integrity is sacred and it's right to report it.

I totally agree with the other answers, you should definitely report this.
An aspect of the situation which I think other posts did not mention: you don't actually know that two-thirds colluded.

The project is a group assignment and the students work in teams of
3-4 members.
This year, four out of six teams submitted identical assignments (the
only differences were their names on the cover page).

It is very easy to not cheat when you work  alone. When you are in a team of 3 or 4, your work will be plagiarised if there is one rogue team member. This can happen without your knowledge.
So, the most you can say, is that there is at least 1 person in each group who colluded with others.
It seems to me that it is unreasonable to assign 25% of the total marks for a group project, and then get punished for plagiarism, when the University cannot prove that every individual was aware of what is going on. You cannot expect from each team member to evaluate whether another team member's contribution is original or plagiarised.
My undergraduate Physics course included a part when 3-4 students worked together, but that project carried less than 0.5% of total marks, which I think is reasonable. 25% is ludicrous.
Nevertheless, this is not your problem. If you can influence these aspects of the course in the future, I would advise you to do so. Report collusion.

I don't think that 25% marks for a large project is unreasonable. There are many faculty these days who vociferously argue that all marks should be from projects like that.

I don't have problem with getting marks from projects, but I have problem with my mark dependent on 3 other people. Are those departments refer to large projects you do on your own or with other people?

That's good point! Although the ability to determine if there are nonzero cheating teammates is I'm pretty sure not part of intended learning outcome.

I see you've already taken action so this comment is late.  Something for you and others to consider maybe is:

You are correct this work should be graded zero.

However maybe you could give them an opportunity to remedy their error?

Reject the plagiarised work, and give them a stern talking to, explaining why you have rejected it, and explaining that they were warned and should know better.

Give them a tight new deadline to redo the work to the proper standard and resubmit. Explain the consequences if this is not done. Explain that they are on the edge of being banned from the university (or whatever the likely max punishment would be from the Academic Offences Committee).

Keep your line manager / Department Head informed of this and your actions.

Likely they will still fail the course, but at least you gave them a chance to remedy their errors and they have learned from this.

Tomato, thank you for your answer. I think this would not be fair to the other students who didn't collude. I could of course allow them to take more time to improve their marks, but they have now crossed this assignment off their lists and are currently studying other modules. I could allow them to resubmit for a capped mark at 50%, but this is not allowed by the school.

This is the most reasonable answer to me.  As soon as this problem is in the hands of  the administration, they will probably come down with a blunt and broad punishment completely ignoring any nuance.  I prefer to keep problems to myself as much as possible so I can solve them according to my goal: to educate.  I often have students redo work simply because I know they half-assed it for a low, but passable score.  Students don't abuse my system because otherwise their workload will build up.  So I think the idea of giving some (or all) students extra time on the assignment is a non-issue.

How many times do would you guess the student have been given a "stern talking to" and waiving of any penalty over the course of their academic career? How likely do you think it is such a lesson will result in their trying the same thing in another course?

If 2/3 colluded and they were all international students, then that is proof that this was due to misunderstanding. When I had to do experimental work at university, the set-up was that we had to work in groups of two, a report was to be written and we would be be graded based on the report. But it was then one report per group of two students, the grade applied to both students and usually one student would write most of the report. This sort of a system is common practice in many universities, so this may be the source of the misunderstanding.

I once had 7 students turn in identical copies of an individual assignment. The person who wrote it only knew 1 of them, but that person let someone else copy it, and so on. Everyone was amazed at that number -- they assumed their were 2, or at most 3 copies turned in and they could at least claim they had worked with their friends on it.

Having pursued a fair number of these cases in the past year, many of them start of with the student claiming "misunderstanding", and when it becomes clear that I have hard evidence and am actually pursuing sanctions, they flip to, "oh I didn't understand the initial question, yes I cheated and I knew it was wrong, please forgive me".

"Proof" must exclude other possibilities. While I agree that the fact that all the plagiarizing students are international may suggest a misunderstanding, it's a far cry from proof of the matter. It's entirely feasible for international students to cheat intentionally, the fact that they are international does not in any way "prove" otherwise.

I never said that the other students, who didn't collude, are not international.

Plenty of courses have more than 2/3 international students.  This is particularly common for masters programs.

International students (I am one of them) are not mentally retarted, or something like that. People in high school understand the notion of plagiarism, so I don't quite see what this is all about.

...copying an other team's assignment is wrong.

tl;dr;
It might help you decide what to do by considering deeply what you mean by "wrong".  AFAIK, there is nothing Biblical (or Koranical, or [insert totally objective moral dogma here]) that governs your behavior in this specific scenario.  Will reporting them to the university office create a situation that is more "right", in your view?  Will doing something else create a situation that is more "right"?  Ultimately, your ethical system is yours, and as an educator you should really make an attempt to navigate these waters for yourself (with some aid, perhaps, from other stackoverflowers).
tfa
Probably, it is not the case that you consider plagiarism to be a moral error in-and-of itself.  Often, I find that educators have vague notions that individual plagiarism causes some further inherent ill much later (e.g. at time of employment), or slippery-slope logic leads to a conclusion that plagiarism can cause class-wide problems.  There are possibly other considerations that are valid, for example this answer implies that if you give your word to do a thing (possibly implicitly by accepting payment for a job), then it would be inherently wrong to not do that thing.  I would consider this valid.  You may or may not be of this opinion.  However, many academic positions give a great deal of leeway to professors when deciding how to implement policies in their classes, so this consideration may not even apply.
Personally, my strongest ethical motivator is that I feel that knowledge of science is an inherent good.  As a science educator, this implies for me an ethical responsibility to educate.  Perhaps more strongly, I feel an ethical responsibility to educate despite what my educatees may or may not want.  If I have taken on the duty to educate student X, and student X doesn't want to be educated, then this does not relieve me of my duty to educate them.
In this context, if student X is utilizing plagiarism to shirk their studies, then I feel ethically bound to take steps to prevent (!=punish) this thing.  What steps to take?  If pursuing a particular course of action regarding their plagiarism will cause student X to, for example, be expelled from the program, then I would want to consider carefully my actions.  Possibly this will open a spot for another student who will actually learn, allowing me to fulfill my duty to educate.  Possibly such an open spot will only be filled by a student with similar habits, in which case I would want to find a method that would actually prevent these actions rather than simply flunking a never-ending cycle of plagiaristic students.
In this same context, it may be the case that student X is diligently pursuing their studies, but is simply using plagiarism as a tool to pass a class that they may otherwise not be able to pass, or to get an "A" having actually "earned" a "B".  In this case, pursuing an action that would cause student X to be ejected from the program would be antithetical to my duty to educate, and would therefore, in my ethical system, be wrong.  I may have other ethical duties due to official university policies requiring me to sort students by ability with maximum efficiency and accuracy.  To me, these are secondary to my ethical duty to educate.
As such, if I were in your scenario, I would have some delving to do.  Is it actually the case that these students were utterly incapable of completing the assignment?  If so, then this assignment probably isn't very educational (which is the primary purpose of assignments, IMHO).  Perhaps I should give a different assignment to replace it.  Is it actually the case that students are simply shirking their studies?  If so, then perhaps I should re-assign the same or a similar assignment of comparable difficulty, letting students know that they must actually be diligent in their studies.  Have these students been shirking their studies repeatedly, even after similar attempts to encourage them to diligence?  Then perhaps these students are simply lost, and you should report them to the appropriate department so that they can be replaced with students who will actually attempt to learn.
All of this is not to say that you should follow this suit.  This is simply to say that perhaps the ethics of the situation are not so simple as to admit a black-and-white answer.  Or perhaps they are.  Since you will be dealing with this ethical conundrum for years to come, you should really make efforts to come to a system that you find ethically consistent.

"AFAIK, there is nothing Biblical (or Koranical, or [insert totally objective moral dogma here]) that governs this specific scenario." There is. "Thou shall not lie."

@nick012000 your statement seems to be directed at the student, not at the OP, who is clearly the professor.  Indeed, from this perspective, the more relevant quote concerns casting the first stone.

No, it's aimed at you, to address a misconception in your answer in the hope you might improve it.

@nick012000, I feel you are ignoring the point of Him's answer.   Sure "thou shalt not lie" is in the Bible and applies to this answer, but there is loads of nuance around that specific commandment and OP's question.  It is easy for everyone to hide behind the rules and act like their hands are tied because some text says some specific thing.  Him is just pointing out that you don't have to do that to be ethically or morally correct.

What is "TFA"? The fine article? As in read the fine article.

@PeterMortensen the full answer, maybe?

"the full article"... I see this a lot on news aggregators.  It was meant as a disparaging joke about the length of my answer..... I guess it's not that common, though.  :)


text:
How do I find a new advisor for an unvaccinated graduate student?
Summary: I am closing my laboratory, and need to find a new placement for a PhD student who has strong anti-vaccination beliefs. Every professor on campus knows about it. How I can help them find new lab?

One bright, well-performing individual in my group is unvaccinated (against everything, apparently) due to personal beliefs. This individual is not outspoken about these beliefs, but their status as such has been spread not only within our group and department, but to many related groups. Indeed, upon learning this I myself stopped meeting in-person with the individual.
I am closing my laboratory, and seeking new homes for my graduate students (see here if curious). I am having zero luck identifying a new advisor. The student is increasingly frantic; homes have been found for the entire remaining group. It is clear to that student what the problem is, and why no one will engage. I am now hearing comments from them that suggest to me that they will exit and "give up."
My university does not allow sharing of vaccination status, so this cannot be made explicit in any way. I am in the USA, at an R1. They will not get vaccinated, and our program does not allow "unsupervised" students. I would love to pass this matter off to my administration or their counsel, but we have been told to handle this at the departmental level.
How can I resolve this in a more positive way?
Outcome: The student quit.
Happy Update: I have hired her through my new industry position.  It is remote work.
Details below.

Moderator’s notice: Work with the assumption that the student cannot be convinced to get vaccinated and the asker wants to or has to support this student. If you want to discuss the ethics of the student’s and asker’s choices, how to convince anybody, or the politics of the pandemic, please do so in chat. Any comments, answers or parts thereof going against this will be deleted without warning.

Advisor-advisee relationships are not just based on scientific fit, but must also be based on a good personal fit. Nobody is obliged to take on a student, or if they can be obliged to, they can't be forced to be a good advisor (thanks, jakebeal).
If your peers have learned that your student has made some objectionable and unresolved decisions in their past, I see little you can or should do. You specifically mentioned "personal" and not "religious" beliefs, so unless your student is a member of a religious sect with a long-standing opposition to vaccines and wants to start a legal route over religious discrimination, there's not a ton of options for them.
I wouldn't want to supervise a student that doesn't want to help end the pandemic, either. I think there is very little conscientious people owe the willfully unvaccinated at this point.

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My student emailed this evening to resign. I suggested that she give it another week but she was firm. She will drop out of the program, after 4 years.

An unplanned, happy turn of events: while helping my now former student with letters of recommendation for jobs I sent her a posting for my coming team, for which she successfully applied. Her position will be remote, and her pay is at a level commensurate to her four years of graduate school. I'm happy that one familiar and dependable member of my old team will be helping me in building this new one. I'm also sleeping a bit better at night.

@ProfessorWind-up Hopefully they make her get vaccinated too.

As the student’s current advisor, you do have some responsibility to help the student find a path forward with their PhD. But that responsibility is not infinite; the student is also responsible for their own decisions and actions, and if they want to continue in the program, it’s their responsibility to make themselves attractive enough that someone else will find the idea of supervising them appealing.
A few things you can do are:

Consider looking for a way to allow the student to transfer to your new department and keep working with you, if this is compatible with your own personal philosophy about what vaccination preferences you’re willing to tolerate in a student, and with the new institution’s covid policies.

Talk to your colleagues and encourage them to take on your student, praising the student’s good qualities as much as you honestly can. If you feel that your lack of ability to mention the student’s vaccination status makes it ethically impossible for you to advocate for the student in such a way, I think a way to resolve this dilemma is to ask the student to give their permission for you to mention their vaccination refusal, waiving the privacy-related constraint. Make it clear that if they will not give you that permission, you will be unable to advocate for them.

If the above advocacy fails, or if the student refuses to waive the privacy restriction, have a heart to heart talk with your student, and explain to them that you did your best to help them find a new advisor, but did not succeed. Explain to them that at that point, as long as they refuse to be vaccinated you do not think they will be successful in continuing with their studies.

After taking these steps, in my opinion you have fulfilled your ethical obligations. It’s up to the student to decide what to do next in such a situation. I don’t see that there is anything else you can or should do.

OP states that (...) individual in my group is unvaccinated (against everything, apparently) due to personal beliefs. It may be that the student stated that publicly (not sure what "not outspoken" actually means), in which case what is the problem in mentioning his vaccination status orally (I understand that the university doe not allow formal (written, I guess) sharing of such information)?

The OP is leaving academia (they have no new department).

@WoJ if university policy forbids OP from disclosing their student’s vaccination status to other people, I’m sure that would apply to both written and oral communications.

@AzorAhai are you sure? I didn’t see that stated anywhere.

@DanRomik It's in their linked background question.

@DanRomik: somehow everybody knows he is not vaccinated. This was not formal information so it is not like OP was given confidential information that must not be made public. For some reason, OP wants to be helpful to the student despite putting everyone else in danger. So either his non-vaccination is a normal thing for OP (in which case the whole point is moot), or OP wants to help the student and still have due-diligence informing others what they are getting into. I would be mad if such information was hidden from me (while being known to everybody else).

@WoJ I completely agree it’s problematic to recommend the student to other faculty without discussing their vaccination status. My answer explains the ethical and policy-compliant way to deal with this situation.

My university and state have muzzled faculty in regards to discussing vaccination status. Indeed, the untenable nature of this is one reason I am moving to a more free speech friendly position. I would have ethical issues, in many directions, but this student made their status clear early. Everyone qualified to take them knows.

@ProfessorWind-up Within the (US) federal and federal contractor community along with many state institutions, inquiring about vaccination status is also a no-no. PII needs to be protected. Good luck finding a more free speech friendly position.

I would recommend speaking to university legal counsel first, prior to attempting to implement (2)-(3).  Offering to withhold an academic benefit from a student (e.g., reference/advocacy for that student) unless they agree to waive legal rights could itself have legal ramifications.  I'm not saying you absolutely can't do this, but it would be prudent to speak to university legal counsel first to see if there are any restrictions on this.

@Ben sure, sounds like a reasonable suggestion. However it’s worth noting that in the US students are routinely asked to waive their legal rights as a condition for having a letter of reference written for them. In the current situation the advocacy is even more discretionary than writing a letter (which is considered a standard part of a professor’s job). So I think the risk here is pretty low, but I am not a lawyer.

@DanRomik: Out of interest, what rights are they generally asked to waive for LoRs?

(To explain the possible legal danger further, one issue here is that if there has already been a privacy breach leading to broad knowledge of the student's vaccination status, then any differential treatment on that basis could establish a "causal nexus" between the privacy breach and subsequent harm.  So even if it is usually okay to trade an LoR for some kind of waiver, if this is done as a reaction to knowledge of vaccine status, and if that knowledge would not have existed if not for a privacy breach, this could establish the "causality" for damages for a privacy breach.)

@doneal24 That would be PHI - "health information," not "identifying information."

Consider talking to the university's legal counsel if it's because of religious (or other legally protected) reasons.
If this student is refusing vaccination due to genuine religious beliefs, then I would recommend that you talk to the university's legal counsel to figure out what you can do. Discrimination against someone for their religious beliefs is illegal, and that would likely include indirect discrimination as a result of inflexibly applying rules and regulations that have a disparate impact on a protected group. If this is the case, then the university either needs to find him an advisor, or they need to waive the requirement that he has one, in order to protect themselves from a discrimination lawsuit.
If you're in an area where things like political beliefs are legally protected under anti-discrimination legislation, this would also apply if their reason for objecting for vaccination falls under any other legally protected reason.
Additionally, in the comments you've mentioned that the location you live in has a government mandate banning vaccine mandates by private organizations. If your student is unable to find an advisor because of their vaccination status and will be forced to withdraw from their degree as a result, that would amount to a de facto vaccination mandate, and would place the university at a great deal of legal risk if they were to make a complaint to the state government. I would definitely recommend that you speak to the university's legal counsel as a result.

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This might work; our state does have such legislation, I believe. I am hesitant to pursue options that might end in my fellow faculty, who are individuals I value, being forced into a situation they do not want. If the student goes down that road I would feed ethically unable to help them.  I might be legally required to, and the very suspicion that this is true is why I am leaving.

@ProfessorWind-up This is another reason to talk to the university legal counsel; once you do, you can get them to kick it up the chain and let the university administration handle it.

@ProfessorWind-up This. The student would most probably not want a supervisor who does not want to be his supervisor but legally forced to. It's a very bad, fustrating, and possibly toxic situation that just sucks for everyone involved, mostly for the student himself. Supervisor-student relations are pretty personal. Suggesting to earn a legally forced supervising againist his will is not a good idea.

First, I am amazed that they were able to enter a college in the United States while unvaccinated.  I didn't know that there were colleges that did not mandate standard vaccines.  I could see not mandating HPV or influenza, but I am amazed the situation exists for things like pertussis.
Your ethical obligation is to try; it is not your obligation to succeed.  This drama is playing itself out all over the United States right now over a wide range of settings.  The problem is that it sounds like there is no way to develop a reasonable accommodation around the student's status.
This is an interesting question that should be answered by the university's legal counsel.
Your institution doesn't require vaccinations so it is accepted as part of the contract that students do not need to be vaccinated to enter programs there.  The student needs an advisor and found one, but that advisor is leaving.
I would say that this is not a problem for you, but that the student should engage legal counsel.  The institution has a duty to perform, but there is no functional way to force faculty to take on a student.
There is a bizarre contradiction present.  The student was admitted with a hidden deficit.  That deficit is unrelated to the performance of their duties as a student.  The institution entered into a contract with them.  The faculty probably do not have to take a student as an advisee but the institution has an obligation to perform.
There may be a legal duty to assign that student to a faculty member.  However, the faculty member cannot be made to write letters of recommendation or even to prevent them from recommending against hiring the student.
I would say your ethical duty is complete, but I am not sure the institution's legal duty is complete.  Further, I am not sure there could be a path for success for that student even if a faculty member is required to take them on.
If the student leaves, does the institution owe them all the potential lost wages for their time there as well as refund tuition?  They entered in good faith.  They performed as required.  They did not fail to meet the institution's standards.
There are illnesses that prevent vaccination, they are uncommon but they exist.  There are also treatments for certain illnesses that eliminate the immunity normally granted by vaccines.
Should those people who either cannot be vaccinated or have been vaccinated but have no immunity be banned from colleges?  Generally, colleges grant medical exemptions certified by a health care provider but that isn't what happened here.  I would say this is an institutional failure.

Your ethical obligation is to try. I do not believe that their ethical obligation is to try to find a place for a student that is a danger to others. Their ethical obligation is to help normal students (something OP apparently did successfully). If this was me, my ethical obligation would be to try as hard as possible to have that person isolated from others.

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One of the ways to defend against Covid-19 is to put on masks. For example, we have only 16,499 cases per 24 million populations in Taiwan so far. The major reason I believe is that most of us (over 99%) put on surgical masks. (Our vaccinated rate is low compare to other countries)
If you cannot convince the student to be vaccinated for whatever reason (be religious belief or not), can you persuade the student to put on the mask?
If the student still refuse to do so, let them go. If the student is willing to put on the mask, then finding a professor to accept them may be easier. If still no one would take them, then you have done your best to keep them.
Good Luck !

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If you really need to help them, then I suggest that the first step is to get a commitment from them that they will do whatever is necessary to protect those that they work with. Masks, isolation (zoom), whatever. If they are willing to make that a top priority - no excuses, then proceed to the second step, otherwise tell them that you can't help them as it would put others at risk.
The second step is to inform anyone that you recommend them to that they aren't vaccinated and are therefore a potential public health risk, but that they have promised to take all necessary precautions. You may, in some jurisdictions, need their permission to have this conversation with others (IANAL), but if not given and you can't do this, then they are tying your hands from ethical behavior.
If you are in a field in which people need to work closely with one another, such as a lab, then this might actually be impossible. In a field like math it would work, since weekly zoom meetings and electronic communication is both possible and safe. But if people need to huddle over lab equipment then I'd find it hard to come to a solution.
For a belief to be ethical, it must take account of the valid needs of others. If not, it is just selfishness as well as dangerous to public health. And dangerous to public health beyond the bounds of the lab itself, since you have no control over how they interact when away from work. But if they are willing to take responsibility and the physical constraints make it possible, then you can safely (and ethically) work with them.
Furthermore, having a belief and acting on that belief are two different things.
And if you can't work with them, it isn't because you reject their belief. It is because they are a danger to the community.

"For a belief to be valid, it must take account of the valid needs of others." This sounds logical and good in theory. In practice, I'm afraid it would invalidate maaaaaany beliefs.

@EricDuminil, perhaps I should have said "For a belief to be ethical...". At one time in the US, many people believed that slavery was fine.

a commitment from them that they will do whatever is necessary to protect those that they work with I wonder if there is a situation where this can work. The student thinks that their deity will protect them, or that it is their fate to die if the deity decides to gift them with COVID. I find it hard to believe that they have any incentive at all to protect others (since everything is managed by someone else, up there). You are asking for rational behaviour someone whose behaviour is explicitly and intentionally irrational.

@WoJ, yes, I can't predict its success, but if they are unwilling to do that, I'd personally feel no need to help them further. But, we don't actually know it is a religious belief. It might be purely political.

I miss free speech. It does not exist at my R1 US institution in a way that might allow this. I cannot talk about these things: it is a firing offense. Masks cannot be required or requested. Faculty here lecture in packed rooms, are forced to have office hours, they are levered into service meetings, all with what every statistic tells us are many, many unvaccinated. Our state likely lies about these statistics to make them look more benign. It's bad, mkaes being ethical impossible, and is not what I worked so hard to do with my life. This is why I'm leaving.

Your second step here may be a breach of applicable privacy laws for the university (and according to information from OP it is a breach of university policy).

@Ben, unlikely if you have the person's permission.

@Buffy: Depends on if the relevant laws require consent to be freely given. If they do, the OP may not be able to obtain valid consent from the student, since they are in a position of authority over them and since the circumstances are such that the student could be justified in believing that refusing consent could have negative consequences for them. Also, "university policy" may or may not care about consent at all.

Check if anyone in the faculty holds the same beliefs. That may be his only chance. If none, go with the university's guidelines. That falls under the jurisdiction of the College Secretary and the university's legal office.

What does the "College Secretary" do? In the universities I'm familiar with (US/Canada) there's no such role.

@AzorAhai-him- in some Canadian universities, it would be the "Secretariat" which is a department which reports to the President.

Some description of a Canadian university's secretariat is given here. Briefly: it seems to be the department which reports to the university leadership and is responsible for overseeing the implementing of the policies that the leadership decides on.

This actually has been my strategy for the last couple days. We do have individuals here aligned with the idea that vaccinations are not necessary. However, I have not been successful. One major challenge that has arisen: I am forbidden to talk about vaccination statuses. The individuals I have talked to are the first to bring up this rule. I've already been reported once, and had another (the same, potentially) threaten verbally.  I have a lot to do before I leave, and this latest issue just makes me feel tired.

@cag Thanks for answering my question! Is that the same as the college secretary mentioned in the A?

No idea. I rather doubt the answer's assertion that "College Secretary" is a common term in an anglophone country (I suspect a mistranslation of a term that would better be translated as "secretariat"), but I could be wrong. In any case, a good reminder to the answer-writer that Academia varies more than you think it does.

I agree with other commentators that you should take whatever action is reasonable to find a new place for the student, but their acceptance depends on the decisions of others.  Your obligation is to make reasonable efforts to assist the student to find a new place, but you can only do what you can do --- you are not obliged to guarantee successful placement of the student.  You have stated that the student is a bright and well-performing student, so presumably you can give a reference that reflects that reality.  Aside from helping to identify possible placements and giving a good reference to the student, it is difficult to see what more you can reasonably do.
If you are concerned that vaccination status is having an adverse impact here, I would recommend you seek to have potential laboratory supervisors apply whatever are the operative university rules --- i.e., if there are vaccination mandates at the university then the student should be bound by them, and if there are not then the student should be free to attend a university laboratory without vaccination.  You can seek information on university policies and applicable laws from the university legal counsel, and they can also give guidance on whether or not it is legitimate for university personnel to take account of the vaccination status of the student in their decisions.  Seeking advice from the university legal counsel would be prudent in any event, since there are also possible legal issues relating to privacy breaches (see below).

Possible privacy violation issue: Notwithstanding the limitation on your own responsibilities, an important issue here is for your institution to ensure that relevant privacy laws/policies are being respected, and take action if there has been any breach of applicable rules.  Your post is unclear about the details, but from your description it sounds like the student either did not disclose their vaccination status, or did not disclose it widely.  In most jurisdictions, medical information taken from students is subject to privacy laws/polices, and this generally means that the medical status of a student cannot be disclosed except on a "needs to know" basis, and with various privacy protections.  The legal situation in the US is complicated, but universities are covered by FERPA in many cases, and this imposes privacy obligations on the university.  You also state that your university rules prevent sharing of vaccination status.
Your post states that the student's medical status has been spread around within your group and department and to other related groups.  That sounds like it would probably entail a violation of privacy rules in FERPA and in your university rules.  If so, that could lead to a complaint against the university and possible legal action either under FERPA or contract law.  Since you are closing your laboratory, this is not an issue for you personally, but it is something that you should bring to the attention of the Head of School and possibly also HR/legal counsel at the university.
One of the other answers here suggests that you should encourage the student to waive their privacy obligations in order for you to directly discuss the issue with potential laboratories, and you should tell them you cannot effectively advocate for them if they are unwilling to waive these rights.  I would strongly recommend against doing that without first speaking to the university legal counsel.  It could raise further legal issues relating to the privacy obligations of the university.

Three comments, which I will leave separately so they can be deleted separately. (1) US institutions don't usually have a "Head of School," there might be a department chair, the dean of a college or school (a collection of related depts in a university) or a university president/chancellor. Which do you refer?

(2) FERPA covers educational records, not medical ones. Even if vaccination status could be considered an education record (I doubt it), even at my liberal university with a vaccination requirement, professors do not have the ability to look it up, as it isn't deemed "need to know." FERPA does not stop the student or their peers from sharing any information about themselves

(3) Perhaps it is different in other countries, but medical privacy in the US only extends to covered institutions, i.e. doctors and people that need to know. It is not applicable to medical information that a professor learns about a student. It might be rude, but it is not illegal for someone to share medical information they have learned about someone else unless they are in a provider relationship to begin with.

Whilst I am not an expert on FERPA, your answer seems to contradict the little I know about it.  In particular, immunisation records held by an education provider are considered to be part of the education record at primary and secondary level, and at tertiary level it seems likely that they would also be covered.  OP suggests that the vaccination status of the student was spread around by others, not by voluntary disclosure of the student.  In any case, it is worth drawing to the attention of university legal counsel so that they can assess the matter.

It seems you are right that vaccination is considered an educational record (https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/sites/default/files/resource_document/file/FERPA%20and%20Coronavirus%20Frequently%20Asked%20Questions.pdf), so my bad on that. Nonetheless, if OP's university is so cavalier about vaccines to begin with, they may not even be collecting it, in which case it can't be an educational record. But, from a legal perspective, it would still only be illegal for someone to access that record and tell people, it is still irrelevant if the student shared that information herself.

I agree with most of this.  However, it could also be a breach if the initial source of the scuttlebutt was the student's disclosure of their vaccine status to a university official (e.g., supervisor) in some situation where that information was solicited from university, and then that official spread it around (without having accessed it from the record).  It's not clear to me whether a breach has occurred here, but there are enough "red flags" that I think it would be prudent to refer to university legal counsel so that they can assess.

As an uninjected graduate student who won't be compromising on this, it was really a non-issue for me. I did everything online.
In-person was always unnecessary, and I think classes should have been in a distanced format anyway and it was a move backwards to restart in-person classes.
Anyway the point is, unless there is a compelling reason for the person to meet in person their vaccination status should be completely irrelevant.

This works fine and is perfectly ethical, but only provided that it is possible to do so. Not every field has that characteristic. Big Science, perhaps.

Your answer isn't relevant. If distance were an option, then this wouldn't be a problem. Some doctoral programs do not even have classes, other than a pro forma course in research so there is something to bill for. An unvaccinated graduate student in some fields would be a hazard, such as medicine. Indeed, in practice, in some fields/programs there would be no way for the person to graduate because there would be requirements on external participation such as internships. I would never consider hiring an unvaccinated person.

Un, OP didn't give the details. Stop assuming particulars in your own mind.

As an advisor/mentor of grad students in math in the U.S., I would not want to take on an advisee whose success would a-priori be limited (in my mind) by no personal meetings, no matter what they thought. I feel responsible for at least the short-term success of my people, and would not want to take up such a responsibility with limitations that I think could be fatal, whether or not someone else perceives those limitations as such. (Similarly, after some experience with the whole mess, I don't think "distance" teaching is as good as in-person. It's a "much narrower pipe"... )

You're placing far too much importance on yourself and apparently the effects of physical vicinity lol. I personally thought COVID was great.

Indeed, remote is not an option in my field.

@paulgarrett would you also not be willing to take on a student who was paraplegic and physically unable to meet with you in person? What about a student suffering from an illness that put them at risk of early and sudden death? The logic you are employing seems tailored to justify a particular no-advising decision that conveniently matches your moral disapproval of anti-vaxxers in particular. But as these examples show, it’s a dangerous logic to employ and can justify all kinds of other behavior I’m guessing you won’t condone as enthusiastically.

Relationships take 2. * You * might feel that it should be okay, but that only works if you find the others involved are also okay with it. If you can't - and they have a right to their strong views who to work with under what conditions, as you have - then it'll of course be no go. And no recourse.

Of course the other option is go to a state which makes COVID restrict explicitly illegal, which is apparently the case in OP and apparently the professors are attempting to evade it.

@DanRomik, I guess I can't help but view "refusal to be vaccinated" as a voluntary self-disservice, in which I would hesitate to be complicit.. Involuntary compromises would not involve my complicitness. I suppose the issue that is active in my mind is about voluntary-or-not (about restricting/damaging interaction with advisor/mentor...)

@paulgarrett yes, that was exactly my point, that you were hiding what is actually moral disapproval behind purely pragmatism-based explanations for why you wouldn’t want to advise such a student. I’m not saying your position is wrong, just that your earlier comment was leaving something pretty important unsaid.

@DanRomik, it may indeed be that I'm expressing a "moral" viewpoint, but my own self-perception is that it's about voluntary versus involuntary restrictions. But probably this is a pointlessly philosophical issue here...

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text:
When do you know things are actually going poorly in graduate school?
When does someone know things are actually going poorly in graduate school? Each time folks post about being behind, it's always assumed that graduate students are such high achievers that they have imposter's syndrome. However, I have always pondered instances where things do actually go poorly. To be clear, I am not including the obvious instances like a Master's student never finishing their thesis, low grades, or not passing doctoral qualifiers twice. I'm referring in this instance to those who may graduate with a resume and/or CV that is lackluster for one reason or another and they may have been oblivious to it or were actually doing the bare minimum.
Using myself as an example, my master's grades were quite low, but it wasn't until I got feedback from the program director that said my GPA and GRE scores weren't ideal, and my thesis defense committee spoke about their concerns for me at length, that I finally realized I wasn't getting the typical "even the best students get criticized to smooth them out" treatment. It was legitimately indicated that I was somehow not material for moving on to the next level. I did anyway, but I continued to struggle.
I get there are program specifics in some instances, but what are common signs graduate school isn't going well? Furthermore, why does this only come up after results are in?

For most of us, the signs are nearly invisible until they are obvious. You "know" things are bad when you are told so. Failing comprehensives or having a stern lecture from your advisor are obvious signs.
But many (most?) of us aren't especially good at self awareness or self diagnosis. Burn out can be hard on a person. Poor study habits (cramming for exams, not taking good notes) might not be obvious to a person who has done well without much effort previously. And, everyone is different. And nearly everyone reaches their natural level of ability, after which only hard work leads to success.
The best advice I can give, and I wish I'd gotten it earlier, is that if you have suspicions or doubts about your progress and standing, talk to a professional. That might be your advisor or another faculty member, but it might also be someone in an office of student support; even a counsellor or psychologist.

talk to a professional is great advice.

@Buffy I definitely see your point.
I will say that I made the mistake of never asking my Master's advisor if he was happy with my professional progress or development. I did ask my first Ph.D advisor when I doubted myself constantly on the explicit instructions to work on nothing but my qualifier project (and no additional research) if she was happy with my progress (never asked about professional development though) and she always said she was happy until our fallout happened in this case. Then, my current advisor comes along and said my CV was "lacking" at the time we worked together.

For what it's worth, my current advisor has constantly said he's happy with my progress so that's a good sign.

For most of us, the signs are nearly invisible until they are obvious. That's a surprise. I'd have thought most people think they are doing worse than they actually are.

@Allure There's folks who are poor at self awareness like me and are oblivious to how someone would see their progress or standing from the outside in (I have a neurological reason in my case).

Like many things, communication is key.  My experience with my own master's, and working with other grad students during my degree and after was that those students who had good constant communication with someone did best.  Sometimes this was their advisor, or generic person within the department, every school and program is a little different.  But you WILL hit setbacks, they could be in classes, in research, or just in your personal life, but it impacts your academic life.  You need to be checking in with those people whoever they are. They will know what you should be focusing on, and help you navigate different challenges.
Additionally, what you want matters a lot to a grad degree.  If you just want your master's degree and to move on, then a C probably isn't a big deal.  If you want to get into a top PhD, then sure grades might matter a lot more.  If you are doing research at the same time, you might have to have a conversation with your advisor along the lines of "Hey, my classes are really piling up right now, and it's important that I do well for what I want to do after this.  I might need to do a few less hours of research the next couple of weeks".  Additionally, if research and publishing papers are more important sometimes it's fine for classes to take a bit of a hit.
In my own time, I also found professors of classes I was taking to be pretty understanding if you are actually putting in work. I had a child during my MS and professors were really understanding about giving me an extra day when I needed it or letting me reschedule things to be able to help my wife.  Sometimes this meant getting assignments or tests early to make sure my weekend was clear etc... Showing that you are willing to "give", not just take, goes a long way.

You can compare to your peers. Your peers are those other students enrolled in the same graduate school. It's relatively easy for courses: if you're consistently scoring lower grades than them, then things are going poorly. Research is more difficult to measure, but there are still things you can look at: are they making more progress in their projects? You can gain some sense of this during your research group's meetings. If they regularly have new results to report to your supervisor, then they are doing well (are you?). Another metric is if they are publishing more papers.
In your case, it seems to me that the poor grades are a warning sign. C is not a good grade, and getting more than one C in core courses is a red flag; in fact if your goal is to do well, I'd say getting B's is not good enough either.

This is the first time I've heard that comparing to peers would be a good thing in this case. As for my research group, I've been the only one working with each of my advisors in this case so I have no one to compare to at all really. I will say that during my internship I'm in right now (folks from various schools in this case), my boss says he's happy with my progress but everyone else consistently has more things to report to my boss than me. ETA: Regarding grades, I have a weird tendency to bomb bad in things that aren't my strength, but I balance them with other As as my final grade.

How do you compare grades when they aren't public?

@Buffy you make friends with the other students and ask them.

@Allure Everyone else had a 3.7 GPA or above and didn't have any C grades to my knowledge. To be clear, that C+ was the lowest final grade I ever had and had all As in the rest of my classes that semester (so 3.49 GPA overall), only to go down further next semester with a 3.1 GPA that semester after I got an A, B-, and other Bs (overall GPA was a 3.32). I got 3.7s both semesters in my last academic year of my Master's. I also retook the Research Methods course in my Ph.D program and got an A in it. Lowest class grades in the Ph.D program were A-'s (I had a 3.8-3.9 after my first year iirc).

Comparing to your peers only works when the peers you know are actually your peers.  For example, if you are aiming for a research-oriented academic job in pure mathematics from a mid-ranked graduate program, then you should know that almost none of your fellow students will be competitive for one, and you need to compare against students at higher ranking schools, not other students at your school.

@AlexanderWoo I see your point. I will say that I've been at mid tiered or less US programs (R2 undergrad, M1 Master's, and R2 Ph.D all at regional colleges) and wanted to work in research for industry and whatnot. Even though industry cares less about school and/or program name, it was an uphill battle to get my current research internship at a top 10 children's hospital in the country. Everyone else graduated from public, hidden, new Ivies, or their state's flagship university. ETA: One of the only folks I know who "broke through" their low rank institution was Katalin Kariko.

@AlexanderWoo I don't see how that's a problem. If you know none of your fellow students will be competitive, then you can still compare to them, you just have to be clearly better than all of them.

@zzmondo1 Everyone else had a 3.7 GPA or above and didn't have any C grades to my knowledge That makes it sound like you did not do well relative to your peers, but not by much.

This answer is very long (sorry!), so in brief: things "going poorly" often depends on the subjective goals of the student, so it's important to figure out what those are and what's needed to achieve them. Being as proactive about communication as possible, and forming clear plans can give you a way to track your progress.

I get there are program specifics in some instances, but what are common signs graduate school isn't going well? Furthermore, why does this only come up after results are in?

Aside from the egregious cases mentioned before, "going poorly" depends a lot on the students' desired outcome- did they just want to get a Masters as a terminal degree? Make themselves competitive for top PhD programs? Finish the PhD and off to industry, or are they aiming for academia? This is made more difficult by the fact that "good" grad students are expected to be self-starters. The onus is on them to figure out what success looks like with respect to their goals, program and subfield, and then proactively aim for it.
So what can a grad student do to figure this out?
Talk to people - your advisor, any senior academics you have a report with, postdocs, gradating students who are pursuing the career path you want (!)- anyone who seems remotely qualified in your field and enjoys holding forth on what makes a successful grad student. Talk to your fellow students as well, just take their advice with a grain of salt. Before starting my PhD, I read "The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research" and "A PhD is not enough", both of which I'd recommend (especially the former). All of this should give you seem idea of what you need to accomplish during your program, which should be sanity checked by your supervisor, and then roughly sketched out. In my specific case, I befriended all the outgoing PhD students, and built my goal list based on (what my supervisor wanted) + (the program requirements) + (the outgoing students's advice) + (what I wanted my CV to look like to be competitive for applications) + (peer-recommended whimsy).
Once you have these goals, you can use them to determine warning signs that things aren't going well:

You're feeling persistently upset/frustrated/stuck for an extended period of time
You're not keeping up with benchmarks (skipping group or supervisor meetings, not publishing on schedule, falling behind on assignments,...)
You're getting close to failing a goal

These aren't signs that you're a failure, or are failing grad school: just that you should talk to someone, and possibly adapt some plans.

Each time folks post about being behind, it's always assumed that graduate students are such high achievers that they have imposter's syndrome.

I would like to offer an alternative perspective: it's normal for grad students to experience setbacks and overcome them. Arguably, things have "been going poorly" for most students at some point. Most supervisors will expect this and be understanding, and/or assume that their student is doing their best under difficult circumstances (especially if the student indicate that they recently had medical issues). Your grad school experience will survive things going poorly for a bit: the key is to try and avoid that going so far as to derail your plans.

It is very easy to know if you are doing poorly in graduate school, because "doing poorly" is arbitrary, outside of major milestones (finish or not finish). And because it is arbitrary, you compare your progress to the expected progress and actual progress of your peers.
By comparing, you should look into, first, the status of reaching milestones and deadlines of your projects, feedback from advisors, the frequency of engaging in academic discussions, collaborations, publication count, and lastly networking.
You would look into this and compare your current status with a known student of the previous year, maybe through your supervisor. This is the expected progress. Then you can look into peers of yours in the same year and see how they are doing; this is the actual progress. You will, of course, see some differences that indicate you are falling behind either the expected or actual progress.
For example, you lack feedback, but it was because the feedback came in late. Or if you have a lesser number of publications but your publications have high quality of work. Or you don't attend seminars often, but you spend the time on your research and work on publications. If those logical explanations can't really balance all the factors and still get you a negative overview, then you are doing poorly, at least, compared to your own standard.

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