text:
Why would a grad school not want me to defer admission?
I have been accepted to a fairly competitive online computer science-related graduate program (in the US). It is a part-time program geared toward working professionals. During the application process, I was assigned an admissions counselor that worked with me during the application and answered questions, etc. The counselor did mention at one point that I could defer  admission by one trimester, should I be accepted.
Well, long story short, I have a situation with my employer (who would be funding my graduate studies), that is now making me strongly prefer to exercise the deferral option.
I have reached out to my admission counselor seeking guidance on how to do this. I expected this to be a fairly routine, straightforward process. Instead, I am getting aggressive pushback, with the counselor trying to talk me out of it.
After several emails and phone calls with the counselor, I still do not have any instructions on how to actually accept the admission but defer by one trimester. My admission offer is still pending. I would really like to simply accept the offer (and pay the deposits), but with deferral.
All I have are appointments to talk with a current student and a scheduled one-on-one demo of the "courseware" with the counselor. I cannot help but notice the counselor is seemingly dancing around my question on how to defer.
Since this deferral option was mentioned up front when I was still just an applicant, why would I be encountering this kind of resistance? I am truly baffled. Why can't I just do "what is best for me"?
The program has three admission cycles throughout the year: fall, spring, and summer. I applied for fall 2015 and was accepted. I'd like to exercise the option to defer, essentially as if I applied for spring 2016.
I am starting to wonder: Does my request for a deferral reflect badly on someone? On me? On the counselor? Might the school have some aggressive revenue forecast that was expecting my tuition payment, and now this deferral request throws a wrench in it? Does the admission committee and/or counselor have some quota for accepted offers they need to meet? Might they simply be trying to balance class/cohort sizes? I am trying to understand this from the school and counselor's perspective: Why might they do this, and why do so in this aggressive manner?
Furtheremore, does anyone have any advice on how to proceed from this point? Should I just be frank and ask the counselor why the aggressive pushback?

This is not a shady, fly-by-night diploma factory. Quite the contrary. It is a world-renowned institution. I have edited my question with a link to the program to provide more context and detail.

@tony_tiger: Thanks for editing in the link.  I agree that this changes the situation a bit.

If you don't manage to defer your admission, then don't bother signing up at all unless they also give you a very valid reason why: it would mean they are very badly organized and erratic, and you don't want to be bound to them for these crucial years of yours…

Universities get defensive in these cases because not all the prospective students that say "I will start in six months" now end up doing that. This might be a cover-up story for shenanigans of different plans. Some are waiting to hear from a second offer from another institution, or have different plans for life and are just biding time to see if everything works well. Case in point: this was posted a few hours after your question. They don't want the positions to go vacant.

Agreed, even if the OP named the school and the counselor all we could do is speculate.  I'd say stick it out.  I seriously doubt they're going to pull their offer to admit you based on the fact that you require a deferral.  It could simply be that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, from their point of view.

I think your admissions counselor is worried that he or she may miss the recruiting/enrollment (versus admission) goal and not get a bonus.

The MIDS program at Berkeley is an unusual special case among graduate programs.  One clue is the use of admissions counselors, which are almost unheard of in typical graduate programs but are widely used in for-profit education.  (This doesn't mean there's anything intrinsically problematic about relying on admissions counselors.  They are used because they are an effective recruiting technique and can genuinely help everything work more smoothly for applicants.  However, it's a cultural difference in how recruiting is done.)
In fact, the MIDS program is run by the I School at Berkeley in partnership with a for-profit company called 2U.  See here for a description of how 2U and Berkeley are collaborating on this.  In particular, the key sentence is "2U's marketing and recruiting team supports the I School's goal of finding students who are most likely to succeed in the rigorous Master of Information and Data Science program."  The admissions counselor you've worked with is presumably a 2U employee from the marketing and recruitment team, whose job performance is based on getting people to enroll. Deferring at least means you won't be enrolling now, and you might change your mind about enrolling at all in the meantime, so it would not be considered a good outcome by 2U.
So why is Berkeley working with 2U if it could lead to awkward situations like this?  One reason is 2U's educational technology platform, but frankly I think it's primarily the prospect of making money.  The I School is descended from Berkeley's library school, and this has never been a lucrative field.  I'm sure the idea of running a professional master's program (in which people's employers pay a lot of money) is very attractive to the I School, especially if 2U takes care of recruiting students and managing the online program itself.  This seems to be a common pattern in 2U's partnerships with universities.
This situation actually gives you a little more leverage than you might normally have:

Feel free to be firm (but polite, of course) with the admissions counselor.  This is someone who is trying to sell you something, and you don't need to worry that they have some wise but inscrutable motivation for trying to get you to enroll now.
The I School really doesn't want 2U to embarrass them.  If you have a bad experience with 2U, I'm confident that the I School would like to know and will try to keep 2U in line.
In the worst case scenario, you could try complaining to the Berkeley administration (outside of the I School), or even doing something like bringing problems to the attention of someone at the Daily Californian.  I'm sure many people at Berkeley dislike the idea of partnering with a for-profit company, and this gives the I School and 2U a strong incentive to address complaints effectively.

It sounds to me like you have a legitimate complaint.  Either the admissions counselor is trying to keep you from exercising a legitimate option, or they misled you about what your options would be.  It doesn't sound like a simple miscommunication, since the counselor could have easily addressed that by providing the correct information or context.  It's not clear how things will play out, but you shouldn't give up just because the admissions counselor is uncooperative.

I don't think Berkeley's MIDS program is unusual.  I thought this was how all online masters programs worked.

I see 100% online programs as already being unusual in comparison with other graduate programs.  The heavy use of admissions counselors is certainly far from unique - for example, 2U is involved in eighteen other programs, which presumably operate similarly.  I don't have statistics on how common this is for online masters programs overall.

This is a very enlightening answer.

I think there is no point in our speculating about the motivation behind the "aggressive pushback".  In that we don't even know which program you're talking about, we have less information than you.  Moreover, speaking as an academic at an "analogue" university, I have no experience whatsoever with online programs.  Maybe someone here will have expertise in this area, but I can't think of any frequent contributor with that background.

The counselor did mention at one point that I could defer admission by one trimester, should I be accepted.

Did you get that in writing (presumably email)?  If so, I would send a copy of this offer back to your "admissions counselor" and then have one more telephone conversation with him in which you do not ask for advice at all but simply say "I would like to exercise the deferral option that you previously offered."  If they try to argue, don't.  Just say, "I'm sorry if I wasn't making myself clear: I am not interested in further discussion on this point.  I would like to take you up on your previous offer.  Who should I talk to about doing that?"
If you didn't get the offer in writing: well, the bottom line is that I don't see how you can hold them to it.  You should decide whether you are interested in enrolling in the program without the deferral.  It's not my decision, for what it's worth: this kind of behavior on the part of their organization makes a poor impression on me.  It is not a good foundation for future work.  Unless you feel like this is a unique opportunity (and, well it sounds snooty but nevertheless: I don't know of any online graduate programs that are unique opportunities), I would not take them up on their modified offer.  If you decide that a deferral is not okay, you have a version of the previous conversation where instead of sending the documentation you indicate that you were extended the offer before.  The option is now theirs: they can enroll you after one trimester or not at all.
I am very conscious that the above is more like how I would deal with my credit card company than with a university.  Again, I would think twice about enrolling in a graduate program that reminds anyone of a credit card company: yikes.
Good luck.
Added: The OP has since provided two further significant pieces of information.  First, the institution is one of the leading ones in the US; I was worried that it was an online only institution.  Second, there are three application cycles per year, so really it is hard for me (a tenured faculty member at a nationally ranked state research university) to understand what the big deal is to start in the following cycle.
Here is my updated advice: as above, I still recommend that you have one more telephone conversation in which you make a good faith effort to get what you want out of the person who's been assigned to deal with you.  From your description of the previous conversations, it doesn't sound like you've been as direct as you possibly could be.  Counseling is over.  Either this person will arrange your deferral or he won't: find out which it is.  If the conversation with him does not result in your successful deferral, you should contact a faculty member in the program and tell them that you want to start in the next trimester, and that [insert Mr. Counselor's name here] orally gave you the option of doing that.  If there is a good reason not to do this, you'll hear it much more directly from the people who are actually running the program than an "admissions counselor" (again, I don't really know what that is...).  I looked up the program you linked to, and three minutes of internet searching did not fully explicitly tell me which faculty member to contact about questions like this, but there is one faculty member who appears most prominently on the page, namely the dean of the school you've applied to.  I recommend that you write to her.

Just searched my email. No, the deferral option was only mentioned during a phone conversation. I edited my question with a link to the program in question. I do feel that this is a unique and valuable opportunity.

Like Pete L. Clark, I don't have a lot of experience with online programs, but I can extrapolate some guesses from what I know about traditional "face-to-face" graduate programs.
In many traditional programs, it would be quite unusual to offer a student the option to defer for less than a full year.  The courses required for the degree often are not offered every term, and may have to be taken in a particular sequence, so the department will schedule courses so that students who start at the beginning of an academic year can take everything they need in sequence and be done as quickly as possible.  For a student who defers and starts mid-year, there is a problem.  Either the student has to wait to take some of their courses (complicating their schedule or even delaying their graduation), or they have to take courses out of sequence  (problematic if one course develops material that is prerequisite for the next), or the department has to offer a special extra course (expensive) or arrange for something like independent study (awkward and time-consuming).
An online program might be able to mitigate this issue, if some of the courses can be taken "asynchronously" (so that you don't have to be "taking" the course at the same time as a professor is "teaching" it).  But this is not always the case; sometimes online course are quite synchronous and resemble traditional courses in structure, except that lectures and assignments are delivered electronically.
So that's at least one reason why they might not want you to defer, and why they might not be able to "just let you do what is best for you".
So why were you offered this option in the first place?  Another note: traditional graduate programs are usually run "in-house" by a department and its professors, with administrative assistance from department staff.  Admissions is usually handled that way as well (in contrast to undergraduate programs, for which there is a dedicated university-wide admissions office).  It would be unusual for there to be dedicated admissions counselors for a graduate program; usually the point of contact for prospective students would be a professor from the department, or a staff member with a direct line to a professor.  The fact that all your dealings have been with a person whose sole job appears to be admissions suggests that this person is somewhat removed from the day-to-day running of the graduate program.  So they may have mistakenly offered you this option without checking with the department, whose responsibility it would be to actually make it work.  It's conceivable that the department actually doesn't want to have this option available (perhaps for the scheduling reasons described above), and told the admissions counselor so, and now he/she is trying to backtrack.
As such, here are some things I might suggest:

Try to get in touch with someone who is actually involved in running the program.  The academic department which offers the program (say, computer science) should have a professor listed on their web site as "graduate chair" or some such title. That would be the ideal person.  See if you can find out from them what would actually be involved (for you and for them) if you were to defer.  This may at least give you a better understanding of what's going on, and you can have a sensible discussion with someone, instead of a credit card company-style ultimatum.
Based on your work situation, would it be convenient for you to defer for an entire year?  My guess is that the university would be much better able to accommodate that.  It does cause some issues with "balancing cohort size" and revenue.  (More specifically, they probably have a fixed maximum number of students that can enroll in each year.  If you defer, they will be (further) below that number for this year, which represents lost tuition revenue that can't necessarily be made up by increasing enrollment next year.)  But that is likely a much smaller logistical problem than a student starting mid-year.

I've edited the question to provide details about the admission process. I don't think class availability is the issue. There are 3 application cycles throughout the year. As such, accepted students start at 3 possible times throughout the year. But I will ask about this when I speak to a current student.

@tony_tiger: Ok, so that was a bad guess on my part.  Then it may be down to class size and/or revenue issues.  But I still think it may be helpful to try to talk to someone actually involved in running the program (a professor, not a student).

Given the updated information, I think Nate Eldredge's answer is more on-target than mine.  I don't think that UC Berkeley is a shady institution which is trying to take your money.  (Although again, I don't have much experience with this angle.  I was a PhD student at Harvard, and I do recall that Harvard has certain programs, like its school of continuing education, which seemed to be run in very different ways from what I was used to: in particular, if you had enough money you would probably be okay.)  It is also significant information that they have three application cycles.

Now that @PeteL.Clark has updated his answer, I think his is more on-target again :-)


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What if I don't want to do a PhD but my professor says I have to else he will not let me graduate. What should I do?
I just want to do a master's and that's it, I don't want to do any more schooling, tertiary education is awfully tiring because you have to work and study at the same time. I know this seems like a whining complaining about bachelor's degree. I can't wait to leave academia.
Actually, I'm a college senior anxious about my future, I don't want to do a PhD. After looking at these theses I'm not sure if I can handle a PhD anymore. I'm not doing a PhD due to intense stress.

It's not like they can force you to commit to a PhD in writing. If you have to lie a bit to get your papers, that seems like a small sacrifice compared to the coercion they are putting you under.

At my university, a student is able to submit his/her thesis without his/her supervisor's approval.   Look up your university's policy.

@tripleee I don't want to do a phD how to lie?

Tell them you will do what they want but then don't.

It might help to get a more complete answer if you provided a little more context.  Was this an actual threat to your graduation? Or did they just say something like it would be a shame to waste your talent?

I'm going to vote to close for now; this could be an interesting question, but we're going to need more details about what exactly was said. Is he threatening to block your bachelors degree? Why can't you just ignore him and sign up for a masters program somewhere else?

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How bad will refusing to defend PhD look on industry-job applications?
I have been a PhD student (Pure Mathematics) for the full PhD time in my country (a northern European country) and am very vexed with my supervisor and the department I have worked in.
Education is state funded where I live, and currently, due to some mistreatments by the department and the supervisor (I prefer not to go into the details for the moment) I want to refuse to defend my PhD so as to harm the department's economy and my supervisor's career in pure boycott.
I have enough publications to defend and have taken enough courses with good enough performance to look good on paper.
So the questions are: How bad would this look on job applications to industry jobs? I understand that it would be easier for the employer to see my qualities and skills if the degree had been awarded, and likely that companies look better if their employees have PhD degrees. To what extent would it look bad if I disclosed that this is for pure boycott? Could this look like someone too bad to finish the degree or could this look like someone not preferable to hire for other reasons?
The version my department knows is that "I currently am in economic difficulty and have to focus on solving the job situation before working more on the thesis", which is not even nearly true. I am aware of the risk that this will lower the quality of recommendations from anyone.
Two potential employers have already answered my application and asked when the defence will happen. Can I tell them the truth?
(Please forgive any harsh formulation, as I am currently rather angry about having been treated so badly. There is a likelihood that in some time this might go over and I might want to finish after all.)

Would you consider asking this on Workplace Stack Exchange (maybe with a different focus, e.g. how to frame it positively)? Here, the audience is mainly academics - this might make a difference :)

We get it, y'all have really strong opinions about this plan. But, please do not write answers in the comments. If you can't write a real answer, at least put it  in the chat. Please see this FAQ before posting a comment below this one.

@Vertex: some of the discussion in the chat is based around your idea that your department will get paid $100K when/if you finish. You might consider making a separate question that shares the basis for this belief and asks whether it is true.

Why not ask the premise of the question more specifically? if-i-quit-my-phd-would-it-make-my-advisor-look-bad (spoiler: it won't).

No matter how you were mistreated, this plan will make you look extremely toxic. As an employer, I wouldn't go anywhere near someone that would decide to take a personal hit like this purely out of spite.
Not having completed your PhD will always raise questions. Clearly, presenting the truth would hurt you significantly in the eyes of a potential employer. So you'd be stuck having to evade questions about this in any interview, which is bad in its own right.
No matter how you spin it this will hurt you a lot more than it would hurt anyone else.

People give disingenuous answers about why they left a job (or didn't finish a degree) all the time, which is expected, because many good reasons upset prospective employers to hear even if they're true (like "my boss stole my wages"). The real danger here, besides just not having the degree, is that OP wouldn't be able to use the intended victims of his revenge as references. But that might already be out of the question, anyway, since he's already "very vexed with" them.

To emphasize, the OP does give an extremely toxic vibe that I would not want around me, all things being equal.

I'll comment here since its something of a similar nature: from the perspective of the company, this looks to me like
"hmm... should I hire someone who is willing to damage the entire company for a grievance against a single employee, regardless of personal consequences?"
and yes I think it looks pretty bad
If these grievances are so significant, I would encourage you to make the responsible people accountable rather than take the hit (which will impact them very little).

Yes, exactly this. I'm not in academia, but I'm on hiring committees.  This is the textbook example of someone that we don't hire, even though we can recognize great technical strength, intelligence and motivation. We would wonder: What the h will happen when they're not happy (rightfully or not) within the organization.

A toxic person can easily ruin many people. Even if they are somehow the absolute best, say giving them a score of 100%. They just need to reduce each person they meet by 1%, then go meet 100 people in your company, and then his entire value is gone. It's not that hard for a toxic person to reduce someone else's performance by more than 1%, and also to meet more than 100 people in a decent sized company.

In this comment section the upper-echelons wondering what happens if the lower-echelons rebel, promising one another to boycott the boycotter in retaliation. The truth is- academia matters- for your first job. Never ever after. Everyone else looks at the results in your job. Yes, even as a doctor. Or not a doctor.

Re: "The real danger here, besides just not having the degree, is that OP wouldn't be able to use the intended victims of his revenge as references"
The OP is talking about industry jobs, like software engineering, etc., it is pretty rare for anyone to ever check references anyway. The real danger is that OP will not be able to apply for software jobs that have a hard requirement on having a PhD. This is the only issue. You get industry jobs by doing well on interviews which are competitive for high salary etc. / serious positions.

You Will Burn Yourself To The Ground
I can speak directly from the perspective of industry:  If you go into a job interview and tell them, "I could finish the PhD any time I want to, but I choose not to, because I have been slighted in some way I do not wish to detail and this is my revenge", it is quite possible that the interview will end that very moment.  And I mean that literally:  "This interview is over.  Someone will show you out."
You will be seen as some combination of:

Arrogant, for the assumption you can finish, before you've actually finished
Lazy, for not finishing,
Vengeful, for the intent to do damage through all of that,
Petty, because at this point no one will make good assumptions about your causes,
Foolish, for thinking this is really going to achieve your purpose (one student leaving is not a "boycott" and will not do damage),
Foolish, again, for admitting this out loud.

The only possible inference a hiring manager (much less a human resources staff member) can make is that you don't even understand what a toxic indicator this behavior is, so you will probably do it again in the future.  You will come across as the kind of person who, in a system administrator role, leaves logic bombs in network set to go off a few weeks after your termination.
And I assure you, ain't nobody got time for that.
But what you also haven't thought through is that you're telling one story ("I carry vendettas to extreme lengths") to your prospective employers, and another ("I have money issues") to your academic supervisor, which by your admission is pure fabrication.
You've mentioned letters of recommendation.  This enables, at least in theory, the possibility of communication between these two parties.  Imagine what might transpire in such a conversation, which will of necessity be about you, but will not include you.
I think perhaps you might need to hear this from people who are not random faceless people in a Q&A forum.  I'm not sure who that would be-- perhaps a trusted friend (outside the academic scene, if possible), or an older relative you respect, or someone with an obligation to privacy like a therapist or counselor or religious figure that you can go into details with.
Because this is not just a bad idea, it is so bad an idea that it makes me worried for you, even though I am just a random faceless person in a Q&A forum.

I think this answer is in the right direction, but goes over the top.

I agree with the above comment. It is not like OP planned to kill or seriously harm somebody (as far as we know). I also find the level of simplistic hive mind slavery in industry (as portrayed in this answer) quite concerning. I don't understand why anyone would willingly partake in that just for some money.

Then you are welcome for the much-needed industry perspective on hiring openly vindictive employees.

I don't understand your comment. What do you mean with "perspective on hiring openly vindictive employees"? As I said, I agree with the idea that this strategy does not help OP and is bad. But it is not so bad as described in this answer - sooner or later OP would find an employer who simply does not care about this story or at all about Academia (or has resentments themselves against Academia). As I said, the strategy is only harmful - but it does not warrant such extreme words/reactions as in this answer.

@user111388 Sure, sooner or later OP will find an employer who does not care, much more likely to be of the caliber of a second hand paint shop.

@Servaes: I disagree that this employer must be bad. While, again, I find this plan not good, from this question I don't get the impression OP will hurt anyone, only the supervisor. While this is only a feeling, an interviewer (even a good one) might also feel that way (or simply doesn't care enough) or give them a shot if they are otherwise better than the other candidates. I repeat, it is not going to help the OP, but I find it unlikely they "burn themselves to the ground" or will be seem as toxic or lazy.

@user111388 - I don't think it's over the top enough. OP sounds like they're mentally unwell and is planning to do something life-changingly stupid.

@valorum, just to reinforce your comment, this is what I meant by my last bolded sentence.  And, really, the paragraph before it.

@user111388 I can only make (educated) guesses at the decision making process at other companies, but I've been on hiring committees in mine, and if this story came up the candidate would be immediately crossed off and blacklisted. There is no way to make up for the immense risk this candidate clearly poses if hired. This has nothing to do with caring about academia or not.

Why would a company want to hire you if they know anything about the circumstances? You've spent time working toward a doctorate and failed to earn it. You've demonstrated vindictiveness toward superiors. Those are elements of a truly poor employee.
I suspect that if you start on this path it won't be possible to go back on it.
I recommend, strongly, that you finish as soon as possible and then take some time, perhaps a year, and then complain about the situation if you still feel it necessary. Otherwise you have wasted several years of your life and damaged your career.
How bad? About as bad as it could be.

Two questions: If I clarify that I could graduate if I wanted to, then would they not look to skills more than the achievement? Several colleagues of mine (some not having graduated but in their cases due to actual lack of research results) did find similar industry jobs to the ones I am looking for.
Secondly: complain where? Do you mean complain before the new employer?

@Vertex Please pay attention to the answers you're getting: it has absolutely nothing to do with your skills or what you could possibly achieve, it's that your plan of action is the plan of a jerk/bad employee. If I were looking to hire you, I'd assume that in the middle of a project somewhere you'll decide you've been mistreated by me or your coworker or a manager in a different department and harm the project. These arguments are common in the workplace. I'd rather hire someone who never had the opportunity to even start a PhD program but is reliable on a team.

Very risky and a serious negative, I think. Complain to the university if you still feel the need.

@Vertex - perhaps you could of graduated, but you didn't and no longer will have the opportunity. Without the PhD diploma in hand, you have no way of showing what you accomplished.

@JonCuster Course transcripts, pre-prints CV will not be enough? Or do you mean that without a letter (even from other employees in the department who are understanding to my situation - and yes, there are those who are) this would change nothing? There are positive teaching evaluations. Some fellow research students have had some help with useful discussions, etc.

@Vertex - my HR folks aren't going to look at any of that. Do you have a PhD or not? Simple question, they expect a Yes/No answer, not 'kind of, sort of'.

@Vertex If you tell the prospective employer this, what it says is "Revenge for [perceived or real] ill-treatment is more important to me than my title or my career, or a constructive future." Maybe your department really mistreated you. Maybe you perceived it as mistreat, but it was something normal, unavoidable or just the usual dose of daily toxicity one has to live with. We don't know. Your prospective employer will worry about whether this may end up applying to them. They will not touch you with a barge pole. Those who hire you might expect to walk on eggshells.

@Vertex "There are positive teaching evaluations. Some fellow research students have had some help with useful discussions" - this shows you work well with peers and underlings. Maybe. Maybe you just didn't encounter the problematic ones yet. But the quite glaring omission raises the question: do you work well with authority? Because that's the hard part of a job.

@Vertex: first off, I absolutely agree with everything in all the answers here. Your proposed action would signal to every employer that you are a risky employee. Unless you have truly exceptional and rare demonstrable skills, they will rather interview someone who does not send out this kind of signal. To your question about transcripts, preprints etc.: (a) HR managers will not go to the trouble to dig deeper if you have already disqualified yourself. (b) Look up the sheepskin effect.

@Vertex Last time I was involved in hiring, I had to assess something like 150 applicants in a couple of weeks, while still looking after other responsibilities. That gives me maybe fifteen minutes to review each candidate's application and make a recommendation on whether to offer them an interview. Looking through all that documentation, thinking through how much weight I should give to this not-actually-completed PhD, and then documenting that decision so it's defensible if somebody appeals the outcome, is going to chew up all that time and more.

@GBsupportsthemodstrike Especially if you already have a stack of applicants who did complete the PhD, why do the extra effort of deciding whether one more borderline case might possibly maybe belong in that same stack? You're looking for reasons to whittle down the pile, here's an easy reason.

I agree with this sentiment, though I think spending time on a PhD and then failing to earn it is easy to explain for people in other circumstances. My wife suspended her PhD program for health reasons after hitting "ABD" status and starting her dissertation. She decided not to complete her dissertation after recovering. She has had no problem finding employment. My understanding is that dropping out at ABD status is pretty common in some places.

@BryanKrause FWIW, I'm a relatively soft assessor and maybe a bit too soft on that first pass - I read every application hoping to find somebody good, I want to tick that "progress to interview" box even if that means more work for me at the next stage of the process. But I can't do it unless they make it possible for me to tick all the other boxes that lead up to that one.

In addition to the other reasons why this is a bad idea, it wouldn’t even work. Your department is used to people starting a PhD and then not graduating, so they wouldn’t really care that much about your boycott.
In other words, it’s not so much “cutting off your nose to spite your face” as it is “cutting off your nose to spite someone else who barely cares if you have a nose”.

I think that's right... perhaps sadly, but, still, self-immolation rarely makes an impression that changes anything.

Are you absolutely sure of this? Recall that in my country education is largely state-funded and when a graduate student finishes they receive around the equivalent of 100 000 dollars (roughly). I know this is different in different countries, where some students might not even receive salary at all, essentially.
Secondly, my supervisor has been almost desperate in trying to sell why a PhD-title is fantastic both inside and outside of the academia. I find it rather strange that they would do so if what you are saying is true? May I ask what countries you have in mind?

@Vertex: Don't you mean they received 100,000 dollars during the course of it by effectively being treated as an employee (not as a bonus at the end)?

@Vertex what I am sure of is that PhD students dropping out of their PhD before they graduate is a common occurrence (particularly in pure math). Since it happens regularly, it is unlikely to bother anyone greatly or to cause the department financial hardship. Of course, your adviser may still be disappointed at a personal level if you don’t graduate.

@Vertex this answer is not specific to any country. The principle holds that PhD students frequently quit. Your supervisor is not an impartial party, and they do have a vested interest in helping people obtain a PhD, so it wouldn't be unheard of to oversell its importance. However, losing out on one person isn't going to wreck them. Just like Toyota didn't go out of business because I decided to buy a Honda.

Certainly in the UK both the individual and department pass rates do matter for getting future funding for PhDs, however a single failure isn't going to move the needle much.

@PeterMortensen, I think they meant that the funding of the university (or whatever education institute or unit) is partly based on their output of degrees, so they might well have some financial incentive to try to push people to finish their degrees. Though I still expect they'll see their share of people dropping out for whatever reasons anyway.

Re how much it hurts if one student drops out: Those usually don't drop out after everything but the defending is finished, so the supervisor spends much less valuable time with them. Also it might depend on the department or even down to the research group how much each single drop-out they invested significant time in ”hurts”.

I think this is a straightforward question.

If you don't defend the PhD but don't disclose the true vindictive reasons why you hadn't, it may slightly lower your chances as you would be a less qualified candidate. Still, you can land a nice job.

If you don't defend the PhD and disclose that you have decided to boycott the department, then clearly as other answers correctly mentioned, you are going to be unemployed for a long time.

Regarding #1, it will create a gap between graduation and employment.  That doesn't do too much to hurt your ability to pass a job interview, but it will cause your resume to be more likely to be screened out before it gets that far.

@Brian A gap? Can't you still write up working at a research project at a University for that time in the CV?

@BlackJack: If you listed it as a failed PHD, I'd count it against you. If you listed it as a a "research project" but failed to mention you were really there for a PHD, I'd probably consider that to be misleading.  And sometimes that sort of trickery is catchable even without explicitly checking references. Mind you, once I've screened a candidate, I mostly stop caring about their resume unless their other factors end up being very border-line.

@Brian I woudln't PhD's are hard. Not everyone is cut out for it. Though the closer someone got to reaching the end of the PhD before they quit, the more eyebrows I would raise.. I will admit it certainly isn't a positive factor.

@Brian You are right about the trickery, but unless the job strongly desires a PhD and you are trying to still fit in, I don't think most people will count a properly disclosed failure to finish a PhD as a bad thing. Lots of people drop out without finishing for lots of reasons. My wife suspended hers for health reasons and then didn't go back. No employer has counted it against her yet as long as the job didn't actually require a PhD.

It might give the impression that you are fast-reacting and that you struggle with conflict resolution. All over academia, people put up with deficient supervisors, bad projects, etc. still end up defending for the most part. If you have the necessary papers, course credits, etc. to defend but choose not to because of personal conflict with your hierarchy, to punish them, you risk being seen as reactionary. The private sector likes team players.

Absolutely.....!!

This also goes for the public sector.

You never know what you might wish to do in the future. Even if you don't need  a PhD certificate now, it may become useful later, even if only to satisfy some bureaucratic requirement. For example, a PhD degree is worth extra in some points-based immigration systems, such as this Australian visa.

These three letters will give you $10-20k higher salary, every single year for the rest of your work life. You're going to forgo that amount of money for what? Because you're mad at the university? That seems like a pretty stupid decision to make.

As I am a PhD holder, could you tell me how to obtain the additional money? ;-) I earn the same as my non phd collegues which do similar work (phd not needes for our work).

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"Two potential employers have already answered my application and asked when the defence will happen. Can I tell them the truth?"
They do not care about the truth. They are asking just to know when you will be available.
Tone down your ego, but remember a PhD is about you, the financial hit for the department will be minimal, even not finishing your PhD will have minimal implication for you.
The issue is the revenge need you have: it is a department failure to allow for vexation to happen, it is your duty to defend your PhD and bring all the vexations to the surface to prevent others from suffering the same way.
It seems you are ready to suffer to achieve your revenge goals. Think about it: you can suffer in a constructive way or in a destructive way.
You are enraged with your supevisors and academic environment because you suffered: making them "suffer" with a boycott will just increase the general level of pain. If you disclose the behavior that made you suffer, your level of pain will not change, but there is a small possibility that in the long term the general level of pain for everyone will be less.
Be empathic, if not with yourself at least with the next people stepping in your shoes, try to leave them a marginally better environment.

I do understand that the power relation in a PhD can be extremely abusive!
It may have had damaging effects on your mental or in consequence even your physical health.
However, as you seem to able to stand up for yourself...
Why not show them your revenge by being successful?
As others have outlined, you won't be able to hurt your advisor in a meaningful fashion other than badmouthing.
You only have three options:

Finish and be successful, despite the mistreatment.
Don't finish, but downplay the situation, i.e., only explain that you didn't finish your thesis. Thus, you will appear like an ordinary dropout, which won't help you, but since it isn't that uncommon, it won't significantly hurt you more than not having the PhD in the first place (so there will be a difference in salary for sure).
Explicitly try to tell any employer that this is your revenge, which needs explaining, could be for any number of other reasons the prospective employer might assume, and seems stupid in light of the other, more convenient solutions.

How bad would this look on job applications to industry jobs?

Asking the question is already a part of the answer.
I do not negate the fact that you may have been mistreated: power abuse, condescending/disrespectful behavior do exist in academia and I do not have all the elements and data to judge.  It is human to have a desire of revenge. However, this has to be turned into a positive and sane way.
The best revenge you can get is by having a successful career, in academia or in industry. This will send a message like "whatever you did to me, it has no effect since I got success despite it".
By not defending you PhD, you will simply hurt yourself. For the university, you would neither be the first nor the last to leave a PhD program and it would not affect the career of your advisor. At best, unless all his/her students leave before defending, it will raise questions.
Think about yourself and the future.

People are welcoming to someone doing good to others.
People are OK with someone doing neither good or bad to others.
Peoople are tolerant to someone doing bad to others for own gain, to an extent. There are known protection strategies and the person may be useful overall.
People are quite reluctant to engage with someone who is going to suffer harm in order to impose harm to others. A bit of empathy is possible, engagement is unlikely.

All these facts are obvious to every more or less adult person and their application extends way beyond the academy.
And then,

People interested in you are going to know both what you did and, to a great extent, your intent. In today's connected world keeping a life-changing secret is not really an option anymore. In small proffesional communities, it was never really possible.
Chalking a feat like this as "youth's mistakes" will take a while.

I want to refuse to defend my PhD so as to harm the department's economy and my supervisor's career in pure boycott.

You are looking at this from a wrong angle.
Defending your PhD is NOT very much about your support for your department or supervisor. Instead, it is much more about proving to you, all your potential employers, and everyone else that you truly deserver a PhD after years of hard work. You should earn your PhD as you have invested lots of time, money, and energy to it.
You would hurt your future careers and job perspectives more than anything else by not defending your PhD.
So, definitely, you should go ahead and defend your PhD to get it over with. Then, you can move out of that department, forget about your department/supervisors, and get a good job elsewhere.

Two potential employers have already answered my application and asked when the defense will happen. Can I tell them the truth?

No companies or organizations would want to hire you if you tell them the truth that you want "to harm the department's economy and my supervisor's career."

Does anyone care to explain the downvote or disagreement ? That would be more helpful.

This seems like good advice to me, not sure why there is a downvote.

I have worked in industry and hired people at Master and PhD levels for industry roles in the US for over 10 years and my concern would be identification of a reference. References, it seems, matter in academics and workforce - and since the question broaches both aspects, I think this is a sound answer.
Any applicant should be able to provide a reference from their longest/strongest working relationship. As a hirer, I take note of it. I consider the applicant's most recent, longest, or most challenging role and whether the reference is a direct manager or at least a close colleague. If I feel a suitable reference is missing, I might ask the applicant to provide a better one if possible, and if the applicant has worked under a less than supportive supervisor for a particular role, I might recuse them from providing them as a reference. If they cannot provide a suitable reference, it is a cause for concern.
Whether one is a freshly minted PhD, or an ABD who is turning to industry, I expect to see their advisor as a reference. Whether the applicant or their reference has industry experience or not doesn't matter, I (as the hirer) want to know from the most qualified reference whether the person can perform satisfactorily from the perspective of a supervisor. There are basic questions - do they show up on time, can they work independently, do they build positive collaborations with colleagues and supervisors?
Your plan is not wrong because you are thinking of walking away from academia. Your plan is wrong because you think of it as a threat to him or her. This is downright dreadful. If I knew of this kind of thing, I would not hire anyone for a role no matter how smart, how capable, or how experienced. The slogans about how toxic team members dissolve morale is way more than virtue signaling and fugazi, it's very much real and something to notice. In this case, if your supervisor was a missing reference, this would be my cause for concern and I would mention it outright in the hiring decision. Given the factual matters, the concern would be fully justified.

What is "ABD" ?

All But Dissertation - google is somewhat friendly

Fully agree, matches my feelings after hiring for 20+ years. Immediate no-hire decision.

I'll analyze a few angles here:

Will officially having a PhD vs. not make a difference for getting jobs?
Will refusing to defend make you look bad when getting jobs?
Is refusing to defend an effective way to get punish your supervisor/department?

You're obviously not asking about jobs where the PhD is required, but a "nice to have". For entry level jobs when you don't have much experience or portfolio, the PhD is moderately helpful. It shows you're smart, determined, blah blah blah. In reality, it's a nice way of plugging an experience gap and reasonably effective at preventing HR from throwing your resume straight in the bin. Once you get to the interviews, people will judge you mainly on how you interview. People without PhDs, when deciding on whether to hire people with a PhD, rarely have strong opinions on whether the PhD makes you better at the job. Generally speaking, people who have not completed a PhD are totally mystified about what a PhD actually entails, and they will not be very receptive to learning during a job interview. People with a PhD might slightly respect you (or not, they left academia too remember), but it will still not make up for lacking job-relevant skills. If you do demonstrate skills and get to the offer stage, the PhD may help you negotiate it up slightly, especially if the hiring manager is themselves a PhD or is familiar with them. On the whole, I would say that having a completed PhD is a slight positive for an applicant vs. no doctoral schooling background (smart etc.), while being a PhD dropout is a slight negative (giver-upper, etc.). Not worth losing much sleep over, but I'd say if you're almost there, you might as well swallow your pride and get the piece of paper so it doesn't become an annoyance you have to deal with for the next few years (until you accumulate enough work experience that your education becomes irrelevant to hirers).
If you do refuse to defend, and when asked give the reason in your OP (rather than some opaque and generic "I just decided it wasn't for me"), it will make you look pretty bad. A minority of people will respect you for standing up for your principles, but even some of those will wonder if tomorrow they will find themselves at odds with those principles. I would say a majority of employers are allergic to insubordinate, "principled" candidates in entry level or junior positions. HR may say they want idealists, but they're usually thinking of some cutesy catchphrases you say when called for, not actually challenging the norms of their organization. It's sad, but people love hiring doormats. And this is if they are convinced of your sincerity. A lot of people will assume you were the problem and are making excuses for it. Plus the task of convincing them will eat up valuable minutes of the interview, which you could be using to talk about all the skills you have that are applicable to the job. I caution you from being too inspired by people proudly labeling themselves dropouts (Bill Gates, etc). Once you've worked 2-5 years, your education stops mattering, but if used right it can be a valuable tool for getting the first 1-2 jobs. The people who brag about dropping out are usually mid or late career. They play by different rules than you.
Will refusing to defend be a big deal to your advisor? Probably not. You're already denying him the biggest prize: You're exiting academia, you won't publish papers, you won't give conference keynote speeches where your pedigree is announced during the intro. That stings as well as you could hope, might as well stop there. The defending vs. not defending, people will not care. If the department ends up pressuring your old prof about it, with you gone, he will have ample room for damage control and reframing to make it go away. Remember, he's been in this biz (academia) for decades, much longer than you - he probably knows how to bounce back from a minor screw up. The department will not care at all, unless it's something like they were founded 2 years ago and have 3 faculty members.
In conclusion, I would say:

Defend if you can. Getting the first job out of school is hardest and the degree will help a bit.
If the advisor is being really bad and defending will be extremely difficult for you, then cut your losses and drop out. It will be a bit harder, but not by much, and after a few years it will not matter.
Do not tell people about the boycott during interviews for entry-level or junior jobs. It has a small chance to help you, but a huge chance to backfire. Ideally, find a way to be 100% positive about everything in the interview.

Your frustration with the matter is understandable, but deal with it privately. Get therapy, vent to your friend, take up kickboxing, whatever... But don't let it define your (new) career. The moment you stop being a PhD student, you have a chance to leave it all behind you - don't squander that.

"For entry level jobs when you don't have much experience or portfolio, the PhD is moderately helpful. It shows you're smart, determined, blah blah blah" I guess different fields, different perspectives. I'd much rather hire someone with a bachelors. They have less bad habits. And both take the same amount of time to bring up to speed. But I guess in fields where industry and academia haven't diverged so much it might be a positive (I would still prefer work experience).

"People with a PhD might slightly respect you (or not, they left academia too remember), but it will still not make up for lacking job-relevant skills." I dunno, I feel like it's the opposite. People without a PhD often think it's some kind of certificate that you are a super smart person, while with a PhD hopefully understand that that's not what it is. Otherwise, good answer.

Simply put, you'd basically be burning any offer letter for future jobs before you even get to see them.
Any employer would wonder why you spent so many years working towards it, only to not finish. Particularly if you only have small pieces left. And you would basically have to remove the PhD piece entirely from your resume. Since you didn't cross the finish line, it was like you were never in the race to start with. And if you tried to explain your situation, any employer would see you as highly vindictive. What's to stop you from getting mad at a coworker or superior, and then taking any work related documents on a server and just deleting them all? What's to stop you from lying about anything else. Any employer would see that as an immediate red flag, persona non grata.
Life is hard, I sympathize with having a tough PhD situation or any work related thing. But you're better off working through it as best you can, maybe consulting a therapist, administrator to help ease the situation and then finishing. Then you never have to go back, and if anything, it'll help you in future job prospects, "I had a terrible situation that I wanted to quit, but I persevered and still finished." If you go about your current plan, there is no going back. And you'll almost certainly wish you could.

While I agree with your general suggestion, I think saying "it was like you were never in the race to start with" goes a bit too far. Advancing on the studies gives you some experience in the subject even if you don't finish. And comparing to "deleting files from a server" is quite a reach: it's not like they're sabotaging the other operations of the university here, they're not removing any possible pre-existing publications they might have contributed to, or the work of others, etc.

The thing about the university not getting money for a finished degree would also come up even they just decided that a PhD is not for them, or got (unrelatedly) ill enough to not be able to finish. At worst, that's on par with getting hit by bus or just deciding you don't like your work and want to move to the countryside, not active sabotage.

I don't think failing to get a PhD once started is as big of a problem. Everyone in industry made a decision at some point to leave or not even participate in academia at some point, they aren't as fixated on academic milestones as academics are. It's common for people to switch jobs frequently in industry before a given task is finished. No, you won't get credit for leaving a PhD early, but it's no worse than time spent on another job with the same responsibilities (besides missed opportunity). The vindictiveness red flag is what will destroy OP's chance, nothing else matters in comparison.

There are two points to my answer, and the second is the most important here.
I did my full PhD tenure (3 years in the UK) and got improved funding for it from EPSRC in Chemical Engineering. I got several publications out of it, and I attended some really prestigious conferences. When I finished the funded period, I became a bar manager because every grad scheme in my field refused to accept me (too qualified, under experienced) and I had a real hard time; I was signing on at the dole office.
My friend contacted me about a company he was trying to start in Dubai (I was still in the UK) and I spent boring shifts behind a community bar figuring out how I could help. I ended up with a complex job.
There are lots of reasons I could give for refusing to submit, from the low job prospects, the fact that big pharma basically annihilated my area of research, conflicts with a co-supervisor, issues with the fact I was already working 16 hr days and so on...
However. Your attitude sucks if you want to present that to an employer. You can absolutely get jobs in industry but you need to be able to justify why you walked away. It's a big life decision and your approach to justifying it might be far more important than the topic of research itself - I still have to list 3 years of my life on my CV. I work with lots of astrophysicists now trying to sell clothes etc.

My brother had reached ABD status and never completed his PhD as he had to take care of our mom when she was sick.  He now works as an educational aid in a job that would just really only require a bachelor's degree.  This is fine work, but it doesn't fit what he was planning for his life.
So not finishing has consequences.  I'd really urge you to finish, if you can.
One must always remain sunny and positive in job interviews, so I'd bring this up as little as possible, and just say that you value working over academia, if you don't finish.  But again, I'd finish if I were you.

Being in academia virtually guarantees that you will have to put up with and deal with toxic people.
Being in private industry virtually guarantees that you will have to put up with and deal with toxic people.
Being in a family virtually guarantees that you will have to put up with and deal with toxic people.

Hence, short of becoming an absolute hermit like the Unabomber,

Being a human on this planet virtually guarantees that you will have to put up with and deal with toxic people.

You can exact all the revenge you want on all the toxic people in your life. But, that approach is itself toxic behavior that will only attract more toxic people into your life. Toxic people are like the Hydra of Greek mythology: when you cut off one of its heads, two grow back in its place.
I am writing from personal experience. I learned  too late. I am basically subsisting in an entry-level job at age 58 despite being a brilliant computer scientist who was in his prime at the peak of the biggest tech boom in history. Why? Because I thought I was smarter than everyone else and passive-aggressively always got my way, in the short term. In the long term I ended up burning bridge after bridge, until there were no bridges left.
Don't make the same mistakes I did. Accept that there will always be toxic people. Learn to forgive and move on. Take a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. Go to a CoDA.org meeting.
Purposefully hurting others for any reason, even if they totally deserve it, is toxic and it will kill you.

Sorry to hear you were mistreated.
I've been tenured faculty in the past, now I work at a deep-tech startup.
I am in the loop on hiring. We hire exceptional people from MSc all the way to tenured faculty.
For what is worth, knowing the truth would make me like this candidate more, not less. Because:

I can always have a chat with them about their papers (done it with many people) and determine what they actually know and get a good sense about their personality.
Standing up to abusive superiors is a GOOD trait! And a company that pushes away people with courage may not be a good one to be part of in the first place.
If the candidate will indeed do a good job, having the PhD or not will matter less and less, as their career progresses: their work will speak for itself.

On the other hand, it is true that people will be wondering what happened there. Also, we do care about candidates who hop too often from job to job. That's called a pattern and it is telling. One PhD cut short is just one datapoint.

"Standing up" . Where is OP standing up? they are lying extremely low, if anything!

@EarlGrey Believe me, there has been some confrontations.

Standing up may be good. But is the OPs strategy a good way of standing up?

It seems hiring considerations vary significantly between fields. I would have thought similar considerations would hold in deep-tech; OP has shown that they are willing to make huge sacrifices (4 years of work?) simply to spite someone that they feel has wronged them. In my sector we have extensive non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses. They work only because the employee does not want to be fined and sued deeply into bankruptcy twice over. OP seems like they might not mind this. That poses an immense (even existential?) risk to the company. It's a reject beyond a shred of a doubt

How bad would this look on job applications to industry jobs?

Note that I will be answering your question and not providing psychological or ethical support - there are good answers already.
TL;DR Whether or not you have a PhD does not matter
Generally speaking, the industry expects something like a Master so if you are half your PhD you are already more qualified than the other candidates. "Qualified" doesn't mean much because usually when you leave university your qualifications are only that much relevant.
You would need to explain why you stopped your PhD during the interview, and saying that you realized it was not for you because you prefer more concrete goals is the kind of response people want to hear.
Of course, there may be many various cases where your PhD matters (more research-oriented industry, someone likes PhDs, ...) but for generic employment it does not matter.
This answer is from a high-tech industry perspective, in the technical areas (R&D, IT, ...)
EDIT because I left the rest of the question hanging as @Dawn mentioned in his comment.

To what extent would it look bad if I disclosed that this is for pure boycott? Could this look like someone too bad to finish the degree or could this look like someone not preferable to hire for other reasons?

It would look terribly bad. Do not even try to make it look positive.
I am not even sure how you can say "They were not nice to me so I screwed up the whole department by not taking my PhD defense because I knew it would be a big thing to do. High five!"

But the question also is “Can I tell them the truth?” I think you are implying “No” but you didn’t quite say it.

@Dawn: ah, you are right, I did not go past the title (How bad will refusing to defend PhD look on industry-job applications?) and the first question (How bad would this look on job applications to industry jobs?). Obviously OP should not tell them "yeah, I sabotaged the organization because I was angry" :) I updated my answer

From my own personal experience doing industry interviews, if you went ahead with this and I was aware of the circumstances of your departure from your PhD program, this would look horrendously bad. In fact, I can't think of anything that would convince me to make a positive recommendation on your candidacy in light of it. Sorry to sound a little harsh, but I would likely assume that you were petty, vindictive, toxic, and likely to stab others in the back (including me) at the slightest provocation, and even a stellar publication record wouldn't convince me to overlook that. (Even if you aren't any of those things, that's a risk I wouldn't be willing to take).

There are lots of comments about why you should defend your PhD and move on. No doubt my comment is on the same line. I (and several other PhD students that I know) have faced similar situations during PhD journey. So my suggestions are based on what I have experienced and concluded taking with several other PhD students with similar experiences.
I would say, if you have all the papers and chapters done and ready, simply defend, get your certificate, degree, and move on. If you feel like publishing your dissertation or chapters, publish them (if they are already published, wonderful!) else you can simply let your professor do what they want or not even care about it. Journey after PhD is different and you can work with whom you want. You win against all the toxicity once you defend that dissertation. It may not affect much to your professor (especially if they are already tenured) and the department if you drop but affects you more than anyone else.
Dropped or changing your PhD department or university in early stages of PhD (~1 year) is much more effective and easier compared to dropping later on such as in your case. Thinking another way, work you did is also your effort, your reputation, your time, your belonging, and deserve your ownership. So, not defending your PhD means you are giving up on things that you already own and work hard for it.

People will initially assume you are the problem.
It is better to keep things vague as possible. And after getting a job and having a bit of time to know for sure you still want to pursue boycott you can just tell your employer you changed your priorities.
What you should not do is boast to your potential future company how you messed with your previous "company".
If you are bothered by lying/misrepresentation: If you are not the guilty party after a year or so performing well in your job people will respect you enough and you can share with them the real reasons for your PhD situation. This way you can let them know if it really still bugs you. My guess that in a year you will barely remember all the nonsense related to your PhD/hiring process.
P.S.
I see a lot of people attacking you in other answers, but they don't know your situation, if you want a relatively unbiased opinion you should ask some friends of fellow PhD students that are aware of your situation much more than random answer here.

People aren't attacking OP in other answers, they're helpfully pointing out how OP's story will be perceived. The details of their situation and the consequences for their job prospects are very unlikely to matter for that perception. I don't really see what this adds to the 24 (!!) other answers already here.

Spoiler alert: my answer is very different from all other answers and it is gonna be the extremely unpopular one due to the mindset of people in academia, and more specifically here in Academia.StackExchange.
It’s been about 2 and a half years that I started working in industry in the US, after I quit my PhD and got a Master's degree (though I had another Master's before joining the PhD program). For the record, I work in one of the big tech companies as a software engineer. So, my experience is based on working with the best people in the whole world.
I was in countless interviews as both interviewee and interviewer and I never needed to ask/answer questions about someone's/my own PhD and the surrounding circumstances around graduation besides only asking/answering pure technical questions about what they/I did during that time and descriptions provided in their/my resume. So, in a nutshell, nobody really cares if you graduated or not, you need to just show you have experience that is relevant to the job description. Nothing beyond Master's degree is really needed in the industry (Yes, I’m talking about big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc.). It’s no one’s business what happened during your PhD, and honestly nobody really cares or has enough time to talk about childish dramas with some delusional people who work in academia. These people think because of their professor title, given to them by god, they can do or say anything and not be held accountable for their actions. Unfortunately, these days the universities are the new Catholic Churches, where professors see themselves as medieval cardinals and pope, who can control anyone under their power and questioning their actions and their motivations behind those actions would face a harsh punishment (Well, you’ll see that in the comments under my answer, where they won’t tolerate any different view other than what they approve of and they would do anything in their power to censor other views).
You just mention that you were a PhD candidate at that time and at some point you decided to move on to industry work and that’s it. If you have Masters or Bachelor, you mention that you finished that in the application form (that’s the only place where you talk about your educational background anyway). Also, you use that finished Masters or Bachelor for the background check if needed. For sure, if there are some people that like to know more about these kind of dramas instead of technical experience and background of the person they are trying to hire, you simply just move on to another employer because that’s not normal for sure.
So, in my opinion, if you don’t like to get a PhD degree, it’s totally fine and that’s your personal choice and will have very minuscule to no effect at all on your industrial career. If you like to be called a Dr. and have that title, go for it, but there is no other use for that. Some people here tried to scare you about circumstances of quitting PhD and the consequences of burning your bridges with your supervisor or other professors in your university. Honestly, there are extremely rare to no cases at all where you need to have a reference to start your work in the industry. Personally, I never needed it. So, don’t worry about that also. You don’t need to be nice to people that certainly don’t deserve it.

Dilworth's answer already covers your position on their first bullet point ("If you don't defend the PhD but don't disclose the true vindictive reasons why you hadn't, it may slightly lower your chances as you would be a less qualified candidate. Still, you can land a nice job.")

Nothing beyond Masters degree is really needed in the industry (Yes, I’m talking about big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc.
Probably true, however this is true because these companies are financial colossus, not the garage-ethos they were and they still claim to be  ... they are tech company but someone else is doing the cool things, they are "just" putting the cool things together for the masses.

I think the comments so far show that we do tolerate different opinions. It is useful to have your opinion. But this answer would be better if you properly addressed the fact that OP seems to be vindictive, and cut the parts like "I work in one of the big tech companies ... So, my experience is based on working with the best people in the whole world" (which comes across as quite arrogant) and "childish dramas with some delusional people who work in academia. These people think because of their professor title, given to them by god, they can do or say anything."

Impact of PhD vs no PhD on an industrial career is also very location specific. In Germany and Austria, for example, having a PhD will definitely be extremely helpful in some industrial career tracks. The same might be true for other countries. One can argue whether this is good or not but be careful to not overgeneralise experiences from the US (tech-)industry.

+1 for the different opinion.

In your particular industry and job position (and geography) this may be true, but generalizing from yours to the OP's circumstances seems like a stretch at best, and possibly devastatingly incorrect.

It's true that the OP doesn't need PhD degree if working in Industry. However, what if the OP wants to go back to Academia later, say 10 years from now, how to explain this in  the application for re-entering Academia ?

I think you almost make a good point here. But the choice OP is making is not - get a PhD or don’t. It is get a PhD or don’t get one and tell everyone the missing degree is because he was too mad at the supervisor to finish and wanted to punish them.

Downvoted as answer does not address the question ("tell my employers the motivation") and the other main point it's making (not achieving their PhD - which I agree is not the end of the world) has already been covered by another answer.

I also think that you're conveying a useful counterpoint to the other answers. It would be interesting to know how many up- and downvotes (currently 7:7) you'd have received, had you simply spared out the extensive rant part and the somewhat arrogant side notes, as already suggested by @toby544.

Pragmatically the actual (versus your metaphorical) Pope is having his difficulties squelching disagreements these days but that is mostly with select Cardinals and Bishops not demi rogue clerics.

@Nobody Are you sure that this is even possible? Everything I understand about the Academia is that when you leave, it is extremely hard to get back in. For instance, if you had in mind a post-doc after 10 years of research absence I believe that this is effectively ruled out. Perhaps as some lecturer, or so. To enroll in other programs should not require PhD's, I would think?

@Vertex Yes, it is extremely hard to get back in., but it is still possible. However, if you don't defend PhD, it becomes almost impossible. I came from industry. I had a colleague who left Academia (giving up PhD) because of money. Years later, he went back to Academia. He had to re-take undergrad courses before was admitted back to PhD program because the department said his knowledge was behind. Nevertheless, he got his PhD later. You're at the junction right now. Think twice before you give up the PhD which you already spent years on. Good Luck !

I think, if you can defend and get that degree done, won’t that be positively reflected on the resume? If toxicity is on the extreme height and severity affecting students mental health, it’s different. Otherwise, this person will win if they defend, take a degree, and just move on. It’s just one more step, you get highest degree and become qualified to do any job in the world. Get it done and move on. Don’t look back to your professor.

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text:
Study of code share practices in science
I am searching for a study that presents statistics of how often you can get code that claims to be available in scientific communities. I found the following interesting study, which is very similar to what I am looking for: http://reproducibility.cs.arizona.edu/
However, this one is specific to computer science, and I wonder if something similar has been done in biology, physics or other research areas. I appreciate your hints and clues.

If you find more studies on code availability in computer science please let me know here: Reference on availability of source code used in computer science research articles?

I doubt that most departments are even aware of what source code their researchers are using; some departments see source code as something like how you organize your desk: specific to you and disinteresting to everyone else.  Your survey may require a lot of tracking down people and doing personal interviews to get reliable data.

This study is more qualitative than quantitative but might provide you with some more information about the scientific software space.
James Howison, Ewa Deelman, Michael J. McLennan, Rafael Ferreira da Silva, James D. Herbsleb; Understanding the scientific software ecosystem and its impact: Current and future measures. Res Eval 2015; 24 (4): 454-470. doi: 10.1093/reseval/rvv014

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text:
When teaching, which question types are effective for stimulating deep processing of the material in students?
In our university, we have a discussion about different question types to use in a module in our Electronic Learning Environment called 'self-tests'. We use this module to stimulate active processing of learning material by students in an automated fashion, enabling us to offer courses with a high degree of interactivity while remaining feasible for large numbers of students.
Our discussion concerns specifically which question types we need to implement in the Electronic Learning Environment. Some example of question types are the following:

Multiple choice questions
Open questions
Ranking questions
Images with 'hotspots'
'Likert'-type scales and matrix questions ('arrays' in LimeSurvey)
Checkboxes
Sentences (or complete paragraphs) where words have to be entered to complete the sentences

Some applied examples would be:

Please organise these concepts to reflect the developmental stages
distinguished by Piaget.
Which of these types of sampling are appropriate? In
this painting, point out where the artists uses [INSERT BRUSH
TECHNIQUE HERE - sorry, I'm a psychologist, not an art scientist :-)]
Given the above material properties, how much load can the bridge
bear?

A colleague recently voiced the position that all other question types 'boil down to yes-no decisions' and that therefore, there is practically no variation in the types of information processing students engage in when working with the different question types.
However, in this discussion, nobody has as yet managed to produce any meta-analyses of the evidence, or in fact other forms of empirical, or for that matter, theoretical, evidence. At the same time, I can't imagine this hasn't been studied yet. However, queries in Google Scholar using keywords such as 'information processing', 'cognition', 'formative tests', 'interaction' and 'learning' didn't yield anything. Lots of opinions and examples, but no evidence.
So my question is: does anybody know of literature presenting empirical or theoretical evidence regarding differences in processing between different question types (methods of interaction)?
This is the kind of thing academics (as teachers) should all have readily available I guess - but I'm afraid I don't, and I don't know anybody who would.
I don't have any 'dogs in this fight' - if there is evidence that all question types perform equally, that's fine. I just want evidence, regardless of which way it points :-) As long as the evidence is methodologically and statistically rigorous I'm happy.
One answer would be, of course, "it's not about the question type, it's about what exactly you do with it and how you embed it in the course". However, this ignores the fact that different question types enable/prohibit different problem solving approaches. It would basically just change the question into "assuming the question types are applied properly, which serve which goals best?"
I'd be very grateful for any pointers towards literature where (preferably experimental) evidence on this matter is presented.
[this question is kind of like a more in-depth version of this one, which is about whether online quizzes can work in general]

Despite its overuse in questions likes this, you might want to consider Bloom's taxonomy and see to what extent you can fit those objectives within those answering styles you have.  Outside of the open answers (which are hard to grade automatically), I don't think you can really get higher than the "understand" level except for a handful of questions that, posed right, could maybe reach the "apply" level.  For research, searching for "assessment theory" may yield better results.

Thank you for your response! Do you know whether there is any empirical data on this? For example, which question types / tasks / guidelines are associated to learning at these different levels, or maybe studies where learning activities were broken down into sub-tasks such as planning, comparison, working memory function, etc? I'm quite sceptical of claims not backed up by peer reviewed research, so I tend to continue searching until I accumulated some papers. Or until I'm confident we actually don't really /know/ :-)

As someone who studies learning sciences, the answer is quite complicated and in many cases domain-dependent. As a general rule, you want constructive (e.g. building things) or interactive tasks (e.g. dialog) for best learning. After that, active (e.g., most of your list). Passive (readings/lectures) being the weakest (Source: Chi 2009: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01005.x/abstract). But that is still in generalities. Passive materials still have their role.

The question is inspired by our need to implement 'interaction elements' or question types in our online system. However, I assume most empirical evidence would often generalize to class situations as well. For example, if there is evidence that to stimulate deep cognitive processing and consolidation, open questions are generally superior to closed questions, I guess that would be true for both online and face to face interactions. But I'm not sure - which is why I asked the question :-)

This is a question which is far too big to reasonably answer, particularly without knowing the subject matter and tasks of importance. In terms of theories with solid evidence, ones that I find useful as guidelines are:

Chi's Active-Constructive-Interactive framework. However, it sounds like your system does not naturally lend itself to constructive or interactive activities.  This is unfortunate, because I've seen studies with evidence of learning gains for things as simple as quasi-interactive tasks like allowing people to continue answering multiple choice questions for partial credit after wrong answers (e.g., wrong answers trigger hints for further reflection).
25 Learning Principles: More of a list of known effects rather than a theory, it is still useful to know. The primary issue with some of the items on this list is that it is hard (maybe impossible) to optimize for all of them in designing a course. Also, certain content fits certain approaches better, either because of the type of knowledge or expectations by teachers/students (e.g., embedding math into stories might be pedagogically valid, but jarring/disliked due to unfamiliarity).
Aligning Media to Cognitive Tasks: While there is a broad literature on this (Mayer obviously being the big US name), Schnotz's work highlights the relevance of picking multimedia that naturally communicates the information you are trying to convey. For example, it is incredibly hard to verbally describe an individual chair (picture worth a thousand words) but equally hard to show enough pictures to imply the simple concept that "most chairs have 4 legs." This intuition implies two things. First, that much of "learning styles" literature represents preferences, and shouldn't be mistaken for what actually leads to better learning (since the content affordances will almost always dominate the best approach to use). Second, it highlights the need to align your learning tasks to the modality that makes the right information salient and accessible, at least initially. Later, if the authentic application of those skills involves tasks where they are not salient or easy accessible, tasks to represent that greater complexity are also useful. This represents one incarnation of the general strategy of scaffolding, where tasks are simplified/supported initially, but increasingly approximate unassisted performance of the cognitive tasks needed. This has implications for question sequencing.
Multiple Representations: Related to both of the above, I think it is important to note that multiple ways of testing the same information is important. This has a lot of backing behind it, which is why it is big in the US Common Core for math. It is suspected to have two major mechanisms: a) multiple pathways/cues to recall the same information and b) understanding of the abstract relationships/processes rather than brittle task-specific procedures tied to one representation. This would not generally apply to just different input controls, though, which are likely to be a last-step after the desired learning-relevant processing is done.  Or, put another way, if your question leads to knowledge that is so brittle they fall on their face because they have a checkbox instead of a multiple-choice, they probably won't be able to apply that knowledge in practice anyway.
Generative: Also noted in some of the above, and relevant to the question types that you list, open response is different and generally better. This is particularly relevant because many of the above types (e.g., multiple choice) are actually very hard to build correctly, with most teachers using a strategies like: 1 right answer, 1 obviously wrong/off-topic answer, 2 variants of right answer with flaws. They're very prone to test-gaming, unless you start with open responses and build one with a right answer vs. common misconceptions, for example. Gaming behaviors are known to reduce learning, probably because learners spend their time thinking about the strategy to game the answer, rather than actually processing the domain-relevant information.
Comprehensive Testing: Testing on the full set of knowledge so-far has also been shown to increase learning gains. This was noted by one major report as the single simplest and most effective way to increase course-level learning gains, if I recall, but I don't recall the cite off the top of my head. I also cannot recall if this had implications related to studying more or if it was more of a repeated practice issue.
Question Taxonomies: There are also a few question taxonomies to look into, which have some indications that deeper questions (e.g., causal reasoning) result in deeper learning. However, deeper learning is not necessarily more learning. The relationship can be quite complex, and if all you really want is just recall (e.g., the end-task is recall) then deep questions may not be efficient for that goal. As always, aligning practice to your target task is important: if your ultimate task will be shallow, shallow practice probably works. There might be some value to "multiple representations of different shallow practice" using MC questions vs. Y/N vs. checkboxes maybe, but that seems like such an uncommon situation that I am genuinely not sure if anyone studies it.

In general, I would say that I don't see tons of difference between any of the closed-response questions (Y/N, MC, Checkboxes, Ranking, Likert). Yes/No is a bit flimsier than the others because you only need to evaluate one assertion, but I'd still say you'd do similar thinking when given the same question regardless of how you're entering an answer. I'm not aware of any research that shows substantial differences between these techniques off the top of my head, and even if differences were observed there's a good chance that they're not useful differences. As with the learning styles literature noted earlier, just because you can find a difference when everything else is kept equal (controlled) does not mean that the difference is useful in practice because you generally have much stronger factors to manipulate. Open response is different because you get less cues (e.g., you can't just use recognition, and instead need to use recall). There is some research indicating that is better, but applying the caveat of what better means (e.g., might be deeper but less efficient, if all you truly need is recall).
I will note that there are a few systems out there for making interactive questions for courses. CMU has the CTAT system. WPI maintains the ASSISTments system. Both of these have various levels of retry/hinting support for interactivity, among other types of adaptation. There are also some similar systems for doing this with open-response formats (i.e., dialogs), but I don't currently know any good ones that can yet be easily and freely embedded by instructors into courseware and that also have professional support staff available.
Finally, if it really is the input controls that you're most interested in, you might find more literature on that in fields like HCI or marketing survey design.  Both of those fields tend to focus more on the affordances and optimizations to input mechanisms, while learning sciences and education is typically more interested in the content of the questions (other than the notable concerns about choice-based questions and simple active learning tasks in general).  But personally, I think that the big gains aren't in those minor tweaks.

This is great, especially with the links to the literature. This is a very useful answer - a reasonable answer even, I'd say :-) Thank you!

I'm a teacher major with about 2 years of experience. Unfortunately I cannot cite research, but offer some of my own experience with some theoretical background.
According to the constructivistic theory of education, learning is mainly made by an active effort of the learner to make a mental construct. Therefore, and according to my own experience, the best questions are which require an insight to solve.
For example, good puzzles almost always require you to discover a new concept, unless you knew it, of course.
SPOILER ALERT
There is a Sam Loyd puzzle where you have to make a donkey (or horse) out of a few pieces of paper, which never seem to give the right shape together. But when you put the pieces in a circular fashion, you can make the outline of a horse (the negative, i.e. the table you put the puzzle on). So if positive/negative image is what you want to teach, perhaps in the context of Gestalt or graphic design, it's a great way to make them grasp the concept by utilizing it.
SPOILER END
Lateral thinking puzzles usually do this, because when you reach the limit of your knowledge, you need to reorganize your thinking to go forward. And that's what teaching is about in my (and constructivist teacher's) opinion.
Some other ways to do it would be presenting case studies (word problems), when they need to explain what would they do in that situation and why (both can be multiple choice). Or let them make up their own questions about the topic, which is also great for learning -- and you can use the best ones for later.
There's research that suggest that simply reviewing study material is not enough for long-term memory. You need to try and remember the answer before checking it. I don't have links, but Cal Newport's probably write about it.
Another great resource is Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
So in my opinion, it's not the format of the answer what is really important, but rather how engaging the question is. But maybe there is some research about that, and some formats may be better in a given situation than in others.

Thank you for the thoughtful contribution! I won't accept it as the best answer yet hoping to draw more attention and perhaps somebody posting specific research about, for example, whether question types exist that seem to be associated with more engagement/elaboration of the student. If nothing is added, I'll accept this as the best answer. Thank you again!

Also, one thing I will note to this comment is that "engagement" is a notoriously squishy concept. I have been in two discussion forums on this topic filled with experts from various fields, and both nearly devolved into shouting at times. The nasty issue with engagement is about time scales. At the 1h level (e.g., Mayer-level), the data makes a good argument for Clockwork-Oranging your students: keep eyes on page, remove extraneous info! At the lifetime level, engagement is often about fostering curiosity and exploration (even sometimes unproductive exploration). And so on... competing goals.

Agree with the comment above about Bloom's. I take a different tack though.
Why not ask questions that matter in the particular discipline.  I use the motto of "let the subject speak for itself".  If your question matters, it is worth working on it.
If it doesn't matter, why waste time trying to 'tickle' a student's brain.  They aren't actually dormant.  Most students are pretty busy, more so than professors, and they will work on things that matter.
Equally, keep your assessment format constant throughout the course.  If it matters, then it matters to practice it.  So model what you want done in class (be the role model of the way of thinking and talking in your discipline) and make sure the coursework and exams are all in the same format.  Then they understand what you want and get better at it.
Most courses these days are only 10 weeks so there is very little you can actually teach and practice.  A good example though is Andrew Ngs course on machine learning (Coursera). Each week he taught a new machine learning technique.  He taught the maths on powerpoint and then set a programming assignment that could be finished in one evening.  Students submit it online and it is tested against another data set designed to trap the most common errors.
It is memorable and doable.  It has a minimum standard of performance in the programming.  Students know they have walked through the theory and can go back to it when they need.  Elegant, tidy, predictable, repetitive but with each new assignment taking a student upwards in content, upwards in topicality and upwards in having practise core skills once again.
Hope that helps. (PS never over do the teaching.  Students aren't daft.  Be orderly and let them get on with it.  They will).

Most students are pretty busy, more so than professors -- [citation needed]

Most courses these days are only 10 weeks Er ... perhaps another one to ask for a citation on. I'd have sworn there are still more schools on semesters than quarters (in the US). Which is too bad for me because the tempo of quarters fits my subject better, but my place is firmly in the semesters camp.

I have to respectfully disagree with about half of this comment. Practicing and testing in the same way repetitively sounds like it would build fragile knowledge and cargo cult approaches.  Building on skills (comprehensive applications) is good advice though, as is modeling how you think/talk about problems.  Moreover, in terms of metacognition research shows that students are daft (i.e., estimate their knowledge poorly). And how would they not be? They lack the knowledge to know the extent of what they don't know.

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