text:
Is 14/20 a good grade on master studies in France?
When I asked my professor why Is my grade so low, he told me that it is a good grade. Maybe he didn't want to make me sad? In my country 14/20 is just "not being dumb" grade.
I am an international student and study on one of the best universities in France.

It would be answerable if you could add few more details. Exactly what does 14 20 mean in your country and how people interpret it. Is is saying 70% in the course? Is it really that bad?

Does this answer your question? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_France

@Coder If the OP told us what exactly 14/20 means, that wouldn't only make this question answerable, it also would make it answered, don't you think? (Apart from the obvious, that it means 14 out of 20 possible points, which I guess we do know already.)

In your country, are full marks expected? This isn't true for many European nations.

14/20 is for those around the top 20% I believe.

Your question is a bit too broad; even restricting to classes I graded or saw graded by others, the answer can vary a lot. What I can say with some confidence (after about 20 years as a student then teacher in French higher education in mathematics) is:

it is almost universal (by law!) that the passing grade is 10, so all grades above 10 should mean the work deserves more than just a passing grade,
in some classes (projects, internships, etc.) 14 might be a bit plain, but still good,
in most written exam classes at the licence level (first to third year), 14 is pretty good but not outstanding,
in most written exam classes at the masters level (fourth and fifth year), 14 is between pretty good to very good (the best grade in a course can be lower than that).

Of course, on some occasion I have been disappointed by a 14. But in higher education I don't think I ever thought it was disgraceful.
To make a comparison I have seen quite a few files from Italians, our grading system is very different. Every Italian application I ever saw but one had maximal grades everywhere (70/70 or 110/110), while that is very rare in France for a single grade, let alone an yearly average.

A remark: The fact is that there is a lot of variation in Italy too, see e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/38923/20058 However, it's true that if you convert 14/20 to 21/30, this in Italy would be considered a score in the low range.

Very good answer (18/20?). To give a very general example, you can look at the nationwide university entrance examination baccalaureat: the passing grade is 10 (over a maximum of 20), whereas a grade of 10 gives you an Assez bien (quite good) distinction, a grade of  14 a "Bien" (good) distinction, and a grade of 16 a "Tres bien" distinction (plus an article on your performance with the other awardees in the local journal, at least where I am leaving)


text:
How is it possible that [insert known crackpot] has articles published in Peer-Reviewed Journals?
Note: This question is intended to be a generic version of something that gets asked occasionally on this site. I apologize for making it overly-contrived, but it's intended to be a generic template of this style of question. A previous version of this question was locked due to Personally Identifiable Information (PII), so I'm re-posting the question anew.
I was recently reading about [topic] and I kept finding articles by [crackpot], such as [link] [link], and [link]. How the heck can anyone trust this person? They've been disproven as a crank by [notable person] and [notable news source], as well as people on our own website: [link to some other stackexchange site]. People tend to say really nasty things about them:

[crank] is an idiot who only spouts [expletive]. I wouldn't ride the bus with them, much less be a collaborator on academic work.

How on Earth are trusted academic sources such as [high h-index journal] publishing work from this [amusing yet insulting word]?

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I'll just say that I think about peer review the way Churchill thought about democracy: It's the worst possible form of scientific review, except for all the rest that anyone has ever come up with.

I'll note that a "crank" in one field might well be an expert in another. Some incredible racists who spout crap are well respected researchers in, say, math or electronics.
I'll also note that someone who has done important work early on can become a crank later in life. The opposite is also true. Road to Damascus, and all that.
Sometimes a perfectly well respected and published researcher will run in to some idée fixe that they fail to shake off with all of their attempts to follow through rejected by their peers.
I'll also note that the incompetence of reviewers at good journals is probably the least likely explanation. And pressure on reviewers, likewise, is hard to manage with blind reviewing.
But, was Poincaré a crank for not recognizing Einstein's work? Or Einstein for turning aether theory on its head?

Note that neither the question nor this answer address the issue of how crackpot articles get published. That requires a completely different analysis.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

Why would it be impossible? Remember, peer review is only supposed to judge the work that is presented. It's not supposed to judge the reputation of the authors, or the credibility of the author's work that wasn't submitted.
Take any of the papers you linked, then cover up the names of the authors and show it to people in those fields. Will they disapprove of the work? If they only start disapproving when they know who the author is, then we have exactly something which double blind peer review is supposed to stop.
The idea that [crank] is a crackpot and therefore everything they've ever written is untrue falls afoul of ad hominen. Beware.

On the other hand, the "stopped clock" principle applies.  Papers are normally not just expected to show results, but to show that those results prove/disprove/give probability bands for some hypothesis.  Accepting a paper doesn't just mean endorsing the results, but also endorsing (at least to some extent) the hypothesis.

... It's also important to note that if someone has a track record of "research" which is structurally flawed or simply inaccurate, then we do genuinely need to distrust everything they do.  There have been various high-profile researchers who have been found to have falsified results, resulting in all their work for years/decades needing to be rechecked.  "Ad hominem" only applies if the person is working competently in good faith and has their work rejected for non-technical reasons.

@Graham Falsification is a very different problem. Structurally flawed research is readily detected by peer review.

@jakebeal It's a different problem, but either way it comes down to whether the person is engaging with the scientific community in good faith. "Crackpot" ideas aren't those which go against current opinion, but more those which are defined by ignorance or misrepresentation of the field in general.

@Graham indeed, and the solution to this problem is not "reputation-based gatekeeping", but requiring submission of all data/code used so that it can be scrutinied, and expecting reviewers to actually have a look at it. (which obviously is easier for software-based experiments, less so for wetware-based stuff ... but replicability works quite differently in such projects in the first place, and presumably similar QA checks can apply there as well).

@Graham "should be distrusted" is not the same as "should be untrue", though. I might not read something that a known crackpot writes, but that doesn't mean I can say it's incorrect.

@Allure But a "known crackpot" can and should legitimately be dismissed then without even reading their work. Reviewers have finite free time, after all. So it definitely is fair to get to the point of saying "we don't believe you're personally capable of producing work which is both factually accurate and procedurally sound". With infinite time available, of course everything should be given equal review time, but in practise that isn't reasonable.

@Graham again, dismissing isn't the same as saying it's wrong. I'm not about to start reading the works of a known crackpot because chances are good it is wrong, but I am also not about to say it is wrong, either.

@Graham Luckily, crackpots and liars seem to be pretty disjoint. Scientific misconduct is hard to catch but gets you expelled from the community. Crackpots are honestly wrong, just overly insistent. Editors/program chairs might maybe desk-reject papers from cranks, but as a reviewer, even in a single-blind setting, I'd struggle to review differently a paper from a crank, unless the paper is visibly bad (which it'll probably be).

@Graham "Ad hominem" only applies if the person is working competently in good faith and has their work rejected for non-technical reasons. - How do you check, whether or not a person is acting in good faith?

First, I think it is appropriate to describe peer review by paraphrasing Churchill's famous quote on democracy: It is the worst form of publishing scientific results, except for all the alternatives. Peer review has a high failure rate. I've seen results that can be easily demonstrated to be fundamentally flawed, containing elementary errors in math or reasoning, appear in top-rated journals. I fought and sometimes lost battles with referees whose criticism was obviously nonsensical, but they stuck to it, and eventually I just took the coward's way out and submitted the paper to another journal. Still, when you look at what gets published when there is no effective peer review, clearly peer review helps a great deal, its flaws notwithstanding.
Second, there is a continuous spectrum between mainstream science and utter crackpottery. Revolutionary ideas sometimes appear at first in a form that makes you wonder what the author was smoking. Consider this quote from James Joyce, for instance, "Three quarks for Muster Mark! /
Sure he has not got much of a bark / And sure any he has it's all beside the mark." It inspired Murray Gell-Mann to use the word "quark" in his proposed mechanism behind the "eightfold way" involving a new substructure for baryons and mesons, with elementary particles carrying fractional charges. A miracle this paper even got published. Yet it now forms the foundations of the SU(3) part of the Standard Model of particle physics, one of the crowning achievements of modern physics overall.
Finally, it is important to note that no crank or crackpot thinks he is a crank or a crackpot. I am regularly approached by strangers offering their, ahem, unconventional ideas on physics. Many have respectable scientific credentials. They have strong faith in the validity of their concepts and often go to great lengths to explain them in detail, "prove" them, provide background, even propose experimental verification. Most of them are genuinely good, well-meaning people, devoted to what they do, who spent a huge amount of time developing their ideas. This, of course, makes it even harder for them to accept the possibility that they were wrong all along, that what they saw as profound insight was just a symptom of their profound ignorance.
Which sometimes makes me wonder: How do I know that I am not one of them? Indeed, how do you know that you are a crackpot? The answer is, you don't. It's like that German Autobahn joke I heard eons ago, about a driver who listens to his car radio warning travelers that a demented driver is going against traffic on the wrong side of the expressway. "One driver?" he asks rhetorically, pointing through his windshield, "There are hundreds of them!"

-1 due to the Churchill quote, which, if applicable, would only cast doubt on the peer review system.

The intent was precisely the cast doubt on the peer review system, as it is far from perfect. That is not to say that I know of a better alternative... which is exactly what the Churchill quote was intended to express. Oh well.

Well, Churchill's quote is a generic claim that anybody would make about the system they support. A Monarchist would say Monarchy is the worst form of government except for all of the alternatives.

I respectfully disagree. I would only use this quote to describe systems that I consider flawed, perhaps even deeply flawed, yet with no better alternative available. It is an acknowledgment of the flaws of the system one supports.

+1 for the Churchill quote

Just as an added note: if not all research of said crackpot is bad (and as others have said, it most often isn't), if the review process is double blind, then the only person who could reject the paper simply because they knew the person was a crackpot is the initial editor who accepted the paper for the peer review process. And I really don't know if editors make it a habit to look up every single author of received papers (I guess they rather don't).

And there is an important question - even if the editor "knew the person [is] a crackpot", should they do anything special at all? If a quality, double-blind process feels the article is worthy of publication, why over-ride it? Lost in the genericized question is whether the contents of the article is crack-potty, or merely, elsewhere, one of the authors. Excluding adjudged quality articles based on authors' other publications is but a short distance to "no, we won't publish your article in our high impact journal because  you're not prestigious enough!"

The editor should look up the author's previous work, even if only briefly, to see if the work is "salami slicing" or has been published already in a too-similar form.  Not to do so would be wasting the reviewer's valuable time and energy.

Jacques Benaventiste published in Nature an article about (broadly speaking) the "memory of water" in Nature. Nature added a warning about "the incredulity of the many referees", but still went for the publication.
Why? Because Benaventiste was a Famous Scientist That Can Be Trusted (TM).
For anyone else, the article would have been rejected with a roar of laughter, but here rationality went on vacation and Nature wanted to be the first one to publish breakthroughs.
So to answer your question: this happens sometimes because of money and connections.
A special mention to Luc Montagnier, whom I admired and was proud of his Nobel Prize, until he went nuts about homeopathy and vaccines (including his defense of Benaventiste's biased results)

This seems to be answering the question "how does a crackpot paper get published" whereas the question was more about a person. In reference to the original question asked, the answer supported by what you write here isn't "because of money and connections" but rather "because the previous work by the crackpot was legitimate work, and the crackpottery came later".

@BryanKrause well, he was published because he was well known (admittedly, though his previous publications, but also his professional activity). This means that Nature trusted that past more than their own referees. I call that "connections" but it can be also called "blind trust for someone well known". As for the money - I was referring to the money Nature would make (in the future, as a top journal) by publishing breakthrough results despite the universal critique. They could have rejected it, on the basis that extraordinary claims require etc.

Nature writeup on this story. The assertion that this is based on "money and connections", while possible, is highly unlikely; Benveniste was a highly accomplished immunologist, well-respected in his field when this was published. The research was eventually disproven, which is actually evidence that the system works, not the other way around.

@eykanal: Nature published the paper because they would be THE ones who published a breakthrough if it was real. The fact that the claims were extraordinary with little to no physical backing did not stop them from doing that. Their referees were against it. Would my paper about that be publshed? No. Why was his paper published? Because he was well known. In other words, no matter what he wrote, even if it made little sense, he had the privilege to be published outside of standards. I call this "connections".

@eykanal:  Why would Nature publish that as well? Because fame = more subscriptions, ads etc. Therefore money. The fact that they built a strory about how this happened does not matter. They should have said: we gave a privilege to someone, a privilege someone else would not have had and we willingly published false science. I did not see that.

@WoJ - It is impossible to disprove what you are alleging. That said, you're stating it as fact, while it's really just you assuming the worst of all players and following that logic to where it leads. You may be right, but you're essentially alleging conspiracy ("the only goal of everyone here is fame and money, truth be damned"). ♂  I guess I just disagree.

@eykanal: I am an ex-scientist. If someone proposes a revolutionary theory, they should be able to i) back it off with strong facts (and not say, as Benaventiste did, that the details are not what he is interested in - when talking about the orthogonality of his theory to physics) and ii) say "I was wrong" when you happen to be wrong. None of these are in place so for me, such a person is a crackpot.

@eykanal Then you have the place where they can put their claims. It could have been Hyde Park where bystanders would listen, but it was a reputable journal that did it not for science, but to raise its greatness, bypassing their normal standards. This is not at all a conspiracy, it is just my opinion about how they dealt with a fantastic claim.

@eykanal A conspiracy would be if there were dark forces trying to hide or push an agenda. here it was much simpler: they wanted fame and it was an opportunity, so their standards were conveniently reduced. It is (sadly) normal today with the rush to publications and to be THE journal people want to publish in.  (sorry for the length, i had to chop the answer down to 3 pieces)

How does being a "highly accomplished immunologist" matter when publishing a paper on the memory of water?

@Taladris - Read the abstract; it's a paper on vaccine dose concentrations. "Memory of water" refers to the fact that he claims to see immune response even when the vaccine is diluted so much there's not even a molecule present in the actual administered dose. He claims the solution had "memory" of the vaccine; hence, "memory of water".

There is of course the alternative possibility that the person being pilloried by

[notable person] and [notable news source], as well as people on our own website:

may simply be correct. It's not a priori reasonable that those authority sources deserve more faith than the published researcher on the topic in question.

People tend to say really nasty things about them

And this is sadly often true about those going against the majority view, the existing power structures, groupthink or vested interests (classic examples: Giodarni Bruno, Galilleo, Darwin).
One can receive opprobrium and still be be correct. If the anonymous work has been peer reviewed and stands up on its own merits, then that may in fact be evidence that the criticism received by the

[amusing yet insulting word]

may not be entirely justified. Suppression of dissenting ideas has often slowed new discoveries and scientific progress, so we should be wary of contributing to it in our own modern way.

The original posting had links to articles with multiple authors. Where there are multiple authors, it is possible that the articles are fine and that most of the authors are fine, but a person somehow insinuated his way into being listed as a co-author but in fact did little or no work on the article. This could happen in a variety of ways from just being friends with the authors, being persistent or doing some favor. I assume that journals accept the list of co-authors submitted, and do not investigate each to see if they actually made -- or could have made -- any substantive contribution.

They've been disproven as a crank by [notable person] and [notable
news source].

Because some basic logical fallacies are assumed in such a subjective question, most any answer would have to first address that. They are:

Argument from authority
Fallacy of incomplete evidence
Ad hominem

Addressing evidence for or against the specific claim rather than spending time on reputation of the claimant is the only way to determine the claim's veracity.

One possibility is that the crackpot is a close friend of an editor in chief of a peer-reviewed journal.  The editor in chief unethically changes the peer-review process so that the paper is accepted even if it is not worthy of publication.

Possible, but incredibly speculative.

@cheersmate My answer is based on a real situation but I don't think it is appropriate to give details here.

This seems like a road to the end of the line for that journal.

@Buffy: Not true. It's precisely because people who know about such journals are not revealing the details that they won't die out so easily.

I can also give an examples of "crackpot" papers by members of the editorial board of the journal in question.  It isn't speculative.

... on a related note https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10049/should-an-editor-in-chief-publish-in-their-own-journal

One of the reasons why "crackpots" can get papers published is because a lot of journals allow authors to suggest potential reviewers.  Journals should never do this - the editors should be sufficiently familiar with the topic to be able to select appropriate reviewers for themselves (authors should be able to suggest people that shouldn't be selected as reviewers).  I feel extremely uncomfortable every time I am asked to suggest reviewers for my papers, but happily this is fairly uncommon in my field (machine learning).
I (or at least my fictional alter ego, Gavin Cawley) was involved in a case where this led to a comment paper by the journal editors explaining the failure of peer review and the change in the journal's policy (it wasn't the first time this had happened).
Another reason is the lack for academic reward for publishing comments papers, which should be an important element of post-publication peer review or quality control.  If people knew their "crackpot" paper would be likely to attract a critical comment, there would be more of an incentive not to do it.  I've written a few comments papers and they are a lot of work.
Journals don't seem to do a great deal of checking to see if arguments have been made and refuted before.  One of the comments papers was on a study that argued a statistic technique used in a variety of areas in biology was wrong.  But of course, it wasn't, the authors just didn't understand it correctly.  So I wrote a comment paper, but I have found the authors have published a large number of papers making similar claims in a variety of applications of this technique.  Nobody has the energy to refute all of them.
The last reason is that there are a lot of journals these days, so if you get a paper rejected, they can easily be sent somewhere else, and if you test the lottery of peer-review often enough, it will eventually fail.  Good authors adapt their papers according to the reviewers suggestions, bad authors just send it off somewhere else with minimal changes.
So there are a couple of practical reasons why it happens.
Some have mentioned Galileo and Darwin and Einstein.  It is important to consider though that Galileos, Darwins and Einsteins are vanishingly rare, but crackpots are near ubiquitous.  So if you think you are a Galileo the odds really are not in your favour and it is self-skepticism that stand between you and "going emeritus".

Among other things, based on observation, sometimes an element of the crank-ery is an exorbitant self-confidence and enthusiasm for self-promotion... even, or perhaps especially, in the face of negative professional feedback.
I can easily visualize personally timid expert people getting worn down by the importunings of a crank they misguidedly tried to help.
I have a little more difficulty visualizing serious journals getting similarly worn down, but it's conceivable to me that it could happen through various event-sequences. "Being pushy" does have its rewards...?!?
I think the relevant dynamic here is that "the crank" "has nothing to lose", and subliminally realizes this, and thus has a much different context in which they operate. The established professionals and journals do "have something to lose", but apart from inhibiting endorsing/publishing doubtful things, there is also a strong social/moral disincentive to be toooooo negative to enthusiastic amateurs, etc. This dynamic is used by con artists more generally, I gather. Playing on the tendency of people to "be nice".

I will not deny that I do not like how the question is phrased and I like this answer even less. There is an entire spectrum of "cranks", going all the way from insanity through carelessness to something else entirely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abc_conjecture. The answer to the closed question was substantially better. Also, in my humble opinion, in non-axiomatic sciences, the distinction between a crank and an established researcher can often come down to a matter of opinion/education and personal relationships/like/dislike.

I'm curious whether this is something folks have experienced. I haven't seen this sort of thing when reviewing... personally, I'm comfortable giving harsh reviews when necessary, and I really haven't seen editors getting "worn down" and letting inappropriate things through.

I've never seen something really bad getting through by wearing down the editors/reviewers. I've definitely seen that happen with things that were basically worthless due to their mediocrity. Not wrong, just pointless...

Being successful in science requires both self-confidence and self-skepticism, you really do need both.  Self confidence is fine, providing it doesn't stop you from taking criticism seriously.

Something that doesn't seem to have been mentioned here is that the paper could just have been poorly written, and have enough buzz words from complicated enough fields to intimidate the reviewer. And possibly the reviewers might be junior enough that they aren't confident in their reviewing skills yet or senior enough that they only skim through the papers and fill in gaps with something reasonable rather than what is in the paper.
The first paper that I happened to review was one of these papers, on a complicated field and poorly written so it was hard to assess what the authors had done or were saying. Reading through the appendix made me notice they had defined variable A based on variable B and variable B on variable A in their algorithm. I checked a previously published paper of theirs that they referenced and found the same thing so rejected the paper on writing and this inconsistency (or I think I gave the benefit of the doubt and said resubmit with major corrections). I suspect the first paper was published even with this issue due to it being difficult and intimidating to read the original paper just as it was the one I was reviewing.
But I could easily see the temptation to just let it go through if you feel you couldn't understand the paper and felt you'd bitten off a bit more than you could chew. Alternatively you have the good reviewers decide it isn't worth the time and say they can't review it after accepting (because they know it isn't worth the time) and then if it happens to go to those who are more likely to just rubber stamp due to being intimidated and inexperienced, meaning these kinds of papers could slip through. This is part of the reason I consider it completely valid to go after the clarity of the work when reviewing work, and therefore try to make my own work clear and will make edits if a reviewer misunderstands work I'm a part of.

There was this one guy called Galileo Galilei who was considered a crackpot, and a dangerous one, by all the experts at the time he was alive.
He was later proven to be correct, but there are still people believing the erstwhile experts to this day.
He eventually got published, despite being considered a crackpot...

There were these hundred of guys who considered themselves a Galileo Galilei, but all of the experts considered them crackpots, if they could be bothered to consider them at all. They were never proven correct, but  still believe they are a Galileo Galilei to this day. They never were published, despite their belief that they should be.  // For every unrecognized genius, there are a thousand crackpots.

As Carl Sagan said "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” The experts are right the vast majority of the time, the rate at which scientific paradigms are overturned is positively glacial, and with good reason.

BTW I don't think Galileo was considered a "crackpot", the problem was heresy, not crackpottery.

Others have made valid points here, but there is one that seems to be missing.  Or, at the least, talked around.  And that is the logical fallacy you are engaging in here.
One should never, ever, ever judge a factual, or logical argument based on the person making it.  Merit alone is all that matters in the world of knowledge.  That is known as the Ad Hominem logical fallacy.  All other reasons above are valid.  But to those I'd like to add that even an idiot can be correct.  Hell, you've heard the saying that a broken watch is correct twice a day.
To put it another way, if a mentally handicapped person (once regarded retarded) were to tell you the sky was blue, would suddenly doubt a lifetime's experience?  If a known idiot told you that 2 + 2 equaled four would you assume it equaled 6?
No, of course you wouldn't.  Because all that matters are the facts.
And this goes the other way as well.  Just as it is a logical fallacy to assume anything a crackpot says is wrong, so too is it a fallacy to assume anything a respected researcher says is correct.
We see this in politics all the time.  And it goes beyond simply ignoring anything a Democrat or Republican says simply because they are a Democrat or Republican.  It goes beyond ignoring Fox news or MSNBC.  Both sides love to hurl names at each other, negatively charged descriptors, very much along the lines of the one you employed: crackpot.  But to that they add Nazi, racist, rapist, heartless, supporter of big business etc. etc. etc.  All that should matter are the details, ironically the very thing many politicians would die before giving you.
Nor can we assume that, just because someone has a high degree they will be correct.  The tobacco companies proved that one conclusively.  Sadly, I see this form of the Ad Hominem fallacy the most.  The entire world seems to suffer from Wizard of Oz syndrome, acting as if it is the attaining of a piece of paper that somehow imparts knowledge.  In truth, the paper is meaningless to any discussion.  It is the points presented, and only the points presented that should matter here.
We want the facts, and nothing but the facts, so help us god.

I strongly disagree with this answer.  Suppose I've never encountered Special Relativity.  Then my crazy Flat-Earther uncle tells me that time slows down on objects travelling close to the speed of light.  It doesn't make sense to take him seriously.  But if my university physics professor tells me the same thing, then it's worth looking into.

Well, you too have committed an ad hominem logical fallacy.  What you should have done when your crazy flat earther uncle told you about relativity was to try to corroborate his data, not simply assume he was wrong.
Would you have dismissed what he said because he looked at his watch and told you it was 5:32?  Would you have assumed that anything he ever said about anything was wrong because he was a flat earther?

No.  People study hard and gain credentials in an area, and are eventually seen as "experts".  So I'll trust my physics professor more than I'll trust my crazy uncle.  Because nobody has the time or the resources to check absolutely everything that anybody says to them, in a vain attempt to avoid ad hominem fallacies.  Are you seriously suggesting that if my uncle tells me that Australia doesn't exist, and all Australians are paid actors, that I should buy  plane ticket and go there, just to make sure?

"One should never, ever, ever judge a factual, or logical argument based on the person making it." no, this is obviously not true, simply because we have to make judgements to a time and energy budget.  Whether an argument is correct or not does not depend on its source, whether we should invest time in the argument does.

@Brandon Thompson it's not a fallacy to discount information about a specific domain from a person when according to your experience with the person (i.e. corroborated data), they are not knowledgeable about this domain or have bad judgement. In fact it would be quite reasonable.

How do you chose your dentist? Do you trust their expertise and education, or do you just give a random person a try? Or conversely, do you have your dentist explain every bit of the procedure and go home to check in detail whether what they propose is the right thing to do, or do you trust them to do what's right according to good medical practice (which doesn't exclude consulting you for your preferences etc. when that's relevant)?

So I assume that no one responding here believes that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer.  After all, it was PHDs that claimed to have proved it was a safe as mother's milk.  By your own arguments, they must be correct because of who said it, not what was said.

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text:
Should the website contain information which is discouraged to have in the CV?
Here and there in this site, I get that you should have your own website. It is one way to networking, making you standing out of the crowd. It can also be your extended version of CV or SOP, helping others knowing you more.
But what about the information that is discouraged to have in such documents? For example:

Contests. A math contest indicates that you can solve hard problems, but it doesn't say anything about your research ability. A chess contest is worse, it doesn't even relate to your field.
Courses.
Volunteer activities.

The main point is that they show that you are not investing your time properly. But does this contrast to the "a place to show yourself more" point?
And how about putting things like life objection, music I like, drawing my kid draws, etc? These are obviously not suitable for a CV, but they are just hobbies. Everyone knows that investing your time on this isn't a bad thing for your career, but a way to balance your life.

Links:

Is web-presence important for researchers?
Are participations in competitions well recognized for a Ph.D. application?
Can I include the completion of Udacity and Coursera classes I have attended in an academic CV?
Why are contributions to the education of the broader public not valued much within academia?

I don't think they necessarily mean you don't invest your time properly, you are allowed to have a life apart from work. They do show a misuse of space, on the CV, though.

In moderation, I don't see anything wrong with including content on your website that you would not include on a CV.  In principle it could hurt your career if you post something ridiculous or objectionable, but information about chess, ordinary volunteer activities, children, etc. doesn't seem problematic.  The main issue is making sure it doesn't overshadow the academic content: if you provide more details about your chess activities than about research, then it may give the impression that you are devoting more time and attention to chess than to research.  (Even if that's not the case.  For example, a grad student who is just starting with research but has a lengthy chess history might give the wrong impression, regardless of current priorities.)  If you want to cover non-academic activities in substantial detail, then it may be safer to set up a personal website that is clearly separated from your academic site.

Should I include those information in a separated area or I can mix them together? For example, should I put the chess stuff in the middle of my online CV?

I would include the same things in an online CV as in an offline CV.  (But you can include things in your website that aren't part of your CV at all.)

So as long as I have a website, is it a good idea for me to keep the offline CV half a page short?

That would be dangerous.  For many purposes the offline CV will be a key document that should be readable without reference to the website (or even access to it, since someone may be looking at a hard copy).  It should include all the information people expect to find there.

In the question Why is an academic CV not the place to sell?, Roger Fan advises me to "limit what you include to specific, concrete, verifiable achievements". If I sweep the fluff out and keep only the important part, or "all the information people expect to find there", my CV is more than half of a page a bit. Is it still dangerous?

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The school's guidance on SOP doesn't match to what I know about it. What should I do?
In the application form of the school I'm applying, there is a short definition of SOP:

Your statement of purpose should explain why you want to study your proposed course and how it will help your life and career.

The message is direct: why I want to study here and how it will help my life. It doesn't ask for my past research, it doesn't ask for my community service, it doesn't ask what I'm working on. My research proposal is asked in another field.
This contradicts to what I know on SOP. My prepared one is strictly followed to this question: Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose.
My questions are:

Does this mean that the school actually doesn't care about my past research, and talking about it just waste my space?
Unfortunately I just noticed the difference after I submitted my application. If the answer for the question above is yes, then how bad my SOP is?

I assume this is for a PhD or research-oriented Master's program.  Almost certainly the admissions committee will care about your past research.  Here are some possible reasons why they don't explicitly mention it in their description of the SOP:

They don't assume that you've already done research.
Someone wrote it without much thought or experience.
Presumably any past research would play a role in your desire for a further degree, so it is implicitly covered.
They were just expecting this information as part of your research statement.

Also, regarding your comment "This contradicts to what I know on SOP": different departments (and different committee members on the same committee) look for different things, so this place may not look at community service at all.  Answers on this site are not infallible universal laws.

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Handling plagiarism as a TA
To give some background, I am a TA at UCLA for a lab class. They submit their assignments to TurnItIn, which you may know highlights any text pulled from another place.
I made it clear that they are not to work together and that no text in their reports should be found "anywhere else in the universe."
After the first week I caught a group of two plagiarizing. I repeated the "your text should not be found anywhere else in the universe" talk. I gave a long speech about academic honesty and such. One of the plagiarizing students dropped the class herself. I didn't take action on the other, besides a stern talking-to.
This week, two more students blatantly copied chunks of the other's paper. Whole paragraphs. I couldn't believe it -- I had just explained to them the week prior how easy it was to spot plagiarism. I brought them outside class one at a time and asked them what happened. I showed them the highlighted TurnItIn gradereport and their reports side-by-side. They each said they worked together, but didn't copy (slim chance. And still against the rules.)
Now the issue:
The professor that oversees my class doesn't have time to talk to me; hence I am here. He has given me two options: do nothing, or report them to the Dean of Students. If I do the latter, the punishment will extend beyond their grade -- they will probably fail the class, or even be suspended.
I want to punish them. But I don't want to ruin their undergraduate lives. Is my professor right -- I only have two options? (I cannot find any school-specific information about this.)
Or is there a better, less obvious way to handle this?
Update:
I talked around. It turns out that this kind of violation is serious, but it's not going to destroy their life. The Dean of Students people tend to be pretty reasonable when it comes to sanctions from what I hear. So I'm reporting it to them.

Where did you "make this clear"? Is the "nowhere in the universe" rule written down somewhere? Also, does this software let the students check that they haven't copied from one another somehow?

@aeismail assuming this isn't a kindergarten class, the students should be capable of a) understanding, and even writing down, things said to them by their teacher and b) not copying from each other without realizing it.

I'm not arguing that. However, an oral statement about what constitutes plagiarism likely does not carry as much weight as a clear written statement in the syllabus or an official email.

The professor that oversees my class doesn't have time to talk to me — Yes he does. Make an appointment. Camp out at his office door if you have to. Complain to the department chair if you have to.

As a TA and now as a faculty, I have given plagiarizing students a "speech" and have also reported them to the dean of students. Plagiarism is serious! If these are engineers or doctors, think how their lack of knowledge would affect the world.

@aeismail Your tone confuses me. Not only is it in their syllabus (with the exact phrasing "nowhere else in the universe") but they have been told this on three occasions -- twice by me, and once by the professor (who came in on the first day.)

@aeismail The software doesn't tell the students anything.

@sadTA: My point was that an oral warning is one thing—a written policy is another. (A student could always claim not to have been informed of the oral statement.) However, given that the policy is clear, you can't let the students off without a punishment. At a minimum, they need to get no credit for the assignment. If you don't state what the penalty is for plagiarism, that gives you some leeway. Personally, I'd assign them multiple zeros (in effect adding extra assignments to their grade for which they receive no credit).

Burn them. But tell them why. Also, get your boss' authority behind you.

@Lohoris I share your feelings. I am bewildered that they even tried. The other students seem to get the message loud and clear.

@sadTA When you gave your plagiarism talk, did you also make it very clear what the consequence(s) would be if someone was caught plagiarizing?

I am curious about this version of a "no copying" policy. How long a string of text needs to be identical to something written by someone else for it to count?

Does school policy require a TA to report plagiarism?

You need to ask yourself what your end goal is, which IMO should be to get them to stop doing it. I'd use the gentlest possible approach, and a graded one. You have already failed as a TA when your actions made a student drop the course. Pathetic. If your actions were in any way unjust, I'd find every possible argument to have you punished, and odds are I would succeed more than you. You don't need to chop off a hand when a slap on the finger works.

I don't agree @A-B-B. If students cheat they should face the consequences in case they get caught. If they can't accept that and drop the course, too bad, they won't be missed. The way of teaching should never be tailored to the lowest denominator of students. Separate the wheat from the chaff as early as possible. This helps everyone who is serious about learning. Higher education should focus on students that want to learn, not those that want a diploma.

@MarcClaesen, take for example the legal system, which absolutely doesn't work this way. When you get your first driving ticket, you don't get your license suspended. In fact you may at first get away with nothing more than a warning. Next time, you have a little fine. If you do it again soon, you've a bigger fine, more points, insurance hikes, and eventually a license suspension. The point is that people can and should be gently molded - people are not wheat. It's your kind of unrealistic b&w mentality that leads to mass campus shootouts and incidents of arson.

I had this happen before. Except the person had their paper copied by two other students, unwittingly. The professor gave the three students one option: Tell me who wrote it and I will give them the grade, the others get 0. The two who copied the paper got 0's, the one who actually did it got the grade. In this case, the paper was stolen. You could take that approach.

@A-B-B Calm yourself. The student dropped the class because she got caught and feared the consequences. That has nothing to do with me.

@A-B-B You miss the point entirely. It's easier to do the assignment than it is to plagiarize so effectively that I won't detect it. If they go through all the work to plagiarize a boneheaded lab report so well that I can't detect it, then they probably learned all the relevant material along the way. The problem is straight copying -- they don't learn anything when they do that.

@A-B-B It's ironic that you describe MarcClaesen's "unrealistic b&w mentality", after saying to sadTA "You have already failed... Pathetic. If your actions were in any way unjust, I'd find every possible argument to have you punished...", which seems quite b&w.  While I share some of the principles you're promoting -- "gentlest possible approach," people being "gently molded," and "it takes smarts to reform someone" -- I don't think you're demonstrating them.

Take-home assignments of any kind are effectively just asking for students to engage in plagiarism, with only the ones who are new to the system getting caught. I'd test them in class where they couldn't cheat or share. No take-homes except for practice purposes. Restructuring various reports to fit this paradigm and meet the goal of evaluating their knowledge and skills shouldn't be too difficult. Problem solved.

@A-B-B Class time is valuable (and, from the students' perspective, or at least the perspective of whoever's paying, quite expensive). I hate wasting class time on assignments that could be done outside the classroom. Since this is UCLA science class, I'd be astounded if they're not getting in-class tests; you're not suggesting anything new. The point of the question is about dealing with academic dishonesty, not about preventing students from having opportunities to engage in plagiarism. It is extremely important to teach the value of academic honesty.

@KyleStrand, I disagree completely. I have been in grad courses with a test per class, and it was a complete non-issue. Make up your mind - is proper testing important or not? You make it sound like plagiarism is the main kind of academic dishonesty, but it is not. The main kind, also the kind that does real-world damage, is cooking up data and results; plagiarism has nothing to do with it. Moreover, many users on this forum are hellbent on severe punishment, as if that is the answer. The only thing it teaches is to be a better cheater.

@A-B-B ....what are you actually disagreeing with? Where did I say anything to contradict the idea that testing is important (or "proper testing," whatever that means)? When did the question of which type of academic dishonesty is "the main kind" become relevant to the conversation? What exactly is your point about "many users on this forum" being "hellbent on severe punishment," and how is it relevant to your conversation with me? How did this become a question about what I am or am not teaching?

@A-B-B: Your approach makes a class like the one I'm teaching right now—which is based on applications that can't meaningfully be done in a classroom setting—impossible to grade. The class pretty much requires a final project, which you'd say isn't feasible because it allows students to cheat. And lab classes just fundamentally don't allow for a "test-only" approach. Part of the goal of a lab class is to learn how to communicate your results, which requires you to write, plot, and analyze. This can't happen in 30 to 60 minutes. So problem not solved.

@aeismail, a final project is different because it is often in groups which do different projects, unlike a homework assignment which is the same for everyone. I'm confused - is this an English writing or a communications course? No, then why are you testing those skills? I'd leave it to the English and Technical Communication courses. Similarly, I'd leave plots to the Statistics and Visualization courses. As for analysis, it can be done in class. I realize I might be a bit facetious, but it's only because you seem so unwilling to adapt.

@A-B-B: If I'm unwilling to adapt it's because I believe analyzing and clearly presenting results and explanations are skills that should be taught, developed, and evaluated in every class in the curriculum, not just writing or statistics classes. For starters: the Challenger and Columbia disasters could have been prevented if the engineers had better communication skills. The Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrated because of communication issues between the laboratories working on it. You can't simply isolate skills—they need to be integrated. Lab courses are an excellent place to do that.

Wait? What?!? The professor doesn't have time to talk to one of his TA's??? And this is at UCLA, which is supposed to be one of the premier schools in the UC system?!? Geez - did they change their motto to "Fiat lax"? I'm glad my kids aren't wasting their time and my money there!

This sounds like "I want to punish them but not really". Fact is that these students have cheated even after multiple warnings. You are not teaching little children. Responsibility and accountability are important and adult students should have both.
If you are sure they plagiarized the only correct course of action here is to report them. It is then up to whoever handles such issues to assess the severity and appropriate punishment.
The students knew the risks of plagiarizing and decided to do it anyway. Giving them a milder treatment now will encourage other students to behave similarly since the consequences become less severe.

Note: are you sure the students copied from each other or is it possible that they are using the same source?

I can't be sure they didn't copy off the same source, but that's a violation of the rules still.

I do want to punish them, but I personally feel like the penalties for cheating are extreme.

@sadTA whether or not the punishment is too extreme is not your decision to make, it is university policy. The rules (and consequences of breaking them) were clear and they broke them anyway. Giving them a milder treatment now may feel good to you (though it is unfair in my opinion) but be aware that this will encourage other students to behave similarly since the consequences become less severe.

I suggest you to add "Giving them a milder treatment now ... will encourage other students to behave similarly since the consequences become less severe." to your answer.

@scaaahu thanks for the suggestion. I've updated my answer.

@sadTA While I don't agree with MarcClaesen's "only correct course of action," I do agree that accountability is a good focus. You did have options, and I think your ultimate choice was a good one. Hindsight: might reporting them sooner have even helped them see real consequences were more livable than what they imagined... and prevented the dropping-out?  (FYI, I'm particularly grateful to a professor who gave me a failing grade for not completing, while being in communication with me:  it felt like being parented... and helped me learn being accountable without harshness on myself.)

I think these penalties are lenient (I, too, was a TA in in the UC system).

Report them. It is precisely the job of those working in the office of the Dean of Students to make judgment calls of the sort you describe. They, also, do not want to ruin students' undergraduate lives.

I agree. As a TA you do not compensated for making judgment calls of the sorts. You have to earn your own respect because you lectured the class on plagiarism and gave warnings. If you want your word to be of any worth, you should report them. Moreover, what's preventing you from testing the water by asking the dean directly? When I was TAing, we had to report any misconduct without delay. In turn, the dean would tell us what course of actions would be needed, if any.

Firstly, I think it is not OK for professor to present you with options. He/she should have decided what to be done and it is actually funny that he gave an option that clearly conflicts with honor code.
If the cheating is provable, then you are paid to carry out the rules so you should report them. No person should be above the rules of the university, and I am sure the rules are clear. Your responsiblity is to grade homeworks and report them if they cheated. Anything else leads to corruption in any organisation, which is also misuse of power.

Yea. I specifically asked him for guidance and he brushed it off. He seems to be too busy to take responsibility for the class.

@sadTA, To be perfectly honest, that is something I would want to talk about just as much as the cheating. Resolutions would differ based on the professor's position (head of department, etc.) and whether he's got tenure, but he shouldn't be doing that to you. It's probably worth a question of its own.

@BrianS I found out his wife is having a baby today so I am letting it slide.

Just give them no credit at all for that assignment. Since even copied homework takes time, and it's very likely that they will be caught, it's not going to be worthwhile to copy and not get any credit.
If your professor asks, you can say that you chose to do nothing, but that of course they could not receive credit for that work, which you assumed was what he implied in his advice.
If the students complain that they want to be able to make up the credit or feel they should get a grade, tell them categorically no. If they insist, refer them to the professor. This puts the ball in their court - they are unlikely to want to make the effort to complain about you, when they will be drawing attention to their cheating, and probably end up in a position where they have to openly lie to a professor.
If this does happen (because the students are spiteful or lack all sense of proportion) don't worry about it. Students sometimes think that an incident like this can be made to reflect badly on a TA. Even if they do pursue a complaint, even if it is upheld, and even if it is shown that you did the wrong thing, it is not going to be held against you. It will be accepted by faculty and anyone else involved (all of whom probably realize what PITAs some of your students are) that it is a the very worst a minor misjudgement of the type that everyone makes in their first few teaching experiences.
Just make sure that you are consistent (so that you can't be accused of discrimination) and clear (so that no-one can say they didn't understand the rules). If you get bounced into making an exception, immediately make it clear what the rules of exceptions are ('Everyone gets one chance', 'one chance only on the first homework' or 'one person got one chance, but now you have all been warned' etc.)
Lastly, don't take it personally. It is disappointing to try and treat people like adults, and then find that they treat you like you are an idiot. Ultimately it is a reflection on their immaturity not your teaching skills.

I would add: next time, have your rules written down, preferably in a small "Notes" section underneath the description of each coursework. State clearly what measures you are going to take if you detect plagiarism (no grade for the coursework, no grade for the whole course, etc.).

@nplatis The punishment for plagiarism is stated almost every time in the academic calendar and many other places, and in theory that is the only option the instructor has. While in many situations the instructors are lenient, I doubt one can put in course outline any note which is contradicting the academic calendar....

I'm also at UCLA, and have worked for profs that weren't willing to escalate when cheaters were caught. Many of them just assume that cheaters will  drop or eventually fail the final or whatever.
My only advice is to remember: you're primarily here to do research and get a degree; TAing just pays the bills. Cheaters are upsetting, but choose your battles wisely and without getting emotional. In the long run, it probably isn't worth pissing off your advisor by going over their head.

Thanks Neal. He is not my advisor, just a professor supervising my class. The issue is, I just want to give them a zero. It saves me time and I think it's more fair. But I don't think that's an option. I think I have to do the whole "escalation" thing. Which I don't want to do for the reasons you stated.

If "TAing just pays the bills" you aren't going to be a good teacher. To pay the bills I suggest taking a side job where motivation is less important than teaching - like a part time janitor job.

Fun fact - at UCLA janitors get paid more than TAs.

Also TAs should not be working more hours than their contract specifies - it's a job, not a higher calling.

If the rules of your institution are told to you by this professor, and you choose not to follow them, then where does that put you relative to how you think of the students' behaviour with respect to the clear rules on copying?
Either you have discretion to decide the punishment or you don't, and it sounds to me like you're being told that you don't. Your professor may be incorrect in this, but if you can't find it written down either way then the only way to determine that is to contact another authority in your institution for another opinion.
It's possible that by "do nothing" your prof actually meant do the thing you want to do -- fail the assignment and nothing else. If so then you're home free, and I think you could probably establish that by asking the prof, "If I do nothing how should I grade the substantially-copied assignments? Give them both 0?" This doesn't require a long conversation, anything that can be handled by a 1-minute email is probably good for the prof.
Otherwise you're in the position of a cop who has been told by the captain, "If you think they've broken the law this goes to the DA. If you think they haven't then forget about it and cut them loose". You're saying, "well can't I just issue them an on-the-spot fine or something?". No, you can't, not if the person in authority says you can't. You can acknowledge the offence and follow procedure, or you can knowingly overlook the offence because you think the procedure is unjustified. And, I might add, good luck with that as a long-term strategy...
That said, perhaps you could contact the Dean of Students (or their representative), and ask whether they are prepared to ratify failing the assignment but not the class. Of course if you do this you pretty much have to report them if the Dean says "no, they must be expelled, this is a zero-tolerance issue for us" or whatever. What you can't do is decide on behalf of your institution that copying just one assignment isn't sufficiently bad to justify failing the class. The Dean of Students has clearly impressed on you that their opinion is otherwise or you wouldn't be able to predict their response.
Speculating wildly, I would guess that the reason the Dean's response is so stern is that many TAs before you have been through the process you're currently in. The class is told the rules against copying. Someone copies. The class is told the rules against copying again. Someone copies. Now what? The Dean of Students can probably list more things than you can that have been observed not to work.

To add to everything else that's been said here, you SHOULD talk to your professor about this.  If for no other reason than to make sure that all sections of the class are following the same rules.  If there is no clear policy then you can't be expected to enforce the rules.
Also remember that a lot of students won't understand why it's cheating and you have to create that understanding.  Putting something in the student's hands that explains the policy is key.  Refer to the student handbook as appropriate.  My handout usually says something like "This is your one and only 'warning.' After this if you plagiarize you will have crossed a line you cannot uncross."  After I started handing that out and going over it very clearly on the first day of class I never again had a plagiarism problem.

Forgot to add, I usually also say something like "The easiest way to avoid problems is if you're not sure whether or not something is plagiarism: ASK."

Academic honesty cases are very serious for two reasons. First, academic dishonesty strikes at the very foundation of what makes education work in the first place -- namely the idea of mutual trust. Second, academic honesty cases all too frequently degenerate into legal battles that cost the university time and money. For this reason of seriousness, it's paramount that the professor of record take responsibility for this situation and not leave it up to you as a TA.
Go find your university's academic dishonesty policy and read it very carefully. In all likelihood you will find two things that are relevant here: (1) only the professor of record has the authority to act on an academic dishonesty case in her/his class, and (2) more to the point, if academic dishonesty occurs, the professor is contractually obligated to report it. This is how most university's policies work. You might find yourself in a situation of having to remind the professor of this fact -- the prof might have freedom to handle punishments however s/he wishes, but the prof must make a report anyway, for the student's record. (If the student is a repeat offender, the student may be expelled.)
If the prof has this responsibility and still won't listen, go to the department chair with it. This sort of thing really can't be ignored. But I repeat -- this is probably not your responsibility. The thing to do at this point is to find the person who is responsible for investigating it and make sure they move on it.

I agree with the answers that suggest you should report them to the dean, and come what may. But I would like to raise a consideration in case you decide not to.
It is very likely, per university regulations, that you personally do not have the right to punish students.
We had a situation like this in my department, when the chair wanted the students punished but without involving the disciplinary board (for irrelevant administrative reasons).
We had to be extremely careful in letting the concerned students know that their project had been graded 0, not as a punishment, but simply because they hadn't followed the instructions which stated to work in 2-person teams.
In case you decide to "punish" them yourself without reporting them to the dean, you should study the applicable regulations to make sure what exactly your rights are. You wouldn't want to get into trouble to protect undeserving students.

Let me share what I used to do in these situations:
First, don't report anything further up unless you've decided you want to escalate the matter; reporting plagiarism happened and then not doing anything about it could be construed as misconduct or collaboration. For this reason I also don't like those TurnItIn-like systems; who knows who keeps track of that stuff? Nah-uh. Now, I know, your email could also be scanned and analyzed, but still, I'd recommend starting out with a lower profile.
When I would notice what looked like plagiarism (let's assume it's 2-way; n-way is also possible but the principle is the same) I would hold passing a grade for these two students, and would email them to come see me during reception hours. Note that this could happen for other reasons that are not plagiarism - unintelligible hand-writing; an issue whose clarification/resolution face-to-face could decide between a very low and a high grade (e.g. correcting a typo would make everything work); and so on.
When the students arrive (I would try arranging it so that it's at the same time and not the week after), I would call them both in. I'd tell them I think there's been plagiarism committed. I'd say that, between the two of them, they have just one submission, and would suggest that they leave the room for a few minutes to decide how they want to divide the grade or the responsibility.
If they wanted half-grade each - I would do that; if one of them cried bloody murder and said he was taken advantage of, and the second didn't deny it - I'd give 0 for the assignment to the plagiarizer and the grading result to the other one; if they amicably agreed on any other distribution - also ok. If they would claim it's not really plagiarism, I'd have them try and prove it to me - but that never actually happened, they always admitted it immediately or they never bothered to show up. If they indeed didn't bother to show up they both got zeros.
Only if something extreme, or morally repugnant beyond just copying somebody's HW assignment answer, had happened - then I would consider bringing them up on disciplinary charges. Otherwise I wouldn't.
As for my motivation for this approach: I don't like policing students. I'm providingn them a service, and if they don't bother to do their homework it's their loss. I taught courses which were homework-heavy and I would tell students at the beginning of the semester that in this class they will "learn through their hands" and listening in class just wouldn't get them to where they need to be, so, again, if they don't work ardently on their homework they're just wasting the course.

Firstly it depends on the assignment; I had to do labs in my computer Sci degree with a partner, each person then had to produce a write up on our own.    We created one document with all the results in that we shared, and then wrote up the rest ourselves.   There was no point in both of us writing down the same numbers and then typing the same numbers into ms-word.  So text like the headings on a results table would be the same between the two of us.
Maybe give the students the option of.

Being reported with all the risks that takes
Or withdrawing their assignment and getting no marks for it.
Or putting in a formal complaint themselves, so reporting themselves.

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Fee for Recommendation letters?
My college demands a fee (equivalent to $10) from the students for every LOR that the student asks for. The fee goes to the college authorities and not to the professors themselves.
Is this a malpractice? I already wrote a complaint to principal/dean and he said that this is how it works.
What can I do about it, even my fellow classmates are exhausted paying so many fees since we are all applying to multiple colleges for admissions to future courses?
EDIT: I asked my dean based on the suggestion of the answer below (by Maarten Buis) and the reply stated that this is indeed an act to limit the applications that a student makes, so that the professors aren't burdened to write recommendations for students who apply to various institutions just for the sake of it/ a place where the said student would have no chance but still applies.

Which country is this in? Customs may vary.

A new low in academia...

@henning Is it alright for me to not tell the country's name? Since none of the other institutions in the country have this custom (I asked my colleagues from various places to verify this claim and they confirmed), it would just tarnish the image of my nation.

@mnuizhre of course. I'm just asking because it may help elicit useful answers. Regarding the image of your country, if it's just an outlier institution, there's no concern.

I wonder if it is just a hold over from the time in which staff people (secretaries) had to get involved in preparing such letters and getting them out. Or perhaps that is still the custom. I paid one of the staff to type my math thesis in the days before personal computers.

Imho it's particularly ridiculous that the price is for every letter, since usually once a letter is written for a student the others are just copies of the same letter. So there's zero justification for asking a fee for every different college the students applies for, it's almost always the same letter. Additionally the time spent by the professor writing these should obviously be already factored in the college fees: what's next, they're going to ask a fee for every question asked by the student to the professor, every correction, every hour of supervision... ??

Could you at least provide the geographic region of your country? Say "Western Europe", "South-east Asia", etc.

This is reminiscent to me of my school charging $0.05 per page printed, though on a more egregious scale. $0.05 per page is totally negligible for the school, and likely $10 is too - it's more about trying to force students to think twice before acting. Now, in my humble opinion a fee for LORs is unethical, but that's besides the point.

As if students with access to means and capital won't be willing to spend, potentially hundreds or more, for the chance to "shoot their shot". This policy really is just saying "if you are middle or lower class please be careful about how many letters of recommendation you ask"

I had to consider for some time whether to reveal the country's name over here or not, but since there is some correlation (which maybe I don't understand) thta exists and would maybe provide some useful info for me or others, I shall just mention it. It's India.

Malpractice has legal meaning that does not seem to apply here. So I will interpret your question as "is this wrong". After all, this is not the place to get legal advice.
Given the information you have given us, this seems to be a policy by the institution, and not one that professor invented themself, nor does that professor benefit from it. So the professor is not doing anything wrong. Professors are powerful, but even they have to bow to university policy.
There are possible justifications for such a fee. The time spent on writing such a letter is time that cannot be spent on other things, so there is a real cost the institution incurs for giving the student that service. However, given the small size of the fee, this sounds more to me like a policy to put up a small barrier to prevent overuse rather than a policy to get some money. Maybe, this was a reaction to too many students asking too many LORs. Maybe something like: lets ask all faculty members to write a LOR, and I will pick the two best ones. If many students do that, then the university needs to react, for example adding a small fee. I don't know if this applies to your university, but there are situations where such a fee may be justified.
That is the real answer I can give you: find out why they have that policy. It is hard to argue against a policy if you don't know why it is there. Maybe, they actually had a good reason, and you don't want to argue against it anymore. That would also be a good outcome.

$10 could be a less insignificant value in another country.

Re "Professors are powerful, but even they have to bow to university policy": I bet you they can write a LOR for  free as a favor. Now that may be a "malpractice" like any other favorable treatment of specific students, depending on the circumstances.

-1 for "there are situations where such a fee may be justified". This is totally unacceptable money-grabbing behaviour from any university under any and all circumstances. A failure of their basic duty to their students.

@JackAidley I don't think it is money-grabbing behaviour; it probably costs the university more to collect those fees (the prof has to collect it hand it to a secretary who needs to add it to an account, which needs to be checked, ...). I believe the edit by the OP that this is policy is designed to influence the student's behaviour. You can argue whether the policy is effective, whether the costs to the students outweight the benefits to the institution, whether the problem it is supposed to solve even exists. In all likelihood we would agree. ...

... However treating universities like moneygrabbing supervillains is not helpful and most of the time not true. A policy has a goal. Once you know the goal, you can start a meaningful discussion with the university. Treating it as the enemy will get you nowhere. Whenever dealing with a university keep Hanlon's razor in mind: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

@MaartenBuis OP did not say how the fee was collected, but I assumed (without proof) that the university reduced the transaction cost to almost nothing.  Fee collection does not necessarily require the professor's effort.

@emory the main cost involved is not the Prof but all the administration. Since this is an official policy, any money has to probably jump through many bureaucratic hoops. There are good reasons for that: there is money coming from a person who is in a dependent position. The rules are often there to prevent abuse.

@MaartenBuis It is really so different than my experience as a student that I am struggling to understand.  I just politely asked my professors, gave them my resume, and self-addressed, self-stamped envelopes.  There was nowhere for the university to insert itself and extract a fee.  But I figure many students today are interacting with their prof online and not in person.  So they can't just hand them a SASE.  OTH I understand most universities want referees to use an online portal to fill out their reference so the SASE is a thing of the past.  I just don't know how it works anymore.

@MaartenBuis Good advice, and it applies equally to (nearly?) all other situations too.

@emory it is a difficult concept evem for us to wrap our heads around. Since, no other institution that any of us ever have attended has asked for such a fee.

@mnuizhre My question is thus:  what would happen if you gave your prof a SASE?  Maybe the institution you are applying to has a portal for referees.  What would happen if you gave your prof the portal details.  Would your prof verify your fee payment, trust you paid, or not care.  Does the fee provide any service (like the university reminds the prof to be mindful of deadlines, etc)?

No nothing of that sort. I fill a form, make the payment to the office (note again, this doesn't go to the professors themselves), get the receipt and the professor shall then send my LoR to the institution where I am applying. The LoRs are already ready even before the payment is made, the rule is that it can't be sent out without paying the required sum.

The policy at face seems perfectly reasonable to prevent some Tragedy of the Commons, though in modern times, professors have been largely free to write or reject per-student (ie. why would they write a letter for a student who they are sure does not understand a subject to work with their peers? or why would they not write a letter for a promising student who added to their class? - surely they must be free to write or not write for either case if asked!)
However, without strong controls I believe this leads to some trouble-
The monetary fee is insignificant in comparison to the cost of attendance, but the process provides a novel way for the university to directly track some details of the process surrounding letters of recommendation.
Simply the knowledge that different counts of LOR are sent by professors could affect them personally (are they sending enough? too many?) or worse, financial information and speculative success information about students involved is no business of the university. (ie. is 15 letters too many? cheaper than a US physics text!)
Conversely (perhaps?), whether the payment is accepted shows information to a student whether a professor did write a LOR, while this information may not otherwise be known. (is this desirable? it's a break from the norm, but perhaps not a bad one)

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


text:
different online Harvard citation styles
I read some Academia questions, such as this one, but I'm still wondering about the preference of the following similar, but slightly different formats:
Option 1

Cillizza, C. (2020). The absolutely remarkable social media power of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. CNN [Online]. 24 July 2020. Available at: <https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/24/politics/aoc-ted-yoho-cspan/index.html> (Accessed: 23 October 2020).

Option 2

Cillizza, C. (2020). The absolutely remarkable social media power of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. CNN. 24 July 2020. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/24/politics/aoc-ted-yoho-cspan/index.html (Accessed: 23 October 2020).

The differences here are the [Online] and the chevrons (<>) around the URL. I understand it doesn't make much of a difference, but I'm interested in what people's preferences are. To me, option 1 looks more academic, yet option 2 much cleaner.
Also, please feel free to educate me on anything else here.

Generally academics (in my experience) don't choose a preferred citation style - journals pick a preferred style and academics conform to it (often by using a citation manager, or through built-in features of software like LaTeX). If you're submitting to a journal (or writing for another purpose, such as an assignment for a class) you should just follow the target's guidelines to have a quiet life!

I completely agree with the comments. It would be useful to see what the journal wants. You could also check recent works published in the journal you are interested in to verify the appropriate Harvard citation format for publication.
Having said that, personally, I like option 2 for its brevity:

Cillizza, C. (2020). The absolutely remarkable social media power of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. CNN. 24 July 2020. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/24/politics/aoc-ted-yoho-cspan/index.html (Accessed: 23 October 2020).