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Is paying someone to fix LaTeX issues in one's thesis ethical?
For my bachelor thesis in theoretical CS I paid someone to

fix some weird LaTeX issues I had
make some figures in LaTeX for which I provided exact (!) hand-drawn pictures
adjust the document class/template (font size, margins, …) to university standards

In particular, all the text, formulae, figure sketches and remaining, say, 70% of the remaining typesetting were done by me. Let me also say that I got the best grade possible to highlight that my contents were more than substantial for a bachelor thesis.
By academic standards, is it ethical to outsource parts of typesetting one's (BSc|MSc|PhD) thesis by paying someone?
Note that I am looking for opinions about the academic culture, not about legal situations. My university regulations are especially blurry and demand that one's thesis must be solely produced (in German: angefertigt) by the author. Whether that includes typesetting and in what proportion, is probably up to interpretation.
Related post: PhD student hiring a LaTeX expert to typeset thesis? asks about pragmatic reasons, not about ethical concerns.

As the answers say, it's fine, but if you're planning on staying in academia it's worth learning how to do these things in LaTeX yourself.

@astronat FWIW, my field is moving toward Markdown and away from LaTeX, but, I suspect, this is field specific.

Unless your thesis is about LaTeX. Then you have a problem :)

Once upon a time, students could make good money with their typewriter, typing up other students papers.

@Jon Custer: And if your typewriter broke in the middle of typing up your thesis, would it be unethical to take it to a typewriter repair shop instead of fixing it yourself?

@jamesqf - if you are a mechanical engineer, perhaps? One year, the student in the next dorm room over did typing for people. The IBM Selectric was at a steady roar - their typing speed was unbelievable.

At the end of the day, I think you'll need to find out what your school thinks about this; we can only tell what we think.

@bob At the end of the day, I think he will need to find out what he thinks.

OMG I wish this was the most unethical academic practice

What is the scientific or technical domain of your Bachelor thesis? History or Chemistry would dictate different advices

@BasileStarynkevitch Theoretical CS - now added to the question. Nonetheless, I'd be interested in opinions on other fields, too! Feel free to post an answer.

I did post an answer and I strongly believe you really should invest your time in learning LaTeX

I notice from the OPs other comments that they did not admit to doing this to their advisor before handing in the thesis. Personally I would expect a BSc student to be able to produce their own figures and if not, I'd like to know. I think within the German university system the OP is on very thin ice here.

Have you asked your advisor? Are you planning to?

I would be careful, while it is no ethical problem for a paper or research result a bachelor thesis is at a level where writing style and presentation is a major part of the overall criteria. So you should consult your advisor on this - I would not expect it is ok.

@carlo I agree. I just meant that if OP's question is actually "do you think I broke a rule", which is how I read it, then we can't answer that question for OP; only OP's school can answer it.

Doesn't asking someone to make figures in LaTex qualify as torture?

I do not see any unethical point in this.
You were supposed to make an original contribution to your thesis in terms of your research. With respect to writing, you can take help from your friends, supervisor, or anyone else (free or paid).
In our university in New Zealand, there was a dept. which used to charge a small fee to fix language issues for students with English as a second language. I suppose this should also work for the images/pictures thing as you are not an artist but an expert in your particular field.
Cutting it short, I do not see anything unethical in it.

To be absolutely sure: mention it somewhere in the thesis, in the acknowledgements, for example. If it is ethical (it is), then there is no issue stating it.

It's also pretty common (at least here in my EU country) to pay a linguist to proofread and fix gramatical and other language errors. Especially in cases where the thesis is in English which isn't the first language. That usually improves readability without affecting the actual contribution done by the author.

@JeffreysupportsMonica I think acknowledging someone fixing formatting is silly. Should I thank Microsoft Office for the autocorrect? The print office for their recommendations about attractive margins? My wife for deciding the colors of the figure? Or the creators of my reference manager software?

Historically it was common to hire a paid typist to type one's thesis, working from your own long-hand manuscript. When I did my thesis, the secretaries in the department did this as a side-line, being well-versed in the domain-specific symbols and notation. (I was among the first wave who did my own thesis in TeX--plain Tex, not LaTex--in the mid-'80s.) More than a few professors would consider it a waste of a student's time to spend it typing, when a professional could turn out a better product faster; you should no more be expected to typeset your own thesis than to bind it yourself.

@Behacad: I certainly thanked some friends for proofreading.

@Behacad: You don't have to be so precise. Just acknowledging the person for typographical assistance or something like that. No reader is going to bother about it.

@Behacad :  If you follow standard practice, then you're already thanking your wife for the much more significant help of putting up with you during the difficult parts.

I am fine with thanking someone who helped in the acknowledgements if a person wants to do that, but I do think it is silly to suggest it to the person asking this question. It raises the possibility that perhaps this is somehow needed or perhaps the "right" thing to do, while in fact, it is completely optional.

@Behacad Regardless of whether one should, I've seen people writing thank-you notes in the acknowledgements section of theses towards everyone and their dog, so, comparatively it's not even that crazy.

@Behacad The purpose of the thesis as Sjaffry has noted is original contribution to the scientific community. Someone typesetting or proofreading it improves readability and ultimately contribution.

I don't think it is a bad idea to put it in the acknowledgments! I'm just saying that the top rated comment here suggests putting it in the acknowledgments, and I believe future people reading this will interpret this as "you should do that", and I don't think you "should", I think you "could" and it is completely optional.

This is quite common. Some Universities in the UK are hiring private companies to improve the presentation of grant proposals, which includes typesetting, proofreading, professional preparation of graphics, and in many cases editing the text. Academics are encouraged to also use these companies to help improve their papers before they are submitted to a  journal / conference (the Universities won't pay for this but academic can pay from their grants).
This practice does not quite fit in a popular vision of academy as a world where personal skills and commitment are more important than social background, money, old boys network, etc. It appears that those with money, fame and powerful friends have better chance to be supported, win the competition and get even more money, fame and powerful friends. Personally, I find it frustrating, but on a global scale this is acceptable and is not considered unethical or morally wrong.

In contrast to a student thesis, a grant proposal is not assessed and graded in order to hand out a degree. From my experience with bachelor theses, visual appearance is often taken into account when deciding on the grade. In this sense this might be considered as paying somebody to improve your grade.

Arguably, visual appearances has also a considerable effect on the success of grant applications, which in turn has a major effect in promotion / tenure decisions. If it's OK for academics to pay someone to boost their chances for grant success and promotion, why is it not OK for for a PhD student to do the same?

@DmitrySavostyanov one could consider producing high-quality figures part of the learning process. I am not saying that it's necessarily unethical to have someone else produce the figures, but the two cases are quite different (by the way, the question is about a Bachelor's student, not a PhD thesis).

@Christoph grant applications are assessed and graded (yes, graded) in order to hand out money, often public money. Presentation definitely influences who gets the cash.

@Christoph: I don't agree in this case, because it is solely to fix LaTeX errors, convert hand-drawn figures to LaTeX (instead of chucking in photographs of said figures), and adjusting formatting to university standards. None of these adds any significant improvement to visual appearance. That said, I do think it should be acknowledged anyway.

"some universities in the UK" - it's far from common, I certainly haven't come across it and I work at one of the larger ones.

I also see no big problem here. Generally, there is nothing wrong with accepting help for any part of your thesis, I would even encourage everybody to discuss and refine their work with others from the field or the group. A paid service is nothing I would usually recommend, but it is also possible.
You however must make the support (paid or not) you got transparent, especially if you have to include a statement which says that you disclosed all help you got. Then it is for the graders to decide if your thesis justifies the top grade. In your specific case you could have mentioned the services you used in the acknowledgements.

Yes.  Typesetting is not the same as contributing to the contents of a document.  It is not unethical to hire a typist either, who would take your handwritten essay and produce a properly formatted document using MSWord, LaTeX or any other typesetting/processing program.
The contents (and associated ideas) is expected to be and should be your own.
Note that in some cases hiring outside help for such technical matter can be efficient, especially if one is not so proficient with the tools needed to produce a document meeting specific technical requirements.

(+1) This was my reaction. Indeed, I would guess that a large minority of theses before the early-mid 1980s were typed by someone else, as I've seen this explicitly mentioned in the acknowledgements of quite a few Ph.D. theses from the manual/electric typewriter times, and I don't recall ever hearing about a change in something like this. On the other hand, the ability to prepare sufficiently elaborate diagrams could be considered part of the training in one's field, and I can imagine for certain fields that even in earlier times a certain competence in engineering drafting might be desired.

The OP has changed the title of their question, such that the first word of your answer should now be "Yes".

@wimi thanks for the heads up.

Unless the thesis itself is about LaTeX and its usage, I'd see no problem, and I've never seen rules against it. But if we're talking ethics...

The university should provide a complete and usable LaTeX template for thesis and other works, so no student would need to waste time creating or adjusting a template. This removes a lot of the effort on both librarians who may need to review typesetting and the hassle of dealing with professors who make a big deal about typesetting/formatting errors.
Dealing with LaTeX issues is just dealing with a text processors bugs. Good thing LaTeX is open source so you can debug it yourself, but what happens if you were using Microsoft Word and a bug prevented you from continuing your work? I once had to work with a document so large and so full of references that it would crash Word frequently (it also had configuration management). Would paying an IT technician to see this unethical? Would contacting Microsoft be unethical? Was it unethical in the first place to pay for a test processor? If the lack of RAM memory was the issue, would paying for more RAM sticks be a problem? I myself think its perfectly fine to outsource tools/software repair/maintenance, as long as those are means for delivering my thesis and not a part of the thesis itself.
People, by default, will assume that if you've done your work in LaTeX, then you know how to use it. So maybe you have a small impostor syndrome for delivering a work that makes people assume you have a level of proficiency with LaTeX that you don't have. But that's easy to solve: Mention your LaTeX wizard on the acknowledgements. You could even ask for a discount for doing this.
Now the controversial part: Teachers will sometimes let typesetting and other aesthetic aspects of a work have a more than fair impact over final grades. Nobody admits it, but this happens. Any bold claim made by a paper with several typos receives much more skepticism than a similar claim made by an aesthetically flawless paper. While I think this justifies investing a lot of effort into typesetting and formatting, it is a flaw in the system and in us humans that we need to live with. So maybe you think hacking this flaw by adding steroids to your formatting (by hiring professional typesetting work) looks like "cheating". But that's just a regular dose of life being unfair, you are not in the wrong in this case, and reviewers should make the effort to separate pure typesetting from the actual content merit.

"The university should provide a complete and usable LaTeX template for thesis and other works, so no student would need to waste time creating or adjusting a template."  That would be great, but in the real world this seems to be rare.

@NateEldredge : That,s true, but where I've graduated, there was a template made by students that was easily accessible in some communication channels. Where I've got my Msc, they had an official template provided on the library website, and there was a contact to reach for help in case of bugs and other issues. So, not so far from reality, and pretty worthy sending the feedback to your university.

"People, by default, will assume that if you've done your work in LaTeX, then you know how to use it" <- Not necessarily. A lot of people get others to help them with LaTeX, or just avoid the more difficult constructs.

Good answer. But I don't see why the university should choose any official template. In my university the directive was to simply use "article" setting. It was the best.

@carlo : In each place I've been, people were a bit picky on some formatting stuff like "the page count begins after the index" or "the list of figures is before the list of tables". And each place had different rules for those. Those are for thesis rather just homework papers, of course. They also required some custom front face with university logo and so on. This is why the one-size-fits-all never applied to me.

If people are picky, it's their problem. They should not pick on students with their personal picky preferences by imposing a template.

When publishing an article for a scientific journal, you provide the text (and formulas, and figures) in tex format, and they take care of the layout and typesetting. Alternatively, you have to use their template to fit your article in it.
I don't see why anyone should consider latex formatting as a part of the student work for a thesis, apart from strictly practical reasons.

Many departments have some official description of the educational goals, grading criteria, or similar, for the thesis.  Do these educational goals or grading criteria include anything about learning scientific/professional typesetting, or something less specific like “presentation” that could be understood to include typesetting?
(I’ve certainly seen these explicitly named as goals/criteria for courses that had a “mathematical writing” component, which are often a prerequisite for theses.  I’ve never seen them explicitly listed for a thesis itself, but I wouldn’t be shocked if a department chose to include them.)
If the goals/criteria don’t mention presentation/typesetting, then I agree with most other answers, outside help on typesetting is fine.
If the goals/criteria do include typesetting or presentation, though, then what you did was possibly problematic.  In this case, I would recommend speaking to someone suitable (e.g. your advisor or the dept’s bachelors thesis co-ordinator) for advice; if they think it is problematic, you could offer to e.g. re-typeset the thesis yourself, as make-up work.  Since you acted in good faith, I hope they would not react punitively, but they will almost certainly be more sympathetic if you approach them pro-actively and apologetically than if they discover this independently.
If your department doesn’t have a document publicly laying out the goals, criteria, etc, for the thesis, then again, as other answers say, you were quite reasonable to assume that typesetting wasn’t considered part of the content.

I admit I do not know of situations where such educational goals would refer to the proficiency in a specific typesetting software like LaTeX.  I would think that, if this is required to complete the degree, the program would offer a course on it.  Typesetting is a very useful soft skill although some of this is quite intricate, and become proficient to the point of producing a specific technical document might require quite a bit of experience.  I for one would be stumped if I had to produce some MSWord document in a strange format.

@ZeroTheHero: I’d agree, if a program expects typesetting proficiency, they should offer a course covering it (not necessarily a whole dedicated course, but enough to help attain the expected skill level) — and indeed, they often do offer that.  Expanding on what I said in the answer: I’ve been TA on a course where producing professionally written and presented mathematics was explicitly in the syllabus, and LaTeX was what we recommended and gave teaching/assistance for.  Students could use other software if they preferred, but were expected to aim for LaTeX-equivalent output quality.

Learning LaTeX requires significant time and effort. By not learning LaTeX to the point where you could overcome your problems on your own and draw your own figures you have had more time to develop and polish your thesis compared with your peers. If you have not acknowledged the aid you have purchased you have given the grader the impression that you have acquired skills you do not have. As a rule, you simply do not present the work of others as your own. The regulations of your university are crystal clear to me. They require your thesis to be produced by you. I am Danish and work at a Swedish university. I would not approve the involvement of third party, unless there were special circumstances, such as sudden illness or a death in the student's family. I wonder, what is the position of your department?

+1. I think you should emphasize your last point. The rules clearly state that the thesis must be solely produced by the author. Not following that is academic misconduct and therefore unethical.

I am not sure if I should ask the department with my real name in retrospect. I can, however, casually ask the prof, who is still my ongoing advisor. Also, I'd like to question that "learning LaTeX to the point where [I] could overcome [my] problems on [my] own" is a useful time and skill investment given that some problems I had were really obscure and hard to track down without having months of LaTeX experience.

What would be the alternative to overcoming typesetting problems other than paying someone? Certainly I could ask at TeX.SE, but that would require creating a minimal working example (MWEs) (which is non-trivial sometimes) as well as it would take longer response times. I do acknowledge that creating MWEs is often a great learning experience, but not necessarily with a technology like LaTeX. (Understanding LaTeX probably won't give you great practical insights in a good [internal] design of a typesetting system.)

@user897029. You have to make use of tools and techniques which you have mastered during your undergraduate studies. That is the only option.

It is surely not common to suggest that getting secretarial help is not allowed: the OP is not getting a degree in LaTeX after all.   Granted that it is good form to acknowledge such help, but I suppose all hinges on the interpretation of the words “solely produced by the author”.  Certainly in NA this would refer to contents, not to technical help in the production of the thesis.

@user897029: The alternative is learning more about using LaTeX, which includes learning how to troubleshoot problems.  This is non-trivial, sure, but (at least in subjects where LaTeX is standard) most students manage it fine, and most academics view it as an at least somewhat useful skill to learn.  It’s not an unreasonable or unsurmountable obstacle.

@ Carl: I agree with you that this can be problematic, but I don’t think “you have had more time […] compared with your peers” is a good argument — a student living near to the university also has a time advantage over peers with a long commute, and students with childcare responsibilities or jobs may have much less time for writing; but these are issues of social equity, not academic ethics.  I think the relevant distinction is whether the department considers typesetting as part of their educational goals, as I discuss in my answer.

@CoderInNetwork The distinction between the original question regarding a paid, direct and undisclosed contribution to the quality of  a thesis and your new question regarding a paid, indirect and publicly known contribution is very large. I suggest that you formulate a new question to the appropriate community.

@CoderInNetwork The original question involved the issue of a possible misrepresentation of acquired skills and a clear violation of the rules of the relevant department. Your reaction seems based on the first three lines of my answer.

When you really want to make sure that nobody can claim academic misconduct, add a note to the thesis that you got typesetting help. The reviewers should review the content of the thesis and not the typesetting details and probably do not have any problem with it.
Then nobody can claim you were not honest when you undersigned that you did not use any help that is not mentioned in the thesis.
When you're unsure if you are allowed to get such help, ask your advisor before getting the help.

Is paying someone to fix LaTeX issues in one's thesis ethical?

No, it is not (but you should ask your advisor), but you should mention (in acknowledgements) that you did this.
Another important consideration : if you want to get additional degrees (e.g. a Master's or a PhD thesis) you'll better improve your LaTeX skills. They will be useful later (even in industry).
So pay someone to teach you how to better use LaTeX. You are extremely likely to need LaTeX later, if you stay in technical circles (a big lot of technical conferences prefer LaTeX to Microsoft documents). With oversimplification: LaTeX is useful for a technical career, MicroSoft Word and Excel is useful for management. A big lot of computer science or programming books (e.g. this one) are typeset using LaTeX. Doxygen can generate LaTeX documents (so PDF) from comments inside your source code. Pygments can do something dual.
If you write (later) any kind of computer software running on Linux (and most web servers are running Linux), generating *.tex files (or some \inputed parts of it) is an efficient way to automatically generate PDF printable files (even if there are other solutions, maybe involving Lout or Patoline or LibreOffice or libpdf++ etc).
At last, tex.stackexchange.com is a nice place to get help in LaTeX.
Be also aware of LaTeX to HTML5 converters such as HeVeA. They can be a nice way to write a documentation in LaTeX and have it converted to a set of web pages.
PS. A big mistake of mine was to write my PhD thesis in AI without using LaTeX (in 1990). That was probably the biggest professional mistake of my entire career (ending in a few years by retirement).


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Referring to paper from some other school when writing Statement of Purpose for Grad School
I am currently working on grad school applications to US Universities. Somewhere in my statement of purpose, I express my interest in working in a certain field. As a reason for that interest, I want to cite a particular paper written by members of the CS Department at the University of Toronto. The problem targeted by that paper was one that I was very interested in (at an abstract level) when I was in high school. Thus I got deeply excited and would like to extend their work.
Is it okay if I mention this paper in my statement of purpose for schools other than the University of Toronto? Could such a reference give the (mistaken) impression that I had written a statement of purpose specifically for the University of Toronto and then didn't bother to make changes for other schools?

I understand you'll need to mention the title and the authors when you cite a paper. But, why do you need to mention the university (affiliation) of the authors?

No I won't be mentioning the university, but if I am applying to a sub-domain in CS, I believe that a person related to that sub domain would be reading that paper and there are chances that she/he knows that the paper/author does not belong to their university (or might even end up doing a web search)

Some computer scientists at Toronto are so famous that mentioning their work would be perfectly natural in any statement of purpose.

If the paper was influential for your development, by all means talk about it and cite it.

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IEEE and ACM gives very different results
Me and my colleague are conducting a literature search that will be used to argue about an experiment. We've just started our SLR and noticed that ACM and IEEE gives very different results.
When searching for "java AND jax+rs", ACM gives 26 hits while IEEE gives 18577 hits when searching for "java AND jax+rs". The term "java AND jersey" gives 25 hits at ACM and 701 hits at IEEE. In other searches, such as "auth AND oauth*", ACM gives 62 hits while IEEE gives 65 hits.
We are using the same filters in both searches (limit to journals and proceedings, all years, metadata only). When searching at ACM we limit the publisher to ACM only, and at IEEE we limit publisher to IEEE.
Are these types of results usual? I understand that they are different publishers and thus publishes different papers but these results seem off.

What does the + stand for in the first search is this part of the search term? This could be translated as AND in some searches, or disregarded in others.
The Auth and Oauth* results do not vary that much...

But is + interpreted as AND? And why do you add AND if a white space is already AND? Should Jax & Rs follow each other? Maybe you should search on Java AND "jax rs"

This isn't really part of the question, but I cannot imagine that a SLR about Java and Jersey / JAX-RS can lead to anything useful.

Sorry. Time's 10 PM here and my head is fried. White spaces are interpreted as AND/OR at ACM, + is used to avoid this.

Big data systems like search engines are really complicated algorithmic engines that put everything through a giant sausage-making apparatus to give you your results.  Even if the two databases are running the exact same engine on their back-end, there is no reason to expect that they have configured it the same way or that the results are necessarily stable.  This is especially true for recent "smart" search engines which try to figure out what you might have wanted, in addition to what you actually entered, and which may broaden your search for you whether you ask them to or not.
In short: every big database search is likely to have its own quirks and ways of approaching queries, and it is reasonable to expect that they may be interpreting what you are asking in radically different ways.

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type of experience required for masters
I graduated from university last year with a bachelors degree in Mechatronics Engineering. Good learning and GPA is quite good. I have planned to do a Masters degree from the US next fall with a focus on data science (I am very much interested in learning all of computer vision, data visualization, machine learning and using these to solve practical problems eventually - I have made some projects related to these in my undergraduate as well). Unfortunately, where I live in the third world, there are barely any work opportunities in this field and most which exist require years of experience and/or a PhD.
I have been working in a Fortune 500 company as a service engineer for the past 4 months. It's a bit stressful and the job feels quite menial because while there is quite a bit of work to handle, it's simple (replacing parts if a machine breaks down, sending emails, etc) and in terms of actual learning there isn't much. My manager told me this as well. I only get time to research and work on my personal projects after work. But because I have to travel and work overtime quite often, I tend to "miss" a few days which ruins my flow of learning. Case in point is when I was about 25% of the way through a machine learning book but then later hadn't touched in the past 2 weeks because of excess work. So I have to start all over again.
So recently I was thinking to quit and work an easier job I've been offered (which again is not too related to the field I want to get into, but nevertheless a job is a job) that gives me more free time. I even considered the option of not working at all and taking several MOOCs (I feel like there is a lot of good material there), learning as much as possible related to the field of study I want to pursue for the year I am still here. For the record, money is not an issue for me, although not working an actual job at all feels very degenerate and does look bad on the CV.
So my question is: what do the universities really want to see and what would help my chances of getting admission? Corporate experience? Should I sacrifice my "good" Fortune 500 job for an easier one to work more on my personal projects / research? Will this help more because I can mention more things related to my field of study in my SOP? For example I want to further improve some of the things I've made in undergrad but it's hard to find the time to do that with the job I'm currently doing.
Advice would greatly be appreciated. Please let me know if I have been vague anywhere as well.

In which country did you earn your bachelor's degree? Do you know if it is similar to a US degree or more like one from UK/EU?

It is similar to a US degree.

My suggestion is that you continue your job as Master's programs in engineering departments in the US (at least for many schools) value the experience in the industry before taking on a Master's degree. As for personal projects, it is always useful to be able to present a few in your application materials; however, don't feel like you have to learn everything about computer vision, machine learning etc. before you apply for the schools. It is what the degree is for.
Having done some amount of work is surely useful, as it shows your genuine interest in the field and being able to effectively articulate why you want to study a certain field in your application statement also carries some considerable weight when it comes to admissions. You can try to focus on a single, but a considerably impressive project on a related topic and present it in your application, rather than trying to take all the MOOCs out there (although Andrew Ng's courses are quite useful).

Hey. Thank you for your advice. I decided to continue the job for a couple more months, but I've recently found a research engineering position that aligns more with my interest. I've greatly valued the experience I had at my industrial job, from how to behave in a corporate environment to how to handle most tasks, but ultimately did not feel it contributed significantly to the career path I wanted to pursue. Helpful advice about trying to learn everything related to computer vision as well - I just feel I lack somewhat in comparison to many other candidates for a somewhat competitive program.

This question basically comes down to a classic: Industry Experience vs. Personal Experience.
In my experience, there is no experience as valuable as Industry experience. Engineers often end up employed in positions that aren't quite what they want to do or study, because a lot of engineering now happens between the lines, instead of within them (for instance: I work with a lot of people who have degrees in Electrical Engineering but are employed as Software Engineers because our department does quite a lot of both, and in the real world, the lines are blurry at best).
When considering what programs are looking for, what they really "want" is evidence that you will be successful within their program, and that afterward you will be able to be successful, preferably within your chosen field of study. The more successful you are, the better that looks for the educational institution you are attending. That is why they use statics like, "6 months after graduation, 87% of our graduates are employed, with 89% of those being in their field of study." to attract new students.
You are currently employed as an Engineer. That is a huge bonus, even if it isn't the right type of engineer. It proves that you are employable, and competent, in a real working environment. That speaks volumes more to your capability than any amount of personal projects ever could. Personal projects are nice, and can show where your passion is, but the ability to hold down a solid, paying job is much more important.

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How does the tenure process work
I am curious to know how the tenure granting process works in the US. How much weight is given to research, teaching, and service. I have heard that a lot depends on your relationship with your peers - department colleagues. If they feel you are a good fit, you can be granted tenure even though you have less than a stellar record.
Is there a minimum requirement for number of publications. Do publications before joining the institution count? I would appreciate your inputs.

I would bet this is highly country/field/university dependent. I don't think there will be one single answer, but maybe I'll be surprised! Let's see :-)

Policies and the actual implementation of those policies varies dramatically between institutions and even within institutions.  Because institutions have a great deal of autonomy in the US system of higher education there's no governmental policy or regulation that controls this.  Informally, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has guidelines on the tenure process, but these are not very specific and aren't binding on institutions in any case.

I understand that it depends from institution to institution, but was hoping someone would shed light on what factors are generally taken into account.

Relative weights are wildly variable at different institutions, primarily by class of institution.  Research weighs very heavily at research-focused institutions, teaching weighs very heavily at some primarily-undergraduate institutions, and there's a wide range in between.  Service is probably rarely as important as the others, though.

Usually there is no fixed requirement for the number of publications (total or since joining the institution), but sometimes there is (I've heard of departments where the rule was simply "publish 1 book for tenure"), and sometimes there's an informal expectation which can be bent if you have few but exceptional publications.  In any case, you should ask the department in question.

The two most important considerations are publications and teaching: you have to have enough good publications, and you have to be not horrid at teaching. This assumes a typical teaching, research and service obligation -- research won't matter in a teaching-only position, and vice versa. Although teaching is usually considered to officially take up more of your time, research is usually given greater weight in a research institution, and teaching in teaching-oriented schools. Teaching tends to matter less than research in sciences, and teaching tends to be more important in humanities.
Officially, collegiality is in last place and is in some institutions forbidden as a criterion. However, likeability can influence people's subjective evaluations of other criteria. There is a growing trend to require departments to have explicit criteria, for instance stating that a book is required, or that the norm is 3 peer-reviewed publications per year. I understand it to be the normal case that all of your publications are part of the tenure package.
The external evaluations are, in my opinion, more important as a measure of your research productivity than the raw number of publications, so a huge number of crappy papers will do you no good, unless you can get a lot of crappy referees too.

I don't agree about all publications being counted. In the areas I am familiar with, you would only get credit for work that you've started in your current position. Even papers published after arriving on e.g. postdoctoral work do not count. The exception is the case in which someone moves from one tenure-track job to another pre-tenure.

That is what I have heard as well. I know someone who had a publication in Nature journal as a postdoc and wanted it to be counted for his tenure review, but it was not accepted.


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Should I get a Second Bachelors and Masters to Make My PhD as Broad/Interdisciplinary as Possible?
I've currently decided to get a second bachelor's in Statistics over 1.5 years after finishing my first bachelor's in math. Both of these degrees are debt free and follow a passion of mine. The next goal is to work in industry for about three years at my parent's home while taking one class a semester in Computer Science online to save for a master's in Statistics with Thesis where I hope to take some really advanced courses over two years.
The big idea is that I could grab courses like Categorical Data Analysis, Multivariate Statistics, Nonparametric stats (and maybe substitute mathematical stats 1 and 2 with graduate Measure Theory) etc during my second B.S. and then focus on the really advanced statistics courses and math courses during my masters like advanced graduate topology, experimental design and bayesian analysis
Then I would start a PhD in say Computer Science focused on Machine Learning to develop cutting edge statistical tools based on theoretical principles in Statistics, computational topology, measure theory etc.
Would this be too much education? I want to do more than just take classes on various statistical methods before a PhD.
Edit: I should add that the answer I received from r/datascience was to go straight into a Masters program. But since I can't afford that yet, I guess the answer in my circumstances is that I can do a second B.S. in Stats or Comp Sci if I'm making good money near my parent's home?

What country do you live in? The answer is radically different if you live in the US or another country where PhDs contain masters degrees within them.

I live in the US. Though I'm not too interested in maximizing my earning potential / minimizing lost time

Why do you want to do this though. Your post doesn't say

Mostly because I need to pass time until I can afford a Master's degree in cash. I'm willing to compromise a little, but my parents taught me that I should only ever take out a loan for a car and a house. (Edit: and a B.S. in stats might make me slightly more employable and still give me a few years to work full time.)

Also, I could use more research experience and internships because I hardly have either which was a large mistake on my part.

I don't understand. Is the second undergraduate degree not going to cost you money? I would expect a second BS to cost as much as a Masters, if not more. Where are you going to school and who is paying for it?

I only need 9 more courses for a B.S. in Statistics, and I would take it 45 minutes away from my parents house. Transportation, tuition, room and board, utilities etc will all be covered by my parents. Edit: however, once I move out of the house everything is on me. My parents are very supportive, but I Don't want a master's at this university 45 minutes away. Thank you for staying with me on this topic.

That's an interesting (and exceptionally fortunate) situation. Why don't you want a masters from this university? No matter the quality of the education, admissions departments will look better upon a masters than an undergrad. You'll probably learn more from a masters too. This goes double for if there's a thesis option for a masters. 45 credits is a masters degree worth of credits

I can find the link if you want, but there's a bias in top PhD programs accepting mostly only students from other top universities. I would like to get a Masters in a university like Columbia, Penn State, Chicago, UCLA in Statistics with Thesis  despite the cost to improve my odds. It'll be a while (3-5 years) before I can afford that though. Edit: so maybe I could pursue two masters (C.S. and Stats) and a PhD instead of a B.S. and Master's (Stats and Stats) and PhD

But I Don't think my parents would like paying the tuition for a full Master's to be honest as they already payed my full B.S. at the University of Florida.

I would agree with the answer from r/datascience. Go straight to MS.
The main reason you cited for waiting on the MS was that you could not afford to pay cash for grad school and you didn't want a loan. Keep in mind that cash and loans are not the only two options.  There is a significant amount of financial assistance available for grad school. E.g. you might be able to get a teaching assistantship (teach an undergrad class in exchange for tuition), research assistantship (work on a professor's research project in exchange for tuition), or a fellowship/scholarship.  I got all three of these at various points in my program. I have a MS and a Ph D and I literally paid zero tuition for both of them. My wife and my sister both have MS and neither one paid any tuition.
Research assistantship is very common in technical fields where corporations sponsor research projects. E.g. Apple or Microsoft might give a CS professor $200k to study some challenging problem. The professor will spend that $200k to hire grad students to do the work.  You work on the project part time, say 20 hours a week, and that pays your tuition. Now if you were talking about studying history or poetry or violin performance, then money is a lot harder to find. But Comp Sci, you have a good chance at finding some money.
The only reason I can think of to do a second BS before the MS would be if your BS was in such a completely unrelated area that you would be unlikely to get admitted to the graduate program. For example, if you had a BS in English Literature or Violin Performance, you would be unlikely to get into an graduate program in Statistic or Comp Science.  But I don't think that applies here.  With a Math degree (assuming you have good GPA / GRE scores) you should be able to get into a good Statistics or Computer Science program.
EDIT:
Let me try to put this a different way.  To a large degree, the value of a BS is less about the specific facts/skills that you learned, and more about proving to a potential employer or grad school that you are a hard worker (see Signaling theory).  Opinions vary, but let's says it's 50% about what you learn, and 50% proving you're a hard worker. If you get a second BS, it's only worth half as much as the first, as you've already proven you can do work at the BS level. If you get an MS, you now prove to potential employers that you can do work at the MS level, which is worth a lot more than proving you can work at the BS level. Let's just say that an MS is worth twice as much as the first BS for this. Then an MS is worth four times as much as a second BS. And since it will take a similar amount of time, why waste your time getting the less valuable thing?

Would it hurt me if I still decided to do the second B.S. to take more advanced courses during my M.S.?

@Kulgurae Most M.S. programs will have required courses at the "intro masters level." I don't think you can assume you'll take more advanced courses simply because you have a BS in stats.

As someone doing an interdisciplinary PhD (a mandatory element of my programme) in CompSci and Music, there is nothing interdisciplinary about the subjects you've already studied between maths, stats and CS. Now don't get me wrong, they all compliment each other very well, and judging by the fact you can even consider doing more than one bachelors, you're probably an extremely competent and bright student who would sail through a CS PhD. But to say any element of this is interdisciplinary is a bit of a farce. Stats, maths and CS is, in most universities housed under the same faculty. You wouldn't be able to say you're doing any combination of those three in my programme and justify it as interdisciplinary work. If you'd like to learn more about interdisciplinarity in research, the classic text to start with is Alan Repko's Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory. If you want to put it into practice, consider working with another faculty for your PhD outside of electronics, maths and computer science within your institution. There are many opportunities to apply Machine Learning techniques to any number of disciplines, so the limit is your imagination (and a good supervisor ;) ).

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


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Research after the bachelor's degree has ended but before applying to Master's program
Background: I'm planning to attend graduate school for CS at a school (UT Austin) where state residents pay significantly less tuition. Therefore, I will move to the city where the university is 16 months in advance of applying. I am planning on first applying to a Master's program to gain research experience and boost my credentials.
I want to do research with a certain professor at this university before applying to the Master's program.
Question: What can a non-enrolled student with only a bachelor's degree do to improve his/her chances of being able to do research with a professor to boost the student's resume for graduate admissions?
I.e., replicate his important research, try to publish in his area of research, use my university email so it's less likely to be treated as spam, have a professor I'm doing research with beforehand reach out (while continuing research with this professor), etc?
Edit: Well, I've been trying to get undergrad research as a distance learning student right now and I haven't gotten any response back yet. I wonder if it'll be even harder after I graduate.

What about finding a lab for an internship during some of these 16 months?

I've pulled out a lot of the personal information to make this fit more with community standards so you might get an answer. Please roll back the edits if I have gone too far...

Thank you Dawn. That's a wonderful idea Guillaume; I'll read into it.

I don't have time to make this a full answer, but definitely use your current university email. If your current professor is willing to reach out to this other professor, definitely go that route and then follow up yourself. Otherwise, they may be willing to let you drop their name "So-and-so suggested that, given my interest in X, it would be appropriate to reach out to you." This is known as a "warm" contact and can increase chances of getting a response.

You may also want to see answers to this question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/108045/how-can-one-find-a-research-mentor-to-fulfill-a-research-paper-requirement-prior/ and this question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/107401/questions-about-research-assistant-posts

Contact the professor and ask (politely!).
Nobody ever explained to me how you applied for a doctorate until after I found out my undergrad results and people started suggesting I should think about it, so I approached a few of the departmental lecturers whose work I liked, explained that I was interested in working with them and asked if there was any way I could get experience in their group. One of them turned out to have some short-term funding and paid for me to work with the group for a year as long as I did two days a week of general group jobs. During the year I was able to get to know the group, contribute to papers and apply for doctoral funding (which was successful).
So, from personal experience of being in a similar situation, it's worth asking. This took place in the UK about (ahem) 20 years ago, but unpaid or self-funded 'placements' are common in other countries too. Since you have a clear aim (a specific project or area that you want to strengthen your CV in, for a defined period) and it doesn't sound like there is a specific structure in place to facilitate this, then I'd give it a go.


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3 Year Master's Full Time?
How strange is it to want to spend three years on a Master's degree to take an extra six courses? A lot of programs have different curriculum for introductory PhD students vs introductory Master's. I want to be able to take some of those PhD classes, and I want to have spare room for exciting electives both within my Master's and outside it in associated fields.
When is this not possible, and does spending an extra year in a Master's program sound bad? I'd simply end up spending all my time  self-studying the extra material after a two year degree anyway.
Edit: I don't know how I'd feel applying for a PhD then dropping to a Master's in a couple years to have a separate core sequence. I don't want to waste anyone's time.
Edit: I'm not enrolled yet. Funding would hopefully be a combination of resident tuition and a TAship/RAship.

For clarification: who's paying your tuition, and/or stipend?

Not enrolled yet. It would be a combination of (hopefully) resident tuition and a TAship/RAship. Otherwise, I'd have to work off of student loans and staying three years likely wouldn't be feasible. I plan to do a traditional Master's with thesis, so getting partial to full tuition funding should be possible by the third year even if I don't manage funding before then. I'm paying my tuition.

FWIW, things at masters and PhD level can be less rigid than undergraduate. You might be able to contact your department and explain that you would like to take these classes instead of the usual electives because they relate to your field in the direction you hope to pursue.
My program encouraged that, and even let you take the classes at another school if they weren’t offered. It doesn’t even have to obviously connect as long as you can make a reasonable argument. I got a PhD in nanotech and talked my way into taking electron microscopy classes in lieu of spectroscopy classes.
It sounds like you figure two years for the masters and an additional year for the classes you want. Life doesn’t always work out that way, and you’ll want to be very careful about making sure the actual degree isn’t interrupted.
Also consider just asking if you can audit the classes. That way you gain a lot of knowledge but still get your degree on time, plus you aren’t adding to your study load and needing to worry about your grade.
But assuming it’s not classes for complete fun (e.g., a 17th century literature class for a degree in chemistry) it is not unreasonable to expand your expertise a little bit, particularly for only one year.

Many master's programs do have a term limit associated with them. However, many master's programs may require additional classes, particularly for students coming from other backgrounds. So you should definitely check the specific programs you're interested in enrolling in, to see what is specifically allowed.
But extending the master's or PhD program just to take classes seems like a poor use of resources. One of the goals of advanced education is learning to become an expert in a new subject. After a while, you should be able to get much of the same content that you would from enrolling in a class through self-study.

I did say I would self study otherwise. Thanks :D


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A famous scholar sent me an unpublished draft of hers. Then she died. I think her work should be published. What should I do?
A famous scholar sent me an unpublished draft of hers. It was to convince me that a certain philosophical position is wrong (the paper debunks that position). Then she died. I think her work should be published.
What should I do? Who should I contact?

What's the condition of the draft? Does it need heavy editing, or is it almost ready to publish as is?

I would say ready/almost ready.

And, of course, the situation is just the same if the person is not famous. If the paper is worthy of publication, its authorship is of less importance than the contribution itself. Maybe even more important for a non-famous person, though, to have the work properly attributed just as if they were alive.

Following up on Buffy, another reason it might be more important if the person is not famous is that the work of someone famous is likely known about, and if really famous, will probably come to light in one form or another when that person's academic belongings have been gone through (or at least archived at their university library or something), whereas anything by someone not all that famous is likely to disappear. For someone not famous, maybe it'll be rediscovered in some form at a later time, but the actual work in it's original form by the person who died will be completely lost.

What was her intention in sending it to you? Was it accompanied by any instructions? Did she want you to advance its publication? Review it for errors? Archive it against accidental destruction of the original? Study it and inform your own subsequent work? - The title doesn't say.

It was to convince me that a certain philosophical position is wrong (the paper debunks that position).

I would also keep trace of the contacts you had. Emails, envelopes, etc. Then the answers below provide viable alternatives.

The first thing to do is to contact her estate. You can probably reach someone through her last affiliation. I assume that they have control over all of the papers and effects of the deceased.
Since you say she is famous, there my be some posthumous attempt to honor her in some collected publication, but the estate, possibly a spouse, should have knowledge of that. Her last employer might also.
But start there.
And, of course it is possible that it has already been submitted somewhere and publication is in process. The estate might even welcome contact with interested people in finalizing publication as needed.

How do you contact someone's estate? I have no idea. Also, let's suppose that for some reason, they don't publish it. Would it be ethical to make the work available online anyway?

If she worked at a university or such, they will have information about next of kin. From there you can go to the executor of the estate if necessary, but a close kin is probably enough to make proper contact. I would hesitate to publish it on my own authority in any venue unless you have permission from her family. That may, of course, already have been granted to others, such as her colleagues. As a last resort, a collective enterprise to bring it forward would be better than any individual one.

And, let's suppose I want to reference something in this draft (our areas of research are related), how do you cite that? As "personal communication"?

A copyright is inheritable property. There is a copyright owner, initially the estate, and later someone such as a spouse or child, and their consent is needed for any publication.

Yes, it is a personal communication until published. Good catch @PatriciaShanahan, her estate holds all rights unless and until they are passed on or licensed.

A famous scholar may have appointed a literary executor specifically to deal with manuscripts, unpublished works etc.

She was retired from university.

I think most universities will still be able to contact family. Colleagues of hers probably know the family. You probably have no more than two degrees of separation from someone with responsibility.

@DamiánBeanato: if she was famous, she may an Emeritus title from her last university and some form of affiliation/contact

@PatriciaShanahan wouldn't the work belong to the University in this case? Also, IRC, in some countries e-mails sent from issued address are a matter of public record so someone might make the paper public that way if the estate is for some unforeseeable reason unwilling. EDIT: saw an update that she was retired. In this case this doesn't apply to this particular event.

@DanM. According to another comment she was already retired from the university. In any case, I would expect the executor of her estate to be aware of copyright ownership on her papers. If she was in the process of getting it published, she may have granted rights to a journal.

@PatriciaShanahan This may depend on the nationality of the deceased, but AFAIK copyright only applies to specific expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves.  Even if the estate were dead-set against publication, philosopher of science is free to publish a paper making the same points, and also to attribute them to the deceased as being via personal and unpublished correspondence. Of course, all reasonable means to a mutually satisfactory solution should be explored first, if there is a disagreement on the issue.

If a university with which she was affiliated does not have contact information for her estate, you may want to ask the clerk of the probate court in the state judicial district in which she lived whether they know anything. (But I think quite possibly they won't.)

Note that the science itself cannot be copyrighted since they are (supposedly) facts. In this case that would be the argument to debunk the philosophical position. A specific representation (the paper draft) usually is copyrighted. It would therefore probably be legal to reformulate the arguments and publish that. The academic community would probably see this as dishonorable, unless the result is properly attributed and would otherwise not be published. (And your institute might have their own rules that could apply.)

@Philosopherofscience  Worse still, what if they don't want to publish it because they want to actively suppress it?

@Michael I don't see why that would happen in this case.

@Philosopherofscience Well, the way you worded it as debunking a famous philosophical  problem, so who knows that maybe she entrusted it to you because she thought she might encounter resistance from other sources.

@Michael That was not the way I worded it. She was debunking a position, not debunking or disolving a problem. The problem stands but she gives a different answer. Also, I did not say that the problem was famous.

If the author has coauthored work with someone recently, that coauthor can be a good first contact.  For one thing, they might know someone in the family and perhaps know who is executor for her estate.  They might also be in possession of other partially finished works and you might work together toward a common solution.  Coauthors sometimes know a scholar better than those in the department.  If you are lucky she has a google scholar page you can use to identify recent collaborators.
If she published primarily alone, you are left with contacting her publisher, department, family and estate, former graduate students.  It is as Buffy said:  if you were close enough to be sent a manuscript, you can't be more than a few degrees of separation from someone who can help.
Best of luck.

I know one of her coauthors. I don't even know what a estate executor is, but thanks!

When someone dies with non-trivial assets it takes time to value the assets, pay debts, pay taxes, and organize distribution to the heirs. Rather than the assets going directly to the heirs, they are owned by the "estate of XXX", and the person in charge of the estate is called the "executor". Alternatively, there may be a trust and trustee. If you want to publish her paper before the copyright has been transferred to whoever inherits it, you need permission from the executor or trustee.

@PatriciaShanahan, let me suggest slightly better phrasing: "If you want to see her paper published...." rather than "If you want to publish her paper...". The OP can't actually publish the paper. That is up to others. The OP can help, of course. In theory, the estate could even transfer rights to the OP.

@Buffy That wording is better.

Probating an estate is a very long and arduous process. Especially if it there wasn't a Will (Source: Newly an ADM of an estate). It's likely a highly emotional time for the family. Such a document or topic could likely get "lost in the chaos" and be an unnecessary complication. PLUS, inheritors of an estate may not always have the best interests of the deceased in mind. Finally, it can take well up to a year for the family and attorneys to finish resolving an estate. With all of that in mind, it would be wise to wait a year and then contact people until you can find administrator(/executor) and inform them of your wish to help publish the deceased's work.
Considering there is a coauthor, most of the above may not actually be relevant! Simply do as the deceased asked (review draft, provide feedback, etc.) and then relay everything to the coauthor. Then wish them good luck, offer your help, 'sorry for your loss', and that's it! It is between the coauthor and the admin/executor of the estate to decide to publish or not to publish.

s/is/can be/.  My partner was executrix of her father's estate, and it was neither long nor arduous.  Also, the deceased doesn't have an interest left; the copyright in the draft belongs to whoever inherits the copyright - it is up to them what they want to do with it.

Precisely, I was thinking that as documents can get lost in chaos, mine could be the only copy in the future!

Also, there is no co-author listed.

@MartinBonner I agree that the right is to whoever inherits the copyright. The goal of my suggestion is to advise giving space and time for the grieving family.

Even if she was retired her department chair will know how to contact her family.  They almost certainly announced her death and talked to the family at that point (been there, done that).   They may also have more information about her plans.


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How to deal with a professor that continuously dismisses student questions?
I'm taking a distributed systems course at a well known university in the U.S.
I've noticed my professor has three primary forms of responding to student questions during his lecture:

Immediately answers with, just a minute, we're going to cover that
Immediately answers with, that's what we just covered
Spends a couple sentences briefly explaining why the student's question doesn't apply / doesn't work

Almost no dialog is ever spent on further explanation, but rather on disproving. So, instead of recognizing student questions as a lack of understanding, it seems to come off as defending what he already covered and moving on.
As a student in this course, how best do I approach this?
I fear this may be just a personality trait / teaching style that he's acquired, and I wouldn't want to offend him with "Your responses to questions are unhelpful." — But maybe this is the best option?

Are you asking how to give him feedback to improve his teaching in the future? Or how to get him to answer your questions this semester, while you're in the class, because you think it would help you do better in the course? Or something else?

Is both an option? :) -- Really, how to give him feedback, and in the meantime, how to get him to answer questions now until that feedback is heeded.

I think this may be a duplicate of How do you respectfully give a teacher feedback about their teaching? (unless your question is "How do I get answers to my questions if the situation doesn't change," in which case you should edit the post to clarify.)

@ff524: This is not a duplicate of your indicated post. This relates to question as doubts not as just feedback.

The opposite is also a problem, where a question that is about to be covered is instead answered poorly because the prep in the next section isn't used, or lots of time is spent explaining to just one person who missed the point (rare), or the lecture twists a question that does not apply around til it kinda does and then spends ages going into detail on that (I've seen a whole lecture wasted because 1 student asked a question about transmission frequency range in a class about modulation.)
you want a goldilocks point in the middle.

Sometimes the best takeaway from situations like this is as a case study to prompt you into thinking about how you can improve on it, or avoid similar mistakes, when you become a teacher.

@Mari-LouA - Thanks for the helpful edit, and welcome!

It may be time to become more assertive in this person's class.

If he immediately answers with, just a minute, we're going to cover that, then you can speak up 5 minutes before class ends, or at the beginning of the following class, for example: "Excuse me, Prof. So-and-So, you mentioned you were going to be covering Topic B.  Since we didn't get to that today/last time, could you please start with that leftover question from last time?
If he immediately answers with, that's what we just covered, follow up immediately, for example, "Could you please clarify how the material you just covered answers my specific question? ... I'm sorry, sir, I don't see how that was relevant to my question."
If he spends a couple sentences briefly explaining why your question doesn't apply / doesn't work, then you can try something like this: "You feel I asked a stupid question.  Nevertheless, I asked because I would honestly like an answer.  Can you help me formulate the question in an acceptable format?"

Meeting one on one with certain professors sometimes gets one nowhere, unfortunately.  Still, you could try visiting office hours to find out more about what he's like.

Yes, this happens many times. I have observed this generally happens if teacher is either young or new (might not be true but it is my observation, other experienced teacher here can shed light on this observation). Also this can be characteristic of that person as you mentioned. I would suggest first check if questions you (or others) asking are valid. I mean are they really not following in second category you mentioned.

Immediately answers with, that's what we just covered

Or wait for some time and see if it is not following in first category,

Immediately answers with, just a minute, we're going to cover that

If these doesn't satisfy and he/she is falling into third category,

Spends a couple sentences briefly explaining why the student's question doesn't apply / doesn't work

Then meet his/her personally after class and clarify your doubt. May be that person didn't understand your question correctly. It is also possible that sometimes some teachers become offensive if they can't answer your question and they might take this approach. In this case he/she might search for answer and get back to you later on. I had professor who has done similar thing where he answered abruptly and tell that student's question is not valid. However after 2-3 days, he mentioned this question again in class and said he was confused. He gave correct answer that time. I liked his attitude. He actually apologized that he misunderstood and then he researched on this for 2 days and finally answered !!
Even after that you think that person is doing this again and again then you can first talk to his/her fellow professors who do you think can understand students better. I guess there is always some professor with whom students talks freely. We had one such professor who actually was aware of all student matters better than us (He even knew who is dating whom :P). Your last resort will be head of your academics. You can talk to him/her and explain situation. You can take few representative students with you also. Then head of academics can handle things further and will take appropriate decisions.

When a professor avoids questions (doubts) in class, it could generally depend on one or more among the probable reasons.

The answer to the question would eventually be covered later in the session
The question is irrelevant to the current topic under discussion
Lack of time to explain in detail and cope with the syllabus
The answer to the question is not known to the professor at that time

Most may interpret the first three points as excuses to gloss over the fourth point. If any of the first three reasons are true, then the professor would be able to clarify your question after the session in her/his spare time. If the professor continues to avoid the question, then it may lead to infer the last cause.
IMHO, you should feel more comfortable having the question avoided rather than obtaining a random answer. Now, you have the option to search for the answer rather than be contented with the wrong one. You may force out truth, but not knowledge per se.


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How to call colleagues who was once your professor or advisor?
After finishing my PhD in the US, I am now working in a university in an Asian country where I studied for my master. All of my colleagues are 20 years senior than me and are full professors except one. I am wondering what I should call my colleagues. Should I address them as "Teacher" if I've ever taken a class from them? (One of them is my master advisor which is especially awkward for me to call his name.) Or should I address them by their "First Name" to emphasise that our current relationship is not teacher and student anymore? (They usually call each other by First name since they are all in similar age group, seniority, and male?)
By the way, I've been in this position for 1.5 years but I never call them by their first name, it's usually ‘Teacher’ if they previously taught me; or "Teacher xx(Last name)" if they never taught me. Would that be awkward if I just change how I call them now?

Please specify your location. .I think the answer depends on the culture/location.

I am in Asian country.

OK. Now, I see you just added a note saying that you already got your Ph. D. Congratulations. :-)  Maybe, it is still a good idea to call your former teachers "Professor" because they have more seniority (or older) than you. I know that in my Asian country, one of my University professor still call his former teacher "Professor" to show respect and gratitudes, and they both teach at the same college and get along very well. :-) Best of luck with your career.

I would say in the last way it was used unless something intervened.

I am not sure we can answer without knowing the country/language. Saying "Teacher LastName" sounds very odd in English, but I suspect it makes sense in Japanese (sensei). Even within Asia, I imagine that the linguistics and "politeness culture" of Vladivostok, Tokyo, and Islamabad vary widely. (It's fine if you don't want to specify, but I would take the answers with a grain of salt in this case).

[ My updated answer after the OP updated his location and more info. ]

First, congratulations on your Ph.D. That is wonderful. :-)

In Asia, in generally, you probably should always call people, who once were your professors, with the title "Professor/Teacher/Doctor" at colleges, at commercial companies, or even in general social settings.
Note: Even if they are no longer your professors now, and they are working either at the same colleges or in the business environment with you as co-workers, perhaps, it is still a good idea to call them "Professor".
Generally speaking, that shows the respect and gratitude toward your former teachers/professors in Asian culture.
In my country in Asia, I have seen one University professor calls his former college instructor "Professor/Doctor" all the time. They are both teaching at the same college now, and getting along very well as both co-workers and former teacher/student.

Thanks for providing your experience. I'm currently working in a university in Asia.
I remembered my pHD advisor in US always call his colleagues by first name. I heard my master advisor now my colleagues also call his colleagues by first name. (I wasn't sure gender would make any difference here.)
Two of my previous professor now my colleagues with research relationship start to sign their first name (instead of teacher)  at the end of the email once I got this position. This makes me think whether I should call them first name both in person and in email.

@Ying:  You asked "I wasn't sure gender would make any difference here".  My answer is "No, it does not make any difference".

Perhaps the best method would be to start with the most formal phrasing that makes sense, and keep using that unless or until someone suggests less formal phrasing.  I imagine different people feel differently, so you may end up addressing different people differently.
You could also just ask, if you feel comfortable in doing so.  I assume that a former supervisor would be happy to help you by explaining the best choice.

This seems extremely culturally dependent. I don't think that "Asia" is a tight enough classification to make a general statement. It is also, within the standards of the culture, dependent on the desires of individuals.
If you aren't familiar with the local culture then ask those who are. You will get better answers. I think the general level of expected formality differs greatly over a region as vast as Asia. It might possibly even differ between regions of a single country.
In the US, informality is generally expected among colleagues. Sometimes even between doctoral students and the faculty. But, even here, some individuals want an exception to the general rule.

That's true. I am in Mandarin Speaking Country. I guess it is tight enough classification : )


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Good practices for organizing notes
As a PhD student I generate a lot of pages with calculations, ideas and lecture notes.
Most of them are useful only for a short amount of time, but some may be important for much longer (when writing a paper, or when having new ideas to continue a once abandoned project). Typically I work on a few project simultaneously.
The question is, what is good practice for taking and keeping notes? (With or without computer apps.)
Writing on single sheets (even if adding date and title) makes it easy to organize by topic, but also easy to lose. Keeping them in one notepad makes it harder to collect useful things of one topic in one place.

You should keep a research notebook, regardless of whatever other system you have for notes. The format of the notebook is up to you; it can even be public (see Carl Boettiger's as an example of an electronic lab notebook). it can be created in programs such as an iPython or Jupyter notebook, or even a more specialized program such as Findings.
If you choose the pen-and-paper route for your research notes, and want to have the added flexibility/security of taking your notes with you (and also because it's good practice to do so), you should consider getting a scanner and making regular backups. You can then import these into a product like Evernote, Onenote, or MacJournal,
If you are using LaTeX, your options are somewhat limited, as most of the major tools for notebooking really don't support "live" LaTeX. Then you'd be better off using something like Aquamacs as a holder for your "notebooks" (LaTeX documents), and then using one of the above packages (or something like Papers or Paperless to organize the resulting PDFs.

cough LyX cough

@badp: LyX is not a "notebooking" program; moreover, I don't find the OS X implementation (which the OP would be running) to be all that good. Your mileage may vary, however.

Well it's as close as "live LaTeX" as it gets currently. I dunno about OSX but I've found out LyX is satisfactory for taking lecture notes (...that means notes during others' lectures right?) even when they involve a lot of maths.

As an alternative to a scanner, Livescribe paper notebooks and smartpen (http://www.livescribe.com) are a nice option - my lab uses those. It basically scans as you write, plus allows voice note recording and does handwriting recognition.

"After 13 years in business, Circus Ponies Software has shut down. It was a good run."

I would definitely recommend a research notebook.
There are several different ways you can go about it.

The old school method of just using a paper notebook, where you enter data and computations sequentially by date. One is often encouraged to start a new page if one is moving to a new topic (and label the topic at the top of the page); but another possibility is to make use of the margins for noting the topic at hand.
An electronic notebook would be more searchable. On the other end of the spectrum from a paper notebook is a lab wiki. Some universities even have a university-wide Wiki platform available (for example, here's EPFL's wiki portal). In those cases you won't have to worry about administration issues, and many of those services are regularly backed up, and come with access control system so that you can limit your lab notebook to be only viewable by those in your research group.
An intermediate method is to just keep a private electronic notebook. I use a customised document class that I wrote for this specific purpose. If you use a good indexing package in LaTeX and make the effort to keep good indices, such a notebook can be very easily searchable. It also has the advantage that when preparing lecture notes or papers for submission, you can just copy and paste directly from your notebook.

If you prefer not to have a single notebook, what you'd need then is a sophisticated document managing system. For paper documents this will generally involve a filing cabinet, folders, and sticky labels. For electronic documents (say you digitize all your notes either by typing them up or scanning them), a lot of the citation managers, especially those that support multiple databases, can easily be co-opted for organising notes. On the even fancier side, you may want to use some sort of mind-mapping software.
Another option if you do not mind "showing how the sausage is made" is to follow the initiative of the Open Science Project and blog about your research as you go along.

+1 for mentionning Mind-Mapping software. Usually you can use "tab" or "ins" to create subnodes, "return" to create a node underneath (and at the same level than) the current node, and you can move a node+subnodes using "ctrl+keys" (to move up/down/sideways in the hierarchy). It makes organising thoughts on the spot (or later) very effective (+ force you to decide how to organize them).

For some pretty well-thought suggestions about organizing your notes (without being specific to any application, and dealing with both electronic and paper notes), you can refer to this link.
A summary of what methods are discussed:

Keeping Track of Information Online: How to organize your notes in a sensible directory structure on your computer.
Version Control: Using the power of SCS packages (Mercurial happens to be my favorite due to its ease of use) to store multiple revisions of your notes.
Keeping Track of Paper: Finally, how to keep your office clutter-free.

Bear in mind that the link is a bit dated, so it doesn't refer to online services like Google Docs which can be effectively used to keep a back-up of your notes online!

I like to keep the paper option, since most initial ideas are usually a waste of time to typeset using LaTeX or any other computer system. I really hope that does not sound like advertising, but I find the combination of Atoma notebooks (picture below) and sticker tabs quite efficient. You don't lose sheets, and you reorganise them as you wish, as many times as you wish.

Part of my answer in this question applies here as well; when reading papers, I've found it useful to write down notes on paper, and then put the notes in a 3-ring binder, along with the paper itself. A similar technique can be used electronically using either Papers or Evernote... take notes on each paper and attach the notes to the paper (or the to paper if using Evernote). Personally, I found it much better to take notes by hand, as you can scribble in margins, write equations, draw out plots, MUCH faster than if done by hand.
I've also made it a point to keep all notes from classes I took. I've found numerous instances where I referred to notes from a course I took a while back. It's much easier to re-read your own notes (assuming you take good notes) than to learn it from a book where you're unfamiliar with the layout and presentation style.

If you have Microsoft Windows Office 2010, I would recommend OneNote as a really handy way of tracking your notes, images, miscellaneous ideas etc.
For a non-MS cross-platform app, you can try Evernote - it is similar to OneNote, with the added advantage of syncing your notes over multiple computers/tablets etc.

Actually I use Evernote, but it does not support neither LaTeX nor interlinks between notes (so I use it only for random notes, much less as a research notebook). (I am on MacOSX, BTW.)

I find that using Endnote (or a similar reference software) kills two birds with one stone. I find typing up references correctly very very tedious, but absolutely essential. You can import a lot of the references from databases (less typing needed) and then add your own notes, keeping it all in one place. You can add files or scan your paper notes or photos. It is also easily searchable. Plus when it comes to collating your reference list or bibliography, it automatically inserts and formats the articles in the style you selected. That alone can save days when finalising papers.
Endnote works on both macs and pcs and also has an online version. http://www.endnote.com/
I also found that universities usually buy a site licence for Endnote or another similar reference software that both staff and students can use for free.

The question is about own notes, not references. And putting tones of references and own notes in one place is a suicide.

I find that a mix of both worlds (physical and digital) works best for me. People have different ways of retaining and processing information.
Productivity apps are quickly becoming a popular and efficient choice in managing note, documents and other information. You may want to try applications like Evernote, Dropbox or Google Drive or a mixture of the three.
Also recognizing this growing problem of information overload and how to address it, there are many new and improved data capture applications that cater to the myriad of problems stemming from the need to organize information efficiently while making it accessible no matter the age of the info. You may want to try new apps around like Doo or Phoenary to enhance your note-organizing and information capture.


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My disappointment with academia and should it be fixed or should I leave?
Some background:
I have practically two PhD offers on the table (well, I have to apply as its "the way of things", but they were both personally suggesting me for this) and have two masters degrees.
I am 40 years old, I live in Northern Europe, and my field is nutrition. I have had some years of working in academia and already have some publications, but I have never been in an employer/employee relationship that is financially rewarding and offers me work/employment-security. The offers to continue my education and become a PhD have always been the expectations of my supervisors - even after I expressed my reluctance (repeatedly). Because my field is very small, I don't want to go into further details than this.
My problem:
I am greatly disappointed in how the financial situation is handled by the academic institution in general, and how all the work for achieving a higher education is not paying off in any of the aspects I had expected (financially, greater job security, work benefits, stability, intellectually, and personally rewarding). Other people with bachelor degrees earn more than working in academia, they enjoy free time and personal growth, they are financially secure, which lead to even higher salaries.
I feel the pressure of my age and that I have not been able to make any adult financial long-term decisions/plans and been dependent on my partner, student support and sporadic part-time work in entry level jobs. I have even been presented with the fact that many of my field-colleagues do free work because it is expected. In my opinion, this just undermines the whole field and gives the general view that if you demand a salary or a raise in your quite small salary you are not considered for continuation of contract. Furthermore, the way funding works here is never really spoken loudly about, as with quite a few of the possible foundations to apply for, you will basically have to forego all/most your social rights that is granted to any other employee in Northern Europe. The other thing about funding, is that in my experience it's never granted for the entirety of the project from planning - participants/data collection - analysis and publications, but often only until data is collected and then you have to apply for more. I find this whole ordeal to be quite questionable ethically, but somehow none of my supervisors or colleagues wish to discuss this.
My attempts of finding employment in the private sector, or in the public sector (just not academic positions) have not been fruitful because of the nature of my expertise and experience. I have often been told that "You are too skilled for this xx position".
And no, as I anticipate anyone suggesting this: Working with a specialized psychologist on work-life did not lead to success either.
Does everyone else in academia just live like this, from funding to funding, having to scrape by and only occasionally been in the position to feel a tiniest bit more affluent?
I did not go into higher education to be constantly stressed over if I would have any work to go back to once the timer on your contract is out, have my sense of work ethics be shattered every time that funding ends before project completion, or having to stress with winning the constant popularity contest. No matter how good and skillful I am, it has not been taken care of by the employer by incentivizing my continuation to keep the intellectual and softer assets in-house, it is just expected of me (= they hand me PhD projects to apply for, or don't bother to come back).
Nor did I go into it for becoming rich. I only wanted a safe economical future, a stable work place and a knowledge that I had the long-term ability to provide well for my family while working with something intellectually rewarding.
What should I do?
I can't live this way any more, if described in its simplest terms it sounds very much like an abusive relationship. But I can't seem to be able to find any work outside of academia either. I don't believe that having a go at one of the PhD offers will help me out either, as I see many post-docs in my field have also only constantly repeated short-term contracts of employment.
Thank you for reading all this way.

Please shorten your question or at least add a TLDR, this is far too much information. Try to focus on key points of your inquery.

If money is your primary concern, don't go in to academia. Security is good once tenured, but the pay is less than can be earned elsewhere. I have friends with similar backgrounds, but in industry, who consistently made twice what I did. We were happy with the tradeoffs.

Welcome to Stackexchange. This question is likely to be closed as-is, because it is one person asking advice for their specific situation. I recommend seeing if you can generalize it to question(s) that is/are relevant to others. If this results in more than one question they should be asked separately.

I doubt that academia will get 'fixed' to your desires.

A career coach might help you.

You're thinking about the wrong question, because you've made the (incorrect) assumption that "doing a PhD = working in academia". The PhD does not shackle you to an academic job. You can do a PhD and work in industry afterwards. If you do not work in academia, then questions like "What happens to your hard work ... every time your funding wasn't renewed or applications dismissed" are not relevant.
The questions you should be thinking about are:

What kind of job do you want to do?
What kind of qualifications are required to do that job? Do you need a PhD to do it? If no, then what is the point of the PhD?
If you can't find a stable job now, what makes you think getting a PhD will help?

One of the worst reasons to get a PhD is "because I'm avoiding the job market". After you graduate, you'll still need to get a job, so you want solid evidence that a PhD will help before committing the several years' time required to get it.

But I can't seem to be able to find any work outside of academia either.

This sounds like your real problem, and if you already had several different job offers to choose from, then this question wouldn't exist. Figure out what's wrong with your applications, because something clearly is. The only diagnosis you've given is that you're overqualified for the jobs you apply for - which is easily solved, apply for more senior jobs (or convince the interviewer that you're still an appropriate hire, e.g. this).

"Overqualified" at least where I am means "this person is much less experienced in the real world than somebody comparable" or even "because of some laws, I would need to pay the person more than their skills are worth". This is not solved by applying for more senior jobs (ironically, here the reason given would probably be "underqualified").

I disagree that "What happens to your hard work ... every time your funding wasn't renewed or applications dismissed" isn't relevant for industry positions. Industry projects get canceled or realigned all the time. Priorities and funding get restructured. And personnel get shuffled to different projects or are simply "let go" when projects are no longer wanted by management. That's normal in industry. The only difference is that in industry it's expected you'll move from position to position in your career. (It's job applications instead of grant applications.)

There are two premises to your question:

you cannot leave academia because the world outside academia no longer wants you
you cannot stay in academia because working there sucks

That is a horrible position to be in. My sympathy is not much help to you, but you have it if you want it.
More practically, there is no solution to your problem unless you proof one of your premises wrong. So your way forward is either find a job outside academia, or find a worthwhile place inside academia. Neither is easy, but I don't know what else we can say.

I seriously don't get why this answer was downvoted. It's a brief and concise but completely accurate analysis of the situation described in the question.

Your observations about the poor (average) job security and conditions in academia are correct.  This is a consequence of an incredibly large supply of PhDs relative to their much lower demand in academic roles, which gives the universities an incredible amount of choice of viable candidates.  That situation is not going to change for the better, and indeed, it is likely to get worse over the remainder of your career.
Based on the information you have given about your age, education, and existing academic work, it seems likely that you will remain in the pool of candidates who have tenuous job security for a long time to come (possibly even for your whole career) if you stay in academia.  For this you have my sincere sympathies; it is horrible to work so hard to establish academic research skills and then find that the job market does not give you a secure place to do the work you have trained for.
I have given advice to another forty-something starting a PhD and in that case my advice was in favour of continuing their study and academic work.  In your case you are clearly already feeling burned-out and you say you can't live like this anymore.  So my advice would be, don't --- eschew doing a PhD (at least for now) and instead try again to move to another sector with your existing qualifications.


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I dropped out of my masters degree a year ago and am being threatened by my college that they will blacklist me
I took a masters a couple of years ago and dropped out because my supervisors weren't helpful, were demotivating (told me they could do my research in two months and asked why I hadn't finished mine), and I also didn't have the money to finish it. I called the university when I got the email of my maximum time to finish my research is ending (asking if I'd like to extend) and I confirmed to them I didn't want to continue and they said okay.
So, I thought I paid full previously but apparently I had some debt left over, which they didn't bother telling me the whole year after dropping out.
One of the finance admin called today to tell me to pay $650 in 48 hours, and threatened to blacklist me if I didn't.
I legit dropped out because of money issues and instead of telling me to pay a little bit monthly, they just dropped the bomb on me like that. No, I don't have the money now, so I'm most probably going to be blacklisted.
So my question is, what happens if my university blacklists me? Does that mean I cannot pay after I'm blacklisted and I'm blacklisted forever? Does that mean I can't apply to other (cheaper) universities? I asked the lady just now and she just laughed and say that's up to the university and I shouldn't ask.

Does your university hold a certification from the state where it operates? and,do you have a formal report of your califications?

Yes, they are an official university accredited. And do you mean qualitifications? If yes, then yes i do have my degree transcript and certificates etc.

Ask them for the accounts showing the reason for the debt, and check them. Some time after I completed my PhD the college finance office called me to say I owed some money. After weeks of discussion, it turned out that someone with a name similar, but not identical, to mine had cancelled a check.

Maybe that's part of the answer, but what does being "blacklisted" by a university even mean? I presume you have no interest going back there again anyway, right?

@xLeitix: but what does being "blacklisted" by a university even mean? It might mean (I'm guessing) that the university will not acknowledge attendance and/or course credits, and will not provide an official transcript. Depending on what the OP does later, this could be very important, of no concern at all, or somewhere between.

I'll assume that "blacklist" would only mean that you can't take any courses or get any transcripts from that institution. Is that what you mean, or more than that. It is an odd term to use in academia. It would probably have no effect elsewhere.

Which country you are talking about?

Thanks guys. Yes, i have zero interest to join the faculty in that university again. So i guess the conclusion is that i shouldn't worry so much since it won't actually affect my life? I'm already working and have my degree trnascripts and everything. I have no idea what blacklist is in university terms, the finance lady just told me i would be in 48 hours.

Did they ask you to repay your scholarship?  My girlfriend is concerned that if I drop out before finishing my Ph.D, I will have to repay the money