text:
Telling PhD supervisor I published a paper about my thesis without telling them or listing them as authors?
I am in my 3rd year of PhD. In my program, it is a requirement for PhD students to graduate with a paper that is published in a Scopus Index journal.
Before I entered, and during my PhD, I had already published a few papers to a Scopus index peer reviewed journal (for topics not based on my thesis). At the moment, I am trying to publish a paper as a part of my thesis (with my supervisors' names), but my supervisors keep criticizing the paper and making me rewrite it again and again. This has been going on for two years.
However, I did submit another paper (a part of my thesis) under my own name and without my supervisors' knowledge, and it was accepted. This paper was done without any intellectual contributions from my supervisors - no writing or reviewing. When I told my supervisors about the paper (but not its acceptance,) they were angry that I hadn't included their names, and they asked me to include their names in it. Unfortunately, the editor said I couldn't as I had submitted it initially as one author only.
I am aware that it is my fault that I didn't ask them beforehand, but I know in my heart that if I had included them, it would have taken months or years to even get their approval. In all honesty, they would have ended up demotivating me. I am now really scared to tell them that it has already been published and I cannot add their names.
Can you give me any advice how to handle this situation?

It’s important to note that it’s a supervisor’s job to criticise your paper (although there are obviously good and bad ways of doing that). Spending two years to write a paper is long but by no means unheard of. Your supervisor might very well have a point; it’s impossible for us to judge this from your description.

How closely related are the paper your supervisor has been criticizing and the one you submitted for publication?  And is the criticism of the form, "Rewrite this paragraph to be more clear", or "This part needs more support; run this experiment"?  If the criticism is of the latter sort, and the paper you submitted would have benefited from that criticism, then it's a lot more likely that your supervisor should be on the authors list.

Can you clarify why you feel your supervisors made no intellectual contribution? Intellectual contribution doesn't just mean writing! You seem to be stating the your supervisors didn't know anything about the paper and left you completely to your own devices. Is this the case?

hello, i am sorry for the late reply. hahaha i am a male and the name is an anonymous name! just a bit of background, i am in social sciences area so  @Ray its more on rewrite the paragraph, rephrase the statement, over and over again for 2 years.

@cag51 just a bit of background, i have 4 advisors. all of them insist to be together whenever we meet for my consultation. i have had a manuscript write up (not a part of my thesis) with the 3 of them 2 years ago, one of my advisor insisted that he sent it for publication and up until now, i havent heard the news of this paper.

@cag51now i am working on my theoretical paper (part of my thesis), which 4 of them do contribute, in terms of advice and the whole structure of the paper. but up until now, they are still not happy with that paper. our meetings for the past 2 years only discuss about this theoretical paper. because of this (also driven by the fact that i need to graduate with a scopus index journal), i decided to send one (also a part of my thesis) under my own terms and luckily, it was accpeted for publication.

Same happened to me, during initial phase of my PhD, I published an article in top journal as a single author. After that, I did 7 more publications in top journal coauthored with my PhD supervisor. In all publications my supervisor contributed nothing, not even review of manuscript draft. Now, I it has been one year elapsed and my thesis is still pending with reviewers. I personally feel that my supervisor is in sort of grudge with me and intentionally delaying my thesis review.

i am so sorry to hear that @IgotiT. hopefully, things will go smoothly for you soon.

@IgotiT I was in a similar situation where I had my supervisor delay my thesis despite having a strong publication record (especially in the context of my social-science-field department). I felt it was a little absurd but I dont think it was what my supervisor intended. It was just a situation that spiraled out of control.

@IgotiT Your story begs the question:  "what is the point of a PhD?"  Doesn't 8 publications in top journals prove your credentials as a researcher.  Do you really need that piece of paper? (You probably in fact do, but the question is should you need it?)

@emory: That work was really of my own outside the PhD, that is why I decided to publish as single author, but it seems my supervisor took this my serious mistake.

Are you personally responsible for all aspects of this paper?  Did you personally collect the data, run the experiments and analyze the results using your own personal resources not attached to the department or worse a lab or prior set of experiments?

@JonSG most publishing venues require more than simply having provided a chair in a lab in order to be included as a coauthor.

The key question is whether the supervisors made any intellectual contribution to this paper. Note, intellectual contribution does not only mean writing the manuscript! In some fields, advisors expect to be listed on all papers because of their work securing funding and running the lab (and the intellectual contributions required to do so). At a minimum, advisors probably expect to be looped in on all your activities, so that they can give advice and potentially earn authorship through those discussions.
If your advisors (according to the standards of your subfield) did in fact deserve to be listed as authors, then failing to list them could probably be considered academic misconduct on your part. In this post, we considered exactly this issue: given a supervisor who required 32 drafts over 4 years (!!), the [now former] student wanted to downgrade the supervisor to an acknowledgement so as to submit the paper without requiring their approval. The verdict was unequivocal:

If he deserves to be an author based on his intellectual contributions to the paper, then it would be unethical to deny him authorship based on being difficult to work with

Now you may not feel that your advisors deserved authorship, but this is not for you to decide -- by agreeing to collaborate with them on your thesis, you agreed to work together and co-publish any results. You can't unilaterally decide their contributions were worthless after the fact.
In this post, we consider the inverse situation: a professor taking credit for his students' work without acknowledging them. As the answers show, this behavior was completely unacceptable, but it's difficult for students to seek redress when professors misbehave. Unfortunately for you, it's rather easy for professors to seek redress when students misbehave.
In the other direction, it is possible that your advisors were not eligible for authorship according to the standards of your field. In this case, there is no academic misconduct; this is "merely" an interpersonal issue. Still, I can understand your advisors being very angry: you are supposed to be collaborating with them full-time, and instead you are secretly doing - and publishing - other work. All the worse if they are paying for your time, equipment, training, etc.
So, what should you do? I would start by understanding what your options are. Is there any way to prevent the article from being published? Can you retract the article? Assuming the supervisors contributed to the work, could you publish an addendum saying that authors were incorrectly listed? Then, you should take these options to your supervisors. Tell them that you understand you had no right to publish thesis-related work without their inputs, that you regret it deeply, and that you will address the situation however they want. Hopefully this will resolve itself, but you should think about what you will do if they refuse to continue working with you.

You may also wish to consult with an ombudsman outside the department in the quite possible event that disciplinary proceedings are initiated.

My supervisors did not make any intellectual contributions to the published paper. They did not write anything, nor review it. But since it is as part of my thesis, they feel like I should include them as authors. thank you for the advice. unfortunately, it has already been published and there is not much i can do but to apologize. i honestly feel like I will go crazy if I don't have any other paper to do (other than my thesis). i

Writing is the easy part! If you steal their idea and publish it, it does not become your idea just because you wrote it up. I know you don't think you "stole" their ideas -- but in a sense you did, by agreeing to collaborate with them on your thesis, you agreed to pool your ideas and your publications. You can't go back and re-adjudicate who thought of what after the fact, and you particularly can't do so unilaterally.

@PearlHyatt Authorship and attribution can be a touchy thing to sort out in general. Standards and expectations vary across fields, and even locale. In some cases it is accepted practice that things like "provided the idea and fundamental design for the research" is already good enough for authorship, at least in part because this is considered a genuinely significant and difficult task. Experimental/laboratory sciences, or anything that routinely involves a "PI", seem to be in this vein. For more purely theoretical work such a contribution is often only worth an acknowledgment.

@zibadawatimmy yes, this is a purely theoretical work. so you can imagine all the readings and writings are done by myself. to be honest, even the idea.

It is not about academic misconduct on his part, it's about the academia process being rotten. This is why people that never actually did research appear in a gazilion papers and if you ask them about any of the papers they appear on they tell you the student that did that left years ago and cannot help.

telling someone else to continuously rewrite without giving any directions is no contribution.

You seem to assume that supervision  implies close enough collaboration to merit coauthorship. This is certainly not considered true in any field in which PhD theses are published as books, or else these books wouldn't be published under the (former) PhD student's name only.

@PearlHyatt sorry to hear about your experience. When you feel that your paper is good enough, let your supervisors know that you  will now submit, and ask if they want their names on the paper at this stage. I think this is perfectly reasonable. After all, the supervisors are advisers, and as such they can only advise, in the end it should be up to you to decide when to submit. If your supervisors were correct in that you needed more work on your paper, then your submission would get rejected and you can try again. If they were wrong, then nobody is hurt, no?

@cag51 Actually, ideas are the easy part. Ideas are a dime a dozen: there's simply a lot more supply than demand, as everyone has far more ideas than they will ever work out. Now, working out an idea into something usable, that's the hard part.

by agreeing to collaborate with them on your thesis, you agreed to work together and co-publish any results — This is obviously a field-dependent issue, because this sentence rings completely false. Agreeing to work with someone does not mean agreeing to be a coauthor on every paper that happens while that collaboration is active, only for the specific papers where you have made a direct intellectual contribution. Advisors do not have automatic right to be coauthors on their students’ papers, even if (in my field) they propose the problem, fund the work, and prereview the paper.

@cag51 "writing is the easy part". this varies a lot by the individual researcher. some people come up with loads of ideas but get refused almost however they try to write it down.

To add on to cag51's answer, chances are the editor is being careful about changing the author list because situations where authorship was purchased have happened before. One can guess how it's done: the original authors submit the article, it's accepted (or accepted pending minor revisions), and then during the next stage they amend the author list. Superficially, from the editor's point of view, this seems like what you're trying to do.
It's likely that the journal will let you amend the author list, but only if you give a thorough explanation of why you need to change it. Tell them the added authors are actually your supervisors. Prove it by using your institutional email address, giving your supervisors' names, and their official institutional websites. You can copy your supervisors, too, using their institutional email address (this is arguably a good idea in any case, given the academic misconduct). You may be asked about what each author's exact contributions were, so prepare a response.
You can't change the past, but you can change the future. Making genuine, good-faith efforts to fix the mishap will go a long way towards fixing your relationship with your supervisors.

and not just the organizational issues: You should describe how they contributed to the paper. E.g. author abc gave the idea for this paper, def did the state of the art and performed the expewriments, abc and def interpreted the results and did the discussions, ...

And adding onto what OBu adds, the journal in question hopefully has some guidelines regarding authorship criteria which can be pointed to.  If their own criteria support the addition of the other author(s) that should make things go over more smoothly.  If they clearly do not, that could be used as a potential defense against the supervisor's ire.

@OBu That would be rather hard, though, as Pearl does not believe the supervisors contributed anything.

I think the problem here is very similar to the one in this thread.
The ethical issue is not that the advisor's name should be added at this late stage---which would be unethical, as they apparently did not contribute---, but that they should have been given a chance to contribute, and hence become a valid author, before publication. Similarly to the linked question, you agreed to collaborate with your advisor and went behind their back, denied them the chance to contribute, and published a paper on a topic that they presumably wanted to collaborate with you.
Honestly, there is not much that can be done at this point. I can understand your advisor's standpoint as well as you wanting to move faster. I also think that your advisor is being unethical by demanding that you add their name to a paper that is ready for publication.
I do think your advisor is overreacting a little, but it is difficult to predict people's behaviors. There isn't anything wrong with publishing alone per se during your PhD (as many do), but it has to be mutually agreed beforehand. Presumably your advisor has shared many ideas, comments and suggestions with you in the past, and you not wanting to share one of yours, and work on it together, may be seem as a sign that you either don't trust them, or work to make them not trust you, all of which are bad for an advisor-student relationship. In any case, use the approach to understand what you did wrong, and correct it in your future collaborations.
If you feel that leaving yourself as the sole author will definitely hurt your relationship with your advisor, in my opinion the path that would burn the least bridges is to prevent the manuscript from being published (if at all possible at this stage), work on a new version together, and submit to another journal. The editor may not be happy about this, but ask your advisor if this is something that they would be OK with.

This answer is weird. I want my PhD students to develop into independent researchers. If they develop a result without my help, of course they should just publish it, without asking my permission. I have no more right to be their coauthor, or even to be their collaborator, than anyone else. The idea that my PhD students should ask my permission to do the very thing that the PhD program is supposed to train them to do is mindboggling.

@JeffE it is not about seeking permission, it's about giving the advisor a chance to collaborate. This is analogous to the supervisor independently working on a students' thesis project and publishing before the student. The advisor knows that the student is interested in that topic, and given that they have a formal collaboration, it would be borderline unethical for the advisor to work on it independently. Similarly, the student knows that the advisor has vested interest in the student's thesis project, and not involving the advisor in a related publication is unfair to the advisor.

I also want students to develop into independent researchers, and learning how to collaborate effectively is a fundamental part of that process. The motivation behind OP's action is very selfish. If the OP's publication was not related (or only marginally related) to the their thesis, then I think it'd be unreasonable to ask for the student to discuss the publication with the advisor first. However, given that the publication is likely going to be part of their thesis, which the advisor potentially planned and on which their name will appear, the advisor deserved to have known beforehand.

@JeffE "The motivation behind OP's action is very selfish." Is it really? According to the OP:
"I am aware that it is my fault that I didn't ask them beforehand, but I know in my heart that if I had included them, it would have taken months or years to even get their approval. In all honesty, they would have ended up demotivating me."

@user76284 that's a good point, especially because the advisor seems to be unethical. But I still think the situation could have been solved more diplomatically. Perhaps even by changing advisors if the current one is unwilling to collaborate effectively.

@user76284 is right. Anything that demotivates the student is a no-go and must be avoided or else they will likely hop off at some point. It seems this particular student is wiser than most beginner PhD students.

@FBolst that almost always becomes a mess in one way or another resulting in considerable delays or other difficulties.

@FBoist  No.  Students have no obligation to give their advisors "a chance to collaborate".  It's the other way around: advisors have an obligation to give their students a chance to collaborate.  The relationship is not symmetric.

The answer you have accepted already has the main point right: a supervisor is not necessarily entitled to co-authorship on every one of a student's papers just because they are a supervisor. (But it may help to check if your institution has a policy on this if you intend to argue your point!) I have a few further thoughts on how you might handle the uncomfortable situation of needing these people on side to graduate.
During my PhD candidature, like your supervisors my supervisor would unnecessarily obstruct me in my attempts to publish most of the time. (One of many reasons I did not complete a PhD with him, but that's another story.) I actually missed the submission deadline on one publication I had specially written a paper for because he insisted I could not publish without his final approval and then ignored all my attempts to request that approval. But he was also a big help in getting me to publish work based on research I had done with him as a student prior - because having a publication already made the university more willing to take me on as a PhD candidate, and he wanted me as a student. So it benefited both of us in a way he cared about.
The fact that publication is required for your graduation makes me wonder if your institution also places publication requirements/expectations on research staff. And I wonder if they, like my supervisor, are unmotivated when it comes to pushing through to publication anything that is not going to usefully impact on their quota or - as they see it - yours. Perhaps the publication you are targeting is not of a type they need further authorship credits for and so they are happy to keep casually nitpicking or trying to discourage you from the effort until you are working on something they care to push through. Maybe they don't even realise they're doing it, or that they have been discouraging you rather than helping. Maybe from their perspective you are easily capable of getting your publication requirement fulfilled and they feel pushing you to perfect that publication is what they should do as supervisors. I happened to be at my university while they were transitioning to a system of expecting certain publication output, and the quotas had a peculiar impact on behaviour institution-wide to say the least.
To smooth this situation over you might seek their advice on what publications to submit to in future, even if they are not your preferred venues. Then you are giving them every opportunity to be on board and contribute. But if they continue to obstruct you like this resulting in your having fewer publications than you might be capable of, you are not obliged to let them do so. Cultural expectations of PhD students do vary, but given the situation you have described you appear to have or at least to want some independence in your course, and as someone learning to be an independent researcher it is fine to occasionally say, 'Thank you for these suggestions but taking this on board I am going to go with [this approach].' If you find you are never able to do this then this is not an ideal supervisory situation for a student with a desire to direct their own learning.

Well, based on your description, it looks like you now have limited options.  If the paper has already been published it might be too late to add other authors except possibly as an addendum.  If the journal editor is not receptive to this, you might find it difficult to correct.  So presumably a big part of the issue now is what you should do to follow this up, and what you should do in the future, when dealing with other papers.  From your post I am also assuming that you do not dispute the claim of your supervisors that they are legitimate co-authors of the paper.  In view of this, here is my advice:

When engaging in a relationship between student and supervisor, it is a good idea to negotiate the expectations for publications up front, prior to writing papers.  Supervisors have reasonable claims to be included in publications if they are assisting you with your work.  If they make an appropriate contribution to the research, they are entitled to be included as co-authors.  It is a good idea to discuss expectations at the start of your supervisory relationship.
Certainly you should not publish work they have helped with behind their back, without them having an opportunity to claim co-authorship.  As others have pointed out, this could amount to academic misconduct.  It is unsurprising that your supervisors are angry, since they have spent a lot of time helping with this research, but they are not acknowledge as co-authors.  Since you are a graduate student, and not necessarily experienced in this, they might forgive this error in time, but you'll have to wait and see.
As a student, you probably do not see things from the perspective of these academics.  When you are an academic, supervising a student is a huge amount of work, and the main reward for that work is co-authorship of papers.  Career success as an academic is hard work, and any activity that takes away time without producing research is generally a negative for success.  If you take substantial time from your supervisors, but then prevent them from getting a valid co-authorship of your supervised research work, you harm their careers.  (You are still paying the university for your degree, but the academics are not getting a reward for working with you.)
It sounds like you have already made some effort to rectify this with the journal, but you have not been successful.  It would be a good idea to push this and make sure you exhaust all avenues of possible mitigation.  If it is too late to add new authors to the publication (I don't see why it would be, at least in the online version) then you could ask the journal editor if you can publish an addendum with this information.  I would suggest making every effort you can to convince the journal editor to allow you an opportunity to make this change.
Regardless of whether you succeed in adding their names to the paper, you should keep your supervisors updated of the progress of the paper, even if it is bad news.  If you have been unsuccessful in adding their names to the paper, and it has now been published, you should update them of this fact.  They might get angry again, but they are going to find that out sooner or later, so it is better if you disclose this information.  If you are making efforts to seek an addendum, etc., you could also mention this, and keep them updated of your progress.  It might even be worth asking them to help you convince the journal editor to allow an addendum (e.g., emailing the editor with you).
For future papers, it sounds like you want to be able to get advice from your supervisors, but you also want to have the freedom to submit the paper once you think it is ready, without having to be constrained by them adding more requirements.  If this is the case then you should negotiate this with them up-front.  It may well be reasonable for you to ask that you be allowed to submit to peer review at a certain stage, even if they want more changes.  Peer review is a reasonable test of whether the paper is ready for publication, but bear in mind that your supervisors want to be happy with the paper if they are helping with it and intend to claim co-authorship.  You should negotiate with them up front to discuss when you will have discretion to submit.

Good luck with sorting this out.  The best outcome here would be to get a change to the online version of the publication to reflect the appropriate authorship; second best would be an addendum; third best would be for your supervisors to accept that you have made an error that might not be able to be rectify, but you've tried your best to fix it.

As I see it, there are two distinct questions: (1) Can you publish without putting your PhD supervisor on a paper to which she/he has not(!) contributed? (2) Can you include such a paper as part of your thesis?
1. Can you publish without putting your PhD supervisor on a paper? Basically all scientific journals have publishing guidelines stating that only those people should be included in the list of authors who have made important contributions to the paper. So, if in your case your supervisor did not contribute to that specific paper, then it is not even allowed to put him/her on the paper.  Naming people as authors who have not contributed to the work is considered scientific misconduct. Note, that some journal guidelines even specifically state, that being the head of the division, department or institute, or providing funding for the research is not sufficient for earning authorship. There must be an intellectual contribution. If, on the other hand, your supervisor has made an intellectual contribution to the paper, then it would be misconduct not to include him/her on the author list (or at least offer them to include them).
In order to publish scientific work in a journal you do not need an academic title: you can publish as distinguished professor, but also as student or even as layperson that has never set foot into a University or institution of higher education. If you read through journal guidelines you might also notice the general absence of words like ‘student’, ‘supervisor’ or ‘professor’. The only distinction that is technically made is between corresponding author and co-authors. Here again, a supervisor has no privileges or a right to be the corresponding author only because of his/her rank/function. The idea of academia is that your contribution is evaluated based on the content only and not based on your gender, nationality, age or rank. So, even as a student or as a lay person you have the right and the opportunity to publish on your own account–as long as this work is yours. (It’s not too frequent, but it does happen.)
Has your supervisor made an intellectual contribution to the paper? This might be a question that might be more difficult to answer and where you and your supervisor might disagree. If your supervisor read and commented on your manuscript, this counts as a contribution; but also if he/she just discussed the ideas with you informally or within seminars, this can be considered a contribution. Arguably, even suggesting the topic of the thesis can be seen as contribution, though here the question arises how detailed this suggestion is. If the suggestion is of the kind “you might work on quantum mechanics”, this does obviously not give your supervisor the right to be on all papers you will ever publish on quantum mechanics. If, on the other hand she says “Hey, look at the work of XY and their results YZ, which are rather interesting because they imply that XX and therefore it would be interesting to investigate what happens when ...”, then this idea/plan might be a substantial intellectual contribution. So it is really the question of how much did the supervisor contribute. Who can decide that? I do not agree with the notion that only the supervisor can decide this because of his/her experience. If you have never discussed the content of this specific work with them, then you will know that and then it is correct not to include them. (Note, however, that this is the best way to make new enemies for the rest of your life.) Legally, this is a question of intellectual property. Only few disputes between academic authors go that far that they are brought to court, but if they would, it is by no means said that judges would agree that a teaching relationship gives supervisors automatically rights on their PhD students intellectual output.
To sum this up, I cite from the guidelines of the International Commettee of Medical Journal Editors: "Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading."
2. Can you include such a paper as part of your thesis? This is a different question from publishing and depends basically on the policy of your University and the ruling of your thesis committee. The official University regulations are usually rather vague on such things. They sometimes regulate what kind of clothes you have to wear for the exam or graduation ceremony and they generally say that you have to hand in a written thesis that must be examined etc.. but they usually don’t say anything about shared authorship in publications. The supervision agreements I have seen, so far, usually have some statements that a requirement for submitting your thesis is that a number X of papers have to be submitted to or accepted by peer reviewed indexed journals, etc.., but I have never seen agreements that explicitly state that your supervisor has to be on all those papers. So, whether you can add your paper to your thesis depends on the judgement of your thesis committee. If your supervisor is part of the committee, that might be a problem.
At this point it is worth to mention that just 2-3 decades years ago the publishing culture was rather different with many papers being single-author papers –specifically papers stemming from a PhD thesis. John Nash published his thesis outcome as a single author paper (in PNAS) so did Alan Turing, John Krebs and many others. (Ok those were more than 30 years ago, but there are also enough more recent examples). Since then, publishing practice has changed, but most examination regulations of Universities haven’t kept up with that change and do not consider the issue of co-authorship at all. But they usually do consider the PhD candidate to be a rather independent and intellectually mature subject, and they do regard the thesis as a piece of work that should be the sole intellectual work of the candidate. When you hand in your thesis, you usually have to sign some sort of declaration that you wrote the thesis all yourself. If you are handing in a paper-thesis (where the main part consists of published or to-be-published journal articles) and if these articles are multi-author articles, then you are—strictly speaking—contradicting yourself (because in the author contribution statements of those articles you will usually read something like “XY did this, YZ did this and all authors wrote the paper together”). So, the old idea of a thesis as an entirely independent piece of work done by the candidate alone, as it still lingers around in the examination regulations of most Universities, does not fit together with the highly collaborative way science is done today. As current practice and the official rules and regulations do not fit together anymore, this is also legally a grey area.
Publication have a very central role in the evaluation of academic researchers and, as a consequence, many of the most bitter feuds that are fought in academia originated from disagreement about authorship of formerly collaborating scientists. Many people will have strong feelings about this issue, because they have already been in one of the two situations: where they have unjustly been left out from an author list or where they were pressured in putting people on one of their papers that did not contribute anything useful or anything at all. I, too, have experienced both.

To begin with, you should have been totally honest with him. Failing to do that is entirely your fault. A successful PhD depends on the relationship between the student and the PhD advisor way more than any actual results and papers.
Now, the fact that he is your PhD advisor does not necessarily make him a co-author of yours. He must have contributed in some way to the paper, even remotely such as an idea or a conversation. I would go as far as saying that if you used equipment from his lab, especially specialized lab hardware (if it applies to your case), then yes, he must be a co-author. After all, the criteria for including your advisor as a co-author are considerably looser compared to any other person.
On the other hand, if his contribution was zero as you claim, then in my opinion he has no right to ask for co-authorship, even if you paper was in the same field as your thesis. Strictly speaking, your advisor does not own the scientific field you both work on, even if he did in fact invent it. Science progresses by expanding the ideas of other people - provided proper credit is given. Realistically speaking however, you have to work very carefully in order to prove that he did not contribute to the paper. In cases like this, academicians may resort to the slightest of technicalities in order to claim authorship. For instance, a scientific term that is not standard in the literature but appears in his papers and your paper for him, and probably your institution, constitutes definite proof that he was part of the work. Did you cite some of the past papers of your advisor? That would be really helpful for you. The opposite may as well be interpreted as a proof of misconduct on your part.
I totally agree with the person who wrote that is it something that blew out of proportion. Too much fuss for a paper, even an article, in my opinion. I think the real reason behind it is your advisor's hurt ego and not his decision to punish your for an academic misconduct. The fact that you managed to publish on your own an article to a journal without his contribution might just infuriated him. Is it a prestigious journal in the field? Has he submitted articles to that journal which were rejected?
To help you prepare your defense (sounds like you will need one):

Do not bring the journal editor into this dispute. The more parties are involved, the more difficult the situation will be. Unless he gives you a way to add your advisor as a co-author.
Check the policy of your institution. Is it required that he is a co-author in your papers? Are you required to publish a paper as the sole author?
As stated elsewhere, consult an ombudsman such as the dean of students.
Review your paper meticulously. Find as much evidence as possible that your advisor was not part of the work. Also, look for evidence which can be used against you. If you have cited his work, especially papers you are not a co-author of, it can be used to your defense.
Along the same line of reasoning, check your written communication with him, mostly e-mails or even reviews of other papers he has published with you. Find any proof that he was not part of the research for that specific paper. If by any chance you find written evidence he has previously rejected the main idea of your paper, then it is to your advantage.
Try using your advisor's ego to your favor. Tell him he will be a co-author to a far improved version of this article. With his contribution of course. And work on that improved version.
Additionally, tell him that being the sole author of a journal article gives you some prestige, especially if the journal is well known. By extension, he gets some of that, since he is your advisor.
Please keep in mind that it is crucial that you always remain honest with your advisor.

I hope the above will help you.

hi @george thank you for the comment. I am from the social science background, we do not require any lab. its a purely theoretical paper, i did not cite any of their work as my work is a totally different area from them. it is a prestigious journal and my advisors have not submitted the articles to this journal.

@PearlHyatt all these might explain your advisor's reactions. I figured that it was probably a top tier journal as the editor adamantly refused to amend the author list - of course that is not to say that journals who do that are not worth publishing to. If your article is in a different area and your advisor did not contribute to it, my guess is that the dean of students will hear you out. But please make sure you prove beyond any doubt that is truly an independent work. At any rate, congratulations for publishing to a top tier journal!

My answer is going to be more succinct than most because so many have already contributed so much, but I feel there is a single course of action that will address the concerns.

Contact the editor of the journal and indicate that you are withdrawing the paper. In that email/phone call/letter/etc. BRIEFLY describe your oversight in citing your PhD supervisors as the reason for withdrawing the paper.
Apologize to your supervisors for the oversight.

Journals hate to withdraw papers from publication after acceptance. They've already spent editing and review time to get to this place - withdrawing the paper is a nuisance and they would resent having that time wasted. No matter what they have told you about their policies, they likely prefer publication over withdrawal from publication. If they are trapped by their organizational policies, they will likely be able to respect the position you're in.
Then:

Work with the outcome, whatever that outcome is.


text:
Alma mater (USA) refuses to remove my name from public search
The professor of a US university where I graduated from with a master's degree maintains a website that he makes available for public search. He lists students that attended one of his courses, including the groups they were in and the topics they chose for presentation. When someone does a public search with my name using google or yahoo, this information comes up.
This has been published for many years and I recently requested the IT department and the professor to block my name from public search. I do not provide such information myself online and it is more than annoying for me that this information is available on the internet. So far, the university has refused to remove my name.
Which department of a university handles complaints of such a nature? Is there any law that entitles me to get a removal? Do I need to hire a lawyer for such a silly issue? What course of action do you recommend?

Legal issues aside, it could be helpful to ask why the professor does not want to remove your name.  I’d guess something like: when he is assessed for grant applications, internal promotions, etc, this website may be read as a record of his teaching experience.  If you know his motivation, then you can try to suggest an alternative which works for to you both: e.g. that on the public-facing webpage he could give a disclaimer “some student names omitted by request, for privacy reasons”, while still including the full list in non-public versions of the document.

Contact the ombudsman (if there is one) or the legal affairs office. The ombudsman/student advisory committee may refuse because you're not a current student. Alternatively, would you be satisfied if the professor changed your names to initials?

Did they affirmatively refuse to remove your name, or did they just not respond?

I don't really understand, why it is so important for you. It serves as a proof for you, for example as the validity of your degree. I suggest don't believe this pathologic data protection hyteria (especially while surely you also have a lot of google, apple, etc. accounts), and actually what you need is not hiding your data, but advertise it. Advertise yourself, for the academic programs selections and the workplace HRs of the future.

If you were in EU you could use the right to be forgotten. AFAIK nothing like that exists in the US.

What are you hiding? That you have obtained a master's degree with a US institution? Why does it bother you that your name returns this search result? Even with this removed, your name likely returns many other results...

@SnakeDoc: I don't think it is up to us to question why.

(slightly off topic) @peterh: I disagree with your point of view. Someone who is trying to keep their privacy on the internet can easily have more shadow accounts than real acounts. And while I do not question your right to advertise yourself as much as you like, I equally grant the OP the right to limit the advertisements about them.

@peterh: I have earned a masters. Why would a website that states I participated in a specific course validate my degree? Why would I need to validate my degree in the first place? Fact is, not everyone likes to "advertise" himself on the www. To SnakeDoc I asked for advice, not for your personal sentiments. Things are not always black and white. At least not in my world. So, all those people who don't put their resume or other aspects of their personal lives online, have something to hide? It sounds more like you have something to hide. Thanks to those who answered my question! FERPA it is.

@Leslie In your reply you are argumenting about everything, with a single exception: WHY you won't exist in that course in the Google. There is clearly no valid reason behind that; if it would, you had said it now. Thus, I can imagine 2 reasons, why is it so important for you: 1) pathologic data protection hysteria 2) maybe something isn't okay with your papers (for example, there is some data mismatch) and you see that google hit as a danger. None of the cases are acceptable reasons for your behavior.

In the United States, educational records - including the fact of your enrollment in this particular course - are protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
FERPA prohibits disclosure of personally identifiable information from education records without the student's consent (except for directory information, which class enrollment is not - and you also have the right to limit disclosure of directory information, on request).
You can contact the professor and insist that he remove your information from his site, as he is illegally disclosing course enrollment without your consent. You can also find out who fields FERPA complaints and questions at that university (typically the registrar's office) and ask them for help in limiting disclosure of your education records. If this doesn't help, you may file a FERPA complaint here.

Note that "honors and awards" count as directory information, so, for example, a professor listing the names of the members of a group that won an award for their project might be an exception to your answer. That said, as you correctly mentioned, they should still comply if you request removal. Degrees earned and dates of attendance also don't require permission to release, IIRC.

It's also possible (if not likely) that OP gave consent at any number of times during his enrollment and tenure at the institution. Whether or not OP can rescind this permission is another question.

@Nate FERPA also allows students to withdraw consent for disclosure, so the answer to that other question would be "yes"

The ed.gov page says a FERPA complaint must be "filed within 180 days of the alleged violation or within 180 days after the complainant knew or should have known about the violation."  If the OP has known about the issue for years, then it's too late for them to make a FERPA complaint.

@NateEldredge I suspect that failing to remove the information from the website on request (which was recent) also constitutes a violation. (More specifically: the student can say that he initially consented to the disclosure, and didn't do anything about it, but now wishes to withdraw that consent, and the violation is the professor's continued disclosure after withdrawal of consent.)

This is no different in the EU.

@NateEldredge I'm pretty sure that clock doesn't start ticking until the violation has stopped. Kind of like you can't kidnap someone and hold them for 18 years then claim the statute of limitations has expired when the police find you.

@ff524 are we really going to prod the OP into taking legal action against their Alma Mater?... over their name being on the website? How many people have the same name? Could be anyone, and OP needs to understand how the internet works... removing their name from the website doesn't remove the record... this is a ridiculous request.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
How to proceed when the journal does not provide a template?
I am working on publishing a review article in the Journal of Medical Internet Research or JMIR. However, I cannot find any templates that can be used to format the paper easily. LaTex templates are not available and not accepted either. What can I do? Does this mean that I have to manually format my paper according to their guidelines?

Since the journal is in a medical field, I wouldn't expect the production staff to know how to handle LaTeX submissions in the first place. You can ask before submission, of course, but the simpler (and more likely to work) method is to just go with the format(s) they explicitly support. In this and many other journals, that means MS Word. There is a link to a Word template from the Instructions for Authors page.

thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

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


text:
Course Syllabus changed drastically, leading to drastically different final grades
I've seen elsewhere that other professors reserve the right to change syllabi midsemester. However, it's been brought to my attention that a course in my department has had its syllabus drastically altered. Specifically the grade percentages were reweighted (homework went down, exams went up) after the assignments had been submitted, and a project that was supposed to be 40% of the students' grades was removed from the syllabus (as the professor apparently just never assigned it). Students are now being graded out of the remaining 60%. As such, students who expected to be able to use the project to recover their grade (or in some cases move up entire letter grades) have come to me recently to ask for advice on how to proceed, but I haven't had a good answer for them. I just haven't seen something like this before.
There is another post about dropping a 20 percent attendance portion, but it was unclear from the post if this was to the students' benefit. Another post had homework going from 10% to 20%, which harmed an individual student. In this case, from historical data from the class, students perform highest on the project, and lowest on the exams, and these two shifts seem to have negatively impacted nearly all students in the class, but boosted a few who did well on the exams. Students say that the instructor said there are no plans for additional adjustments (i.e. a curve, or lowering letter grade thresholds)
I wanted to ask here if any (US) academics had seen similar situations before. This seems like something that is not fair to students, but I am unsure as to what actions (if any) can be taken here, and if this is something I should somehow report "up the chain" and go hands off. I am not familiar with my university's policy on if syllabi can be changed mid-semester (I have never needed to do so, and any edits I have seen in the past have been minor or only to the students' benefit), and didn't know where to look for such a policy. Again, I understand that syllabi can change, but this seems to be a drastic change with drastic ramifications on students' grades, and therefore their health, hence my concern. Any recommendations for what I should communicate to the students are welcome.

What exactly is your relation to the professor and their students? Are you the department head? A colleague of the professor?

Colleague of the professor, I don't know them personally but have met in passing. Both of us are relatively new: tenure track but neither of us are tenured, hence why I would prefer to go up to people more senior in the department. Students coming to me are former students.

It's great that your former students think of you as someone to consult  about this sort of problem. Unfortunately, without tenure, you probably can't do much to correct the situation. There should be someone in your department officially in charge of such matters (maybe the chair, or, in large departments like mine, an associate chair). I recommend that you inform that person about what's going on. (Long ago, I was that associate chair, and I'd certainly have wanted to be informed.)

Many universities now require that syllabuses be filed with the department or college before classes start. If so, the only applicable syllabus for assignments, exams, and grading is the one that has been filed. When this is required, the syllabus becomes the university procedure. Students in the course could legally enforce the terms of a filed syllabus. It would be enough for someone to mention this to a department head or dean.

This is clearly a bad situation. If you were the instructor, I am sure that our advice would be emphatic and harshly phrased.
As it is, though, you are not the instructor, nor does it sound like you have administrative responsibilities that require or invite you to involve yourself here. But there probably is a person who does have such responsibilities (e.g., the department chair).

Any recommendations for what I should communicate to the students are welcome.

I would tell the students precisely this. While you will not get involved personally, the appropriate person to share their concerns with is the chair. You might suggest that they send a single letter co-signed by many students, or else ask for a single appointment that many students attend.
If the students seem likely to do this, you might also send a brief "heads up" to your colleague. No matter how tactful or hands off you actually are, it's not unlikely that the students will say something like: "Prof. Baseball said that we should complain to the chair about Prof. Reweight," and so a preemptive note that explains what you actually said could avoid some tension.
Finally, I realize your question is a few months old, so this specific incident has probably already been resolved. We would love it if you updated your post with what you actually did and how it went.

This answer is dead on. The changes made are not just changes in the syllabus for a course, they are substantive and material. There is likely institutional policy on such changes. If not, such an incident is likely to lead to the adoption of a policy on what are reasonable changes in grading standards midway in a course.

I serve on our university's grade appeal board and this would be a clear win for the students if an appeal were brought forward.

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


text:
Recommendation letters when changing between two unrelated fields
I was a humanities major in undergrad and am now applying for a master's in engineering. The program I'm considering is a three-year MS that explicitly targets students without engineering backgrounds. To apply, all they require is proficiency in first-semester calculus. Besides a stats elective and AP credits, I didn't take formal math courses in college, but since graduating, I've self-studied the calculus sequence and differential equations, and I am currently working on linear algebra.
My concern is with getting letters of recommendation that will be relevant to the admissions committee. I have one recommender, my undergraduate thesis advisor, who can attest to my research skills and time management. For the second letter, I think it would be ideal to have someone who can speak to my math ability, as I can imagine that admissions will regard my self-study with skepticism. However, I've been out of college for a year and a half and now work overseas, so seeking a reference from someone in my university's math department is impractical.
Do you have any ideas for how someone in my situation could get a letter of reference from someone who can directly address my potential as an engineer?
Failing that, or perhaps in addition, can you suggest any concrete ways I can demonstrate my math ability to the admissions committee?
I've taken a look at these two questions:

Who to ask for letters of recommendation when changing fields after PhD?
When changing fields from undergrad to PhD, which department should recommendation letters come from?

I believe my question is distinct since I am looking to make a much more drastic switch between fields, and my competitors are also people who are changing fields.
Both my undergraduate institution and the graduate program in question are in the US.

If someone in your undergrad math department has actually evaluated your work, then the year and a half is not an obstacle for a recommendation. Best if they know you as more than a body who occupied a seat, of course.
But in general, if no one has seen your work, nor had a chance to evaluate it, then they can't really attest to it, ethically or practically.
Since your situation is described as a bit unique, let me suggest, at least, a unique solution. You could ask a mathematics professor, either at your original institution or elsewhere, to evaluate your skills. There are at least two ways that could be accomplished. They could just give you a final exam from some recent course and decide whether you have the skills. But a fifteen minute or so oral exam should be enough to get an idea. They could then, simply certify about what they did and how you did. It wouldn't be a real letter of recommendation, perhaps, but might fulfill your needs.
An alternative is just to suggest to an admissions committee that you would be willing to take such an exam if there is any doubt about your qualifications. That alone might be enough.
Thirdly, nothing at all might be needed. The program seems pretty flexible. Perhaps flexible enough to accommodate your self study as valid.

Thank you for the response! I'm currently already doing the second of your suggestions by including an "additional information" document where I briefly describe my self-studied topics and express my willingness to take their placement exam or correspond with one of their math instructors. I'm still debating whether I should try to contact a real math professors. Being overseas makes it hard to meet in person, but perhaps they'd be willing to have a video chat or do a take-home test.


text:
If I drop out of a PhD program, do I have to pay back the university?
I recently accepted a PhD program offer of roughly $21,000 for a year (2 semesters) of TA work.  I will be attending a university in the USA, and I am studying computer science, if that affects the answer.  If I drop out before going through the whole program, do I have to pay anything back?  My girlfriend was concerned about this.
I already looked for a duplicate answer on Academia Stack Exchange but didn't find any.

It is country and university specific. In France we have Écoles normales supérieures. I was paid by one to get my PhD, but in return I signed a contract with the French State. However, your interest is to get a PhD....

It would be almost unheard of in the US for you to be asked to pay back money in such an arrangement. But note that you are probably paid monthly, and if you quit in the middle of a year, the monthly payments will stop then, and you won't see the entire amount.
You aren't promised the total, but only an amount that will come to that total if you see it through.

As a curiosity, up to about 20 years ago, PhD students who dropped out in my country had to pay back all the money earned during the year in which they dropped out (I did my PhD under these terms). Luckily, rules have changed.

@MassimoOrtolano What country?

@Nathan Italy. PhD scholarships are largely funded by the government with an additional portion from the university (this portion varies from university to university). At the time, in case of drop out, they wanted the money back from the beginning of the year (this probably happened also if you were fired from the PhD program).

I've heard of something similar where MD-PhD students would drop out of just the MD portion. They would be required to pay back the Med School tuition they received.

If it is actually structured as a salary for TA work (not a generic scholarship), in general it's not possible for the university to claim any amount paid for actual work done since it would be your wage; otherwise it would be wage theft and illegal under labour laws.

@CJR If I quit, I very much hope it will be a reasonably well-considered decision rather than one made in the middle of the stress of the semester.  But thanks for the note

@Nathan I wouldn't really recommend starting out your relationship with your grad school by asking questions about how much money you get to keep if you quit.  Just ask if the taxes on your stipend are a W2.  That will give you your answer.

@Jeff If you wanted to make this comment an answer, I would probably accept it.  It doesn't exactly answer the question in the header, but it solves my next step, haha.  Maybe something like "almost certainly not, for a U.S. university, but to check for certain, just ask if the taxes on your stipend are a W2"

@jeff In general, it is best to understand what you are agreeing to before you agree to it.  why would grad school be any different?  if such a question sours the relationship, it probably was not good anyway.

@emory I disagree; gotta side with Jeff on this one.  People are how they are, not how you want them to be

@Nathan It is your life, your decision.  Personally, I would hope that the acceptance letter unambiguously spells out terms (it probably does).  Failing that, I would ask for clarification on anything I was unsure about.

Norway
Since I am living in Norway, I will answer for our country. At this point this might seem like a list of answers for all countries.
As for the current rules, Lånekassen is in charge of granting scholarships  (stipend) and loans (lån). As long as you are studying fulltime, you have a right to taking up loans granted that you're not a full two semesters behind in terms of credits.
If and when you pass your courses, you will be forgiven 50% of your loan, transformed into scholarship instead.
So, yes, here you would need to pay back 100% of the courses you haven't passed. For the courses you have passed, you would only need to pay back 50%.

As a note, public schools here are free, so scholarships/loans are granted as a means to survive, and are only given to people that do not live with their parents/family.

As others have said, the answer would be country dependent.
It would be unlikely to hear about someone reimbursing their funding while dropping out of a university at the US. However, I would like to add this as a warning to students from other countries stumbling across this post: in some places, like Brazil, this would not be the case. For instance, the policy is actually dependent on what specific entity is funding your work, and you should always check the rules regarding those possibilities.
One example where the money payed to the PhD student throughout the program should be fully refunded (Brazilian funding agency, link in portuguese): CAPES Portaria 76


text:
How do so many people here on Academia.SE, and in general, afford lavish higher education programs?
I graduated last year with a BS in Computer Science. I do not come from a particularly wealthy family, (very low middle class), and was only able to afford my education via school loans/scholarships and working low-wage jobs, with no support from my family or anyone else. I realize some scholarship/loan programs extend into grad school. But I don't think those cover all costs.
Now I'm lucky enough to have a decent-paying salary in industry, along with benefits and living on my own, and I'm thinking one day (sooner rather than later) I'd like to try my hand at research or continue my degree, but these things cost money, in addition to my regular living expenses.
I read posts here often about academic people being in positions of choosing between these crazy research grad programs, some in Japan, or Ireland (while they currently live in the U.S./U.K.) then moving around between countries/universities often for their SO's education or to pursue a new research interest. I'd love to live somewhere else for a while and do research.
I'm becoming increasingly jealous of the people with these opportunities - assuming I were to even get into one, how can I afford these programs, especially given the fact that people working in/during Academia generally don't make as much as those in Industry?
Is it simply a matter of having a wealthy family/connection or saving up? Am I missing something here?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49632/32575

There is a kind of survivorship bias here. Many graduate students do not have access to funding or significant personal wealth, and are not able to complete PhDs at all - let alone very expensive ones. If you ask people who did complete PhDs about their financial resources or education costs you will over-estimate both, because the graduate students who complete PhDs are likely to have had more resources than those who did not.
In my cohort (a social science program at an R1 in the U.S.) there were perhaps 30 students accepted, of which only a handful had financial support (they were paid teaching assistants, which came with some tuition remission).  Of course, once we completed our M.A.s most did not progress to PhD work. We took jobs outside of academia. Certainly our economic or financial situations were a large part of this.
Contrary to Buffy's answer, in my cohort financial hardship was common. Tuition and fees for out-of-state students for us was about $30,000 per year. Even living inexpensively at that point means that you would need a good full-time entry level salary (in our area) to cover your basic expenses.
On the other hand, the few students with departmental support continued on to complete doctoral programs. Some others with significant personal wealth were able to complete Ph.D. work also, but at least among the people in my cohort, that was only a clear factor for perhaps 1-2 people. Debt for unfunded graduate students is almost a foregone conclusion.

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

I fear that this being the selected answer for a question that explicitly mentions Computer Science (CS) PhD programs could be slightly misleading. As has been said elsewhere, In the US/UK/Canada students admitted to a PhD program in CS do not pay tuition, and receive a (usually modest) stipend. Moreover, they often do internships in companies, which can easily double their income. Of course there is still a question of missed opportunity costs.

Nothing against this answer, but it seems to answer a completely different question! Just commenting because I'm confused why it was accepted. OP asks "how am I supposed to afford this", and this answer says "many others cannot afford it either" and "those who have money are more likely to succeed". Both true, but not an answer to the question at all.

Anoe - The disconnect there is because the question in the title and the question at the end of the body are different. It's not clear what the relationship between them is, but I definitely intended to answer the more general question in the title.

@AnoE I accepted it because it was the more general answer - and because it points something out that no other answer did, which is indeed the survivorship bias. I've looked around a bit and not all CS PhDs pay their  students. Maybe it's the area I'm living in that's the issue. But it proves that it's not as black and white as people say it is in other answers here. There was a lot of really good answers so it wasn't easy to choose, because I think they're all correct to an extent (though I'm unsure why the top voted one is a random fact about Germany when I tagged US)

@Programmer The impression is that you accepted the answer conforming to your preconceptions. After having lived in multiple countries (including the US), I have not met a single PhD student in the sciences (or CS) who did not receive a stipend or equivalent.

Bachelor and Master degrees are a lot cheaper in Germany. In fact, they are mostly free (you need to organize and pay for your housing and living). For a PhD you don't pay but get paid, often with employee status, but sometimes with a stipend instead. So financial issue pose significantly less of a constraint compared to the USA.

Comp Sci graduate students in the U.S. (both Master's and Ph.D.) are usually graduate assistants, at least in my experience. Their tuition is covered fully and they're additionally given housing and living stipends. They're not paid nearly as much as a job in industry, of course, but it's typically enough to get by through school. Of course, undergraduate degrees are a different matter (though, at least in my state, it was pretty easy to get those paid for with scholarships... I had so many scholarships that the university paid me about $7,000/yr to get my B.S. in Comp Sci.)

Same case in France. Higher education is almost free and you get paid as a PhD. The pay isn't crazy but enough to raise a family at least.

Yet the question is tagged US

@Marine1 There is an increasing number (admittedly from a small base) of students from US who avoid the tuition fees by studying in Germany. So this is one possible solution.

@reirab You shouldn't make the case that scholarships are easy to get. Its dependent on a multitude of factors and there are many people, including some I know personally, who barely received any funds with great resumes.

@theblindprophet That's why I said in my state. I'm aware it's not the case in all states. It actually is pretty easy here. The primary 2 scholarships I got (which, when combined, were more than full ride) are available to every student in the state who had good ACT scores and high school GPA. There was no additional selection process. Everyone who met the criteria and wanted it got it.

"...they are mostly free..." To the student. I assume it's funded primarily through tax money. I feel this is an important distinction.

@jpmc26 ofcourse, the question is written from the perspective of the student, and so is the answer. That does not change the fact that providing tertiary education is expensive, and if that money does not come from tuitions, then it has to come from somewhere else. In case of Germany, that is the taxpayer. Whether this is the right way to spent that money is a continuous debate here, and the outcome of that democratic process is for now that it is paid for by the taxpayer. This is very much a contious and democratic decision rather than a "historical accident", so I am fine with that choice.

The US has public universities and community colleges paid for by the taxpayer. Tuition there, especially at flagship state universities, has been increasing recently for complex reasons. But the numbers are largely meaningless except to the small subset of students who actually can afford it. Everyone who needs it gets financial aid which includes taxpayer-funded grants in part.

Everyone who needs it gets financial aid which includes taxpayer-funded grants in part. — That part has been shrinking for several years, to be replaced by loans.

In many places, including the US, study for the doctorate, though perhaps not so much for the Master's. comes with some sort of funding. The funding is often dependent on work, either in a lab or as a TA (the most common case). In popular fields, such as math and CS, doctoral granting institutions also normally teach a lot of undergraduates. It is normally much more than what the full-time faculty can handle. I studied math long ago and there were two funded doctoral students for every faculty member. About 70 faculty and 140 TAs. We made dirt scratching wages, but it was enough, but only because our housing was also subsidized. I finished with a small family and a doctorate. My spouse was also a student in a different field with little funding.
But doctoral study isn't just tuition driven as undergraduate study is in much of the US.
Being a full time employee somewhere and also a full time doctoral candidate, however, is very difficult. If you have substantial financial obligations it is even more difficult unless you can find a part-time program (which exist).
However, if you can live on poverty level income for a while, you can earn a doctorate without substantial debt. It isn't the fastest way to a degree, of course, since you are a part-time employee, but it can be a good trade off. Note also that tuition isn't normally charged to TAs. However, US tax law is gettin weird. Some want to treat the tuition "grant" as taxable income, which becomes impossible to cover, given the low pay. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. It is as if some people want a stupid citizenry. I'm not certain of the current state of that proposal.
If you intend to be a teaching scholar (as in the US) then a TA position will help you learn the art of teaching (by osmosis, mostly), so it contributes to the overall goal. But if you intend to be a research scholar, look for a funded lab that will get you deeper into the research a bit earlier.
I don't have personal experience in Europe, but from colleagues, I get the idea that doctoral students are more or less regular employees that do most of the things that regular faculty do, up to and including advising of other doctoral students. One friend successfully advised a doctorate for another student, but left without his own. These sorts of things seem to occur both in UK and in Germany, at least, but others there can give a more complete picture. The positions have a lot of responsibility, but you are low ranked and only adequately paid. But enough to raise a family at least, if that is an issue. Such positions of responsibility are uncommon in the US.

Caveat. My experience and the above is from Mathematics, computer science and some of the other "hard" sciences (what ever that means). It differs in other fields. See other answers here for very different situations: say indigochild. Someone has to be willing to pay for the support, government, foundations, industry, etc. Or the candidate as the last resort.

It appears that the proposal to tax the tuition grants was killed shortly after being floated due to strong negative reactions.  https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/15/16778862/republican-tax-bill-grad-student-tuition-benefits

Even still, grad student wages are harder to stomach if you have less of a safety net, little savings, or no partner. I haven't heard of subsidized housing existing for grad students for quite a while now

@AzorAhai, no employed partner, I think you mean. One option at large places, for some, is to house sit for faculty on sabbatical. But yes, poverty wages.

@Buffy Yes, that's true. I've never heard of someone in that arrangement, but glad to hear it exists for some.

Good answer, but in my European experience, doctoral students don't formally advise other doctoral students. In Germany, they may supervise BA students, in Austria not even that is allowed.

When undergrad students were interested in applying for graduate programs, my advisor (engineering) would frequently tell them "if they [the program] aren't paying for you, then they don't really want you".  Your research/TA work should cover your tuition and at least some living expenses.  Avoiding schools in high cost-of-living areas helps tremendously with stretching salaries/stipends.  It's a step up from being a normal college student, but might be a lifestyle compromise for someone coming from industry.

@henning. I thought it an odd arrangement when I first learned of it. My example came from UK. I was friends with both people. I was an external reviewer. There were more senior faculty involved in all of it, of course.

Grad student stipends can vary a lot between places/departments, but certainly my experience (in a prestigious CS department in a relatively inexpensive city, which admittedly might be best-case) was nowhere near "poverty wages"; my stipend was ~2.5 times the official poverty rate for a single person, and still above the official rate for a family of 4. Of course the official poverty rate is not an ideal measure, and if you have substantial outside debts / obligations / etc things might be tight, but most grad stipends in CS at least are fairly livable.

That said, there are of course substantial barriers involved in terms of the cost of applying, relocating, relative lack of ability to contribute to family / build savings, and so on, that can be huge problems. But someone coming in with "a decent-paying salary in industry" should probably be fine.

I was a grad student back in the 1980's when the US started taxing the grad student stipend (not the tuition - yes, the stipend used to be tax free). The engineering school wanted to increase the stipend to reduce the impact on the students, but the other university schools vetoed the proposal since they did not have the number/total/volume of grants. I ended up moving, with my roomate, to a smaller place somewhat further out from the university. But, I really can't claim to have lived in poverty at all. I just couldn't splurge on things.

Since the question is tagged US, I will answer with that perspective.
There are three very different types of programs that generally are referred to as graduate degrees: PhD, masters, and professional (MD, JD).
Professional degrees generally cost a lot, with the understanding that they are a ticket to a high-paying career that will pay off the enormous cost (>$100k), usually involving some large loan.
Masters degrees are shorter, which makes them a bit cheaper. However, unless you are lucky enough to get a scholarship or do them via a PhD program, they will cost something like $30k—$100k. People often use them to pivot their career or get into the US from abroad. However, one way to get a “free” masters is “on the way” to completing a PhD. For me, the masters requirements were a subset of the PhD requirements and I just needed to fill out a form to get a masters, which was entirely optional. Most North American PhD programs will give you a masters too and the cost is covered as part of the PhD.
Research doctorates (PhDs) are very different. Students are almost universally paid either as a teaching assistant (TA) or a research assistant (RA) or a mix of both. This will usually cover the cost of tuition, health insurance, and a modest living for single person ($15k-$35k). In some sense PhDs are free, except you will spend 5+ years doing it rather than doing a more highly-paid job; so make sure you enjoy it!
The duties of a TA/RA will vary considerably from program to program, and from advisor to advisor. I was very lucky and basically got paid to do my own research, plus three semesters of reasonably laid-back teaching. If you are less lucky, you will be working in a lab for 80 hours a week or teaching 100 undergrad students more or less on your own. An RA is dependent on your advisor having research funding and a TA is dependent on there beingnclasses for you to help teach. Definitely investigate the expectations before joining a PhD program!

Thank you for explaining each step of degree and how much they cost. So basically I just need to be able to "afford" a master degree, and then "survive" my PhD.

@Programmer, masters is not a prerequisite for a research PhD in the U.S. in many fields. Most applicants don't have one.

@usul That's great to know! Thank you. Makes more sense now.

@Programmer It's possible to get research or teaching funding during a masters, as well.  Probably more easily if you're picking up a masters on your way to a PhD.

I’ve updated my answer to reflect the getting a masters as part of a PhD path. Thanks for reminding me of this.

'Most North American PhD programs will give you a masters too'. Maybe you meant 'USA and Canada'. Because to the best of my knowledge, that is not the case in Mexico. Doing a 'direct PhD' there seems to be the exception, not the norm. Anecdotal evidence: all the PhD students I've met enrolled in a distinct master's program before.

Everyone has to decide for themselves what they want with their lives.
Take yourself, for example. You have a decent-paying job in industry, but you also want to try your hand at research. Are you willing to take a ~50% pay cut so you can "try your hand" at research? If your answer is no, then that's why you can't afford higher education - you value the things the higher pay can provide more than you value higher education. Someone else might say yes, and that's why they can afford it. It is no different from e.g. buying a car. How do people even afford to buy a car? Those things are no less expensive than a Masters degree.
Do you really want to do higher education? If so, you can find the money to do it, especially since you have a decent-paying job (I for example saved >60% of my monthly salary). Even if you don't have a decent-paying job, there are plenty of scholarships and bursaries you can apply for. Where there's a will there's a way.
Having said all this don't feel bad if you genuinely think that higher education isn't worth it. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Giving up a decent-paying job to go down an uncertain career path is not necessarily a good life decision, and few things are worse than spending several years chasing a PhD before realizing one doesn't actually want to do graduate study (example, example). If you really care about research and are willing to sacrifice other things to do it, then by all means, but you shouldn't feel jealous about not doing it.

-1 For suggesting that individuals decide what they want to do with their lives. While individuals can choose between options, and occasionally fashion their own - generally, it is powerful social forces, concentrated in the hands of influential minorities, that determine the distributions of what most people do.

@einpoklum You are very right. But I suspect the ones best suited for specializing in the way a PhD is crafted are usually not very sensitive to those forces. Their happiness when socially acknowledged is at most like 1/100 or 1/1000 compared to that feeling of making a new discovery in their favourite playground, err.. research area.

@einpoklum That's a non-sequitur. If I go out on the street offering people $100 no strings attatched, most will take them. The distribution of what most people do is determined. But that doesn't mean they didn't decide what they wanted to do.

I read posts here often about academic people being in positions of
  choosing being these crazy research grad programs, some in Japan, or
  Ireland (while they currently live in the U.S./U.K.) then moving
  around between countries/universities often for their SO's education
  or to pursue a new research interest. I'd love to live somewhere else
  for a while and do research.

You make it sound like a wonderful thing. In reality, the person you are mentioning were struggling so hard with the two-body problem. And believe me, it is not nice at all to fall into the so called ``postdoc trap'', and move to a new continent every two or three years.
Contrary to what you think, most graduate students are not from wealthy family. Most of them are from China, India, eastern EU, third-world countries, who wants to have a better life via education.
People from wealthy family often have better opportunities, and they are not willing to work several years with minimum wage just to earn a PhD. Also they often have an easy life since they were born, and don't have the determination to complete a PhD.
I'm from a South East Asian country whose GDP per capita is around $2000 per year. So even people in upper middle class earn less than people in extreme poverty in the US. There are rich people, e.g. from the corrupted government, but do you believe they are interested in doing research.
If you want to do research, maybe the first exercise is to "search'' for a scholarship/funding for your study. Most PhD programs, in particular in STEM, are funded. Even if you plan to self-fund your Master study, you don't need to be from a wealthy family.
I have a friend who self-funded her Master study in France by working as babysitter during the school year, and working in the farm during the summer. I have a friend who self-funded his Master in Switzerland by washing dishes in a restaurant (the tuition fee in Switzerland is around a couple of hundreds bucks per year). I had a friend in Germany, who bought food for dog from the supermarket to eat during his Master (I heard that it tasted good). All of them are now rich and successful.

"Most of them are from China, India, eastern EU, third-world countries, who wants to have a better life via education" What part of the world are you referring to here? I don't doubt there are places where this is true, but as it stands, your statement is unclear. Also, I would point out the OP is asking about the US, where tuition isn't $100s.

@AzorAhai In the US, undergraduate and Master are expensive, but PhD programs are mostly (if not all) funded. And they don't require a Master to do a PhD. I did my postdoc in a university in Silicon Valley, haft of PhD students were Chinese, the rest were Indian. None of them were from wealthy family.

Yes, but you specifically discussed master's programs. You should edit your answer to state that in Silicon Valley, most PhD students are from those counties

People living in third world countries who are actually living in third world conditions have very little chance of crossing the planet for grad school or a postdoc. A few get lucky somehow, but overall I'd say the west disproportionately gets the children of the wealthier classes from those countries.

@ASimpleAlgorithm "A few get lucky somehow": yeah, right. A few get lucky by, for example, doing research in the universities for just $50 or $100 per month for a couple of years to have publications to improve their CV. Just pure luck, nothing more.

I completely disagree with this answer. There are huge social origin factors shaping the access to university, especially in the US. Giving a few example does not, by any means, make a valid argument. You directly blame the OP when the socio-economical situation has a dramatical impact on the possibility to complete a master's degree or a PhD. Nature even published articles about that (here and here). Do not blame people when you have no idea about the situation. OP may need advices more than being bashed.

@qsp I'm referring to people living in villages who can't even attend that university without some kind of assistance or luck (e.g. getting the top score in ~1000 people on an entrance exam).

-1 For claiming that people are to blame for "lack of hard work" for not being able enter grad school despite having performed well as undergraduates. There should be no financial barrier which requires "hard work", or any work - if you meet the academic requirements. It is indeed "the situation" that is at fault.

Your post has a rude tone. For example, you're "TL;DR" comment is abrasive. Please consider editing your post to follow the be nice SE philosophy.

In the tech field, a benefit some companies offer is to pay a portion of your education in related subjects. This is typically called "Tuition Assistance" which has a yearly cap and some conditions like grades for courses.

I think company support for doctoral study is fading from view. It used to be quite common for large companies like IBM to heavily support their employees. Not so much anymore. But it is highly dependent on the economy of the moment, I think.

The military also offers TA which can cover a Ph.D (though you'd have to stay in the military for a number of years, think mid40-50s to finish). This is how I finished all but a semester of my Bachelor's (which allowed me to finish my Masters with the GI Bill) and I have a few friends I know who completed their Masters this way so it does happen.

how can I afford these programs, especially given the fact that people
  working in/during Academia generally don't make as much as those in
  Industry?

Sorry life is not fair. While you aren't able to afford the study costs, many other people could. Students from rich families would have no problem doing a MBA/PhD/graduate programs.

Is it simply a matter of having a wealthy family/connection or saving
  up? Am I missing something here?

Not totally necessarily, but having a wealthy family wouldn't hurt.
No arrangement (scholarship, tuition fees etc) can cover up your salary from the industry. You just need to have money.

Sad but true. Education in some country is only related to your wealth.

I know I'm late to the game, but I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents for future prospective grad students scrolling through these forums:
I am one of the people OP describes who have an incredible opportunity to study abroad for a few years (Canadian-born student; will be completing a PhD in Europe). I come from a lower-middle class family (parents are both first-generation immigrants and worked minimum wage jobs for most of my life; now retired). I paid for my entire education myself, from undergrad through to the end of the PhD. I currently have no debt and hope not to have any by the time I finish (fingers crossed; this may not be possible though). It took me 6 years to finish my undergrad. I worked 20+ hours/week during the school year, and 60+ hours/week during the summers (usually a full-time NSERC USRA + another minimum wage job... although I tried to get more "academic" jobs as time went on and opportunities presented themselves, e.g. as an RA or university tutor). I always took a full-course load, and while some semesters this was doable, others I felt like the sleep deprivation and burnout would kill me. When I wasn't working, I was applying for scholarships or doing bits of volunteering on the side (to put on my CV so I'd have a better chance of getting the scholarships I was applying for). I also compromised and did my BSc and MSc in a cheap university/town... less well-known, but it got me the degrees. (I also took 2 years to work full-time and save whatever I could to make ends meet... I did this through my university's Co-operative education office so that it didn't look like I had a gap in my education, and could work jobs that looked good on a resume.)
When I started my MSc, I applied for grants like crazy and, after several rejections, landed funding through Alberta Innovates ($26 000 CAD for my second year... however, my first year I didn't get anything, so that was tough. There were times I thought I'd have to drop out of school). I also kept applying for every smaller scholarship, research bursary, and grant I could find. I think throughout my MSc, I made around $60 000 and got by financially.
About 14 months prior to the end of my MSc, I started contacting potential PhD supervisors in Scotland and Ireland, as I always wanted to live there & thought science would be a good way to do that. I spent ~7 months applying/interviewing for funding opportunities. They are few and far-between for international students, so I had a back-up plan in case nothing worked out (I'd also applied to law school & was interviewing to teach English abroad). Surprisingly, I ended up with full-funding from each of two international universities (the University of Edinburgh and Trinity College Dublin). One of these had a programme that would involve significant travel as a student... if this is what you want, all you have to do is find supervisors who value this & make an effort to include it as part of their research programme.
So, there you go. It's a ridiculous, occasionally-awful, long-winded process, but it is possible to afford to do something like this without being independently wealthy (although I believe it will often be much harder & take longer that it would have if you had more money). And of course, if you have parents in academia or are independently wealthy, I'm sure you could go further in your career than I did with a fraction of the work... but on the other hand, I think the resilience, flexibility, & drive that I've built up over the past several years makes me feel like I can do just about anything (if I plan appropriately and give it my all). Who knows - maybe this'll give me an advantage someday :)

Thank you for your input!

By making financial considerations a significant part of my decision-making process.
I'm not from a wealthy or very connected family but two main elements.
1: I was lucky enough to be born in a country where my undergrad was mostly covered by state funding. I chose where to study and what partly based on being able to save money by remaining a manageable distance from home. I could have gone to a bigger-name institution but it would have meant a major financial hit.
2: I picked my postgrad partly because there was an EU program that made it close to free because they projected that there would be significant demand for the skillset in a few years time. Again location picked to remain a manageable distance from home which kept direct costs down.
Both were also picked for being fairly safe, reliable courses with clear paths to stable employment.
Combined with working part time during the year and a summer job and tutoring jobs I was able to avoid racking up any debt.
Had I chosen instead to move halfway across the country to study an expensive non-subsidized course while living in rental accommodation... that wouldn't have turned out the same.
Now, working in a university, I'm making arrangements to do a part time PhD while remaining on my current salary.
Some things are about a little luck but much is about maneuvering into positions where things can be done for a low cost.

Just to offer a perspective I don't see here, the situation varies by field. I'm a computer science PhD student, and I started my PhD after working for a year after undergrad. I did not have a master's, and my stipend as a PhD student is about 30k/yr, which is around normal. My TA requirement was light: I had to TA two courses, and that was it. Now I just do research.
30k goes pretty far as a single person, so the money is not a lifestyle constraint for me. Also, in computer science specifically it's fairly common to do industry internships (e.g. work at Google/Amazon/Microsoft etc for the summer, hopefully doing something related to your research), and these can add another 15-25k onto your annual salary.
In general the financial ease of a PhD in area X is directly correlated to the "employability" of an undergrad degree in area X. It's easier to find jobs as a computer science major than a humanities major, so PhD programs in computer science have to "compete" harder for PhD students and therefore pay and treat them better, albeit not close to the compensation in industry. It is very rare for computer science students to pay anything for their PhD, and typically it's not advised.
The opportunity cost of a PhD in computer science is high in terms of monetary compensation. Most people at good programs could easily triple their salary in industry -- multiply this over 5-6 years and there's a several hundred thousand dollar difference. So there is some selection against people who really need to make money (e.g. if their family requires it), but probably less than in other disciplines with more dire funding constraints.

This has to be anecdotal, because I don't know how everyone does it, and there are a lot of different possible paths.
For myself, I did most of the master's coursework over several years, while working full-time.  (At an employer who originally hired me as an undergrad intern.)  Then when that job ended, I had a good bit of money saved.  The habits of frugality I'd learned in earlier life meant that between this and a paid RA position (which was doing my thesis research) I could live quite comfortably by my standards.  (Which I admit aren't everyone's.)
Then after getting the MS, I worked in industry again and accumulated enough to become independently poor.  So I could do the PhD more or less for entertainment.  Add in another RA position, and a couple of very well paid research internships with major companies, and I did quite well.
So that's a possible answer: take breaks for well-paid industry work, live relatively frugally, and find paid RA/TA or internship positions.

My previous employer would reimburse a significant amount towards education each year. They were able to write off about $6,000/year per person on taxes, so they passed that on to employees. Very few took the company up on that benefit. In the office that I worked in, about 5% of the employees eligible took any education benefit.

Lots of different ways to do it, here's a few...
Not a lavish education, but my BAS in software dev is costing me about $30 per credit hour due to employee benefits working at the college I'm attending.  Have an agreement for tuition trading with the large state research university in the same town, so I could in theory go all the way to PhD only having to pay books and non-tuition fees (student life stuff, etc).  My daughter's schooling (starting her AA in 3 weeks) will cost me the same ... as will my other 2 kids, and if my wife wanted to, she would get free classes as well.
Additionally, some employers in industry do tuition reimbursement, usually related to continuing employment for X years after graduation.  The large hospital chain I worked at in the 90s did this, reimbursed 70-90% of tuition based on grades.  So, may be worth checking your HR department, or looking for a job at an institution you'd like to attend.
Depending on your mindset, you could always join the military and use GI benefits to pay for schooling, both while serving and after you get out.  With your BS, you'd qualify for OCS possibly, especially if you did reserves and ROTC while doing your masters - one of the people that taught me Turbo Pascal back in the 80s was doing this - Marine reserves and ROTC, graduated and was commissioned as a captain.
Of course, if you aren't too far in debt already you can always do the math and figure out how much more money you'd make with a masters and if it is financially worth it to just take loans and do it.  At least working part time with a BS in Comp Sci you'd make good money vs. minimum wage....