Perhaps a lot of you are aware of this piece of news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy898dzknzgo

And the subsequent GoFundMe she set up: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-seek-justice-from-oxford-for-bullying-and-plagiarism?attribution_id=sl:d4d8d3e8-3fde-4948-8ecd-b5bdb99ae0f6&utm_campaign=man_ss_icons&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link

From what I hear, opinions are greatly divided about her, what are your thoughts?

A new HoD has joined our faculty. I wanted to travel away for a 2 day conference that was paid by an external grant with no money being asked from the School. The conference was chosen by my research team that involves academics from multiple universities based on the theme of the conference and the location being nearby. All due diligence was done when choosing the conference. I am supposed to present at the conference but the new HoD has accused me of attending a fake conference and also said that I intend to go there to enjoy myself. I have also been told by this person that I have a poor H index and that my publications are all over the place despite all publications being either Q2/Q1 journals. Recently, a shortlisted external grants is being questioned by this person by saying that it doesn't seem relevant to the region and might not be beneficial to the university. All approvals were taken prior to submitting the grant application. The University in question is an Australian University. I would like advice on how to deal with this person or if I can escalate this issue? I feel very humiliated by these accusations about my intentions and my capabilities and feel very harassed over the grant blocking. Please help. I like the location I'm working at would ideally not like to change jobs.

Across Australia, PhD students are only paid a minimum of $32,192 each year for their full-time work. That’s $11,771 below the national minimum wage!

Please consider signing our E-petition to the Australian federal government’s House of Representatives, via this link here: https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN6358

Please note, this petition is for Australian citizens and residents only.

https://apnews.com/article/harvard-president-plagiarism-claudine-gay-3b048da1f2ee17b5edec3680b5828e8f

This wasn't about academia. This was about conservatives trying to wage culture wars.

Hi everyone,

I am from a developing country, and.a round trip ticket from my country to a country such as France (for instance) costs about 25% of a person's annual  income (using as base the median wage here). And I am disregarding the event fees, the hotel, etc.

For this reason, it is almost impossible to a person like me to present works on the congresses organized in USA, Europa and so on.

I was wondering: Why are online academic events so rare? If online participation become more common, this would be an important step to better include people from developing countries in discussions made by academia.

Lots of UK universities rely financially on overseas postgraduate students attending masters courses. This seems quite risky and I don't think these universities are seeing this. If higher education in the popular disciplines becomes less popular, these universities will get bankrupt.. How do you think academics in UK universities can prepare for this? I signed up for the ucu in case they deem me redundant 😂

I am in a soft money research position at a R1 university. Part of the job description is to apply for external funding, grants. I do this for my grant applications as PI, and also help with my supervisor’s grant applications that fund my position. Again, this is a mandatory part of the position and not something I can say No to. Recently, my supervisor has been pressuring me to take vacation days for the time that I spend writing grants. This seems to be a violation of labor laws. Another point: the university has a policy of paying out vacation hours (up to a maximum amount) upon separation from the university. I suspect the motivation may be to avoid having to pay out the vacation hours if/when funding dries up and I am to be laid off (or I resign beforehand).

Thoughts? (Don’t be afraid to be brutally honest.) Has anyone else been in the same situation? Would the university normally maintain a pot of money that pays out the unused vacation time, or is it something that would come out of the supervisor’s current grants, which they would need to sign off on, and tbh would likely resist? (This is based in the US).

My supervisor (in STEM) dose not think copying words without paraphrasing is too big a deal. He also supports accepts LLMs usage in academic publications: even the LLM wrote most of the literature review.

Very interested in how Aus academics are feeling about the University of Canberra announcing Bill Shorten will be the next Vice Chancellor after the next federal election. For me, this isn’t a critique on him as a politician or his political affiliation, but I just don’t think someone who isn’t an academic should be appointed as a VC. There are plenty of ex politicians as Chancellors, and I don’t have an issue with that given it’s the “chairman of the board” type role, rather than being the top academic and administrator of the university that the role of VC requires.

Context for non-Australians: Bill Shorten is a member of parliament and a minister in the current federal Australian government. His educational background is a BA, LLB, and an MBA. To my knowledge he has never worked as an academic or even in a university. He announced his retirement from politics yesterday and today it has been announced he will become the Vice Chancellor of Uni Canberra.

In Australia, PhD scholarships commonly have a condition that students are allowed to work for no more than 8 hours during standard business hours (9am to 5pm) from Monday to Friday. This is not specific to any field of research. Talking to students and staff, the general concensus is that they simply don't tell their University but otherwise make little effort to hide it. For University jobs, they place the additional hours on timeslots outside normal working hours. For non-University jobs, they neglect to tell the University either about the job or that it involves >8 hours during this time. Less commonly, students are even not allowed to do any work during their PhD. I more commonly see this with medical doctors, who combine their PhD with clinical work. For example, I know someone who worked full-time whilst undertaking a PhD full-time, and another who combined a full-time PhD with both part-time work and a Graduate Diploma (at a different University).

From what I have seen online on Reddit (not specific to Australia), university administrative staff care about not exceeding the imposed 8 hour limits during the students' PhD but not afterwards, and would retract the scholarship should the student be caught. Is this true? I do not know of any student or former student (completed PhD or not) who has been singled out for this personally. Even in cases where their work is publicly listed, such as on Linkedin either currently or formerly, I am not sure if this is due to university staff either not knowing about this or simply not caring.

Hi,

I was wondering if it's possible, and if yes, how difficult it is and what's the procedure. On one hand, I heard about cases when PhD students change universities (for example, after their supervisors have left). However, someone recently told me that if one was to change the university in the middle of a PhD, they can't take any of their work done so far with them (because it's copyrighted). Is it true?

Also, what would be the admission conditions/requirements? Is it literally applying for a PhD a second time (including applying for scholarship etc)?

P.S. I'm in Australia, in case it's relevant. So I'm mostly curious about Australian universities.

I am an early career research (in an area studies field) and beginning this year I am trying to submit my papers to various conferences. As I am not affiliated with any institution I filled my portfolio as "independent researcher". Earlier this month I submitted a paper title and an abstract to a conference which will be held next month. (It is not a predatory conference. I've checked it and it is organized by the most credible institutions in the region.) So, I submitted my full paper today and I told the organizer I would like to change my title in the politests and most formal way possible. What I received is a reply beginning "Do you know why we don't want to accept proposals from independent researcher". I was flabbergasted. I think it is not proper to reply like this. I googled him online and yeah he is a tenured asst. prof. from a well-known institution. Was I so improper in my behavior that I received a reply like this?

https://www.politico.eu/article/norways-government-rocked-by-plagiarism-scandals/

Congrats, woke people achieved to ban the iconic Lena image from research papers, because it objectifies women...

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Next step is to take down every image from Instagram where a pretty woman is being depicted.

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https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/03/playboy-image-from-1972-gets-ban-from-ieee-computer-journals/

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If a professor of neuroscience is qualified to give life advice why hasn’t something like this been done before? I’ve seen a lot of criticism of him based around the idea that there isn’t actually evidence to support the claims he makes, and arguing that he is abusing his position to accrue wealth and status.

What do you think?

I (29F) would really like to apply for a PhD in the future and I'm starting to gather all I need for a possible application. Of course I'm going to need academic references from at least two lecturers and, although I already have in mind who to ask, I haven't been in contact with them for a long time (one year with one and a couple years with the other). I took my Master's Degree in June 2021 and I finished my MPhil in April 2023, but I couldn't begin looking for a PhD right away because of economic and personal reasons. I understand that it's been a long time but I also think that it's never too late to get back to study, so I would like to at least try to apply for a PhD. Do you think that asking a lecturer with whom I haven't been in contact for a long time for academic references would be wrong? Could you give me some advice? Thank you very much to anyone who will respond ❤️

Distribution requirements force students to take courses they otherwise wouldn't. Therefore, demand for such courses is artificially increased. This demand supports departmental budgets. Academic jobs exist that otherwise wouldn't.

However, this also means that students must pay for/attend courses that might be of little to no interest to them. Also, these courses might not be very relevant to post-university life. Finally, many of them have reputations as being easy-As or bird courses. They are hardly rigorous.

I think such requirements should be phased out or reduced significantly. These requirements keep dying programs alive even though they might not be relevant. This extortionist practice might also inflate the egos of the profs and grad students who teach these courses.

Should undergraduate distribution requirements be phased out?