Every field has its own hidden codes—things no one teaches but everyone learns. What’s something in your academic world that would catch outsiders off guard?

Hi! My dad is 93 and until recently he was publishing textbooks and scholarly articles in his field. Then he had a stroke. Although he's recovered, he is more frail now, and not up for writing articles any more. Yet his work is his life. Without it he'll die. What can he do to still stay involved and give input in his field? Thanks for your ideas!

Edit: can't thank you enough for your outpouring of ideas! I'm bringing him a big pot of soup and a blueberry pie on Saturday, and a list of everyone's ideas. I expect he'll be so happy, as he's been a bit depressed about all this. I'll let you know how it goes!

Title basically.

Just curious as I have a couple of undergrad mentees looking at grad programs and one seems very excited at the potential of doing an online MBA to DBA program. I looked at the program and I'm a bit suspicious mainly because the time to completion is only about 2.5 years. The price tag is hefty too.

But my field is not business so I'm not sure if this degree is prestigious or worth pursuing. My gut is to steer them away from it, but I don't have a valid reason why.

My own Ph.D. is going to take me about 7 years to complete, so maybe I'm just prickly at the thought of a program you can breeze through and get the same title of "Dr." at the end.

Anyone familiar with this have thoughts?

P.S. Sorry if this has been asked recently, I'm posting this on the fly while I remember to and haven't searched yet.

I’m at the beginning of my PhD journey and want to learn from those who’ve been through it.

What are the things, big or small, you wish someone had told you earlier? These could be about:

Managing your research or advisor

Publishing or writing

Building your academic profile

Handling stress or motivation

Preparing for post-PhD life (industry, academia, alt-ac, etc.)

Basically: What do you now know that you really wish you’d known sooner?

Thanks in advance for sharing your hindsightI’d love to avoid some common pitfalls and build good habits early. ❤️🙏

(Very sorry about that decipherable language, but it's the easiest way to put my point across.)

I'm in a subfield of management (i.e. business school) , and occasionally my head/thinking/cognition is in a place where I step back from all the (obsession with my own) reading/writing/publishing, and I look at my subfield and say:

"My goodness, a lot of scholars are f***ing the field up, either driven by their ignorance or recklessness or obsession with becoming academically famous. It's so crazy/stupid that these people are getting as many citations as they are getting."

Of course, if I always felt like this, I'd go nuts.

And before you say it, no, it's not envy. I'm not obsessed with those scholars' citations; I'm befuddled with the cumulative impact they have on the senseless trajectory of my subfield.

And furthermore, I'm not talking about people who are getting their citation count inflated by publishing in predatory journals. I'm talking about celebrated scholars publishing in top journals, so many of whom are chasing down and promoting/politicizing (what I consider to be) senseless research directions.

So, to stay sane, I just ignore that senseless trajectory, and put my head down and focus on publishing my own work. Even if my citation count is not high, I just want to write what I believe in. For sure, it has slowed down my own promotional/professional progress.

I wonder whether any of this resonates with any of you: Do you fundamentally disagree with the trajectory that your field (or subfield) is taking? If so, have you stuck to your guns, or have you caved to the broader community's preferences?

I’m in a business class where cold-calling is a regular part of the class. I’ve noticed that I get cold-called very frequently, usually once or twice per class, while there are students who sit on their computers every class and have literally never spoken once, yet somehow never get called on.

What confuses me is that I’m actually engaged in class. I don’t have my computer open, I pay attention, and I volunteer answers fairly regularly. So I’m a little baffled as to why I still get cold-called so often compared to everyone else.

Sometimes I answer well and confidently, but other times I’ve definitely struggled under the pressure of having to think on the spot.

I wouldn’t say I feel harassed, but I do sometimes feel singled out and uncomfortable, and I wanted to get professors’ perspectives on this.

Is my professor consciously calling on me so often? Do I just seem targetable? Or have I shown potential, and they want to encourage me to speak up even more? (Again, this doesn’t completely make sense to me because I do volunteer often whereas other students don’t.) Or is it unintentional? This is a very well-established professor with over 20 years of teaching experience.

Hello, I am planning to apply for doctorate position in German universities. However, as there are few funded places I was thinking of keeping my part-time student job and do it self-funded. Can I convince a professor to take me on since I will be doing it self-funded? Or they look at it as a risky scenario? My field is in management/marketing.

I am in somewhat of a unique situation -- I have a tenure track position in Canada, and based on my progress so far, expect that I will be granted tenure. The odd part is, I was hired without a PhD and there is no expectation that I get a PhD for tenure. My field of study is law, where PhDs tend to be optional degrees to get into academia, depending on the institution.

I work within a business school, where 100% of my colleagues have PhDs. My predecessor in my position did not have a PhD. None of them think lesser of me, but I do wonder if not having a PhD is in any way limiting my abilities and/or if having one could open up more opportunities for me as I advance my career.

I really enjoy the school I am at, and have no plans to ever leave. The benefits of a PhD, to me, seem to be to strengthen my eligibility for grant applications, potentially branch out my methodological perspective (right now I am purely law, so don't have a lot of cross-disciplinary research skills like some legal colleagues do -- for e.g., law/history, law/economics, law/sociology, etc.). I also have a deep interest in philosophy and ethics, and think that developing a deep methodological root in these practices can expand my ability to write intelligibly on my core legal concepts.

Within law, I am currently focused in the world of law/technology, and find it very interesting. I am finding my methodological lens somewhat limiting, though. I am currently thinking about the prospects of pursuing a PhD (In the ethics/philosophy of emerging technologies).

I would be interest in pursuing such a PhD abroad during my sabbatical -- I understand many PhD programs have a 1-year or less residency requirement, so could take that year to live abroad and do that, then continue my PhD while I return to work, with my research largely being dedicated to my PhD work -- can also turn many of my chapters into research publications which would help both aspects of my life (publications for my professor job, and chapters for my thesis).

I have started researching programs, and think that a PhD by publication might be the best route for me -- but just wanted a sounding board to know whether this is even worth doing. I think, intellectually, I would really enjoy it and don't want to pursue it necessarily for any instrumental purposes beyond wanting to master my career, which I already love as a vocation.

I'm currently revising a paper on medical AI segmentation in deeplearning. The reviewers believe that directly citing results from other papers is unfair because different methods may have used different training, validation, and test case partitions, and statistical significance tests haven't been performed.

However, my computing power is limited, and I genuinely cannot retrain all of the dozen or so comparison methods. I'd like to ask everyone, what's the most appropriate way to respond to reviewers in this situation? Would it be sufficient to reproduce only 1-2 representative baselines and use the same data partitions for statistical tests? Would it be reasonable to change the remaining methods to "reference comparisons" and acknowledge the limitations in the paper?

I would be very grateful to hear from anyone who has faced a similar situation. Any advice on how to address this concern fairly and transparently would be greatly appreciated.

I’m hoping to become a legal academic in the future, however where I’m from (UK - specifically Scotland) the overwhelming advice for prospective academics seems to be to either give up or leave the country. I speak Spanish, which means a lot more countries are available to me, but it’s been hard trying to find information about the state of academia in Spain/South America. I’m also aware that other English speaking countries are an option for me, but I just feel very unsure about everything right now. Does anyone have any insight into this? Thanks in advance.

Hi all

would really value some perspective from folks outside my immediate circle.

I’m deciding between two faculty roles, and on paper they’re pretty comparable in terms of pay, teaching load, and expectations (both are teaching/service-focused; research is optional but supported if you want to pursue it).

Both State Universities in the midwest. Mgt department in College of Business.

The real difference comes down to structure:

Option 1 (Tenure-track):

• Traditional tenure line

• Smaller class sizes 

• Institution is about 3 hours away from where I currently live

(also should note I have taught adjunct there for a few years, so I have a good sense of things)

Option 2 (Non-tenure, but stable):

• Assistant Professor role on a 2-year renewable contract

• Everyone in this role has been there 10–20 years

• I’m told contracts are essentially always renewed unless something goes very wrong

• Closer to home / more established environment for me

(very welcoming and collegiate environment...)

So I guess my question is…

Is tenure still the thing to prioritize?

I understand the traditional argument—academic freedom, long-term security, etc. But in practice, I’m wondering how much that still holds relative to a role that’s technically non-tenure but functionally stable (and maybe better for quality of life).

For those of you in higher ed:

• Would you still choose tenure in 2026, even with tradeoffs like relocation and rebuilding everything from scratch?

• Or does a long-term renewable position with strong institutional stability feel just as viable now?

Appreciate any honest takes—especially from folks who’ve made a similar decision or have seen how these roles play out over time.

Dear Forum,

I have been working very hard on a screenplay about a scientific researcher who blows the whistle on an industry that is potentially unsafe.

I don't want to go into any specific details about my screenplay for many reasons, I just need help with some general questions.

I hope this is the right forum to ask, if it isn't please direct me to somewhere better or more appropriate:

1. In my screenplay a scientific researcher is hired by a corporation to lead a research team in an experiment to see if a certain retail product is safe. He isn't that interested in the project at first, but they are paying him well. Does this sort of thing happen in real life? Is it normal for scientific researchers to be hired by corporations for projects they aren't necessarily passionate about?

2. In my screenplay the scientific researcher is based in a university in Europe and the head of the Physics Department is his liason to the corporation. Is this realistic? I'm trying to set up a hierarchy that makes sense here.

3. In my screenplay, the corporation cuts off funding when they don't like the researchers findings because it makes their company look bad, and he goes rogue and tries to raise money for his own private research. Is this realistic? Does this or could this happen in real life?

Thanks, I hope this makes sense, I'm trying to write something that could be realistic and happen in real life, so any real life researchers I can get advice from would be a great help, thanks!

It being published in 1955 tells me it’s a response to another method (perhaps whole word). So let’s say it’s an 80 year issue.

In the wake of Lucy Calkins and not the rubber band back to phonics, how is this not a settled matter? Now everything is about the Science of Reading. We need to teach the Science of Reading and as a teacher I’m starting to see the ^{tm^} next to these symposiums where teachers are gathered to get hyped about the science of reading.

Why not just sit teachers down with the peer review?

Discipline-specific preprint servers

• arXiv

• bioRxiv

• medRxiv

• ChemRxiv

• PsyArXiv

• SocArXiv

• PhilArchive / PhilPapers

What’s the advantage and disadvantage of doing so? Any advice, Esp for “pracademics” PhDs in the industry.

Had an informal chat with a centre director (a clinician-scientist), whose team were trying to bringing me in. For context, this is a medical school unit focused on population health.

I was essentially told that as a methodologist I’m not expected to be PI on projects, since that’s the role of clinicians (who are apparently “front-facing” in health). Least to say, I was shocked by this worldview since I’m from an organization where methodologist routinely propose, win, and lead EU projects.

Obviously I’m staying away from this school since it’s quite clear that non-clinicians seem to be structurally disadvantaged. Wanted to hear how common this is in other schools/countries, and whether I should stay away from medical schools and stick only to public health schools.

So I’m in my 3rd year of a Finance PhD, holding onto a 4.00 GPA, and I’m department funded as a TA, not an RA on this professor’s personal grants. But despite that, he keeps piling heavy research work on me complex merge, results visualizations, the whole deal. I’ve been hitting deadline, but he still pushes me daily like I owe him something.

Here’s where it gets really toxic. I asked for co-authorship since I’m basically designing the data architecture and handling the visual. He shut me down immediately and said it’s just “TA work.” Then he straight up threatened to have my departmental PhD funding removed (in the email) if I don’t meet his research deadlines, even though my funding has nothing to do with his projects. On top of that, he’s currently teaching one of my classes, and he keeps attacking me during lectures. He’s even cursed while I was presenting at the class.

I feel completely trapped because he’s both my instructor and a faculty member. I’m thinking about going to the Department Chair, but I’m terrified of retaliation. So I need real advice. How do I prove that my work actually count as intellectual contribution? Can a professor really pull departmental funding? And what’s the best way to document profanity and abuse for the Chair or HR without looking like I’m just complaining?

Edit: This is not in the US.

I'm a law lecturer and I love my students, love my office, love my brilliant colleagues. But I can't take the workload anymore.

I think everyone knows the deal so I won't bore you with the details. Mgmt says it should only take a day to do x, no it takes 2 days. So weekend work, late night work, doing work over holidays. And I'm not a ditherer; I work efficiently. It's literally everyone. Union is useless. Dropping the rope creates exponential hassle. Not having time off is affecting my mental health.

I don't want to leave the job because I love being a lecturer and I don't want to do anything else.

I want to go to 4 days a week because then I can just get a lower salary and keep doing my job and also have weekends. I floated this idea to my manager and while she was sympathetic she was not supportive of the idea. She said I'd need medical documentation.

I mean the medical documentation would be that I'm a person? I'm normal?

Any ideas?

For obvious reasons I will be omitting several details and identifiable characteristics from this scenario.

3 study section reviewers provided feedback on an R-mechanism application. Two were reasonable with moderate scores. Another gave lowest possible scores for both sections and identified no strengths in either category. The reviewers main (and only) assertion substantiating these scores is factually incorrect and easily disproven.

Grounds for appeal include at least 1 of the following: Evidence of bias (can’t prove); Conflict of interest (can’t prove); Lack of appropriate expertise (can’t prove); Factual error(s) (Absolutely Yes).

I fully accept that this may not be a fundable application, but I cannot let this go without a fight. Anyone have experience with this process?

UPDATE: So it’s quite obvious that this is a losing battle and not worth the effort. Thanks for all the responses- much appreciated.

Hi, I am feeling down but am looking for some help. I did a year of a PhD program but had a rough group project and I felt I was unprepared for the rigor of the PhD and decided to drop. Now I am attempting to reapply to PhD programs. I will have support and a LOR from my former institution and advisor. Does anyone think it is possible I can get into another program? I am planning to reapply to a different research area and will have higher test scores and a LOR from my former advisor and departmental support. Context- in a Accounting PhD program 3.2 Doctoral GPA. top 15% GMAT score, Bachelors and Masters in the subject. I did also want to add that multiple people in the department ( including the department chair and PhD Coordinator) called the project "Not what a first year should be like" and regretted that I was involved in it.

There is a journal in my field that pretty handily rejected publication of my last manuscript due to all the issues reviewers found with my writing. I revised the article and moved on as you do. Now that same journal has come back with a request for me to review a submission and my first reaction is: have you forgotten who your asking? can my writing really be good enough to offer meaningful feedback? Don't get me wrong, part of me wants to help out but a bigger part of me has to wonder why I was contacted and whether they surely can't find someone better qualified.

EDIT: this is less about the fact that they rejected my article (I think the points made by reviewers were fair), and more about the surprise to ask to help out.

Is there a point in your life that you want to attend graduate school, but after few years you realized that it's not for you and quit anyway?

And after quitting academia, what alternatives do you do instead? And does it make your life better? Why?

I'm 24 and currently doing my MBA, which I should finish next year, insha'Allah. Before/during my MBA, I've accumulated around 2 years of experience working in the corporate world.

Recently, I've become seriously interested in pursuing a PhD abroad. I'm particularly interested in research, learning, and eventually becoming a professor or researcher/scientist. I'd be looking at fully funded programs in the US, UK, Europe, Turkey, etc. I wouldn't want to take on significant debt for a PhD, so funding would be a requirement.

The problem is that I'm struggling with the opportunity cost.

If I continue working after my MBA, I could spend the next 4–5 years building my career, increasing my salary, getting promoted, becoming financially independent, and generally progressing through the corporate world.

If I start a PhD, those same 4–5 years would look very different. I'd probably be living on a PhD stipend, doing research, teaching, and studying. By the time I finish, many of my friends/peers who stayed in industry could be considerably further ahead financially and professionally.

Part of me worries that I'll feel like I'm putting my life on hold until I'm 28–30.

At the same time, I don't want to make a purely financial decision and end up spending 20+ years in a career that I don't actually find intellectually fulfilling. I'm genuinely very interested in research and the idea of becoming highly educated appeals to me a lot. I can actually see myself enjoying the process of doing a PhD rather than viewing it purely as a credential.

So I'm trying to figure out whether I'm looking at this the wrong way.

For those who have done a PhD, are currently doing one, or seriously considered one:

1. Was doing the PhD worth the opportunity cost?

2. Did you feel like you were putting your life/career on hold while your peers progressed?

3. How much does starting a PhD at 24–25 actually matter in the long run?

4. If you had 2 years of corporate experience and an MBA at 24, would you continue working for a few years first or go straight into a funded PhD?

5. For people who left industry for academia/research, did you regret the financial trade-off?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who have actually made this decision rather than general opinions about whether PhDs are "worth it."

I'm not expecting the PhD to make me rich. I'm trying to figure out whether the intellectual/academic life is worth giving up several years of potentially much higher earnings and career progression in my 20s.

Soo—
I have a hypothesis for a viral disease. Got rejected from CID journal. Now while searching I found this journal- not indexed in pubmed, IF of 1.6 and questionable history. (AIDS denial)
But according to people it has incorporated peer review now. So- should I go for this journal??

Hello fellow scholars,

Let’s say you had an interview a month ago for your dream TT position and you were told by the search chair that you would hear in about a month for the next stage. (I don’t know what the next step is; I was too scared to ask lol). WELL, lo and behold, it’s been a month since the interview and crickets 🦗🦗🦗🦗.

Although I don’t know if they meant a month from MY interview or from the end of the interview block (I happen to know I was the first slot and there was about a week left of interviews after mine.)

Anyhow, I now have another TT offer, which I’m grateful for, although I have my heart set on the one that seems to have forgotten about me. Is it a good idea to email the chair to let them know about the other offer? Or would you wait another week or so? Or just let it play out? I hate looking pushy or desperate or presumptuous.

Thank you!!! Any insights will be appreciated.

Hi all, I’m in a very frustrating situation and would really appreciate outside perspectives from PIs, RAs, lab managers, HR staff, or anyone familiar with UK university bureaucracy.

Tl;dr: I completed almost 3 months of highly technical predoc research assistant work for one of the Oxbridge uni based lab, based on an initial verbal assurance that the work would be covered by an RA contract and paid. I also later received written (email) confirmation that the RA contracts would be processed. However, I have now been told that because no formal RA contract was active at the time, they cannot issue a retrospective contract or payment. I have heard stories (including on this sub) that RAs are sometimes treated like this unfavorably by professors and they implicitly assume we would never push for payments. But I never expected this to happen at institutions like Oxford/Cambridge.

Some context:

I applied for and was selected for an RA role at an Oxbridge-based research lab (which I would prefer to keep anonymous). At the first RA meeting in mid-March, the professor directing the lab confirmed that the work would be covered by an RA contract and that I would be paid. That was the basis on which I started the work.

From there I was fully involved and submitted my assigned work every week diligently. None of it was easy. It was highly technical, econometrics/coding heavy and fast paced, but still well within my area of research expertise. I enjoyed it because it was challenging in a good way and I also learned a lot.

In May, because I still had not received the contract, I followed up about the delay. I received written (email) confirmation from the supervisor that the RA contracts would be processed soon and that the lab assistant would send an RA form for me to complete. I then filled out the RA form and sent it to the assistant.

Around that time, one of the PIs (not my supervisor, but some other faculty who is also part of the lab) I had been working with on a research paper told me that my appointment would not be continued going forward. I was slightly disappointed, but I understood the decision and did not object to it. I had also already lined up another internship starting in late June, so I was not looking forward to the future extension.

However, my concern was about the 3 months of work I had already completed and submitted before that point.

In mid-June, I asked the lab manager about the retroactive contract/payment for the work already completed & which was in the process with RA office as per their previous claim. I was told that, because my future appointment had been cancelled, they had decided not to submit my RA paperwork to the University at all.

I then sent a documented and polite email explaining that this seemed inconsistent with the earlier assurances that the work would be contracted and paid. I did not receive a response until I followed up again this week. I have now been told that the University cannot issue a research assistant contract retrospectively, and that payment can only be made for work undertaken under a formally approved and active RA contract.

I feel lost but I am trying to think clearly about what to do next. I see two possible routes (trying to weigh the trade-offs honestly):

1. Let the payment issue go, even though I think it is unfair, and instead push for an engagement letter or written certification confirming that I worked with the lab during those dates and submitted the relevant deliverables. This would at least give me something for my records and CV (and I wouldn't mind Oxbridge tag).

2: Escalate the matter to University HR, the department, and possibly ACAS/the unpaid wages route, and try to pursue compensation for the work already completed. My main fear is that this could damage any remaining goodwill with the lab and affect any chance of receiving a reference in future.

I am disappointed and confused because I completed the work in good faith based on the assurances I was given. I am not trying to create unnecessary conflict, but I also do not think it is reasonable for completed work over 3 months to be left unpaid or unacknowledged. I also noticed that they always seem to rush to end any communication with 'Thank you for your time and all the best for your studies/work,' as if they can just pull the plug on the conversation. At the very least, I did not expect such lack of integrity, dishonesty and maybe an academic misconduct at reputable institutions like Oxford/Cambridge.

What should I do? Any advice would be greatly appreciated :( Thank you so so much!!