Time-saving tip for submitting letters of recommendation

Every time an undergraduate applies for graduate school, a graduate student applies for a postdoc, or a postdoc applies for a tenure-track job, he or she must ask at least three professors for a letter of recommendation.  And, every time and tenure-track professor goes up for a promotion, his or her institution must ask 5-20 professors for letters or recommendation.  As a result, many professors find themselves writing 10-20 letters of recommendation per year. 

Many institutions recognize that writing a letter is a time-consuming task.  As such, they make submitting a letter a quick and painless process: click on a link, upload a letter, done.  But, at some institutions, in order to submit a letter, a professor must additionally fill out some bullet-based rating of the person he or she is writing about.  When one considers that undergraduates typically apply to 10+ graduate schools, filling out such bullet-based rating systems quickly eats into a professor's time.

My department chair suggested a method to me a few years ago that he uses to minimize the amount of time he spends on such rating systems.  At the end of every letter of recommendation he writes the following:

P.S. If your application system requires that I fill out a number- or bullet-based rating form, I have either omitted this or filled out the highest rating for everything if the system did not allow me to continue otherwise. I appreciate that you use this information in your evaluations, but I recommend that you change your system to account for the over-extension that all of us in academia experience with writing of many letters of recommendation each year.

This method saves him time and does not hurt the student for whom he is writing a letter.  I now use this technique when I write letters and find it to be a significant time-saver.

Want students to solve more practice problems? Try this.

Most textbooks in STEM disciplines include at the end of every chapter a number of practice problems.  Solving these problems (or at least trying to) is, in my view, one of the best ways for students to learn the material in a given text.  Because solving problems is an effective tools for learning, I assign some of these problems as homework to be turned in and graded.  Unfortunately, attaching a grade to a homework problem has an unfortunate side effect.  Rather than try to solve these problems on their own, some students simply copy the solutions from their friends (or from a website).  These students get credit for "their" work, but miss the opportunity to learn.

Here is a simple remedy for the above-mentioned unwanted side effect.  I tell students that one of the problems on an upcoming exam will be similar to one of the homework problems in the textbook.  Doing this accomplishes two things.  First, because I do not specify which textbook problem I am referring to, I ensure that that students will look at all of the problems (or, at least as many of them as they have time for).  Second, by telling students that the exam problem will be similar to a textbook problem, I ensure that students will actually try to understand how to solve the textbook problems rather than simply copy the solutions.

Use this trick and you will never have to entertain requests for homework extensions again.

Every professor I know has to deal with requests from students to turn in homework after the specified due date.  And, every professor I know of is annoyed by this.  When, I first began teaching, I attempted to minimize the number of late homework requests I would get by stating in my course syllabus that every student would be allowed to turn in one (and only one) homework late without being penalized.  But, as any seasoned professor could have predicted, this simply resulted in students turning in one homework set late, and then asking for an extension on a subsequent homework.  Over the next few years, I attempted a number of different strategies designed to combat lat homework requests.  None of them worked.  But, a few years ago, I had a significant breakthrough.   On my syllabus, I now write the following:

"Late homework policy: I make sure to always cover all of the material needed to complete a HW set before I assign it. And I always give students at least one full week to complete the assignments. As such, late homework will not be accepted under any circumstance."

Of course, simply writing the above phrase does not accomplish anything.  Students do not read the syllabus nor do they listen to me when I go over the syllabus on the first day of class.  The real breakthrough was the following: Question #1 of Homework set #1 in every course I teach is the following:

"What is my late homework policy?"

Since I began putting this question at the start of the first homework assignment, I have not needed to entertain a single request to turn in homework late.  And the concept is easily to extend.  Presumably, if there were other information from my course syllabus that I wanted to etch into my students' brains, I could create a analogous homework question.

If you are a current or future university professor, let me just say "you're welcome!"

Choosing an undergraduate major

Choosing an undergraduate major is one of the more stressful and important decisions a university student must make.  Below, I have written a few thoughts, which I hope will enable undergraduates to make informed decisions about their majors.

Remember that you are choosing a major -- not a career.  One of the reasons that choosing a major can be stressful is the idea that, once you choose a major, you're locked in for life.  Nothing could be further from reality.  Let's take a look at my family as an example.  My undergraduate degree is in physics and now I work at the interface of mathematics and finance.  My brother has a BA in graphic design and now works as an accountant.  And my sister has a BS in biochemistry and is now studying to be a physicians assistant.  My brother, sister and I are all working in areas that one would not traditionally associate with our undergraduate majors.

With the above in mind, think of choosing a major as pointing you in a general direction -- not a straight line from where you are now to where you will end up.  If at some point in your career you are not happy with the direction you are moving, you can (and should) change course.

The skills obtained from certain degrees are more transferable than others.  Physics is an example of a major the helps one develop transferable skills.  In physics, one learns how to model the physical world, make predictions based on those models, and test the validity of those predictions.  To do this, one must become proficient in mathematics, statistics and computer programming.  Can you think of any other field where mathematics, statistics and programming can be used to model the world, make predictions and test those predictions?  How about, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, engineering, economics and finance?

Music is an example of a major that does not help one develop transferable skills.  With a degree in Music, one would learn a great deal about music theory, composition, history, and perhaps become a skilled performer.  Try to name some fields, other than music, in which these skills are highly valuable.

As a general rule, the skills one obtains in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) will be more transferable than the skills one obtains in non-STEM fields.  As such, if you have the talent and work ethic to obtain a STEM degree, it is probably a good idea to do so -- even if your long-term goal is to work in a non-STEM field.

Within STEM, the degrees that, in my view, are most transferable are physics and mathematics.  For example, with an undergraduate in physics, one could go a graduate school in physics, chemistry, electrical, civil and mechanical engineering, and, with some additional course-work, finance, economics and biology.  With a degree in mathematics, one could go to graduate school in mathematics, statistics and, with some additional coursework, economics, finance and computer science.  By comparison, an undergraduate degree in, say, biology, would not likely be able to go to graduate school in physics, mathematics or mechanical, civil or electrical engineering.

Choose a major you would enjoy.  As mentioned above, if you have the talent and interest to pursue a STEM degree, I think it would be a good idea to do so.  But, there is no sense in getting a STEM degree if you would be miserable throughout the entire process.  Long-term, your success in a given field will largely depend on how hard and long you are willing to work at it.  You will only be able to work long and hard at something if you enjoy it.

The only way to find out if you like something is to try it.  If you really have no idea what major is right for you, just try something.   Taking myself as an example, I arrived at my undergraduate major through a process of elimination.  I majored in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Mathematics before I finally settled on Physics.  Obviously, I would have progressed faster had I chosen Physics right from the get-go.  But, given the lack of direction I felt as an undergraduate, I see no method other than process of elimination by which I would have arrived at my final choice.  And, many of the courses I took in mathematics and engineering served me well in physics.

Replacing academic journals with a better alternative

I have participated in the academic publishing process as an author, referee and associate editor (AE).  It is apparent to me that the system is broken and should be -- not just modified -- but completely replaced.

How the current system "works".  For those not familiar, when one wishes to publish a paper (at least in mathematics), one submits that paper to a journal.  At that point, the editor of the journal assigns an AE to handle the paper.  The AE finds (typically) two referees to review the paper.  The referees are supposed to read the paper, and write a report to the AE in which they point out potential problems with the paper, make suggestions on how the paper could be improved, and make a recommendation as to whether or not the paper should be accepted as is, revised, or rejected.  The AE reads the reports and the paper, and makes his own decision.  If the AE decides that a revision is appropriate, he/she provides the authors of the paper with the two referee reports and an AE report.  The authors then have a chance to revise and resubmit the paper, at which point the AE and referees review the paper again.  The process repeats until the paper is either accepted or rejected by the AE.  Throughout the process, the author is kept in the dark as to whom the AE and referees are.

Problems with the current system.  Ugh!  Where to begin?  First, the system is slow.  It can two a month or longer for an AE to find two appropriate referees.  Referees usually take between 2 - 4 months to write their reports.  And the AE may take another month to read the referee reports and make a decision.  In all, authors typically wait between 3-6 months before they receive a decision on their paper (though, it is not unheard of to wait over a year).  If a paper goes through multiple rounds of revision, it can take up to 3 years to publish a paper.

Second, the quality of the referee (and AE) reports is often very poor.  Referees are not paid for their work.  So, other than some good will from the AE, there is very little incentive to write a high-quality report.  In fact, writing a high-quality report is likely to result in further requests to referee from the same AE.  So there is a strong dis-incentive to write a high-quality report.  Also, when referees and AEs are anonymous, they do not think carefully enough about what they are writing in their reports because there is no consequence for writing factually incorrect statements.  For an analogy, think of your favorite anonymous on-line forum.  How well-thought-out are the comments on that forum?

Third, the system is fraught with bias and conflicts of interest.  Most academic communities are so small that friends and colleagues often review each other's work.  I will not go into specifics, but speaking from anecdotal experience, I can assure you that friends do favors for their friends.

Fourth, articles in academic journals are not free to access.  Many academics receive public funding in the form of government grants.  Why should the results from these academics' research be limited to those who pay for access to journals?

Fifth, the review process is a huge time-suck on academics' time.  There are thousands of articles that are published each year and a huge fraction of them are iterations on a well-known theme.  It is not a good use of the Editors, AE's, and referees' time to review these papers.

Is there a better alternative?  Rather than try to "fix" the current system, I am in favor of a complete overhaul.  There are at least two websites -- arXiv.org and ssrn.com -- where academics (and non-academics) can publish original research without having to go through the refereeing process mentioned above.  These websites are a good starting point for an alternative publication system.  But, they do not provide a means for authors to receive feedback from others on their work.  As such, I would propose augmenting arXiv.org with a reddit-like forum.  Below each article, people could point out errors and offer suggestions on how a paper could be improved using their real verified names.  Such a system would address many of the problems outlined above.

First, the proposed system would be much faster than current system.  Academics could comment on articles as soon as they are posted.  And authors could respond to comments as soon as they read them.

Second, if academics are forced to use their real names when they comment on an article, they will be much more likely to think carefully about what they are saying.

Third, papers would be reviewed by a community of people rather than just a few referees, AEs and Editors.  This would reduce (though, not eliminate) much of the bias in the current system.

Fourth, articles would be free to access.

Fifth, the system would save time.  Articles that offer only incremental contributions would not be reviewed.

Of course, the proposed alternative publication system will certainly have its own problems.  But, given the state of the current academic publication process, some experimentation with an alternative is warranted.