Faculty threatened to cancel my Visa if I did not do extra work

Graduate School
1

I am currently an international PhD student in a private university in the US ranked among the top 20. However, my department ranking is pretty bad. I mention this because the faculty bend and break the rules as they see fit.

PhD students are required to work up to 20 hours a week as part of the agreement with the department regarding their admission and financial support. Although F1 student visa rules only allow us to work for up to 20 hours a week, the Graduate Director and two faculty forced me to work for over 40 hours a week without extra pay, by threatening to remove my financial support, make fictitious complaints about me to the Graduate Director, telling lies about me to the rest of the faculty and the department, and then they also threatened to take steps to get my visa cancelled. The extra work included some of their responsibilities for the courses they were teaching and some of their contract work for third-parties which they were getting paid for (but I was not).

They had done the same to an earlier PhD student who quit the PhD program because of this. The Graduate Director promptly switched me in place of that earlier student, so that the faculty could get their extra work done from me.

Most of their threats were verbal, but I have some proof via emails where they lied about my work to some faculty and staff, asked me to repay my stipend back (in spite of their being on the Council of Graduate Schools), and threatened to make some complaints about me to the Graduate Director about why they felt it was inappropriate for me to continue as a student in the department. I have some emails where they asked me to do some unethical work as part of their contract work, and I did not do it. I also have my emails informing my advisor and the Graduate Director about the extra work, and my email complaint to the chair of the department about the threats they made.

My complaint to the chair of the department was prompted when the faculty threatened to take steps to cancel my visa. After my complaint to the chair, the miscreants did not attempt to refute any of my accusations, but instead the Graduate Director and faculty are retaliating by pressuring my advisor into neglecting me as one of his students, and rejecting any research work that I have done so far. They have not kicked me out as yet since my GPA is over 3.9, but the Graduate Director has warned me that my financial support will be cut if I do not make any progress in research in the next academic year.

Please let me know if this is a common scenario in US universities, and suggest what I could do about this.

2

No, this isn’t common. But as a TA, there are some weeks in which I worked well over my 20 hours grading and helping to write exams and there were other weeks in which I had much less to do. Is your complaint that there are some weeks in which you have to work over 20 hours? Similarly as a RA there were crunch times leading up to grants or conference deadlines in which my work effort was high but then in other weeks I was able to work less. TA and RA work is lumpy – the hours required may not be the same every week… In the future, you might need to be more vocal about how many hours you have been working because your employers might not know.

You need to ask yourself if you can be successful in that department. It sounds like the profs you work for are not happy with your work and have doubts about your ability to do graduate research. It turn, you have doubts about them and refer to them as miscreants and describe their work as unethical. .

Can this situation be saved? I doubt it. It sounds like too many negative emails are flying around, too many accusations have been made. Consider moving on but also consider what role you have played, if any, in this unfortunate situation. Not that this applies to you, but I will add that the PhD student I remember as being the biggest complainer, the worst team player, the person who always felt that her grad student experience was the most unfair – that student has gone on to be the kind of person who after getting her PhD could not keep a job for long. Her linked in account lists 8 jobs in the last 11 years.

3

I would not say that this is common although I have heard of such behavior. The best solution is to have a discussion with the Department Chair and find a way to change advisors to someone whom you will be able to work with and who will defend you to the Graduate Director. Your alternative is to get a Masters and transfer to another university. Your GPA is good and hopefully you can still get strong letters of reference from your undergraduate institution and some from faculty at your current school whom you have had for courses.

If the Department Chair does not give you a response, you may need to go above the Department Chair on this and speak to the Dean of the Graduate School. This is a last resort, of course, and will pretty much ruin your chances to remain in the department. However, you might be able to get the time to apply to another university without having your financial aid cut off.

4

@CheddarcheeseMN has a good point and one that I make with my own Ph.D. students. In general, you will be working way more than 40 hours per week if you want to complete your Ph.D. successfully. However, the bulk of those should be to your benefit (your own thesis research, etc.). My students know that I put in at least as many if not more hours than they do to make sure that our projects are successful so they see what it takes to be successful as a researcher. You will not be paid for all this extra work but think of it this way. You are taking research credits to wards your degree and that is your compensation. If that does not work for you, then perhaps graduate school is not for you.

5

It is VERY common for doctoral students to work more than 20 hours a week for their advisors. In fact, you sort of have to, if you want to get good research done so that you are competitive for postdocs and jobs down the line. PhD work is a weird grey area because you aren’t a full-time employee; the work is part of your education, so any doctoral student (international or not) needs to be prepared to work some 60 hour weeks between research, classwork, teaching, and miscellaneous tasks. And no, you don’t get extra pay for it. And it’s very common for advisors to ask (or “ask”) their advisees to help them complete work for the courses they are teaching and outside contracted research work. They see it as using you as an apprentice to teach you the ways of the field. There’s nothing untoward about that.

But it’s not normal for the grad director and faculty members to force you to do this by lying and threatening. A reasonable PI would simply explain to you that this was the expectation and that in order to stay in the program and work with them, this is what you have to do.

Some of the stuff you’ve detailed sounds a bit exaggerated, though. It’s not a “threat” for your advisors to say that they will complain to the graduate director about your inappropriateness to stay on as a student, if they feel that you are not completing the requirements of a doctoral student - stated or unstated. Most PIs would want to cut loose a student who only worked 20 hours a week and not a minute over. I’m also not sure about the ethics of the work you were asked to do because you were not specific; it’s possible that the work was unethical, but it’s also possible that it was not and that you’re misunderstanding what they want you to do or professional norms in your field.

If your advisor is abusing you, then you need to change advisors. You’ve already complained to the chair - so stay on top of that, and make sure that the chair keeps on with the complaint. You might also talk to the university ombuds, whose job it is to help university affiliates work through conflicts, particularly ethical ones. Bring him or her the written record of what you say happened, so that you can talk through what your next steps should be.

6

My Ph.D. advisor used to say “I only expect a half day’s work from you – what you do with your 12 hrs is your business” He said this jokingly but that’s the reality of a Ph.D. program. Juillet is spot-on with her comments

7

Thank you for replying.

I would like to clarify to those who have responded. My first post may not have been very clear on some details:

None of the extra work they asked me to do was related to research. It was only extra TA work and their contract work. None of these faculty are my advisors. The extra work has nothing to do with my PhD, research or my advisor.

I was not permitted to take research credits at the time since my advisor had recommended that I finish my course requirements, so I was doing a full load of three courses of 3 credit hours each, along with the extra work.

That is, in the second semester I was doing 3 courses + more than 40 hours of TA work a week.
In the third semester I was doing 3 courses + 40 hours contract work a week + more than 30 hours TA work a week. In case you are curious, I was sleeping only 2-3 hours a night to get the work done.

The TA work was always more than 40 hours each week in the second semester, and then more than 30 hours each week in the third semester when I complained to the chair. However, in the third semester they were also making me do 40 hours a week of their contract work, until I had to refuse.

The unethical work they asked me to do was to write a background program to snoop on the private usage of a mobile app by participants who were from low income families, in a way which could explicitly identify the participants and log their individual usage and actions onto Amazon servers. The service providers they were using forbid identifying the participants, and they wanted me to exploit certain loopholes in Amazon’s services to achieve that. Until I stopped doing their work, they claimed to be clueless about having any IRB approval for the same. Apart from getting blamed for research misconduct, if there was a complaint that I had written the program I could also have been banned from using services like Amazon and Google Play for further research in my PhD.

In a meeting after the trouble started, I told the Graduate Director that the work was unethical, and yet they were insisting that I do it. When the Graduate Director asked the PI to clarify if the work was indeed unethical, the PI replied that there were some subtleties involved and he would discuss it with the Graduate Director another time. The topic was never brought up after that meeting.

Lastly, they were actually very happy with my work. When I complained to the Chair, he told me that they had spoken very highly of my work, and had specifically requested that I TA their courses. My advisor has also confirmed this to me. The clients for their contract work had also sent emails of praise and appreciation for my work, until the day I stopped.

8

Well, the 40+ hours per week of TA work is absolutely not acceptable. Are there other TAs in the department who are being asked to do this much work? If so and you are all willing to complain together, you can go first to the Department Chair and then up the ladder to the Dean and ultimately the Graduate College or the University Ombuds. You can also do this on your own, particularly if you have documentation.

As for the contract work, then whether or not it is unethical, it at least should have been compensated as is it not a TA duty. The issue you are describing falls under responsible conduct of research and the university research office and IRB need to be made aware of it if you decide it is the appropriate.

The more you describe it, the less I would like to be in this department if all the faculty behave this way. If you can’t find faculty who are more responsible, then perhaps leaving is the right thing to do.

9

There were two other TAs I know who faced the same situation from the same faculty. They both quit the program, and I was promptly switched in to replace one of them.

When I asked them why they didn’t complain, they reasoned that the department would not do anything if they complained.

10

Well, if no one complains, they will continue to do it with impunity. The whole university cannot be corrupt and you should be able to find someone (probably outside the department) who will listen.

11

An interesting thread…the joys of being a grad student…huh?!

I was a TA for a couple of years. Yes, the job sucked. It was 15-20 hours of solid work. Was I asked to do more…sure. It took the passive aggressive approach. I didn’t complain. Instead I worked 15-20 hours and half-assed stuff that should have required more time. Are they literally making you log 40 hours of work. In other words, are they making you show them that you did 40 hours of work, or are they just assigning tasks that should take 40 hours of work to be done well. There is a big difference…actually. The difference is having proof that they ask you to do 40 hours or work.

You should leave this university. You won’t get your PhD there. A PhD student should not be primarily funded through a TA anyway. A TA should be a safety funding when fellowships and research assistant grant money runs out.

12

Thank you for the responses.

Well, after I complained they replaced me with two students who were capped at 20 hours per week each (total cap of 40 hours per week). That was not enough, so the next semester they replaced my position with 5 students who were capped at 20 hours per week each (total cap of 100 hours per week). I have evidence of this.

As graduate TAs, they do not have us log our hours, instead the department expects the work to round out to a max of 20 hours per week in the course of the semester. If not, they resort to threats of cutting our financial support in order to force us to do the extra work.

Not only I, but the TA who was my predecessor also informed them that the work was too much, and started getting incomplete grades in his courses because he could not even attend his classes. He quit the program shortly after informing them of the inordinate TA workload.

If I did any work half-assed, it would have given them ammunition to justify kicking me out of the department.

In our department, performance on the preliminary exams and progress in the program is decided by all the faculty together, thus giving an opportunity to any of them having an axe to grind with you. Some of the faculty in this department have started using this opportunity to have a student supported as a TA, and still force that student do their lab work or contract work by making threats to give a bad feedback about the student or fail them in their preliminary exams. Now even some non-advisors and adjunct faculty are using that approach. I feel this situation has arisen because the chair of the department does not attend these faculty meetings.

13

@jack63 : They assigned me tasks which always took more than 40 hours (sometimes much more). These tasks were not only the normal tasks of office hours and grading given to all TAs, but also specialized tasks which included writing automated program modules for them which they could re-use for later semesters or outside of the course itself.

What would constitute evidence/proof that they forced me to work for more than 40 hours each week?

I know I did the extra work and I have some evidence of that. If you can tell me what you/administration would accept as evidence/proof that is not subject to interpretation, I could get it and attach it to my complaint.

They did not require us to submit time-sheets for the work.

Help me out folks. Thanks.

14

Well, my question to you would be:
So if you were to present evidence of misconduct, what would you expect to gain from it or the university?

It doesn’t sound like this department will ever change.
You won’t receive an automatic Ph.D. from this type of complaint.
You might receive back pay, but it depends on the stipulations in any contract that was signed.

I think you have already spent too much time at this place with no real recourse. Time to move on.

15

Whether I leave or not, I feel that the graduate school should still be informed about it.

16

And there are a few very good faculty in the department who I would not mind working with. The main problem is that the Graduate Director is abusing his position to extort extra work from a few graduate students by making threats. Some faculty know that I have been wronged, but the complaint still has to be made by me.

17

Do you think they would grant you time with these “few, very good faculty in the department”? Unfortunately, you are tainted by association with the other professors.

18

I agree with aunt bea - what you do is going to be predicated upon what you hope to gain in this situation. If you’ve relayed it accurately, then it seems like you can no longer work with your advisor. Moreover, the graduate director seems to have selected you as one of the few graduate students he wants to extort extra work from, so staying in the entire graduate program seems a bad idea too - he’ll always be trying to extort that work from you. So I think ultimately you will have to leave, using recommendation letters from those faculty that know you have been wronged (and know your work at least a little) as a way to transition into another department.

The question is then who you tell and how you tell it in the meantime. Your graduate director already knows and does not care. Who’s the next step up in the food chain? The dean of the graduate school probably is, or maybe your department chair if you think they will be sympathetic. I also still recommend that you talk to the university ombuds, because they will help you plan out a plan of action for who to tell - and will also help you figure out what your end goals are. That is pretty much their job.

19

Good luck, in whatever you decide. ^^^^

A Ph.D has always been known as: “Piled higher and Deeper”.

20

Yes, this is difficult, but it is not impossible. E-mail is huge. If I don’t trust who I work worth, I try to get stuff in e-mail. This can be very helpful when you are accused of not doing what was asked of you.

If you could show that faculty sent you e-mails requiring you to do the following for several weeks in a row you could make a great case. For example, if every week you were instructed by e-mail to do the following:

-Hold 10 office hours
-Give multiple help/recitation sessions (You will also need 2 hours to prepare for a help session)
-Proctor exams
-Grade assignments
-Write test or homework questions
-Prepare modules

What you will not (and should not) win on are the following comments

-I needed to individually respond to all these student’s questions, and I needed to meet with all these students individually. You should have been telling them to come to office hours.
-I needed 4 hours to prepare for help sessions/recitation sessions. It should take you 2 hours to prepare for these help sessions
-Other issues like it took 4 hours to write a test question…It should take you 45 minutes to an hour
-People quit who are in my position. Sadly, people quit grad school all of the time. They will only get irritated with you when you bring this up.

Juillet’s comments about going to the ombudsman are correct, but you need to go prepared with documentation. If you have solid documentation, they will be more than willing to help. The problem is that some grad students don’t always read situations correctly, and these grad students will be ignored by the ombudsman and everybody else.