Is this normal/appropriate?

[CAD153]

My advisor accepted an invitation to give a talk at a conference and subsequently instructed me to prepare a submission and deliver the talk instead, since he would be unable to go.  I am happy to do this, but the registration for the conference costs over three hundred dollars.  As soon as I brought up the issue and tried to get him to approve the reimbursement  paperwork, he simply stopped replying to my emails.  He isn't on campus so I can't ask him in person.  I am pretty sure he wants me to pay the expenses myself.  Is this normal/appropriate?  Am I being unreasonable?  I will probably just end up paying, but I wanted to do a sanity check and see what other people think.

[St Andrews Lynx]

If you advisor was invited to present then I suspect his conference registration fee would have already been paid for him. So I don't think you should pay the $300.

[Eigen]

On the one hand, it would be great if your advisor paid for it for you. 

 

On the other hand, this is a fantastic opportunity that your advisor is offering you. It's likely a higher profile invited talk, and is a great chance for you to get your work out there. I'd happily pay $300 for registration, as a personal investment. 

 

I doubt he's paid already, as this type of invitation is usually pre-registration (if it's similar to the norms in my fields). 

[pears]

I don't know whether this is common practice in other fields, but in anthropology, conferences will often offer a volunteering option that will waive your attendance fees in return for no more than 8 hours of straightforward help (handing out registration packets, setting up or breaking down tables etc. in rooms, & so on). I would try getting in touch with a conference coordinator to see if they have an option like that.

[danieleWrites]

Apparently, it's normal. It also has some sense of inappropriate. One of the conferences I'm sending out an abstract for clearly states that the person who submitted the paper must present the paper. no proxies allowed.

 

Of course, your professor is invited, not submitting. If I were a running a conference and invited someone to speak because I thought that person would be a good speaker (for whatever reason), and I ended up with a grad student instead, how would I feel? I would suggest, before you pay any money out of your own pocket, that you find out if you'd be welcome to present or if you're going to show up to find someone staring blankly at you before asking where Dr. So and So will he be in in time to present his paper.

 

In any event, universities offer travel grants for students heading off to conference. If your professor won't pay, and it appears that he has no interest in this issue, you should check with the department and the graduate school to find out how to go about applying for a grant and how much you can expect to receive.

[CAD153]

Students presenting for professors is definitely normal and totally appropriate, at least by the norms of this field.  It just seems strange to be given an order requiring a large personal expenditure (which I can pay without hardship, but still...).

[TakeruK]

I think this is pretty abnormal in my field -- both the fact that a grad student could stand in for an invited prof's talk and also the fact that your supervisor would expect you to pay the costs of attending the conference yourself. However, with the government shutdown, many researchers are not able to make trips anymore so some conferences have been more lenient on having a proxy present your work. Also, many conferences in my field (at least the ones I've volunteered at) will waive registration fees for invited speakers.

 

If it is normal for supervisors to pay for student travel expenses in your field, then I don't think you should necessarily assume that you should pay the fee yourself unless your supervisors directly says so. Has he sent you on other conferences before? In your shoes, I would tell him that yes, you don't mind presenting but ask what are his plans for paying the fee. At my department, we usually have to pay the fees in advance and only get reimbursed after the trip. If we don't want to carry around a large balance on our cards, every prof has someone in the admin office who has access to the credit cards corresponding to various grants and when I need an expense paid, I get the prof's permission to use their card and then ask the admin staff to make the purchase (e.g. plane tickets, etc.).

 

If you get confirmation that you have to pay the fee yourself, then as Eigen said, you should decide whether or not it's worth the investment. Unless the conference is local, keep in mind that there would be a lot of other costs too -- travel, accommodations, food, etc. On average, I think going to a conference in North America costs about $700-$1500 (depending on location), which, for me, is far too high a cost to bear myself. But, some big conferences also have student travel grants that you might be able to apply for. There may also be nationwide organizations for your field that offer travel support for cases like this (great opportunity for the student but no other funding). Finally, your own school/graduate program might have a few hundred dollars of support for this too. If the conference is local then maybe you can also volunteer as pears suggested to get your costs waived, if possible. 

[Eigen]

Really? The last conference I went to was the better part of a week, and was only about $500 total cost for me. 

 

Find grad students to share a room with and pack ramen!

 

As to standing in for professors- the last couple of conferences I went to, each symposium had 2-3 grad students/postdocs standing in for the professor who was invited to give the talk, including some really big names. 

[TakeruK]

When I was an undergraduate and funding was very limited (i.e. whatever student support organizations we could apply for funding from), I think I was able to make a 4-day conference cost only $500 -- $300 for the flight, $150 for conference registration which includes shared accommodations, and $50 for incidentals like whatever meals we couldn't find free food for, public transport between airport and downtown (2 hours!). 

 

Since then, I've been lucky enough to be in pretty well funded places (or at least, have well funded supervisors), so while I always try to reduce costs as much as possible (after all, $100 saved today is $100 for us to spend on equipment, publication costs, travel, etc. in the future). But, I will at least splurge on something like SuperShuttle for trips to the airport instead of public transit. I plan trips well in advance and look out for seat sales. I will eat actual food instead of ramen or fast food though. However, I usually do not go to conference banquets ($90 for a meal? no thanks!) -- there's always enough post-docs or students to gather up and have our own semi-fancy dinner at a nice restaurant. If I go out and have a lots of drinks with people then I don't charge it as a conference expense. And I always share a hotel room with one or two others -- both to save money and to have people to hang out with!

 

In my opinion, the above is being reasonable with grant money. After all, we're at the conference for work purposes and it's unreasonable, in my opinion, for our employer to expect us to only eat fast food or ramen. If it's our own expenses and not grant money, then I feel that it's unreasonable if the norm was that students would have to do this in order to get the exposure needed for our future. So, for me, I probably wouldn't do it! But that's just me.

 

Even with these cost saving measures, here is the budget for the last conference (5-days) I went to:

 

Flight: $300

Transport to/from home airport: $60

Transport to/from destination airport: $50 (saved some money by getting a ride part of the way from a friend in town)

Registration fee: $400 (no special rate for students)

Accommodations: $400 (was not able to find someone to share with)

Food: $150 ($30/day)

Total: $1400-ish

 

Here's my budget for my upcoming trip (5 days):
Flight: $300

Transport to/from home airport: $30 (getting a free ride one way)

Transport to/from destination airport: $45

Registration fee: $160 (early student rate)

Accommodations: $500 (sharing a room at the conference rate -- supervisor wanted us to stay in the conference hotel)

Food: estimate $150 (the per diem is $66/day but I usually only spend $30)

Total: $1100-ish

 

The cheapest conference I was able to complete was a 4-day conference in a town only a few hours away (so I could take the train instead of flying) and I think that total cost was just under $500.

 

In these budgets, the only room to save money, I think, is to reduce the cost of accommodations -- we could split it more ways or find places further away from the conference center (which was/is downtown for both of these meetings, so everything within a mile is more expensive than the conference rate). I would probably do this if I was expected to pay for myself, but this could only bring down the cost by a few hundred -- it would still be well over $500 out of pocket. So, I would only make this personal investment of money and time if I was able to find some source of outside funding to make my own out of pocket cost much lower. This is entirely possible though -- when I had to do this, I was usually able to raise something like $300-$500 from student organizations, schools and conference organizers.

Edited October 4, 2013 by TakeruK

[juilletmercredi]

Yeah, I agree with TakeruK - I've been very frugal with conferences, but in the past I've had to pass on them because the least I've ever been able to spend has been $700 for a 3-day conference.  If flights are $300 and even if you can snag a room for $100/night and just spend 2 nights there, that's already $500.  Add the registration ($300), food (I think a frugal student can spend $40 a day, so $120) travel to and from the airport (could be anything from $10-60 depending on the availability of public transit) and that's already $1,000.  Even if you were able to find one student to share a room with and the room rate was around $100 a night, that only reduces the cost by $100.

 

The only way I've been able to save significant money is if the conference was close enough to take a bus to.

[jamesshaffer85]

I don't think you should pay before your professor answers if you ought to. It can be  mere misunderstanding and he is unavailable at the moment for some personal reasons. I think that if you were expected to pay $300. he would have told you about it right from the start. If it's a complete surprise to you, it's probably some kind o misunderstanding.

[NatureGurl]

That sounds weird to me. My advisor is very upfront about costs associated with travel to conferences or even for research purposes. Professors know exactly how much grad students make and in my world no conscientious professor would ask a grad student to stand in for him and then expect the student to pay his or her own way.

 

On the other hand, I see someone's point that it may be a great opportunity for you. But, if possible, I would get the professor or the department to pay for you to go. Does your college, grad student association, or university provide you with support for conferences?

[Sigaba]

My advisor accepted an invitation to give a talk at a conference and subsequently instructed me to prepare a submission and deliver the talk instead, since he would be unable to go.  I am happy to do this, but the registration for the conference costs over three hundred dollars.  As soon as I brought up the issue and tried to get him to approve the reimbursement  paperwork, he simply stopped replying to my emails.  He isn't on campus so I can't ask him in person.  I am pretty sure he wants me to pay the expenses myself.  Is this normal/appropriate?  Am I being unreasonable?  I will probably just end up paying, but I wanted to do a sanity check and see what other people think.

 

MOO, you're not being unreasonable. You're simply at a point where you have to think about what constitutes "a large personal expenditure" versus an investment in your professional development.

 

IMO, your advisor has done you a favor, albeit a potentially expensive one. Explore the options suggested in this thread, then pay what you need to pay, and shift your focus on making the most out of a fantastic opportunity to learn more about your craft, to develop skills, to meet new people.

[nescafe]

This would be absolutely not okay in my field (Humanities). 

 

That said, regardless of field I think it's inappropriate for a prof to assume his/her student will foot the bill. Don't pay until you hear back from the professor... chances are, they just haven't gotten around to figuring the money-situation out yet. If after a week you don't hear back, send a reminder email.