Get Your Salts
And sit down so you don’t keel over, because I’m going to defend the university status quo, or at least one part of it. Remember last week that idiot who tried to sue the university because his professor graded on a curve? Well, Betsy Newmark posted about it, though it’s not the lawsuit or the moron who brought it that’s the point. The point isn’t to be found in the article, but the comments. As is so often the case, the comments veered almost immediately off on a tangent, but in this case, into, well, I’m tempted to call it stupidity, but let’s just call it engaging the keyboard before thinking.
One commenter said:
I think the problem in this case is that the TA graded the papers, didn’t like the outcome so he then applied a curve in order to make things come out the way he wanted. I have had teachers like that and it drives me insane. I had a professor at one time who stood in front of the class and announced that 5% of the class would fail and there would be no A grades. I was smart enough and had a flexible enough schedule that I could walk out and go to another section. A lot of people didn’t have that option and were miserable. I bet they wished they could sue.
And another chimed in:
Duke U settled a case of grade retaliation related to the Lax Rape Frame. An extreme example, and the fact that Duke settled out of court implies a lot, because these kinds of cases rarely succeed. The situation at Duke make me dis-inclined to trust University self-policing, because Duke is clearly not policing it’s faculty, and I don’t see evidence that it’s different at other Universities.
So I responded:
Of course, they had the option. Nobody is holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing him to take a specific section. Universities are not high schools. The professor has the absolute right to set whatever grading criteria he wants, and you are free to take another professor’s class if you cannot cope with it. As for grade retaliation, that’s another matter altogether. Universities do a pretty good job dealing with it, when it happens (and provided that the student appeals to the proper authority). It’s actually pretty rare, because you can get in a great deal of hot water for a long time if you do it (and you should). Grade retaliation is more common in classes which grade using highly subjective and non-academic criteria (such as participation), because such grades are a lot fuzzier and retaliation is much harder to establish.
And the first commenter replied:
You’re right, there is always the destructive option. They also had the choice of chopping the professor into little peices and feeding him into a garbage disposal. They didn’t take that one either, although of the people I knew in that class they probably wish they had. You are also correct that the professor had the option of saying flat out that 5% of the class would receive F s although why he should be backed up for that is beyond me.
Before I address this, tossing out a juvenile non-sequitur like a Kos Kid doesn’t get you any points, nor does it make your point. The commenter is a blithering idiot, but there’s an issue here that needs to be addressed, and it has nothing to do with curves.
A university is not high school, and thank God in heaven for that. There are administrators, but they are university faculty, not external professional administrators who haven’t set foot in a classroom for twenty years. There is no school board to force faculty to change grades because little Johnny’s daddy helped elect them — in fact, parental threats are nearly always powerless, and more often than not, antagonize the administration.
A university is a collection of nearly autonomous units. Departments make up schools or colleges, and colleges make up the university. University faculty enjoy a great deal more autonomy than primary or secondary school teachers.
The professor to which the idiot commenter refers sounds like a jerk, but welcome to reality. The university is full of jerks. The workplace is full of jerks. Life is full of jerks. Get over it. I have never understood why faculty announce at the beginning of the semester how many students will fail, unless they grade on a curve (more infrequent these days), and then, there are more tactful ways of informing students of the grading policy than saying, “Five percent will fail.” But a 5% failure rate is a high curve. If the professor were using a standard curve, 10% — not 5% — would fail. Stating that there would be no As, well, again, the guy is a jerk.
That’s what drop and add is for.
Look, it’s the university. It’s his class, not the school board’s class. He can run it the way he sees fit, and you can take another section. Sure, occasionally, you end up having to take a class from a total jerk like this without any choice. Welcome to reality. I had to, you have to, we all have to. Grow up. That’s what being a college student is supposed to be, right? Learning to be an adult?
As I said before, university students have the luxury of choice that secondary students do not. Students have a wealth of departments, majors, programs, and courses from which they can build a degree. These days, we have ratemyprofessors.com, on top of the more traditional word of mouth communication, so students can inform themselves of which professors are good, which are not so good, which are downright godawful, and which are blathering moonbats. And university faculty tend not to view student whining with much sympathy. We’ve heard it all before. And we’re just not impressed.
I’m a great believer in student evaluation, much more so than most university faculty, but let’s face it, when the comment on the back of the evaluation is “Too much work,” well, you can’t take that evaluation very seriously. Most student charges are crap, attempts to boost a grade they did not earn. Unlike in high school, where whining will get the teacher pulled onto the red carpet, at the university, you’ll be sent packing, unless there really is something fishy going on.
Nearly always, there is not.
And again, thank God Almighty faculty are still nearly autonomous, and not pressured to artificially inflate grades so Mary’s self-esteem won’t suffer. When that happens, the university will cease to exist. So while that professor is a total jerk, it’s his class. If you don’t like it, don’t take it.
Please understand that I am certainly not defending grade retaliation or other breeches of ethics. That’s an entirely different issue from being a jerk and using a punitive grading system. If I had my way, grade retaliation would be punished with immediate dismissal. But this isn’t grade retaliation. It isn’t unethical. Obnoxious, certainly, but fully within the professor’s rights.
There’s been a great deal of caterwauling about universities from those who obviously know little about the university, save having been a student. Before you start demanding total overhauls, stop and think about what the ramifications might be. And keep your school boards away from the university.