Education: What's Wrong With Our System, Post 1

[jpskewedthrone]

If you've noticed, I've been somewhat quiet around here for the last few days. This is mostly because classes for the Fall semester have started up and I've been busy getting used to the new schedule. In particular, getting used to waking up at 6am so I can hit the road for the hour one-way commute at 7am. I'm not complaining about this--I get to chose my own times for my classes, so early classes are entirely my fault--but going from not waking up until I feel like it to 6am isn't exactly easy. So that's why I've been quiet. I haven't been doing anything in the way of writing. I'll start that up again once the semester settles down a little bit. Also, I don't know what I should be working on yet. I'll be talking to my editor this coming Wednesday, hopefully, and then I'll know if she's interested in any of my projects and that should give me some guidance on what to work on next. (I could be working on a short story that's been bouncing around in my head, but . . .)

In any case, that's what's up with me. However, something else has happened recently that's bothered me quite a bit. Before people start jumping to conclusions, I want to say that this story is NOT about me. I'm not trying to disguise this as one of my problems by saying "my colleague" and such. Similarly, this is not something that happened at my current college, SUNY Oneonta. This happened to someone I know at a different university. BUT, I know that this is happening at many universities and colleges across the country, because I've worked at more than one university or college in my lifetime and I've seen it in action. This particular story only highlights the issue.

I don't normally talk about things like this on my blog, and I don't want this to come across as a rant. Rather, I just want to point out that things like this are going on and that I strongly believe that this is one of the reasons that our education system isn't up to par. Note that I said ONE of the reaons. There are multiple factors that are all contributing to this problem, and if people are open to hearing my thoughts on what these are, then I'll continue posting these types of things.



Here's the situation: A colleague of mine taught a summer course this past summer for the Continuing Education department of a university. It was a statistics course, and this is NOT a small university. In fact, this is a major university with a well-respected name that generally will get you a job just by mentioning that you went there. Summer courses usually run for about 6-8 weeks, meet everyday, and generally pack a full semester's worth of subject material into that time period. It's rough, but most students know that ahead of time and if they don't, they find out quick.

So the instructor taught the course. Some issues came up, in particular with two students. One of the students came to the instructor a few weeks into the semester and proclaimed that they were going on vacation for the next two weeks and that they'd miss the first exam and a few homework assignments and wanted to know when they could make them up. This meant they'd be missing 2 weeks of a 6-8 week course. That's a third to a quarter of the entire course. The instructor was flabbergasted that the student assumed that taking 2 weeks off in the middle of such a course would be considered "OK" and that it wasn't an issue. However, the instructor told them that they could take the exam immediately after they got back and also allowed them to make up one of the missed assignments if they handed it in immediately after they got back. (Note: If this had been my class, I would have told them they had to decide whether they were taking the course or taking a vacation. If they took the vacation and stayed in the course, they'd get a 0 on the exam and all assignments missed and they'd have to hope and pray they could make up all those lost points with the rest of the course materials . . . which wouldn't be mathematically possible the way my classes are structured. You don't schedule a vacation for 2 weeks in the middle of a 6-8 week course and expect the instructor to allow you to make the missed material up.)

Needless to say, this student was not happy with the situation or its resolution (even though I felt the instructor was being very considerate and generous; too considerate and generous in fact). At this point, the student and a friend of the student in the class, began to protest whenever an assignment was given. They'd claim that the assignment was too difficult, that the expectations from them were too high, that they couldn't possibly complete the assignment in the time given, that the instructor wasn't teaching them the material well enough to do the assignments, etc. There were three other students in the class and none of them felt the protests were valid, to the point that they even approached the instructor outside of class to tell them they thought everything in the course was fine, they were doing a good job teaching, and everyone else handed the assignments in on time with no problems. They also informed the instructor that the two students were attempting to recruit the rest of the class to their cause outside of class.

In any case, the course ended. The instructor gave the two students who were causing problems a C because that's what their grades warranted, and the rest of the students got B's and A's, because that's what their grades warranted. Mostly this was because the 2 students causing problems refused to complete a significant portion of the assignments, complaining about their difficulty, etc. The others handed in everything. As usual at most universities and colleges, the students get to fill out course evaluations at the end of the semester to let the administration know what they thought of the course and the instructor.

A few weeks later, the instructor got a call from the department to come in for a meeting. The instructor knew what it was going to be about, of course: the administration wanted to discuss the course evaluations. The instructor had gotten an average of high 3's on everything out of 7. But in particular they wanted to discuss the written evaluations. In fact, they only wanted to talk about 2 of the written evaluations.

So the instructor arrived for the meeting and this is how the meeting played out: The administration had the instructor read the 2 evaluations from the 2 students, which were of course inflammatory, derogatory, and in the end downright cruel. Some of the claims in the evaluations were blatantly false. After the instructor was forced to read these evaluations in their entirety, the administration informed them that in order to continue working for them in the Fall, they would have to improve their evaluation scores to something above a 6 average, and that they would have to take on a "mentor" instructor who would give them lectures and a class structure to use in order to insure that they got a 6 average or better. This "mentor" would help them design the exams and quizzes and such, becaue this "mentor" had always gotten a 6 average or better on their own evaluations.

The administration did not ask the instructor to explain the situation that gave rise to the 2 evaluations. They did not ask the instructor to provide examples of lectures, quizzes, and exams, so that they could determine whether or not the course had been taught effectively or fairly. And they did not bring up the other 3 evaluations, which must, mathematically (I'll explain later), have had good things to say. They did not allow the instructor to defend themselves in any way, shape, or form.

In effect, the administration condemned the instructor based on 2 evaluations, without knowing the situation behind those evaluations.

The instructor decided, in the end, that their integrity as a teacher was more important than keeping their job, and so a few days before the semester began they informed the department that, because of the unfair restrictions imposed on them by the administration (the "mentor") and the lack of any attempt to allow them to defend themselves, they would no longer be working for the university. And so now an instructor who is more than capable of teaching these courses effectively no longer has a job. Because of two students.

There are multiple things wrong with this situation and the administration's reaction to it. The first and foremost to my mind is that the administration listened to 2 out of 5 evaluations, completely ignoring the other 3 (which statistically had to be excellent), and never gave the instructor a chance to defend themselves. They assumed that the instructor was at fault based on 2 student opinions. That's it. Now, if the administration had said, "Hmm, we have a few rather vicious evaluations from 2 students in this class, let's see what the instructor has to say about this," that would be different (although even this reaction based on 2 evaluations is too extreme to me). If they'd said they wanted to see the instructor's lectures, some quizzes, the exams, the final, and when they perused all of this and how the course was graded and found that the expectations of the instructor were unfair to the student . . . fine. But they didn't do that. They sided with the students without considering the instructor's side, and that's where I think the universities and colleges are going completely wrong. The situation has become, "Please the students, at the cost of their education." In essence, the administration of a significant portion of the universities and colleges are catering to the students, allowing the students to run the university.

Consider this instructor's numerical evaluations. In order to get a high 3 average out of a possibly 7 using 5 evaluations, and assuming that the 2 students gave the instructor all 0s or 1s, the other three evaluations must have contained nearly all 6s and 7s. There's no way to avereage 2 scores with 3 scores and get above a 3.5 average otherwise. So why did the administration ignore the other 3 evaluations? They didn't even take into account the written evaluations, which were good and said the class was taught well and graded fairly. Why did they ignore them?

They ignored them because they want their instructors to get an average of 6 or higher. Why? So that their department "looks good" to the rest of the university. I've taught math for a long time. I believe I'm a fairly good instructor. But this is math. Students in math--and in particular, students taking math at the level of an introductory course like this one--generally hate the subject before they even step into the classroom, and that hatred transfers to the instructor before THEY even step into the classroom, so expecting an average evaluation in a math class to be at least 6 out of 7 is . . . insane. In order to achieve that average, the instructor is either a GENIUS teacher of the highest magnitude, seen only once in a millenium . . . or they've rigged the way the students are graded so that the students do not have to actually learn anything in the class in order to get an A. A student who gets an A without learning anything in the course and without doing any work is, of course, going to give such an instructor the highest praise, in general.

But that student hasn't learned anything.

If I were teaching an introductory course of this nature, I would expect to receive an average evaluation at the end of the semester of maybe 3.5. I'd consider that good. Because of the level of the class, the general mathematical level of the student, and the fact that I expect my students to know how to do that math by the end of the course. If they can't, then they don't pass.

The administration's expectations of the instructor in this department are unreasonable in my opinion. I think they'd be unreasonable to any math instructor out there who's had any experience teaching at this level and has any self-respect about their teaching ability and ensuring that the students know the math required by the end of the semester.

I find the suggestion by the administration in this case to be insulting. In effect, they were telling the instructor that they could not teach and that in order to keep their job they would have to use someone else's technique, approach, and teaching philosophy in their classroom. The fact that they were supposed to achieve such an unreasonable average on their evaluations boiled down to telling the instructor that it didn't matter how much the student knew at the end of the semester, they were to pass with flying colors. In effect, they were telling the instructor that their job was not to teach math, but to babysit the students for 6-8 weeks. As an instructor of math, I completely agree with this instructor's decision to not accept those conditions and to quit. I'm certain that the administration did not expect this reaction, considering today's job market. They expected the instructor to forego their integrity, grit their teeth, and bow down before this "mentor." I'm glad that this did not happen, although I'm pissed that a good instructor will no longer have a job.

As I said, there are other things wrong with this situation: the assumption by the students that they are entitled to a specific grade simply by paying for the course; the assumption by the students that they would not have to work for their grade; the assumption by the one student in particular that it would "OK" for them to miss a minimum of a quarter of the class and still pass; the underlining fact that the administration doesn't seem to be interested in education, but rather student happiness; etc. I'd like to talk about those issues as well, but this post is getting quite long so I'll leave those discussions for another day. But I find the most disturbing element of this situation, the element that I want to highlight in this post, is the fact that the administration no longer seems to support the instructor--the person they have hired to teach, after a lengthy hiring process--over the student. I'm not advocating that departments and universities and colleges simply support their instructors blindly, but there should be an unwritten contract of faith between them and their instructors. They should believe their instructors first and foremost when such a situation arises, until they have significant evidence that, in fact, the instructor is indeed being unfair to the students or is not teaching to the best of their abilities.

In this situation, there was blind faith in the student, and no displayed faith in the instructor, who has spent their entire life up to this point attempting to become the best teacher they could possibly be. They (the administration) should have given the instructor a chance to explain the situation. They should have looked at the instructor's materials and had another statistics instructor determine whether or not the instructor was in fact teaching the subject material appropriately and whether the exams and quizzes given were fair. They should have allowed the instructor a say before they decided upon an action, and certainly before suggesting the instructor accept a "mentor." (And before people go ballistic thinking I don't agree with the idea of mentoring, stop. I believe mentors can be invaluable. But what the administration wanted in this case was not a "mentor." They wanted the instructor to teach EXACTLY like the mentor, as if the instructor were simply a voicebox, not an individual. That's not mentoring, which is why I have "mentor" in quotes for most of this post.) In essence, the administration should have supported the instructor over the voice of 2 students who obviously had a score to settle.

I'm sorry to say that the students won in this case: they created a situation in which the instructor was forced to quit or sacrifice their integrity as a teacher. That was their goal, simply because this instructor was going to make them work for their grades. I'd like to say that this was an isolated case, an aberation in the system, but I've worked at enough universities and colleges to see the shift in the administration's attitude from support of the instructor to support of the student. And it's not isolated to a specific region of the U.S. or even a specific level of college education. I've seen it at the university level, the college level, and at the community college level. I'm happy to say that I have not seen this happening at SUNY Oneonta, where I currently work. It's one of the reasons that I'm working hard to STAY at SUNY Oneonta.

Again, I'm not saying that the administration needs to blindly support its faculty at all times: they shouldn't. But they should consider the instructor's side and give that instructor a fair chance to defend themselves if such a situation arises. A bad evaluation by 2 students should not be considered enough to create such a situation, especially in the presence of contrary opinions by a majority of other students.

Comments

[betta329.livejournal.com]

The school entirely skipped due process. Where was the academic integrity committee hearing during all of this? What about the professor's statement? If I was the teacher, I would sue the school for being let go without due process and warranted reasoning.

[roseaponi.livejournal.com]

As a homeschooler going into college, I was appalled at the attitude some of my fellow students had toward their classes, the school property, and the college itself. At least once a semester, the computers had to be shut down - because some idiot downloaded a virus with the p*rn he viewed on a computer that belonged to the college. I recognized students who cut class for no reason other than to chat in the parking lot. And in far too many of my classes, there were one or more students who would complain, "But it's too hard! I don't know how to do that!" I always wondered what they thought they had _paid_ to go to college for.

As for me, I only gave two bad evaluations to teachers: one to an advisor who mangled my schedule (which was when I learned to do my own schedules) and one to a teacher who showed up late, rambled on about stuff completely irrelevant to the class, and told far too many dumb blonde jokes. I learned the same lesson from both - take responsibility for your own education. I didn't care about the paper at the end - I cared that I was getting my money's worth of education.

Homeschooling isn't for everybody, but I think it inoculated me against grade entitlement. When your mom is your teacher, you don't get away with much :)

[mastadge.livejournal.com]

It's not just you as a homeschooler. I was not homeschooled, and I too was a bit shocked going into college by the sense not only of entitlement but of casualness. Students won't approach a professor before an exam to help figure out what they don't understand or express interest in the material, but will certainly be by later to cry to him that the grade he "gave" them wasn't fair. (And sometimes, of course, it wasn't. Profs make bad and arbitrary decisions sometimes, too, but there are right ways and wrong ways of dealing with it.) Students showing up for class looking like they had just rolled out of bed. Students disputing grades with teachers in class, in front of other students.

And then, of course, there was the other end of the stick: fellow English majors graduating from a four-year program still unable to write a proper sentence, let alone link a few of them to make a paragraph.

[cloudshaper2k.livejournal.com]

Josh, this reinforces why my wife and I have chosen to homeschool our children. We aren't about to let the slide by on academics, but we know the school system will let them. It's become less and less about education and more and more about students = money (whether from tuition or federal funding).

[elainecorvidae.livejournal.com]

What happened to your colleague was completely abhorrent, speaking not as someone who has ever been a teacher, but as someone who has spent most of her adult life as a student (two Bachelors and taking 5 years to complete a Masters will do that). My graduate thesis adviser would have laughed in the face of anyone who said they were taking off for two weeks, and rightly so. The fact that the administration took such a position is shameful.

[vespican.livejournal.com]

Recently I received and forwarded an e-mail that might touch a little upon this subject. I would forward it to you, but I have since deleted it from my files. Supposedly it was an excerpt or the high lights of a speech that Bill Gates gave recently at a high school graduation. If I remember right, he warned the class against just such things as you and the other commenters have mentioned. He exhorted these future college students, members of the work force, and shapers of society to take responsibility for their own actions and not to expect it to be handed to them. On a somewhat lighter note, I believe he mentioned that one should be nice to nerds...because one day one might work for one.

Maybe someone "out there" has seen this and can forward or post it.
Dave

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

My first question is, was that administration gunning for that prof? And second, are they shark aiming for promotion, and so don't care about totally bankrupting the department? Because that is astonishingly, profoundly stupid.

I wish the instructor had taken the problem to the dean, or the president of the college, or someone over the twits' heads. Like you say, a good instructor is now gone, and two students have just learned that they can game the system.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Let us hope that they someday try to game the system against a tenured prof who really cares about teaching and learning. There aren't many, but they do exist.

Sadly, you're right; the cupcakes frown

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Years ago, when I was working on my teaching certificate (no, I never taught in the classroom, because the student teaching experience terrified me--the students are dangerous everywhere, IMHO), I found a book that really illuminated this Sandbox Attitude.

Peter Sacks (pseudonymously) has written GENERATION X GOES TO COLLEGE. He describes being told he'd have to teach to get good evaluations and that he'd have to dumb down the course to reach the slowest and most intractable student(s). At first he wasn't going to do it, but then he viewed it as an experiment in manipulating them. The book is good. Maybe you could find it and read it--even though it only confirms what everyone's saying about the Entitlement Generation and the I Don't Care Because I Can Always Look It Up Later crew. If they're paying for it, they think they deserve an "A" for whatever work they do. Period. (sigh) Certainly not Greatest Generation or Baby Boomer thinking.

Here's an informative review.
http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/GENX.HTM

Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Goes-College-Eye-Opening-Postmodern/dp/0812693140

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

It is an exceptionally poor administration that does not support its teachers until proven guilty, rather than the reverse. And that NEVER asks for an explanation. Especially given the situation you describe. You are right: the student should have been told to drop the class or not take the vacation.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

This is just so awful on so many levels. I don't even know what to say.

I always worry when governments (state or federal) offer "merit rewards" to teachers or schools based on grades. I'm a little less perturbed when it's based on standardized tests (though that does encourage "teaching to the test" rather than general learning).

Community colleges are currently undergoing a resurgence of enrollment. This is a good thing, I think, as they seem more committed to actually making sure their students get an education. CCs don't have a national reputation on the line.

The SUNY schools in general seem to be similar. That makes an interesting situation: the "top" schools want to preserve their position, and may do ethically-questionable things to achieve that. The middle-range schools don't have that problem, and can more reasonably focus on turning out educated people.

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine (who teaches Math, ironically enough) dealt with similar problems at the private college he taught at. After several years of this, he'd finally had enough and interviewed for a position at a nearby community college. He got the job and was shocked to find that not only was he getting a raise by moving to the new position -and teaching lower level math courses, no less- the students tried harder, listened, and gave him good reviews even if they didn't do well in the courses. While he was ambivalent about taking the job as he wouldn't get much of a chance to do any research, he was grateful for finally getting the students that he'd always wanted.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

My observation at a CC was that the student body fell into three categories:

50% - students who really wanted to be there, but weren't at a regular college for practical reasons (at the school where I taught, most were immigrants whose qualifications were impossible to document, or who had ESL issues)

25% - older "returning" students, by and large 40- and 50-something women whose kids were now in college, or at least didn't need direct care anymore, and so the parent was now going back to get a degree.

25% - fresh high school graduates who couldn't find a job, and whose parents told them they would have to go to college instead, then. Most of these ended up dropping out within a year.

[davidkeck.livejournal.com]

Educational institutions will do a lot for an easy life. It isn't always easy (or possible), but educators can be play the rock when parents and students put an administrator in a hard place. One has heard first-hand stories of cheating college kids getting C's to save trouble. Down at the K-12 level, marks get changed without teacher consultation from time to time. In NYC, teachers can be whisked away to the "rubber room" on very limited evidence (in the interests of making sure the administrators aren't suspected of protecting a staffer).

Everybody's had a bad teacher/professor and the business needs mechanisms for supporting (or removing) such people, but an educator's job is not to be the best friend of his or her students. It can't be. Schools all up and down the line probably have to give this a thought.

~D

[kincsem.livejournal.com]

I graduated from a public college prep high school [a very good one] in 1968 and from Ohio State in 1972.

NO ONE expected to get good grades just for showing up. NO ONE expected good grades just for paying tuition.

I took 4 quarters of calculus for engineering and 3 quarters of physical chemistry at the University of Cincinnati in the late 1980s.

Again, NO ONE had the expectation of something for nothing, and there was a range in the age of students.

I think some kind of major cultural shift has occurred, and it isn't good. There is an expectation of equal outcomes, no matter what level of effort and understanding individuals put into a course. I've trained a lot of people in lab work, and in the last 20 years increasingly I see a willingness to fabricate results, even in testing of pharmaceuticals, because the "outcome" can be rigged at the end.

Culturally, we have to stop pretending that all outcomes will be the same. Some individuals are going to do better in classes (and work) because they are inherently more intelligent but more importantly, because they apply what intelligence they have to know more, understand more, and to continue learning.

Making grades easy is a lie that can lead only to bad outcomes--the student with a degree that means nothing since they are incompetent to write a sentence [I have watched BS Chemistry students agonize half a day to write a simple paragraph] or the graduate who was passed through to fill some kind of quota [I knew a handful of BS Chemical Engineering women in the early 1970s who HAD to be very good to survive in a male-dominated field--and I also knew some who came along a little later, who weren't so good, who were passed through, who did not even think like engineers, and who were lost souls. No one did them a kindness in putting them in places they had not earned.].

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I have run into the idea -- especially at expensive private schools -- that students are paying $X0,000 (or somethines $X00,000) for a degree and GPA, not for an education, and how dare you make them work for it on top of make them pay for it!

Fortunately, at my university and in my major, most of the professors were crotchety (and senior) enough to smack down that preconception. But it would not shock me a bit that more junior/adjunct profs would feel obliged to give them the grade they thought they'd 'paid for,' rather than the one they'd earned.

[keireland.livejournal.com]

reminds me of the stupidity going on with the college I went to - where the new dean is trying to run the place like a private school and is pissing off all the people who give the school money. Essentially he told the lady giving the school %65 of their yearly budget to go **** herself. And instead of supporting the engineering departments, he's throwing new buildings at the mathmatics people. Which, ok, math is important, but this is an engineering/science school - designed initially to create rocket scientists for the government (I'm not kidding about this. If you're not working for the government around here, you're unemployed). And this guy wants to promote the maths, squash the lib-arts (because they're useless (what?)), and force everyone to pay $125 for a year's parking pass regardless of whether they're staying the whole year or not.

I think what we're running into is something happening everywhere with colleges. The budgets are getting leaner, so they're buying into policies that are, in the end, going to damage us more than just being strict with students.

Honestly, the summer courses at the school I went to were 5 or 10 weeks long and usually met once or 3 times a week for really long classes. NONE of the teachers would have excused an absence on ANY grounds. And certainly NOT for a 2 week vacation!! how that school treated your friend was VERY unfair.

[steve-buchheit.livejournal.com]

My wife teaches biology at some local community colleges and branch campuses (note to anyone pursuing upper education as a career course, avoid accepting an "adjunct" position, we wish we would have known that then). Josh, she experienced the same thing this past summer (except for the student evaluation, but then that normally doesn't happen for several months at this college). And your next post pretty much sums up all the reasons. It's sad, but that's the effect of MBAs ruling the world ("higher education is a business" they cry - um, no, higher education is an opportunity). It's all about the "customer satisfaction."

She's also run several years of high evaluations, and then had one class with four friends who trashed her. Forget the nearly decade long run of positives, the other 26 positive evaluations, she had to "atone" for the 4 bad ones.

My suggestion to you or any other instructor, if there's a student problem developing, talk to your dean. Inform them of the situation as it's unfolding (once you realize it's going south to never come back). We've avoided several problems because of that. Also, vet your class synopsis and read it to the students (not just hand it out), and stick to it.