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Hi, I left my previous department and moved to a new one in the same CC. Trying to find a job somewhere else while getting some salary.

Unfortunately, I got a class full of students who don't seem to have taken the pre-requisite course even they did. They don't even know the simplest things they were supposed to have learnt last semester. They not only did not prepare before going to the lab nor do their homework. They also want me to sit next to them individually and tell them the answers word by word! Some students took the same course a few times already. They told me that each time they retake the same course, the school asks them to pay more money than before.

[Not sure why some sentences did not show up in the first post so I am posting the rest separately.]

A student around the 50s told me in the first class that he failed the course three times already. Then, in the 2nd class, I gave him a zero since he could not submit his assignment nor ask for help. He asked me for an extension which is not allowed in the course syllabus provided by the department. He then pointed his finger at me and said that he pays for my salary and I have to grant him an extension. He also said that he would complain to Ms. A. I have never heard of Ms A and asked him who that is. He said "your boss who gives you this job". Is that a threat? What kind of attitude is this? What is the best way to deal with this kind of people? In the first class, he also made three students left the class as he could not listen to me while they were talking.

After the incident, I reported to the department. Administrator had no idea who Ms. A is. She also asked me to uphold academic standard and let those who should not pass fail. She mentioned that companies have been complaining that students who graduated from this CC cannot do the things that they are supposed to know how to do. She told me that if students complain, just let them complain. She suggested me to treat my students as kindergarten children as they are immature and try all sorts of things to test the tolerance level of their professors.

This is just more of same. Do what you want to do. If you want to fail them, then do so, if doing it by the syllabus and rules of college.  If you want to just give them the answers, then go ahead.

You have no love for the place and definitely not the students, so just set up the rules, follow them, and go through the motions.

If you want us to confirm that probably a lot of them are problematic students: Yeah, sounds like it.

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 26, 2020, 01:30:52 PM
This is just more of same. Do what you want to do. If you want to fail them, then do so, if doing it by the syllabus and rules of college.  If you want to just give them the answers, then go ahead.

You have no love for the place and definitely not the students, so just set up the rules, follow them, and go through the motions.

If you want us to confirm that probably a lot of them are problematic students: Yeah, sounds like it.

Thanks. So spend the minimum amount of time on these students and don't think of them outside class. Don't even check the school emails outside the working hours and don't waste time to report them to administrator. Focus on looking for the next job outside this CC as suggested in the past.

Quote from: hamburger on January 26, 2020, 01:28:01 PM
[Not sure why some sentences did not show up in the first post so I am posting the rest separately.]

A student around the 50s told me in the first class that he failed the course three times already. Then, in the 2nd class, I gave him a zero since he could not submit his assignment nor ask for help. He asked me for an extension which is not allowed in the course syllabus provided by the department. He then pointed his finger at me and said that he pays for my salary and I have to grant him an extension. He also said that he would complain to Ms. A. I have never heard of Ms A and asked him who that is. He said "your boss who gives you this job". Is that a threat? What kind of attitude is this? What is the best way to deal with this kind of people? In the first class, he also made three students left the class as he could not listen to me while they were talking.

After the incident, I reported to the department. Administrator had no idea who Ms. A is. She also asked me to uphold academic standard and let those who should not pass fail. She mentioned that companies have been complaining that students who graduated from this CC cannot do the things that they are supposed to know. She told me that if students complain, just let them complain. She suggested me to treat my students as kindergarten children as they are immature and try all sorts of things to test the tolerance level of their professors.

What is the best way to deal with these kind of people? This is easy. You fling it right back at them without escalation. A simple and firm "No, you do not pay my salary" and "Complain to whomever you want to; complaining won't change your station in life."

Quote from: hamburger on January 26, 2020, 01:28:01 PM
He then pointed his finger at me and said that he pays for my salary and I have to grant him an extension.

Give me a raise, then.

Quote from: hamburger on January 26, 2020, 01:28:01 PM
She suggested me to treat my students as kindergarten children as they are immature and try all sorts of things to test the tolerance level of their professors.

This is bad advice, for what it is worth. If you treat people like children, they'll keep acting like children. It generally works better to expect your students to be adults and then to seem confused when they don't. I wouldn't try to argue with a student who thinks they deserve an extension because they pay your salary. You'd probably do better to just seem confused, "That's an odd thing to say. That isn't actually how this works."

Well, I think it's justified to treat them as kindergartners in that you need to stay calm and consistent. You can explain why things work the way they do, but if they refuse to agree, that's just their way of seeing if they can push back successfully on the requirements.  Assuming you hold fast, they can't. I think it's worth mentioning to them that you are paid to provide them a structure to learn the material, and if they don't adhere to the structure and don't learn the material, you register that in the grade.  You are not there to give them a specific grade. Sometimes a lightbulb goes on when it's explained that way. But of course when understanding it all means that they need to do the work, they will resist understanding it all.

Many years ago, I got phoned at home one night by an extremely angry helicopter mom.  I had had one of those "reply all" disasters and turned out her darling baby was on the distribution list
I tried multiple times to apologize to helicopter mom  but she was not having it.  She wanted to chew me out - over and over and over.

As the conversation went on, I knew we would eventually get to the "I pay your salary mister!" part of our little talk.

So....  like a hitter waiting on the fastball he KNOWS is coming, I sat back, took her insults and anger and waited on my pitch.  Sure enough....

Helicopter mom: Listen you, I pay your salary.

Your worthy correspondent: Uh, no ma'am.  Actually the university pays my salary.

HM:  Well where do you think they get the money????

YWC: Oh, ma'am.  University budgets are really very very complicated.  For all I know, my salary dollars come out of the sale of basketball tickets.

HM:  Sputter, sputter, sputter, but, what, huh, sputter, but, but, but sputter what?.  Silence.

Our conversation ended shortly thereafter.  She kicked it all up to the dean and I was forced to write a letter of apology to her idiot kid for the lapse of judgement that started this whole fandango.  The kid transferred to the business college later that week and I never saw him again.  Not sure what happened to HM.  Writing my entirely fake apology was a small price to pay for driving one batshit crazy parent apoplectic with rage. 

Ain't I a stinker?

Quote from: hamburger on January 26, 2020, 01:28:01 PM
[Not sure why some sentences did not show up in the first post so I am posting the rest separately.]

A student around the 50s told me in the first class that he failed the course three times already. Then, in the 2nd class, I gave him a zero since he could not submit his assignment nor ask for help. He asked me for an extension which is not allowed in the course syllabus provided by the department. He then pointed his finger at me and said that he pays for my salary and I have to grant him an extension. He also said that he would complain to Ms. A. I have never heard of Ms A and asked him who that is. He said "your boss who gives you this job". Is that a threat? What kind of attitude is this? What is the best way to deal with this kind of people? In the first class, he also made three students left the class as he could not listen to me while they were talking.

How can he do this? Just curious. Is he threatening? Seems to me telling people to leave would be under your control not his. Although I'd hate to have to resort to that. Yet if they were disruptive I can't say i'd be really sad that they left. Interesting scenario.

Quote from: hamburger on January 26, 2020, 01:35:59 PM

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 26, 2020, 01:30:52 PM
This is just more of same. Do what you want to do. If you want to fail them, then do so, if doing it by the syllabus and rules of college.  If you want to just give them the answers, then go ahead.

You have no love for the place and definitely not the students, so just set up the rules, follow them, and go through the motions.

If you want us to confirm that probably a lot of them are problematic students: Yeah, sounds like it.

Thanks. So spend the minimum amount of time on these students and don't think of them outside class. Don't even check the school emails outside the working hours and don't waste time to report them to administrator. Focus on looking for the next job outside this CC as suggested in the past.

Yes, and look for a CC to teach at part time where you feel loved.

Quote from: hamburger on January 26, 2020, 01:09:58 PM
Unfortunately, I got a class full of students who don't seem to have taken the pre-requisite course even they did. They don't even know the simplest things they were supposed to have learnt last semester.

Same thing I experience every time I have a CC transfer student in my class. I don't want to offend any CC faculty, but CC is worse than not going to college at all, because at least in that case the student doesn't think they've gotten an education. Students with a 4.0 GPA in CC don't even know the most basic things.

You're going to waste a lot of time if you try to enforce rules like deadlines for homework. Make your life easy. Don't fight this battle.

"You pay for the right to sit in my classroom. You still have to earn your grade."

Quote from: secundem_artem on January 26, 2020, 06:24:21 PM
Many years ago, I got phoned at home one night by an extremely angry helicopter mom.  I had had one of those "reply all" disasters and turned out her darling baby was on the distribution list
I tried multiple times to apologize to helicopter mom  but she was not having it.  She wanted to chew me out - over and over and over.

As the conversation went on, I knew we would eventually get to the "I pay your salary mister!" part of our little talk.

So....  like a hitter waiting on the fastball he KNOWS is coming, I sat back, took her insults and anger and waited on my pitch.  Sure enough....

Helicopter mom: Listen you, I pay your salary.

Your worthy correspondent: Uh, no ma'am.  Actually the university pays my salary.

HM:  Well where do you think they get the money????

YWC: Oh, ma'am.  University budgets are really very very complicated.  For all I know, my salary dollars come out of the sale of basketball tickets.

HM:  Sputter, sputter, sputter, but, what, huh, sputter, but, but, but sputter what?.  Silence.

Our conversation ended shortly thereafter.  She kicked it all up to the dean and I was forced to write a letter of apology to her idiot kid for the lapse of judgement that started this whole fandango.  The kid transferred to the business college later that week and I never saw him again.  Not sure what happened to HM.  Writing my entirely fake apology was a small price to pay for driving one batshit crazy parent apoplectic with rage. 

Ain't I a stinker?

Hall of Fame!

I say that its like paying an entry fee for a race. You agree to abide by the rules and it doesn't guarantee you anything but a chance at significantly placing.

Take out a dime from your pocket and hand it to him, saying "Here's your portion of it back since you aren't happy."

This insolence is so wrong I don't know where to begin. Take him or her aside and say firmly that it is untrue and disrespectful. You are not a civil servant nor his personal tutor. Even if it was true, your salary might be like 3 cents, compared to the tuition he paid. Profs need to work with unprepared unintelligent students, but not insolent ones.


This is trivial by comparison. In a college library reference desk was a bowl of candy. A student was offered a piece. He said,"okay, I paid for this with my tuition"       true.

Librarians and library staff are used to being viewed as hired help.  I've seldom if ever heard the "I pay your salary" thing, though.  Just "We should have built a new post office instead of a new library."

Tell your student that what he is paying for is to be vetted and challenged.  He bought your time and effort to challenge him.  If he cannot meet the challenge  that is also part of what he is paying for----the chance to prove that he can produce college-level work----and this is why a college degree has worth.

I wouldn't worry too much about the experience personally.  Sounds like he is very frustrated and taking it out on you.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 27, 2020, 08:40:02 AM
Tell your student that what he is paying for is to be vetted and challenged.  He bought your time and effort to challenge him.  If he cannot meet the challenge  that is also part of what he is paying for----the chance to prove that he can produce college-level work----and this is why a college degree has worth.

I wouldn't worry too much about the experience personally.  Sounds like he is very frustrated and taking it out on you.

It doesn't even really work that way in customer service. Just because I'm paying for a meal at a restaurant doesn't mean I get to smoke while I eat my food, take off my shirt, stay after closing time, or insist that they make me something off the menu.

Hamburger, you are clearly miserable in your job.  Not just frustrated, overworked, underpaid, and feeling disrespected.  I mean honest to God miserable.
Just walk away.  Seriously, this is clearly a very poor fit for you and for these students.  I don't know if you are geographically restricted for a job search, but I think that nearly any other job would be better.  If you want to market your university skills you could be a private tutor, an SAT prep instructor, a newspaper editor, etc.  If you want to really get away, find a job stocking shelves or checking inventory at a warehouse, deliver for Amazon/Doordash/etc, learn to hang drywall and work construction, etc.

If you stay in academia, you will ALWAYS have the students that come unprepared, forget their previous coursework, or make rude demands.  There is no school that is so special that these students don't exist.  For now if you choose to stay, focus on being fair and consistent and hide your negative attitude towards your students.  They made the choice to show up that day.  Make it worth their day to be there.

Quote from: Caracal on January 27, 2020, 09:47:03 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 27, 2020, 08:40:02 AM
Tell your student that what he is paying for is to be vetted and challenged.  He bought your time and effort to challenge him.  If he cannot meet the challenge  that is also part of what he is paying for----the chance to prove that he can produce college-level work----and this is why a college degree has worth.

I wouldn't worry too much about the experience personally.  Sounds like he is very frustrated and taking it out on you.

It doesn't even really work that way in customer service. Just because I'm paying for a meal at a restaurant doesn't mean I get to smoke while I eat my food, take off my shirt, stay after closing time, or insist that they make me something off the menu.

?

Answer to question:
I am paid by the state of XX.  The state employs me to implement and enforce the standards set by the department.  You earn your grades, at the end of the term I report them to the registrar.  If you are unhappy with the standards set by the department, please make an appointment with Department Chair YY who will be glad to hear your comments. 

Quote from: clean on January 27, 2020, 03:14:55 PM
Answer to question:
I am paid by the state of XX.  The state employs me to implement and enforce the standards set by the department.  You earn your grades, at the end of the term I report them to the registrar.  If you are unhappy with the standards set by the department, please make an appointment with Department Chair YY who will be glad to hear your comments.

A lot of these approaches are good to test here before trying on actual students.

I think I prefer the ones that don't start with the student's framing of the situation. Wahoo and Myword's examples do the best job so far of reframing the situation in reality, in a way that maintains authority but also allows continued engagement.

There are many troubled students.   I've had my share.  For many reasons, including your own safety, I wouldn't "take students on" or get into confrontations.  Limit interactions and keep emails succinct in such cases.

For outbursts like "I pay your salary!" or "That's not fair!" say simply and briefly "I'm sorry you feel that way" or "I have to maintain university standards."

Yes, spend minimum time.

Your posts often express outrage at things that are wrong or weird.  There's lots of wrong and weird in colleges and universities.  Accept and move on with your life.

Some foreign students told me that they took the prerequisite course last summer and they forgot everything. Moreover, they have to work in the day time so they are too tired and busy to do the homework or review what they learned. One told me that this is his 3rd time to take the same course and the other told me that this is his 4th time! They use the school to get a visa and find a job. The school uses them to earn more money. We professors suffer being the middle person.

Quote from: hamburger on January 28, 2020, 08:47:28 AM
Some foreign students told me that they took the prerequisite course last summer and they forgot everything. Moreover, they have to work in the day time so they are too tired and busy to do the homework or review what they learned. One told me that this is his 3rd time to take the same course and the other told me that this is his 4th time! They use the school to get a visa and find a job. The school uses them to earn more money. We professors suffer being the middle person.

Well, that's their choice then.  The students are happy to enroll in a few classes to keep their visas, the school is happy to take their money.
If the students are "too tired" and "too busy" for the homework, then that's on them.  They could take a different class at a different time. 
Repeaters should know by now exactly what they've signed up for.  You shouldn't be upset if they are taking the class again.
Don't take these things so personally.  Just make the expectations clear and consistent and record the consequences of their choices.

"My job as a Professor is to guide you in learning all about <topic>. I provide lectures and office hours to help you do that. The college provides tutors as well. When I evaluate your work, the grade that you earn is a sign to future employers or professors how much you have mastered that material. All the professors are consistent in that so that those future employers trust us...that someone with an A in English knows how to write well, but those who get an F do not or chose not to do the work to prove it."

We all have had problem students at one time or another, or will. If students challenge, they can appeal using the process outlined by the institution. If they become disruptive, I'll defuse the situation, or might even end class early. I would then get the chair and student affairs involved to make sure the student will be banned from class or has to meet with someone higher than me regarding their behavior.

I've never had to take it to a dean, but I have met with students privately and tell them I don't care what they think of me, but they won't disrupt my class again.

Quote from: hamburger on January 26, 2020, 01:35:59 PM
So spend the minimum amount of time on these students and don't think of them outside class. Don't even check the school emails outside the working hours and don't waste time to report them to administrator. Focus on looking for the next job outside this CC as suggested in the past.

Yes.

I sometimes make signs for myself that I post in a personal space at home to remind myself why I'm spending extra time and energy to get a new job.

Possible examples:

   New job == No more students at <CC>

   Network today for a student-free future!

   What am I doing today that will get me a new job elsewhere?

   Study hard at boot camp and schmooze because my new job depends on it.

   Suck it up and kiss all the ass presented to get the new job.

Yes, I have post-its on my bathroom mirror to remind me not to engage. I went to therapy once to deal with a particular student (this student was making me, my chair, and my dean a bit stressed, and it was getting to me). I asked for some help developing better coping skills through our EAP program, and it really helped. I started setting better boundaries, and limited this student's ability to engage with me, and they actually started behaving better. It wasn't a success story (the whole thing eventually blew up into a real mess and it was STILL very stressful) but I learned a lot from the encounter. This was earlier in my teaching career, and I still have some of the post-its up (I have rewritten them). Mine are about not responding to emails for 24 hours (to give me time to formulate a reply in word and to cool down) and not checking e-mail at all during evenings and weekends. That doesn't mean I don't WORK during those hours, unfortunately, but those are no-email times for me.

Quote from: Mobius on January 28, 2020, 06:03:35 PM
We all have had problem students at one time or another, or will. If students challenge, they can appeal using the process outlined by the institution. If they become disruptive, I'll defuse the situation, or might even end class early. I would then get the chair and student affairs involved to make sure the student will be banned from class or has to meet with someone higher than me regarding their behavior.

I've never had to take it to a dean, but I have met with students privately and tell them I don't care what they think of me, but they won't disrupt my class again.

Yes, troublesome students often want to make things personal. Like a lot of us, they want to focus their frustration on a particular person. You can keep a lot of problems from developing if you just refuse to engage on those terms. Don't lecture students about their behavior, just explain what the policy is. Even when you are frustrated or insulted by a student, try to keep your tone polite and matter of fact. Explain the policy and why you can't make an exception to it. I try to be friendly and approachable in the classroom, but essentially the more a student is being unpleasant, the more I try to become a distantly polite robot in the interaction.

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 27, 2020, 06:30:24 AM
"You pay for the right to sit in my classroom. You still have to earn your grade."

+1

Thank you all of you for all the good suggestions.

We just had a programming lab. A student kept asking me what he was supposed to do in the lab. I asked him to read the lab question sheet a few times but he refused to pull it out from the website. Many students did not have the question sheet in front of them too. He said that he took the course three times already so he "remembered" the questions. I asked him why he asked me what he was supposed to do then. For the first question, he had to convert something from Type A to Type B. In his program, he wrote a function with a name Convert_TypeB_To_TypeA !  Even the code is in the lecture note I taught last week, nobody knew. It means that they did not study.

The lab is very stressful. Students are un-prepared so they all needed my help. I had to run around in a big room without a break for two hours. I don't know why this CC has no lab assistant for large classes. I always feel very tired after the lab. What is the best way to deal with such situation? In the past, a colleague suggested walking in the same route line by line to reduce the stress.

Is it normal for the lecture time to be 2 hours these days? When I was a student, it was like 50 minutes/lecture with a 10 minutes break in between classes. Here we only have a 5-minute break in between classes and we often have to run from one building to the next. A colleague mentioned that by shortening the break time, the college gain one more timeslot for classes to earn more money.

Any of you developed high blood pressure after you have become a professor? I have.

Quote from: polly_mer on January 29, 2020, 05:48:06 AM

Quote from: hamburger on January 26, 2020, 01:35:59 PM
So spend the minimum amount of time on these students and don't think of them outside class. Don't even check the school emails outside the working hours and don't waste time to report them to administrator. Focus on looking for the next job outside this CC as suggested in the past.

Yes.

I sometimes make signs for myself that I post in a personal space at home to remind myself why I'm spending extra time and energy to get a new job.

Possible examples:

   New job == No more students at <CC>

   Network today for a student-free future!

   What am I doing today that will get me a new job elsewhere?

   Study hard at boot camp and schmooze because my new job depends on it.

   Suck it up and kiss all the ass presented to get the new job.

Thanks. So the world has changed? Even at universities, students these days behave similarly than those in my CC but perhaps a bit better?

I know a senior professor teaching at a local university. He told me that to get more students, his university decided to lower the entrance requirements.

Quote from: hamburger on January 30, 2020, 07:32:11 AM


Is it normal for the lecture time to be 2 hours these days? When I was a student, it was like 50 minutes/lecture with a 10 minutes break in between classes. Here we only have a 5-minute break in between classes and we often have to run from one building to the next.

Thanks. So the world has changed? Even at universities, students these days behave similarly than those in my CC but perhaps a bit better?

Five minutes? That's absurd. We have 15 minutes. Most of my classes are no more than a couple minutes walk from each other, but I've had ones that were ten minutes away before and the same is true for students. I always wait for a minute after class so if anyone has a question, I can talk to them.
Add in a few minutes for a bathroom pit stop if needed and then a couple of minutes to set up powerpoint and that doesn't leave much time. Even if you're making it to class in five minutes, hustling into class, and frantically setting everything up right before you need to start doesn't tend to put you in the best frame of mind for teaching.

Just seems like another example of your school having limited concern for students and teachers. And no, I don't really think any of this is normal. I've had some irritating students over the years, but I've never been openly challenged in the ways you describe.

Perhaps the world has changed in some way, but also, perhaps, you are just more aware of the world that has always been there without you in it.

For instance, when I was in grad school (late 80's to early 90's), the professors constantly complained about how horrible the grad students were and the even their undergrads were better. And now in 2020, I frequently see posts of a similar nature regarding terrible grad students. So, are grad students getting worse? Or is there always a group of overachieving faculty who are disappointed that that the grad students don't match their level of enthusiasm, knowledge base, etc.. ?

Same with OP's regard for current undergrads. Yeah, maybe some are just worse, and maybe their is a collective slow slide over the world of undergrads getting worse, but also same as above: faculty are often from a different culture than their students. I mean, you can both be American (or whatever), but *you*, the faculty member, are from an elite group of high achievers who love to work and read about esoteric matters in the profession. We even like to read a bunch of non-fiction and fiction NOT related to work.  Some students might fall into that model, but a lot are just sort of existing. They realize they need a degree, so they are getting one. Some feel entitled, but a lot dont--they just want to show up and do whatever.  Some lover their major, but don't like to work.
Some decided on major by default.

My advice would be to acknowledge that students aren't mini-faculty in waiting. They have their own needs and wants. I am not saying you should give in to whimsy. Just be aware thay as a group they likely think differently than you. Maybe even ask them from time to time. Just say "oh I was just reading about...oh, do you guys read about this stuff?"

It is very common in intro level labs (or even not intro level) to be running around answering questions or sitting down and having them come to you. Either way, you tend to get a lot of procedural questions. I also feel tired after labs.

That's normal. At my school sometimes labs (science labs) can be 2.5 hours. Lectures can be 50 minutes to about 80 minutes.

Quote from: hamburger on January 30, 2020, 07:32:11 AM
Is it normal for the lecture time to be 2 hours these days? When I was a student, it was like 50 minutes/lecture with a 10 minutes break in between classes. Here we only have a 5-minute break in between classes and we often have to run from one building to the next. A colleague mentioned that by shortening the break time, the college gain one more timeslot for classes to earn more money.

Smaller, traditional 50-minute classroom sessions will obviously maintain student concentration and overall academic performance better than longer 1.25+ hour classroom sessions.

The longer classroom sessions are a sign of an institution's reconciliation with critical classroom space shortages and enhanced focus on nontraditional, non-residential, working students.

The 50-minute, three-times-per-week courses are slowly dwindling at many U.S. colleges, but most especially at the commuter open-enrollment institutions. It's just too hard to get students to come to campus three times a week when they're working 40+ hours a week. Some argue that twice a week is too hard for students, or coming to campus at all.

It sounds like your college is pretty "normal" in this regard. It's not a good thing for educational quality to shift to longer, more infrequent class times, but at least your college is getting enough student enrollments that your administration is trying to squeeze more classroom offerings out of your existing facilities. Keeping the lights on and employees paid is a good thing.

Quote
The 50-minute, three-times-per-week courses are slowly dwindling at many U.S. colleges, but most especially at the commuter open-enrollment institutions. It's just too hard to get students to come to campus three times a week when they're working 40+ hours a week. Some argue that twice a week is too hard for students, or coming to campus at all.

We have requirements when scheduling that a decent percentage (that I can not now remember) of all classes are MWF from 8 to 1.  Those are the 50 minute classes.  There are also requirements that 10% of all classes in a discipline must be in the first 2 time slots.  (which pisses me off, because we do NOT get credit for teaching at night! So the department has to staff the late and MBA classes and still have others teaching at 8 or 9 am!)

We are (or at least we were until the last 2 years) a growing campus.  We were quickly running out of building space, and the formula used by the state to justify financing new buildings looked at the utilization throughout the day.  The legislature doesnt care if you are out of space at "prime time" they want to see that you are full ALL DAY.  IF you have only MW or TTh classes, then you wont qualify for a building because they are empty on Fridays.

They also include in the formula how full the classes are, so if a small class is in a large room, then the formula punishes you too.

Anyway, I have been at this university for over 15 years and I have yet to have a schedule that did not include nights!  I am positive that I did NOT go to PHD school to work the Night Shift!!  I, for one, have NEVER taught 'bankers' hours!' 

BUT I agree that 5  minutes between classes is insane!  I was in class yesterday 15 minutes after class ended answering questions!! 

Quote from: Aster on January 30, 2020, 10:10:18 AM

Quote from: hamburger on January 30, 2020, 07:32:11 AM
Is it normal for the lecture time to be 2 hours these days? When I was a student, it was like 50 minutes/lecture with a 10 minutes break in between classes. Here we only have a 5-minute break in between classes and we often have to run from one building to the next. A colleague mentioned that by shortening the break time, the college gain one more timeslot for classes to earn more money.

Smaller, traditional 50-minute classroom sessions will obviously maintain student concentration and overall academic performance better than longer 1.25+ hour classroom sessions.

The longer classroom sessions are a sign of an institution's reconciliation with critical classroom space shortages and enhanced focus on nontraditional, non-residential, working students.

The 50-minute, three-times-per-week courses are slowly dwindling at many U.S. colleges, but most especially at the commuter open-enrollment institutions. It's just too hard to get students to come to campus three times a week when they're working 40+ hours a week. Some argue that twice a week is too hard for students, or coming to campus at all.

It sounds like your college is pretty "normal" in this regard. It's not a good thing for educational quality to shift to longer, more infrequent class times, but at least your college is getting enough student enrollments that your administration is trying to squeeze more classroom offerings out of your existing facilities. Keeping the lights on and employees paid is a good thing.

Last year I went to some classes and labs taught by several colleagues to observe their teaching. Except for one senior colleague who is FT and has health issue, the rest (part-timers) just kept talking and talking non-stop without taking a break.

In one semester, I was asked to cover for a guy who suddenly resigned in the middle of the semester. I had three 2-hour classes in a row with a 5-minute break in between classes held at different buildings. The department does not care about the well-being of the professors. Doing that did not earn me any points as after helping them, they did not even invite me for an interview of the many jobs I applied.

Quote from: clean on January 30, 2020, 11:18:08 AM
We are (or at least we were until the last 2 years) a growing campus.  We were quickly running out of building space, and the formula used by the state to justify financing new buildings looked at the utilization throughout the day.  The legislature doesnt care if you are out of space at "prime time" they want to see that you are full ALL DAY.  IF you have only MW or TTh classes, then you wont qualify for a building because they are empty on Fridays.

They also include in the formula how full the classes are, so if a small class is in a large room, then the formula punishes you too.

Yes. This is a good example of an anti-education state legislature. They just want to be a-holes and not fund colleges and college educations properly.

But it can also be an example of just an ignorant body. We have such ignorance in abundance at Big Urban State College, where *our own college leaders* also use a similar and also inaccurate calculation of classroom usage.

We have 100% classroom usage during Monday-Thursday peak hours, but not in late afternoons or evenings. So the solution from our idiot leaders is that we need more afternoon/evening classes. Heck, the solution is to add Friday and Saturday classes. We've even thrown in 8am classes.

The results of all of these innovations have been exactly as an experienced educator expects. Sure, you can add those non-peak-demand courses, but you're not going to get much more enrollment out of them (or any enrollment out of them). And that's because duh! they're not peak-demand student time slots.

And after a few years of this "innovative scheduling" now its biting us hard in the butt. We've greatly overextended our non-peak class offerings so much that we're actually *losing money* with it. Too many non-peak classes are regularly cancelled for insufficient enrollment, or they're kept open but have less than 12 students in them.

Quote from: Aster on January 31, 2020, 07:39:09 AM

Quote from: clean on January 30, 2020, 11:18:08 AM
We are (or at least we were until the last 2 years) a growing campus.  We were quickly running out of building space, and the formula used by the state to justify financing new buildings looked at the utilization throughout the day.  The legislature doesnt care if you are out of space at "prime time" they want to see that you are full ALL DAY.  IF you have only MW or TTh classes, then you wont qualify for a building because they are empty on Fridays.

They also include in the formula how full the classes are, so if a small class is in a large room, then the formula punishes you too.

Yes. This is a good example of an anti-education state legislature. They just want to be a-holes and not fund colleges and college educations properly.

But it can also be an example of just an ignorant body. We have such ignorance in abundance at Big Urban State College, where *our own college leaders* also use a similar and also inaccurate calculation of classroom usage.

We have 100% classroom usage during Monday-Thursday peak hours, but not in late afternoons or evenings. So the solution from our idiot leaders is that we need more afternoon/evening classes. Heck, the solution is to add Friday and Saturday classes. We've even thrown in 8am classes.

The results of all of these innovations have been exactly as an experienced educator expects. Sure, you can add those non-peak-demand courses, but you're not going to get much more enrollment out of them (or any enrollment out of them). And that's because duh! they're not peak-demand student time slots.

And after a few years of this "innovative scheduling" now its biting us hard in the butt. We've greatly overextended our non-peak class offerings so much that we're actually *losing money* with it. Too many non-peak classes are regularly cancelled for insufficient enrollment, or they're kept open but have less than 12 students in them.

Yeah, same issue has happened at my campus. I think there's this idea out there that night classes are ideal for older students who are working, but when I've taught those classes, they don't have tend to have older students in them. If anything, I think I have more non-traditional students in other classes. If you have a job and kids, a class that starts at seven and ends at 945 is actually really tough.

Quote from: Caracal on January 31, 2020, 07:55:24 AM

Quote from: Aster on January 31, 2020, 07:39:09 AM

Quote from: clean on January 30, 2020, 11:18:08 AM
We are (or at least we were until the last 2 years) a growing campus.  We were quickly running out of building space, and the formula used by the state to justify financing new buildings looked at the utilization throughout the day.  The legislature doesnt care if you are out of space at "prime time" they want to see that you are full ALL DAY.  IF you have only MW or TTh classes, then you wont qualify for a building because they are empty on Fridays.

They also include in the formula how full the classes are, so if a small class is in a large room, then the formula punishes you too.

Yes. This is a good example of an anti-education state legislature. They just want to be a-holes and not fund colleges and college educations properly.

But it can also be an example of just an ignorant body. We have such ignorance in abundance at Big Urban State College, where *our own college leaders* also use a similar and also inaccurate calculation of classroom usage.

We have 100% classroom usage during Monday-Thursday peak hours, but not in late afternoons or evenings. So the solution from our idiot leaders is that we need more afternoon/evening classes. Heck, the solution is to add Friday and Saturday classes. We've even thrown in 8am classes.

The results of all of these innovations have been exactly as an experienced educator expects. Sure, you can add those non-peak-demand courses, but you're not going to get much more enrollment out of them (or any enrollment out of them). And that's because duh! they're not peak-demand student time slots.

And after a few years of this "innovative scheduling" now its biting us hard in the butt. We've greatly overextended our non-peak class offerings so much that we're actually *losing money* with it. Too many non-peak classes are regularly cancelled for insufficient enrollment, or they're kept open but have less than 12 students in them.

Yeah, same issue has happened at my campus. I think there's this idea out there that night classes are ideal for older students who are working, but when I've taught those classes, they don't have tend to have older students in them. If anything, I think I have more non-traditional students in other classes. If you have a job and kids, a class that starts at seven and ends at 945 is actually really tough.

Yes. Our college's plans to grow enrollment (at zero incremental cost!) include...

• Scheduling more classes between 2-5 PM because classrooms are empty. What's up with that?
• More online classes, because online classes are zero work for the student. Really, none at all. So if they have families and jobs they can... log into their class and do their homework while their kids are running around screaming, or while they are at work. Easy peasy!

Quote from: hamburger on January 30, 2020, 03:48:36 PM

In one semester, I was asked to cover for a guy who suddenly resigned in the middle of the semester. I had three 2-hour classes in a row with a 5-minute break in between classes held at different buildings. The department does not care about the well-being of the professors. Doing that did not earn me any points as after helping them, they did not even invite me for an interview of the many jobs I applied.

I've had similar experiences.  My job right now completely overwhelms me.  I, like you, agreed to take on a pretty heavy load----5 classes and 4 preps----because of shortages in teachers for various reasons.  I am hanging on by a thread (and should not now be using precious time to post).

But I have to say that we allow our unis to give us these schedules.  The reason universities can use us up and then come back for more is that the adjunct world allows it.  I was lucky and it eventually paid off in a FT NTT job.  Monetarily and career-future-wise, however, I am a sucker.

Believe me, you can get roped into lots of extra stuff on the tenure track as well.
Its not all fun and games and heaps of money and jewels.

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 31, 2020, 12:20:19 PM
Believe me, you can get roped into lots of extra stuff on the tenure track as well.
Its not all fun and games and heaps of money and jewels.

Oh absolutely.  I see this in my wife's TT job. No sane person thinks the TT faculty have it necessarily easy.  But!

Bet'cha make more money than your NTT faculty (and teach less even if you do more service work).
And I Bet'cha you make a LOT more money and have a LOT more job security than your adjunct faculty.

We do get paid in heaps of jewels, however, which as I understand it is unusual.

"I pay your salary!"

"Then go find your receipt and get a refund."

I actually said this once. My dean said it was my one and only pass. Fair 'nuff.

Well, we have two adjunct classes. The sort of "pay by the class adjunct", and yes, they are not well paid and don't have benefits (and don't stay long). But we also have senior adjuncts who gain a pseudo-tenure after a few years of teaching a full load (or more years if at reduced load). They basically make my base salary minus the 2 promotion bumps (although one or two may have negotiated bigger than average pay increases) and adjusting for time in. That makes them reasonably well paid for their position (research not required, service not required----though some do both of those). Not great, but reasonable. And they have full benefits (but not sabbatical). They have voting rights.

Anyway, I'm not saying I have it worse or anything like that, just that the tenure track faculty often can be over worked, underpaid, etc, as well.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 31, 2020, 12:32:29 PM

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 31, 2020, 12:20:19 PM
Believe me, you can get roped into lots of extra stuff on the tenure track as well.
Its not all fun and games and heaps of money and jewels.

Oh absolutely.  I see this in my wife's TT job. No sane person thinks the TT faculty have it necessarily easy.  But!

Bet'cha make more money than your NTT faculty (and teach less even if you do more service work).
And I Bet'cha you make a LOT more money and have a LOT more job security than your adjunct faculty.

This situation indicates the discrepancies between types of institutions and departments.

The institution that has a teaching track (NTT and adjunct) and a research track (TT/T, soft money fellows) tends to show that split with research being paid substantially more than teaching.  In terms of hours at work, though, teaching plus some service tends to have slightly fewer when counted over the whole year.

The institution that is holding on by its fingertips and trying all the class scheduling tricks mentioned upthread to try to get a wider market because they only have teaching and service likely is not paying a lot more money to anyone. 

Tenured faculty in certain departments at Super Dinky were fired at various points when the major was eliminated and thus the department was eliminated.  The assertion (and found true every time) was that if we had to bring people back to still teach the general education classes, then we can get adjuncts, VAPs, or nonTT folks at short notice, probably better, and likely slightly cheaper than the long tenured folks.

The NTT folks in majors/departments where getting any faculty, let alone good faculty, tended to be quite safe at Super Dinky.  I can think of more than one person who was not going to get tenure who was converted to NTT on rolling contracts instead of being fired for not earning tenure.  Having someone in the classroom willing to work hard enough for the pay we provided was a winner over risking again not being able to provide an instructor for a required class in the major that has 30-40 students already enrolled.

Professional fellows usually were paid more per class hour than tenured people because that was the way to keep the professional fellows coming back.  Yeah, the adjuncts in English get paid a pittance.  The "adjuncts" teaching required classes in criminal justice, nursing, and education were paid whatever those professional fellows requested to stay on another two years for courses that are hard to replace.  At one point, the provost tried to offer one of those professional fellows a full-time position because it would be cheaper for the college to also get service; the professional fellow turned it down because he'd rather volunteer for the service he liked (almost always student mentoring or similar direct student interaction) than be told he had to do mandatory service in ways he didn't like (retired high school teacher who was done forever with faculty meetings).

Quote from: polly_mer on February 02, 2020, 06:01:04 AM

Tenured faculty in certain departments at Super Dinky were fired at various points when the major was eliminated and thus the department was eliminated.  The assertion (and found true every time) was that if we had to bring people back to still teach the general education classes, then we can get adjuncts, VAPs, or nonTT folks at short notice, probably better, and likely slightly cheaper than the long tenured folks.

This is striking, since what I am used to hearing (or reading) from tenured faculty is they estimated that their teaching has improved markedly from how it was in the days when they were adjunct faculty.

QuoteProfessional fellows usually were paid more per class hour than tenured people because that was the way to keep the professional fellows coming back.  Yeah, the adjuncts in English get paid a pittance.  The "adjuncts" teaching required classes in criminal justice, nursing, and education were paid whatever those professional fellows requested to stay on another two years for courses that are hard to replace.  At one point, the provost tried to offer one of those professional fellows a full-time position because it would be cheaper for the college to also get service; the professional fellow turned it down because he'd rather volunteer for the service he liked (almost always student mentoring or similar direct student interaction) than be told he had to do mandatory service in ways he didn't like (retired high school teacher who was done forever with faculty meetings).

Why is 'adjuncts' sometimes put in quotations and sometimes not? Why are some adjuncts professional fellows to you and some not?

At one time Polly lived and worked in a land much different from any land that I have ever lived in or even heard about.  Wonder where she is now.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on January 27, 2020, 06:24:45 AM

Same thing I experience every time I have a CC transfer student in my class. I don't want to offend any CC faculty, but CC is worse than not going to college at all, because at least in that case the student doesn't think they've gotten an education. Students with a 4.0 GPA in CC don't even know the most basic things.

How could this be anything but offensive to CC faculty? What a gross generalization that is wholly unsupported by data on the success of CC transfer students.

Also, back when I lived in a city, all the same d@mn adjuncts taught all the gen ed courses at the CCs and the fancy universities. I would teach one class at a CC on MWF and literally the same exact course on T/R for an elite school charging 6x the tuition.

Quote from: zuzu_ on February 04, 2020, 01:51:46 PM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on January 27, 2020, 06:24:45 AM

Same thing I experience every time I have a CC transfer student in my class. I don't want to offend any CC faculty, but CC is worse than not going to college at all, because at least in that case the student doesn't think they've gotten an education. Students with a 4.0 GPA in CC don't even know the most basic things.

How could this be anything but offensive to CC faculty? What a gross generalization that is wholly unsupported by data on the success of CC transfer students.

Also, back when I lived in a city, all the same d@mn adjuncts taught all the gen ed courses at the CCs and the fancy universities. I would teach one class at a CC on MWF and literally the same exact course on T/R for an elite school charging 6x the tuition.

I agree with Zuzu_!  This is a very offensive thing to say about 2-year college students and faculty.  In my experience, our transfer students are exceedingly well-prepared, responsible, and organized.

It's sort of like high school teachers getting offended when CC professors complain about the inadequacies of high school. The high school teachers think that they're doing a great job, but are isolated in their world and don't have much reference point for what happens to their students when they leave high school. So the people in one bubble world bitch at people in another bubble world, but the bubbles rarely touch, so it doesn't really achieve anything if anyone is bitching. Nobody hears you.

I have the same problems with most of my colleagues at Big Urban College. Very few professors have experience working at 4-year universities (except for Gen Ed adjuncting), so they don't have a professional frame of reference for calibrating their assessment criteria to appropriately prepare CC students for matriculation. But Professor Nice Guy thinks that he's doing a great job with his 90% pass rates and 30% A's with his all True/False question exams and 30% attendance grade, so whatever man.

Only about 40% of the students at Big Urban College who complete their automatic AA degree, and then transfer to our local R2, ever complete. A less than 50% transfer success rate for just a low-level R2 does not seem all that successful to me.

Hopefully other CC's produce better prepared transfer students than Big Urban College does. Meanwhile, I bitch quietly about some of my colleagues for passing everybody, and everyone bitches about the high school teachers for passing everybody. Ha ha.

Professional education is so weird.

I taught PT at a rural CC while also a graduate teaching fellow at a nearby R1.

I'm sorry, but my students at the CC ranged from basically competent-and-not-really-good to utterly-disastrous-and-completely-infuriating. 

The head of my CC department was a PhD wash-out from the same R1.  Hu handed me the departmental syllabus (which had some wiggle room) and we literally did 3/4 of the work as the same class at the R1.

We were not allowed to flunk or lower grades based on attendance.  We were allowed to assign "point values" to class activities and deduct grade values from these, so I was never sure what the difference was.

That said, several of my students did transfer to the R1 and I presume other schools, and as far as I know they did fine.  And there were certain things I liked about the CC and have tried several times unsuccessfully to get a job at one.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 04, 2020, 04:32:29 PM
I taught PT at a rural CC while also a graduate teaching fellow at a nearby R1.

I'm sorry, but my students at the CC ranged from basically competent-and-not-really-good to utterly-disastrous-and-completely-infuriating. 

The head of my CC department was a PhD wash-out from the same R1.  Hu handed me the departmental syllabus (which had some wiggle room) and we literally did 3/4 of the work as the same class at the R1.

We were not allowed to flunk or lower grades based on attendance.  We were allowed to assign "point values" to class activities and deduct grade values from these, so I was never sure what the difference was.

That said, several of my students did transfer to the R1 and I presume other schools, and as far as I know they did fine.  And there were certain things I liked about the CC and have tried several times unsuccessfully to get a job at one.

Some students are so motivated they would be learning even without college, and they come along, without much money, and need a degree. They're the reason I could stand my old job as long as I did. They hated many things about the department that I also did. We even talked about it, with some caution.

Quote from: Aster on February 04, 2020, 04:03:50 PM

I have the same problems with most of my colleagues at Big Urban College. Very few professors have experience working at 4-year universities (except for Gen Ed adjuncting), so they don't have a professional frame of reference for calibrating their assessment criteria to appropriately prepare CC students for matriculation. But Professor Nice Guy thinks that he's doing a great job with his 90% pass rates and 30% A's with his all True/False question exams and 30% attendance grade, so whatever man.

Is there really some sort of agreed upon pass rate? Or grade breakdown? I give all essay exams, but I think if I gave true false exams I'd be giving more As, but I'd also fail more people. It would also be a terrible way to assess students because a true/false exam wouldn't teach anybody how to synthesize and connect information and encourages the idea that my discipline is just about random facts. Honestly, when I think about the rigor of my classes, I'm focused on making sure students have to do good work to get As (don't get me started on our lack of +- grades) and adequate work to get Bs. The grade percentages really don't matter for failing students, they usually fail because they don't turn in assignments and/or don't come to exams. These aren't usually students who have been coming to every class.

Quote from: the_geneticist on February 04, 2020, 02:30:09 PM

Quote from: zuzu_ on February 04, 2020, 01:51:46 PM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on January 27, 2020, 06:24:45 AM

Same thing I experience every time I have a CC transfer student in my class. I don't want to offend any CC faculty, but CC is worse than not going to college at all, because at least in that case the student doesn't think they've gotten an education. Students with a 4.0 GPA in CC don't even know the most basic things.

How could this be anything but offensive to CC faculty? What a gross generalization that is wholly unsupported by data on the success of CC transfer students.

Also, back when I lived in a city, all the same d@mn adjuncts taught all the gen ed courses at the CCs and the fancy universities. I would teach one class at a CC on MWF and literally the same exact course on T/R for an elite school charging 6x the tuition.

I agree with Zuzu_!  This is a very offensive thing to say about 2-year college students and faculty.  In my experience, our transfer students are exceedingly well-prepared, responsible, and organized.

Yeah, I had to hear this crap from a professor at our regional uni. I finally stopped the little conference and asked him how he could compare his uni's first-time-teaching, uncredentialed, marginally-trained graduate students in their little master's program (from which I had graduated, by the way) to the experienced full-time faculty at a CC; or why he could not equate how both colleges employ the same adjuncts for the same classes with pretty much the same course syllabi. And how so many of our faculty who graduated from his regional uni could be so utterly incompetent after earning their credentials from his uni.

A colleague finally kicked me under the table that time, so I shut up and tried to play well with others.

Quote from: Caracal on February 05, 2020, 04:30:46 AM

Quote from: Aster on February 04, 2020, 04:03:50 PM

I have the same problems with most of my colleagues at Big Urban College. Very few professors have experience working at 4-year universities (except for Gen Ed adjuncting), so they don't have a professional frame of reference for calibrating their assessment criteria to appropriately prepare CC students for matriculation. But Professor Nice Guy thinks that he's doing a great job with his 90% pass rates and 30% A's with his all True/False question exams and 30% attendance grade, so whatever man.

Is there really some sort of agreed upon pass rate? Or grade breakdown? I give all essay exams, but I think if I gave true false exams I'd be giving more As, but I'd also fail more people. It would also be a terrible way to assess students because a true/false exam wouldn't teach anybody how to synthesize and connect information and encourages the idea that my discipline is just about random facts. Honestly, when I think about the rigor of my classes, I'm focused on making sure students have to do good work to get As (don't get me started on our lack of +- grades) and adequate work to get Bs. The grade percentages really don't matter for failing students, they usually fail because they don't turn in assignments and/or don't come to exams. These aren't usually students who have been coming to every class.

Agreed-upon pass rates? Not specifically. But there are certain expected grade ranges within certain course types. When a professor wildly deviates from that range over and over again, it is cause for concern. Either they are being way too hard on assessment, or they are being way too lenient with assessment.

When I say "deviate wildly", I am referring to absurdly-mad-level deviation that would make 4-year university faculty turn beet red in the face and cuss loudly about how lousy a community college education is. Like, over half of a freshman majors science classes magically all earning A's, when the normal range for that exact same course at an R1 is 20%, tops. Or passing 90% of the class when the normal range for pass rates at highly selective local R2 for the same course type is only 70%.

Some clueless politician might look at that and say, "Gee, community college professors are magical unicorns that can take anybody and everybody and turn them into outstanding learners!"

But then all of these students transfer to a 4-year university as upperclassmen, and half of them flunk out without getting a bachelor's degree. Oops.

Quote from: Aster on February 11, 2020, 10:52:51 AM

Quote from: Caracal on February 05, 2020, 04:30:46 AM

Quote from: Aster on February 04, 2020, 04:03:50 PM

I have the same problems with most of my colleagues at Big Urban College. Very few professors have experience working at 4-year universities (except for Gen Ed adjuncting), so they don't have a professional frame of reference for calibrating their assessment criteria to appropriately prepare CC students for matriculation. But Professor Nice Guy thinks that he's doing a great job with his 90% pass rates and 30% A's with his all True/False question exams and 30% attendance grade, so whatever man.

Is there really some sort of agreed upon pass rate? Or grade breakdown? I give all essay exams, but I think if I gave true false exams I'd be giving more As, but I'd also fail more people. It would also be a terrible way to assess students because a true/false exam wouldn't teach anybody how to synthesize and connect information and encourages the idea that my discipline is just about random facts. Honestly, when I think about the rigor of my classes, I'm focused on making sure students have to do good work to get As (don't get me started on our lack of +- grades) and adequate work to get Bs. The grade percentages really don't matter for failing students, they usually fail because they don't turn in assignments and/or don't come to exams. These aren't usually students who have been coming to every class.

Agreed-upon pass rates? Not specifically. But there are certain expected grade ranges within certain course types. When a professor wildly deviates from that range over and over again, it is cause for concern. Either they are being way too hard on assessment, or they are being way too lenient with assessment.

When I say "deviate wildly", I am referring to absurdly-mad-level deviation that would make 4-year university faculty turn beet red in the face and cuss loudly about how lousy a community college education is. Like, over half of a freshman majors science classes magically all earning A's, when the normal range for that exact same course at an R1 is 20%, tops. Or passing 90% of the class when the normal range for pass rates at highly selective local R2 for the same course type is only 70%.

Some clueless politician might look at that and say, "Gee, community college professors are magical unicorns that can take anybody and everybody and turn them into outstanding learners!"

But then all of these students transfer to a 4-year university as upperclassmen, and half of them flunk out without getting a bachelor's degree. Oops.

There is no hard and fast rule (at least not at most places, but I have heard of some schools where there is....) but I think that you can get a sense of the intentions of the grades by simply reading the description of what they represent. Here it is essentially A= excellent, far above expectations, B = exceeded expectations, C = met expectations, and so forth.  Based on this, if your class average is in the B range, it means that most students have gone above and beyond your expectations.  To me, this suggests that your expectations are too low and the grades are inflated.  Of course, my class averages are usually in the B range since this is the norm here, so I dont practice what I am preaching, but I act in accordance with my reality rather than my ideals. 

Quote from: Aster on February 04, 2020, 04:03:50 PM


I have the same problems with most of my colleagues at Big Urban College. Very few professors have experience working at 4-year universities (except for Gen Ed adjuncting), so they don't have a professional frame of reference for calibrating their assessment criteria to appropriately prepare CC students for matriculation.

Professional education is so weird.

I actually knew of someone at our rural teaching school who flunked half of hu's students in one particular class in a fit a pique.  The students protested en masse in the chair's office, and of course the grades did not stand.

For the most part, my post-PhD teaching experience has been at open-enrollment state "teaching" universities or rural LACs and one inner city LAC as a 1-year VAP.  My wife and I actually entered the profession at a rural university with several other instructors, adjunct and FT, who had just or were just finishing their doctorates.  All of us came from R1s somewhere, and all of us were dismayed at the quality of our new students.  We all had to reduce our syllabuses and assignments just so students could complete the work.  I had already had this experience teaching at a rural CC during graduate school.

The point being that for practicalities' sake none of us could hold the comparatively high standards that we had at these more selective schools, which were not all that high or selective to begin with.  One simply cannot grade to the standards one should and at the same time contribute to the progression of students through the system, particularly at less selective schools. 

I should actually be grading right now, but I just couldn't take it anymore.  Some papers tonight were basically good college-level work, others were, well, what I might expect from a high school sophomore who is a non-reader.  I should have flunked about half the papers I've graded so far, but it simply cannot be done.  I have read of this conundrum before on the old CHE fora.

So it might not be that CC professors have lost sight of 4-year criteria, although it might be; it might be that CC professors have no real choice but to pass their students along no matter how well or poorly they perform.  I guess this is an argument for reducing the number of students who go to college in the first place.

I should also say that the amount of grading and prep I am currently doing, on top of my own work, precludes doing any really quality correspondence or commentary on the students' work.  Realistically, since I need to go to bed tonight after getting ready to teach tomorrow, I cannot help in the way I should.

Quote from: mahagonny on February 02, 2020, 06:23:35 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on February 02, 2020, 06:01:04 AM

Tenured faculty in certain departments at Super Dinky were fired at various points when the major was eliminated and thus the department was eliminated.  The assertion (and found true every time) was that if we had to bring people back to still teach the general education classes, then we can get adjuncts, VAPs, or nonTT folks at short notice, probably better, and likely slightly cheaper than the long tenured folks.

This is striking, since what I am used to hearing (or reading) from tenured faculty is they estimated that their teaching has improved markedly from how it was in the days when they were adjunct faculty.

Yes, those tenured faculty members would say they were excellent teachers, or at least would be if they had better students.  Seldom did the evidence on student performance back up the assertions as long as we hired experienced teachers instead of those who were still in the first year or two of learning to be teachers.

Quote from: mahagonny on February 02, 2020, 06:23:35 AM

QuoteProfessional fellows usually were paid more per class hour than tenured people because that was the way to keep the professional fellows coming back.  Yeah, the adjuncts in English get paid a pittance.  The "adjuncts" teaching required classes in criminal justice, nursing, and education were paid whatever those professional fellows requested to stay on another two years for courses that are hard to replace.  At one point, the provost tried to offer one of those professional fellows a full-time position because it would be cheaper for the college to also get service; the professional fellow turned it down because he'd rather volunteer for the service he liked (almost always student mentoring or similar direct student interaction) than be told he had to do mandatory service in ways he didn't like (retired high school teacher who was done forever with faculty meetings).

Why is 'adjuncts' sometimes put in quotations and sometimes not? Why are some adjuncts professional fellows to you and some not?

A professional fellow is part-time faculty who has a continuing relationship with the department that includes duties beyond teaching a class.  The professional fellows had full-time jobs in the field and taught one course per term in their particular expertise while also participating as an expert in curriculum design for the particular major, discussions regarding the student cohort in the major, and service related to mentoring of students in the major including placement in internships and forming long-term relationships to be a first node in a professional network for the students.

In contrast, an adjunct is someone teaching an extra section of something once in a while because we ended up needing more than we could cover this particular term.  Expectations for an adjunct is good teaching in their class and following all bureaucratic rules related to teaching, but no expectations exist regarding service to the department/institution, long-term individual student mentoring, or research.

An adjunct is truly extra to the institution and definitely a temporary addition for less than a year.  An "adjunct" indicated me being annoyed at the refusal to believe the difference between someone who is part-time integral faculty to a major versus the big ole pool of contingent term-by-term faculty who are offering general education classes that as a whole constitute a need for the institution, but any individual course is extra and nothing bad happens to the undergrad students if that particular course isn't offered this term.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 11, 2020, 05:59:41 PM
The point being that for practicalities' sake none of us could hold the comparatively high standards that we had at these more selective schools, which were not all that high or selective to begin with.  One simply cannot grade to the standards one should and at the same time contribute to the progression of students through the system, particularly at less selective schools. 

I should actually be grading right now, but I just couldn't take it anymore.  Some papers tonight were basically good college-level work, others were, well, what I might expect from a high school sophomore who is a non-reader.  I should have flunked about half the papers I've graded so far, but it simply cannot be done.  I have read of this conundrum before on the old CHE fora.

So it might not be that CC professors have lost sight of 4-year criteria, although it might be; it might be that CC professors have no real choice but to pass their students along no matter how well or poorly they perform.  I guess this is an argument for reducing the number of students who go to college in the first place.

You guess this is an argument for reducing the number of students who go to college in the first place?

Your direct experience supports nearly everything I've written for years on how students get ripped off by thinking they have a college education and you guess this might be an argument?

Your direct experience supports nearly everything I've written in the past couple years about why specific types of colleges are going to close as students with options chose elsewhere for a better education and the population of people who just want something close has greatly declined and you guess this is an argument for reducing the number of students who go to college in the first place?

Your direct experience supports nearly every case for why transitioning to the cheapest possible labor in revolving door adjuncts does a disservice to the students who want an education because those adjuncts can have their grades overturned or be pressured into giving unearned higher grades and you guess this is an argument for reducing the number of students who go to college in the first place?

Welcome aboard the reality bus!

Where was Polly a few days ago in this thread?  Polly was helping review materials for summer undergrad interns in which the average student (sophomore/junior in college) in the pool has at least one peer-reviewed publication or patent and at least two presentations at national conferences from internships that started as early as sophomore year of high school along with at least a 3.8 GPA at a name-brand school.

Where was Polly a few days ago in this thread?  Polly was helping review soon-to-be-shiny-new-BS holders who are interviewing for staff positions here.  Polly was sighing heavily because we don't have nearly enough people who have sufficient background in the relevant STEM subjects so we can send those folks to grad school or some other postbac education and have those folks be solid contributors in 3-5 years.  The fabulous students who come as interns tend to go elsewhere for long term because they prefer a more urban environment than we can provide.  We get a few to come as permanent staff because we provide a great research/day-to-day work environment, but we can't compete with the lifestyle that most of them learned to love at their elite institutions that have a lot of things for people to do in the evenings and on weekends.  Thus, we recruit from lesser places and the top in the lesser places is far fewer people than the average in the big places.

Where was Polly a few days ago on this thread?  Polly was providing input on how to partner with additional regional institutions on how to get a real college education to the people who already want to live here so that they can get the jobs we have that require college degrees, especially for the much more numerous positions that don't require a STEM background, but do require a true college education including being able to do algebra, read graphs, and otherwise use high school math.  Few people move cross-country for these entry-level positions in a rural place with a handful of restaurants that are closed by 8 PM on weeknights and the one movie theatre providing most of the entertainment options. 

We are providing professional fellows to some regional programs to ensure that the quality of education remains high enough that we can hire.  We are providing support to the K-12 teachers so that students who enter the regional programs are ready to do the work.

Where was Polly a few days ago on this thread?  Polly was helping fix the damn problem of better education for more people instead of helping rip off students who think they are getting a college education, but are instead only getting a checkbox certificate of attendance.

Quote from: polly_mer on February 12, 2020, 05:54:05 AM

Where was Polly a few days ago on this thread?  Polly was helping fix the damn problem of better education for more people instead of helping rip off students who think they are getting a college education, but are instead only getting a checkbox certificate of attendance.

Good lord.

Quote from: polly_mer on February 12, 2020, 05:54:05 AM
Your direct experience supports nearly everything I've written for years on how students get ripped off by thinking they have a college education and you guess this might be an argument?


Welcome aboard the reality bus!

Where was Polly a few days ago on this thread?  Polly was helping fix the damn problem of better education for more people instead of helping rip off students who think they are getting a college education, but are instead only getting a checkbox certificate of attendance.

Oh Polly.  Gee whiz.

Hey, I've never denied that there are problems with education.  What I've said before, however, is that anything human will have problems.  And sure, I do not argue that we oversell college....maybe...

At the same time, the education these lackluster students gained changed them a great deal.  Sure, I had freshman-in-high-school-level work and I cannot realistically give them the awards they deserve.  But...

What I will write now, and what I have written before, is that these students actually gained a tremendous amount out of college that they would not have gotten otherwise. Yup, gained from college what they would not have gained elsewhere.  A great many, most actually, of those H.S.-frosh level college students succeeded and progressed in college and then out.  In fact, most succeeded and progressed. (Lest you be tempted to post more misleading graduation stats I will remind you that at most colleges the graduation rate is around 75%, not counting transfers and students who return later as non-trads, and that the 60% grad rate overall is a deceptive number factoring in proprietary and CC [also deceptively low mean] schools...we've been over this already...I take those numbers from your own links).

So no, my dear Polly sans-Pollyanna, I emphatically do not think we are ripping them off at all.  We certainly could do things better (by hiring FT teachers who have room enough and time to help these under-performing students for one thing) but we are giving them the chance to better themselves and most take advantage of that. 

We're definitely ripping some of them off.

Any tuition driven school will get a few too many of the students who really shouldn't be there,
either because they can't hack the academics, are too much of a discipline problem, or just otherwise don't care.

Quote from: Ruralguy on February 13, 2020, 07:45:02 AM
We're definitely ripping some of them off.

Any tuition driven school will get a few too many of the students who really shouldn't be there,
either because they can't hack the academics, are too much of a discipline problem, or just otherwise don't care.

+1 
And in some fields, in seminar/discussion-based classes, these lagging students can diminish the quality of education for others.

I do think, Polly, you seem a little bit more bitter about your past experiences than usual.
In the interest of avoiding PTSD, you should probably not think too much of Super Dinky.

Quote from: Cheerful on February 13, 2020, 08:03:52 AM

Quote from: Ruralguy on February 13, 2020, 07:45:02 AM
We're definitely ripping some of them off.

Any tuition driven school will get a few too many of the students who really shouldn't be there,
either because they can't hack the academics, are too much of a discipline problem, or just otherwise don't care.

+1 
And in some fields, in seminar/discussion-based classes, these lagging students can diminish the quality of education for others.

Again, I've worked almost exclusively at "open enrollment" places.  And absolutely, some of these people should not grace a college classroom.  Sometimes I've been forced to grade down and dumb down content and expectations. 

However (and I'm not just playing Devil's Advocate here), sometimes what marks a student as "unready" for college level work has very little to do with a student's native ability and everything to do with cultural circumstance and home environment.  These open enrollment schools give people a chance they wouldn't have otherwise, or might have in a couple of other sectors such as the military or sports which are not necessarily geared to nurture people into being better than they are.  Sometimes, not always, but sometimes (I'd even say oftentimes) the gamble really pays off.  "Tuition driven" is clearly a pejorative, but we cannot overlook the opportunity it gives to deserving people either.

Quote from: Ruralguy on February 13, 2020, 07:45:02 AM
We're definitely ripping some of them off.

Any tuition driven school will get a few too many of the students who really shouldn't be there,
either because they can't hack the academics, are too much of a discipline problem, or just otherwise don't care.

But is it really possible to know who should and shouldn't be in college? The point of many non selective schools is to be exist as places where a wide variety of students have access to a college education. If you tightened admissions standards at regional universities, you would certainly admit fewer students who have little chance of finishing college, but you would also keep out students who are perfectly capable of doing fine in college, but didn't do great in high school, or don't do well on standardized tests.

Now, the cost of college and the need for many students to take out loans is a real problem, but it seems misguided to argue that it would be better if students never had the chance to go to college.

I'm not talking about a blanket ban from all colleges, I'm just saying that many colleges with selective guidelines and retention rules violate them regularly in order to keep the cash rolling in even well after they know the person will fail.
So, in all likelihood the bottom 1% in academics or discipline or both are being ripped off. Almost none of them should have ever forked over a dollar, and all coiuld have stopped long before the college forced them out.

Quote from: Ruralguy on February 13, 2020, 08:32:18 AM
I do think, Polly, you seem a little bit more bitter about your past experiences than usual.
In the interest of avoiding PTSD, you should probably not think too much of Super Dinky.

At my current employer, we're in the midst of hiring at all levels and it's hugely frustrating to realize that we can't get enough qualified people at any level.  Articles indicating a mismatch between what employers need and what college graduates claim to have are hitting home this month.  A good recent article indicates a huge gap between what the college graduates claim they can do and what employers see they can do (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/23/study-students-believe-they-are-prepared-workplace-employers-disagree) and we see that when we sigh heavily and hire on the hopes that anyone doing anything in some positions is better than leaving all those positions vacant.

Because it usually has to be stated explicitly, this isn't a field thing so much as a quality of college education thing.  If we're hiring for general skill sets that all college graduates should have, the difference is pretty stark between the average graduate from a highly selective institution and the average graduate from an all-but-open enrollment institution.  The top students from an all-but-open enrollment institution are generally good enough and will thrive when they get to our environment.  However, the gap in academic preparedness between those who can get into a highly selective institution and those who really had to go to an all-but-open enrollment institution doesn't close during college in many cases.  The result is folks with a college degree who are less well educated than the high school graduate from a truly excellent K-12 school system.  I personally know folks who graduated from all-but-open-enrollment colleges, but are functionally illiterate.  And, no, those folks are not graduates of Super Dinky.

The rude accusations that employers used to train and now expect people to be ready upon hire don't account for the change in what a college degree indicates.  Time was, nearly any college degree from any institution (and most high schools) meant someone was literate enough, numerate enough, and had mindsets associated with being able to learn new things in a professional environment.  That's not true any more.  The mindset is something that is hard to teach, but can be filtered for based on experience.

That experience is part of why I'm also sighing heavily at the difference between being a good enough student and really being ready to be a lifelong learner in the ways we need people to act daily.  The article above points out some of the differences between what we need people to do on the job and what colleges use those same terms to mean.  Another entirely relevant article to my current circumstances is https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/21/study-finds-female-college-graduates-newly-job-market-are-punished-having-good. 

Being good at classes in school is not at all the same as having the mindset we need along with the habits we need and the gap is much, much bigger for the all-but-open-enrollment institutions that don't hold the college-education line so we're not even getting people who have the habits associated with being a good student who might be able to be trained into checkbox-like activities.  The claim of "excellent sheep" at the elite institutions does hold true for people who aren't the leaders in something during the college time.  Grades indicate almost nothing about the attitude.  Having a laundry list of participation activities is generally a negative indicator over being a true star in something in accord with the psychology of impressiveness. (https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2010/03/26/how-to-get-into-stanford-with-bs-on-your-transcript-failed-simulations-the-surprising-psychology-of-impressiveness/)  We'd settle in some cases for excellent sheep, but we can't necessarily even get that for graduates of certain institutions where the line on what a college education means is not being held.

An undergraduate degree along with multiple intensive (i.e., all summer or full-time during a college term) internships and/or strong project-based learning (again, all term on a single project as part of a true team that needs all the members to participate at a high level) tends to correlate with what we need in most college-degree-required jobs, regardless of GPA or institution.

An undergraduate experience with substantial organizing experience (not just title of officer in a club, but weekly/bi-weekly meetings getting things done) with about a 3.0 GPA at most institutions tends to correlate with what we need.

A high GPA from a nearly open enrollment institution, zero work-like experience in a professional setting, and a degree that has no national field accrediting body to insist on specific standards tends to not correlate with what we need.

Well before my time as an adult, having any bachelor's degree from any accredited institution generally meant someone was literate enough, numerate enough, and willing enough to get more training to advance in an entry-level position.  That's no longer true and even some name-brand institutions graduate people who don't/won't/can't meet the minimum bar for what we need at the entry-level, let alone what we need for the highly specialized STEM graduate background.

We're currently interviewing for experienced PhDs (about the just-got-tenure level) and it's clear that many of the academics who have the relevant specialities on paper will not function well in the environment we have that includes working on a team as a contributor instead of the leader as a near daily experience to meet externally imposed deadlines as well as having a boss who can set priorities and timelines. It's unclear how people who haven't worked in that kind of environment can mentor students into the necessary mindsets and provide similar experiences as part of the college experience.

Having many classes as part of the undergraduate degree that aren't even attempting to hold a line on basic proficiency in whatever that class is tasked with teaching (skills, background information, practice applying skills in new contexts) are reinforcing that school is disconnected from life and other realities.  At a minimum, college should help inculcate the ability to navigate a bureaucracy that has rules to include figuring out what's important enough to exceed the passing bar for the externally imposed requirements while doing what's personally interesting enough now that is building to a good enough future.  That's a good life lesson for anyone who plans to be at least middle-class regardless of job or specific field knowledge.

I am angry on behalf of people who not only didn't get a job-relevant college education, but also didn't get a good liberal arts education and yet paid good money and invested time/energy in classes that should have paid off in some way.  Having a good college experience that doesn't result in a high-paying job is fine, but I am very, very angry at people who knowingly perpetuate a system that rips people off by not providing a good liberal arts education, a good specialized education, or a good jobs-focused education.

Quote from: polly_mer on February 14, 2020, 05:16:39 AM








We're currently interviewing for experienced PhDs (about the just-got-tenure level) and it's clear that many of the academics who have the relevant specialities on paper will not function well in the environment we have that includes working on a team as a contributor instead of the leader as a near daily experience to meet externally imposed deadlines as well as having a boss who can set priorities and timelines. It's unclear how people who haven't worked in that kind of environment can mentor students into the necessary mindsets and provide similar experiences as part of the college experience.

At a minimum, college should help inculcate the ability to navigate a bureaucracy that has rules to include figuring out what's important enough to exceed the passing bar for the externally imposed requirements while doing what's personally interesting enough now that is building to a good enough future.  That's a good life lesson for anyone who plans to be at least middle-class regardless of job or specific field knowledge.

I am angry on behalf of people who not only didn't get a job-relevant college education, but also didn't get a good liberal arts education and yet paid good money and invested time/energy in classes that should have paid off in some way.  Having a good college experience that doesn't result in a high-paying job is fine, but I am very, very angry at people who knowingly perpetuate a system that rips people off by not providing a good liberal arts education, a good specialized education, or a good jobs-focused education.

1. Your anger isn't particularly well directed and mostly seems to take the form of imputing nefarious motivations to people who either don't share your assumptions or think your proposed solutions would make things worse. We are all, you included, part of systems. I'm not in charge of American higher education. I'm hired to teach students in a subject that I think is important and I try to do my best at that.

2. Universities aren't designed to prepare people to enter the work force, and they never have been. Do students learn things that might serve them well in college? Sure, but you could say the same thing about working a retail job. The truth is that even the people who claim to know what students need to succeed in the job market are often wrong, and even if they are right, they don't know what sorts of skills might be necessary in the future.

3. Again, none of this is to suggest that everything is great. I don't really think the problem is that too many people have the opportunity to go to college. Instead, the bigger issue is that the premium placed on a college education is so high and other opportunities are so limited that people who probably don't want to go to college feel like they have to. Add in student debt and the tendency of these people to not finish, and you have a problem, obviously. I can't fix this though. It certainly isn't going to help anything if I focus on job skills and deaden my classes.

I've never met a college graduate who is "functionally illiterate," even at the open-enrollment schools I teach at.

Nor can we realistically expect college to resolve all issues with young people and mold them into perfect employment machines.  We were all green at one point.  Going from the greenest turkey on the street to someone a little more savvy is part of life, including the working world.

Frustration leads to hyperbole when one does not think one's point is being taken, Polly.

One thing that would help fix colleges (among many others): Hire FT teachers.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 14, 2020, 10:21:20 AM
I've never met a college graduate who is "functionally illiterate," even at the open-enrollment schools I teach at.

I've had one who I think fits the bill (though I could be wrong in my assessment--I'm not a professional).

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on February 14, 2020, 07:40:10 PM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 14, 2020, 10:21:20 AM
I've never met a college graduate who is "functionally illiterate," even at the open-enrollment schools I teach at.

I've had one who I think fits the bill (though I could be wrong in my assessment--I'm not a professional).

Supposedly 14 percent of the US population is by some measures functionally illiterate. I'm guessing, that hyperbole about declining standards aside, there aren't many high school graduates in that number. Are there a a few? Sure, but I give essay exams and I would say two things.
1. I teach at a school that has a 70 percent acceptance rate and I  have never had a student that wasn't capable of writing something that vaguely seemed like a response to the essay. I occasionally have students who don't seem to be able to do more than write something very short. My impression is that most of these students are struggling less with literacy than expressing complex ideas, but I wouldn't be shocked if a few of them do have more basic struggles.
2. The group of students who seem to struggle with basic writing tasks, most of whom probably wouldn't fit the tag of functional illiteracy anyway, is very small, perhaps around 2 or 3 percent.

Show him a list of the personnel working at the community college followed by how much each is paid per hour. He brought up the subject.

Quote from: mahagonny on February 19, 2020, 12:22:30 PM
Show him a list of the personnel working at the community college followed by how much each is paid per hour. He brought up the subject.

PWNED!

My anger is misplaced because people right here have admitted to ripping off students in their classes by not holding standards?  Interesting.

Caracal, all your other points indicate conflating a certificate in, say, key punch operator with a professional preparation like engineering.  Yep, state-of-the-art in engineering tools has changed dramatically in my lifetime and indeed in the past 10 years.  The math to do the physics to do the critical thinking to learn new things remains useful.  The ability to read quickly and learn new things is more important than ever. 

Yes, some people with a good liberal arts education can also learn new things quickly enough to matter.  However, someone who isn't even hitting the mark in a dumbed down college class (something about not being as good as a sophomore in high school) is not on the track to be able to learn new things and adjust as the world continues to change at a breakneck speed.

Only 30% of the US adult population has a college degree.  Dumbing down the content so that more people have a piece of paper instead of the skills and content that used to be the hallmark of a college graduate serves only the people who are getting paid regardless of what students learn along the way.

I will also say, because it's come up multiple times recently in my job and I'm still really, really angry at out-of-touch academics who can't do what we need entry-level folks to do, that two of the most useful job skills we're having trouble finding people to do is organization of the paperwork and running the calendar.  I don't care where people learned to do it, but being unable to do it means people aren't qualified for the any-college-degree-required positions we're trying to fill.  A third very useful job skill is actually being able to do a spreadsheet including writing the one page report detailing what's important in the graph.

My anger is misplaced?  No, it seems pretty well placed when people are all-but-proud that they are contributing to ripping off people to get a paycheck.

Quote from: polly_mer on February 20, 2020, 05:42:50 AM
My anger is misplaced because people right here have admitted to ripping off students in their classes by not holding standards?  Interesting.

Caracal, all your other points indicate conflating a certificate in, say, key punch operator with a professional preparation like engineering.  Yep, state-of-the-art in engineering tools has changed dramatically in my lifetime and indeed in the past 10 years.  The math to do the physics to do the critical thinking to learn new things remains useful.  The ability to read quickly and learn new things is more important than ever. 

Yes, some people with a good liberal arts education can also learn new things quickly enough to matter.  However, someone who isn't even hitting the mark in a dumbed down college class (something about not being as good as a sophomore in high school) is not on the track to be able to learn new things and adjust as the world continues to change at a breakneck speed.



My anger is misplaced?  No, it seems pretty well placed when people are all-but-proud that they are contributing to ripping off people to get a paycheck.

I promise I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that I actually have no idea what you are talking about. I've never said that I think engineering programs or other professional programs are worthless or don't prepare students well for certain careers. Obviously there are some careers that require particular forms of professional preparation. All I've said is that there can be a tendency to focus too much on career preparation which assumes that the people in charge know what sorts of particular skills and training people will need in the future.

As for the rest, I'll just reiterate my previous point. You've constructed a worldview where only people who agree with you and whose career and personal goals are exactly aligned with yours are virtuous. The rest of us are just shills proud to be ripping people off for a paycheck. I'm glad you like your job, but I'm betting that you are also imbedded within various systems, many of which screw people and the world over in various ways.

Unaware is any poster admitting to ripping anyone off.   Maybe a sedative or a puppy to play with, Polly.  Maybe a zoomba class.

If I'm keeping up with Polly's analysis, an adjunct who is only there sporadically to teach courses that could easily be done without, until they are urgently needed, is ripping off the system because his pay and job security are so minimal that he can't possibly have any commitment to the job or the students. So the anger is entirely appropriate. We've got to find these scoundrels and stop them. Or ask them if they have friends who will be definitely available in September, if the course populates. Something like that.

Quote from: polly_mer on February 12, 2020, 05:28:18 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on February 02, 2020, 06:23:35 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on February 02, 2020, 06:01:04 AM

Tenured faculty in certain departments at Super Dinky were fired at various points when the major was eliminated and thus the department was eliminated.  The assertion (and found true every time) was that if we had to bring people back to still teach the general education classes, then we can get adjuncts, VAPs, or nonTT folks at short notice, probably better, and likely slightly cheaper than the long tenured folks.

This is striking, since what I am used to hearing (or reading) from tenured faculty is they estimated that their teaching has improved markedly from how it was in the days when they were adjunct faculty.

Yes, those tenured faculty members would say they were excellent teachers, or at least would be if they had better students.  Seldom did the evidence on student performance back up the assertions as long as we hired experienced teachers instead of those who were still in the first year or two of learning to be teachers.

I actually appreciate this bit of candor, although I think the coast savings would have been dramatic, not slight.

But the rest of your comment on this, wherein you sort adjuncts into to opposite categories and then generalize about their motivation and merit, doesn't match my lived experience. For example in my experience, the degree of commitment to a department can be enhanced by the presence of a union with seniority provisions, input into the student eval process, a right to appeal a termination, that sort of thing. Stuff that you probably think is adversarial.

Quote from: polly_mer on February 12, 2020, 05:28:18 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on February 02, 2020, 06:23:35 AM

QuoteProfessional fellows usually were paid more per class hour than tenured people because that was the way to keep the professional fellows coming back.  Yeah, the adjuncts in English get paid a pittance.  The "adjuncts" teaching required classes in criminal justice, nursing, and education were paid whatever those professional fellows requested to stay on another two years for courses that are hard to replace.  At one point, the provost tried to offer one of those professional fellows a full-time position because it would be cheaper for the college to also get service; the professional fellow turned it down because he'd rather volunteer for the service he liked (almost always student mentoring or similar direct student interaction) than be told he had to do mandatory service in ways he didn't like (retired high school teacher who was done forever with faculty meetings).

Why is 'adjuncts' sometimes put in quotations and sometimes not? Why are some adjuncts professional fellows to you and some not?

A professional fellow is part-time faculty who has a continuing relationship with the department that includes duties beyond teaching a class.  The professional fellows had full-time jobs in the field and taught one course per term in their particular expertise while also participating as an expert in curriculum design for the particular major, discussions regarding the student cohort in the major, and service related to mentoring of students in the major including placement in internships and forming long-term relationships to be a first node in a professional network for the students.

In contrast, an adjunct is someone teaching an extra section of something once in a while because we ended up needing more than we could cover this particular term.  Expectations for an adjunct is good teaching in their class and following all bureaucratic rules related to teaching, but no expectations exist regarding service to the department/institution, long-term individual student mentoring, or research.

An adjunct is truly extra to the institution and definitely a temporary addition for less than a year.  An "adjunct" indicated me being annoyed at the refusal to believe the difference between someone who is part-time integral faculty to a major versus the big ole pool of contingent term-by-term faculty who are offering general education classes that as a whole constitute a need for the institution, but any individual course is extra and nothing bad happens to the undergrad students if that particular course isn't offered this term.

Quote from: Caracal on February 13, 2020, 09:33:49 AM

Quote from: Ruralguy on February 13, 2020, 07:45:02 AM
We're definitely ripping some of them off.

Any tuition driven school will get a few too many of the students who really shouldn't be there,
either because they can't hack the academics, are too much of a discipline problem, or just otherwise don't care.

But is it really possible to know who should and shouldn't be in college?

I can make a pretty good guess by the end of the first week of classes. Students who shouldn't be there

• missed some number of classes, especially early in the morning, because of oversleep/hangover
• arrived late at some number of classes, for above reasons or couldn't find the room
• missed labs, because "someone said there were no labs the first week". (Note: "Someone" was not the course instructor or the lab instructor. And student didn't bother going to the lab to make sure.)
• didn't log onto the LMS for any course that required it

(Note: the above attendance issues were probably not reflected in campus social activities, which were probably attended with liturgical devotion.)

In other words, students with no amount of proactivity should not be there. That's not because they went to a bad high school or are a first generation student. It's just because they are not serious about it.

Good point, Marshy, particularly considering that no students ever mature during their time at college.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 21, 2020, 07:57:39 AM
Good point, Marshy, particularly considering that no students ever mature during their time at college.

I find that most do, but a few of them, not too much, as far as study habits. As a practical matter, I would not identify any student in my mind as 'they shouldn't be here.' The way I would be setting things up mentally would be all wrong. You have to try like hell for each body (within reason) with success in mind. What to do about someone who comes in reeking of alcohol or reefer can be an issue.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 21, 2020, 07:57:39 AM
Good point, Marshy, particularly considering that no students ever mature during their time at college.

The problem is that these tend to be students who are not very strong academically to begin with, so they often fail out before they get a chance to mature. It's pretty rare (although it happens once in a long while) to have a bright student make poor lifestyle choices their first term but then adjust.

Instead of academic probation after they've basically torched their first year, why not have "lifestyle probation" after a couple of weeks so that they can potentially get their act together during their first semester?

Quote from: marshwiggle on February 21, 2020, 08:58:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 21, 2020, 07:57:39 AM
Good point, Marshy, particularly considering that no students ever mature during their time at college.

The problem is that these tend to be students who are not very strong academically to begin with, so they often fail out before they get a chance to mature. It's pretty rare (although it happens once in a long while) to have a bright student make poor lifestyle choices their first term but then adjust.

Instead of academic probation after they've basically torched their first year, why not have "lifestyle probation" after a couple of weeks so that they can potentially get their act together during their first semester?

Good in theory, impossible in practice. Perhaps you and me would have been comfortable working at a Catholic school circa 1940.

Quote from: marshwiggle on February 21, 2020, 08:58:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 21, 2020, 07:57:39 AM
Good point, Marshy, particularly considering that no students ever mature during their time at college.

The problem is that these tend to be students who are not very strong academically to begin with, so they often fail out before they get a chance to mature. It's pretty rare (although it happens once in a long while) to have a bright student make poor lifestyle choices their first term but then adjust.

Instead of academic probation after they've basically torched their first year, why not have "lifestyle probation" after a couple of weeks so that they can potentially get their act together during their first semester?

Orwell much?

Quote from: marshwiggle on February 21, 2020, 08:58:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 21, 2020, 07:57:39 AM
Good point, Marshy, particularly considering that no students ever mature during their time at college.

The problem is that these tend to be students who are not very strong academically to begin with, so they often fail out before they get a chance to mature. It's pretty rare (although it happens once in a long while) to have a bright student make poor lifestyle choices their first term but then adjust.

Instead of academic probation after they've basically torched their first year, why not have "lifestyle probation" after a couple of weeks so that they can potentially get their act together during their first semester?

I'd prefer something more in the middle -- if you haven't attended a class in the first week, you're automatically withdrawn (barring some sort of urgent short-term issue which should be reported to dean of students anyway); if you're predicted to fail more than one class based on midterm grades, it should trigger immediate academic probation (lifted if you pull off a 2.0); if your GPA is under 1.0 after your first semester, it should trigger a one-semester suspension.

I don't have access to transcripts at my current job, but I did at my old one, and the only people I ever saw come back from that the NEXT semester were people where they really should have had a medical withdrawal but didn't realize that that was an option. I really feel that most of the time, the second semester (for people with a 0.x, not people with a 1.9) is just taking their money for no gain, and fucking over their transcripts/financial aid so they can't afford to return even if they do get it together.

However ... while we're at it, fucking over someone's financial aid because they made stupid choices ten years ago (including both stupid academic choices and stupid drug choices) is WRONG.

Quote from: mahagonny on February 21, 2020, 09:19:42 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on February 21, 2020, 08:58:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 21, 2020, 07:57:39 AM
Good point, Marshy, particularly considering that no students ever mature during their time at college.

The problem is that these tend to be students who are not very strong academically to begin with, so they often fail out before they get a chance to mature. It's pretty rare (although it happens once in a long while) to have a bright student make poor lifestyle choices their first term but then adjust.

Instead of academic probation after they've basically torched their first year, why not have "lifestyle probation" after a couple of weeks so that they can potentially get their act together during their first semester?

Good in theory, impossible in practice. Perhaps you and me would have been comfortable working at a Catholic school circa 1940.

The problem isn't just stereotypical college student debauchery.  I've known of students--my brother was one--who didn't carouse and such, but still blew their shot at college by simply goofing off too much.  It's just extraordinary how utterly incapable some youths, even youths who had had a good school record, are of exercising any sort of self-discipline when they pass from high school to a college environment.

Maybe what's really needed is a "gap year" straight out of high school, spent working some low-wage job and engaging in some forced "adulting" practice before going to college.

I worry that we as a culture look far too often to institutions, regulations, and laws to solve our behavioral problems. 

We should teach, because that is what we are paid to do, and our institutions should let students sink, swim, or ride the wave to the top as they will.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 22, 2020, 05:44:02 PM
I worry that we as a culture look far too often to institutions, regulations, and laws to solve our behavioral problems. 

We should teach, because that is what we are paid to do, and our institutions should let students sink, swim, or ride the wave to the top as they will.

There's a place for that argument, but I would add, if we have students in college who shouldn't be there, at significant cost to them, the behavioral problem might be ours. Something mahagonny can say, but I probably won't.

Quote from: apl68 on February 22, 2020, 07:31:51 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on February 21, 2020, 09:19:42 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on February 21, 2020, 08:58:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 21, 2020, 07:57:39 AM
Good point, Marshy, particularly considering that no students ever mature during their time at college.

The problem is that these tend to be students who are not very strong academically to begin with, so they often fail out before they get a chance to mature. It's pretty rare (although it happens once in a long while) to have a bright student make poor lifestyle choices their first term but then adjust.

Instead of academic probation after they've basically torched their first year, why not have "lifestyle probation" after a couple of weeks so that they can potentially get their act together during their first semester?

Good in theory, impossible in practice. Perhaps you and me would have been comfortable working at a Catholic school circa 1940.

The problem isn't just stereotypical college student debauchery.  I've known of students--my brother was one--who didn't carouse and such, but still blew their shot at college by simply goofing off too much.  It's just extraordinary how utterly incapable some youths, even youths who had had a good school record, are of exercising any sort of self-discipline when they pass from high school to a college environment.

I don't think the debauchery needs to be directly observed. For "lifestyle probabtion" I'd just require that for the next month a student must

• be no more than 2 minutes late to any class, lab, or tutorial
• hand in every assignment and wirtten report on time, including those inline

Any student who succeeded at that would probaly be able to get it together from then on. The reason(s) they're missing class, etc. don't matter, unless they have some major non-lifestyle issue such as family emergency or whatever.

Quote
Maybe what's really needed is a "gap year" straight out of high school, spent working some low-wage job and engaging in some forced "adulting" practice before going to college.

Let them do that until they know what they want to study and why. If recruiters were removed from the equation we'd all be better off.

Quote from: marshwiggle on February 23, 2020, 04:46:03 AM
If recruiters were removed from the equation we'd all be better off.

Well, except for those of us at tuition-dependent schools whose year-to-year survival is pretty much exclusively a function of how good the recruiters are at their jobs.  We wouldn't be better off at all.

Quote from: mahagonny on February 23, 2020, 02:38:49 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 22, 2020, 05:44:02 PM
I worry that we as a culture look far too often to institutions, regulations, and laws to solve our behavioral problems. 

We should teach, because that is what we are paid to do, and our institutions should let students sink, swim, or ride the wave to the top as they will.

There's a place for that argument, but I would add, if we have students in college who shouldn't be there, at significant cost to them, the behavioral problem might be ours. Something mahagonny can say, but I probably won't.

This is where class and inequality come in. I also have a brother who went AWOL at one point during college (weirdly enough he did perfectly fine till junior year) I think he just lost interest in school, had too many other things going on and wasn't mature enough to take a voluntary leave, so just failed all his classes for two semesters. However, he didn't have any debt, so the whole thing wasn't some financial disaster. A year and a half later, he decided to apply for readmission, went back, did perfectly fine and graduated a year later. It wasn't some life defining experience, but if he was a first generation college student with limited resources it certainly could have been.

Quote from: Caracal on February 23, 2020, 06:58:38 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on February 23, 2020, 02:38:49 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 22, 2020, 05:44:02 PM
I worry that we as a culture look far too often to institutions, regulations, and laws to solve our behavioral problems. 

We should teach, because that is what we are paid to do, and our institutions should let students sink, swim, or ride the wave to the top as they will.

There's a place for that argument, but I would add, if we have students in college who shouldn't be there, at significant cost to them, the behavioral problem might be ours. Something mahagonny can say, but I probably won't.

This is where class and inequality come in. I also have a brother who went AWOL at one point during college (weirdly enough he did perfectly fine till junior year) I think he just lost interest in school, had too many other things going on and wasn't mature enough to take a voluntary leave, so just failed all his classes for two semesters. However, he didn't have any debt, so the whole thing wasn't some financial disaster. A year and a half later, he decided to apply for readmission, went back, did perfectly fine and graduated a year later. It wasn't some life defining experience, but if he was a first generation college student with limited resources it certainly could have been.

My brother wasn't a first-generation student, and was on scholarship and so blew the school's money instead of getting into debt.  But his goofing off still changed his whole life.  After a few years in low-wage jobs he joined the military.  He thrived as a career NCO, but it cost him and his family a great deal over the years in the form of multiple deployments to war zones.

This je*k continues to bother me. I saw him copying at the beginning of a test even I told them many times both verbally and in writing that it was a closed book test and no internet access was allowed. He played dumb. For the past few days, he keeps pushing me to update his assignment score. Nobody else does that. I told him that professors have a week to do that. He continues to send me emails to bother me. In the lab assignment, he demanded me to sit next to him to help him overtime. I spent some time with him and obviously he had no idea what he was doing. It just showed that he copied from somebody else all these time. In the class, when I asked other students questions, he kept shouting his answers even I told him many times each class to give other students a chance.

This is his 3rd or 4th time to take this course. If I give him a zero in both the assignment and the test (for cheating), he will continue to complain. Shall I just pass this je*k and let the world to punish him when his employer finds that he knows nothing? One administrator mentioned this approach last semester. I have heard from both administrators and students that some local companies don't trust the transcripts of my CC because there have been cases that graduates did not know things that they were supposed to know.

We document cheating and it goes to the some judicial affairs (for students) office.  The first offence, if the student does not object, is just to keep the document.  But if a student cheats in any other classes, then higher penalties occur, including failing the class (even for a first offense) and up to suspension and expulsion. 
IF the student objects,then there is a 'trial' with a committee of students and faculty. 

Do you have a formal process there to deal with cheaters?  IF so, USE IT! 

Quote from: clean on March 17, 2020, 10:06:06 PM
We document cheating and it goes to the some judicial affairs (for students) office.  The first offence, if the student does not object, is just to keep the document.  But if a student cheats in any other classes, then higher penalties occur, including failing the class (even for a first offense) and up to suspension and expulsion. 
IF the student objects,then there is a 'trial' with a committee of students and faculty. 

Do you have a formal process there to deal with cheaters?  IF so, USE IT!

Yes, except if I read this right, Hamburger has no actual proof of it, so no he can't do that.

No, but he can probably obtain proof overtime.

I've never been big on using such systems.teach people who care and move on, I'm not saying to definitely pass him or definitely not report him. Just don't make this into a constant "hair on fire" sort of thing.

Quote from: hamburger on March 17, 2020, 02:43:59 PM
This je*k continues to bother me. I saw him copying at the beginning of a test even I told them many times both verbally and in writing that it was a closed book test and no internet access was allowed.

One non-confrontational act is to write the observations on a sticky ("At 1917, Student X copied answer Y.  At 1925, Student X accessed the internet and I reminded him that wasn't allowed.  At 1940, Student X pulled out a book and I reminded him that wasn't allowed.") to avoid disrupting the rest of the class.  After the testing period, you go to wherever you have computer access and write up the observations in that same neutral tone with just the facts.  Submit those facts along with a copy of the exam to the local process for academic honesty.  You record the exam as a zero with a note about academic dishonesty.

Your observations can be proof if you document them at the time.  One way to ensure that situation is to go stand next to the person as you make the observation and to do something observable to the other students like reminding someone of the rules.

A more confrontational approach is to stop the student the first time you observe copying, dismiss him from the exam room, and mark the exam right there as a zero.

Either way, as Ruralguy wrote, this is a minor blip for the professional, not a situation on which one's hair is on fire.

Thanks. I just loudly told him (and indirectly reminded the rest of the class) to stop what he was doing as it was considered to be cheating. Anyway, the test only worth 10 marks and the assignment only 1 mark. The remaining 70% of the total are from 2 more assignments and various tests. Since there is no way to prevent cheating and I am sure they will do it, everybody will pass this time even they got zero in the previous part of the course. Giving this guy a zero in the assignment and in the test would not hurt him. Just created more work for me and the administrator. I don't think the administrator would like that especially in the current world situation.

hamburger - here's a story for you that seems to apply.  See if you can figure out the connection.

Once upon a time a man went bear hunting in the woods.  He spied a bear, took aim, but missed.  The bear came running for the man and caught him.  "Were you shooting at me?, asked the bear.  "Yes" came the reply.  "I have a special way of treating people who shoot at me" said the bear.  And proceeded to do dirty, dirty things to the man.

The man went home, embarrassed but unchastened.  The next day, the same events repeated themselves, except the bear's revenge was even more perverted and heinous.

On the third day, the man is furious. He unloads every bullet he can find, all to no avail.  He misses with them all.  He tries to outrun the bear but fails.  The bear catches him and looks at him quizzically.  "You don't really come here for the hunting do you?", asks the bear.

See if you can figure out the connection between this story and your posts on these here fora.

Quote from: secundem_artem on March 18, 2020, 08:52:24 AM
hamburger - here's a story for you that seems to apply.  See if you can figure out the connection.

Once upon a time a man went bear hunting in the woods.  He spied a bear, took aim, but missed.  The bear came running for the man and caught him.  "Were you shooting at me?, asked the bear.  "Yes" came the reply.  "I have a special way of treating people who shoot at me" said the bear.  And proceeded to do dirty, dirty things to the man.

The man went home, embarrassed but unchastened.  The next day, the same events repeated themselves, except the bear's revenge was even more perverted and heinous.

On the third day, the man is furious. He unloads every bullet he can find, all to no avail.  He misses with them all.  He tries to outrun the bear but fails.  The bear catches him and looks at him quizzically.  "You don't really come here for the hunting do you?", asks the bear.

See if you can figure out the connection between this story and your posts on these here fora.

I like this story very much. Thanks secundem_artem. What dirty things did the bear do to the man?

Let me translate: If you keep getting "tortured" by heinous students and then don't change the situation, one might conclude that you enjoy being tortured by heinous students. Or, maybe more realistically, that you are paralyzed into just being frozen into this situation and feeling helpless. So, Hamburger, get out of the situation by either not letting students get to you (choose your method for that), or just leave the school completely, not just jumping from department to department. That's obviously not doing you any good.

Quote from: hamburger on March 18, 2020, 06:21:03 AM
Thanks. I just loudly told him (and indirectly reminded the rest of the class) to stop what he was doing as it was considered to be cheating. Anyway, the test only worth 10 marks and the assignment only 1 mark. The remaining 70% of the total are from 2 more assignments and various tests. Since there is no way to prevent cheating and I am sure they will do it, everybody will pass this time even they got zero in the previous part of the course. Giving this guy a zero in the assignment and in the test would not hurt him. Just created more work for me and the administrator. I don't think the administrator would like that especially in the current world situation.

You're in a place that is still holding classes in person?  Where is that?  Antarctica?

Quote from: Cheerful on March 18, 2020, 02:09:49 PM

Quote from: hamburger on March 18, 2020, 06:21:03 AM
Thanks. I just loudly told him (and indirectly reminded the rest of the class) to stop what he was doing as it was considered to be cheating. Anyway, the test only worth 10 marks and the assignment only 1 mark. The remaining 70% of the total are from 2 more assignments and various tests. Since there is no way to prevent cheating and I am sure they will do it, everybody will pass this time even they got zero in the previous part of the course. Giving this guy a zero in the assignment and in the test would not hurt him. Just created more work for me and the administrator. I don't think the administrator would like that especially in the current world situation.

You're in a place that is still holding classes in person?  Where is that?  Antarctica?

The UK's Exeter University only stopped in-person classes this week. (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-51917175)

Last week, most Canadian universities were still open. (https://www.narcity.com/news/ca/canadian-universities-remain-open-amid-covid-19-outbreak-and-are-sharing-their-responses)

Parts of Africa and some countries in Central/South America have no reported cases, which means things are likely still open. (//http://)

Locally, a Montessori school was flat out told by the state board of health to remain open and take in new kids from the employees of the local hospital to ensure continuity of medical service.  The public schools are closed, but that combination daycare/school is open in the best interests of the community.

Quote from: Cheerful on March 18, 2020, 02:09:49 PM

Quote from: hamburger on March 18, 2020, 06:21:03 AM
Thanks. I just loudly told him (and indirectly reminded the rest of the class) to stop what he was doing as it was considered to be cheating. Anyway, the test only worth 10 marks and the assignment only 1 mark. The remaining 70% of the total are from 2 more assignments and various tests. Since there is no way to prevent cheating and I am sure they will do it, everybody will pass this time even they got zero in the previous part of the course. Giving this guy a zero in the assignment and in the test would not hurt him. Just created more work for me and the administrator. I don't think the administrator would like that especially in the current world situation.

You're in a place that is still holding classes in person?  Where is that?  Antarctica?

The test was held about a month ago. Students were complaining about in person classes. Just like most places, everything is online for the remaining of the semester.

Quote from: Ruralguy on March 18, 2020, 01:32:56 PM

Let me translate: If you keep getting "tortured" by heinous students and then don't change the situation, one might conclude that you enjoy being tortured by heinous students. Or, maybe more realistically, that you are paralyzed into just being frozen into this situation and feeling helpless. So, Hamburger, get out of the situation by either not letting students get to you (choose your method for that), or just leave the school completely, not just jumping from department to department. That's obviously not doing you any good.

Interesting.  I thought the story was about the student constantly "hunting" a bear-of-an-education by "shooting" at his teachers and "missing" the mark and then getting tortured so he could be pissed off.  I thought the point was that this guy, the student, just wants to be a b*tch by pretending to be after something in the forest.   I thought the "nasty things" were the grades and hamburger was the bear.

Kind of like that "Wrestling with a pig in mud.  Pretty soon you realize the pig is having fun" thing.

In other words, this guy is just coming to class so he can be a jerkface, so don't play his game.

Either way.....

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 18, 2020, 09:02:26 PM

Quote from: Ruralguy on March 18, 2020, 01:32:56 PM

Let me translate: If you keep getting "tortured" by heinous students and then don't change the situation, one might conclude that you enjoy being tortured by heinous students. Or, maybe more realistically, that you are paralyzed into just being frozen into this situation and feeling helpless. So, Hamburger, get out of the situation by either not letting students get to you (choose your method for that), or just leave the school completely, not just jumping from department to department. That's obviously not doing you any good.

Interesting.  I thought the story was about the student constantly "hunting" a bear-of-an-education by "shooting" at his teachers and "missing" the mark and then getting tortured so he could be pissed off.  I thought the point was that this guy, the student, just wants to be a b*tch by pretending to be after something in the forest.   I thought the "nasty things" were the grades and hamburger was the bear.

Kind of like that "Wrestling with a pig in mud.  Pretty soon you realize the pig is having fun" thing.

In other words, this guy is just coming to class so he can be a jerkface, so don't play his game.

I've almost never encountered anyone coming to class to be a jerk face.  I have, however, encountered significant numbers of enrolled individuals who wanted to have a better paying job without actually learning any of the things that result in doing well at a good paying job.  Those folks tend to keep acting out in the hopes that requirements will be relaxed, much the way that small children keep pestering in the hopes of wearing one down.  I can remember more than one student who failed courses with me multiple times because they refused to believe that standards are standards and I will indeed record Fs for academic misconduct, 0s for non-submitted work, and a final grade of F for not meeting the requirements of the course.

I have also encountered a fair number of employed people who would rather stay in a bad, familiar situation than take a chance on getting a better situation.  The fear of ending up somewhere even worse wins over the possibility of getting something better, even when practically anything would be better and nearly all worse situations would involve criminal offenses like physical abuse.

I have never met someone who goes to all the time and expense of college for the sole purpose of being a jerkface either.  But there is a certain sociopath-type personality who would rather do anything than admit they were wrong, including blaming the professor for their own failure.  It sounds to me like hamburger's nemesis can't face his own inability and lack of a work ethic, so blames Prof. Burger for his own problems.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 19, 2020, 08:28:48 AM
I have never met someone who goes to all the time and expense of college for the sole purpose of being a jerkface either.  But there is a certain sociopath-type personality who would rather do anything than admit they were wrong, including blaming the professor for their own failure.  It sounds to me like hamburger's nemesis can't face his own inability and lack of a work ethic, so blames Prof. Burger for his own problems.

My colleagues told me that there are students who blame the professors for their failures. There are also students who keep pushing via emails so that when the professor got angry and wrote something they could use for their advantage, they would forward the email to the department head and make their demands. They like to say that their "human rights" are being violated, they don't "feel comfortable" to go to the class anymore, etc.

About this jer*... I already gave him a higher score for his last assignment than he deserved. I also did not give him a zero even he was cheating in the test. Yet, he continues to send me emails with all sorts of demands to bother me. Can I just ignore him?

Quotebout this jer*... I already gave him a higher score for his last assignment than he deserved. I also did not give him a zero even he was cheating in the test. Yet, he continues to send me emails with all sorts of demands to bother me. Can I just ignore him?

You keep giving the bully your milk money.  Why do you think that HE will stop?

IF he is demanding things that you are not doing for everyone, then say something like, "I have to treat everyone the same. I will not discriminate in your favor. I can not do XX for you as I would not do it for anyone else."

Then just take the bloody nose. Let the bully forward his demands to your chair.  AND STOP giving in the the bully!  IF he cheats, write him up, and BY ALL MEANS grade him FAIRLY (which in my mind means Accurately!!)


For the rest....
I have not read "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". (As I have a PhD I am Already an Expert on Everything... at least I think that is what happened when I was hooded). I understand that Martians hear a Venetian complain and then try to recommend corrective actions or devise a plan to DO something about the situation. I understand that Venetians  really just want to discuss the issue and vent about it, or otherwise seek something OTHER than a plan for action. 
AS with the Bear Story, I am wondering IF you are a Martian who is seeking advice to DO something about it, or a Venetian who just wants to talk it out.  IF the later, then I fear that I will not be much longer in this thread.  As I recall some definition of Insanity including doing the same thing over and again and expecting a different outcome comes to mind, and I am not equipped to treat insanity.

Good luck on what you decide to do.  Hopefully you will Mars up and handle the issue to your satisfaction.

Give jerkface one final email to the effect of, "I am sorry we cannot agree on XXXXX, but these are the standards as stipulated in the syllabus.  I cannot accommodate you any further.  Best, Dr. Burger."  Copy your chair.  You may have to refer him up the line unless your chair is also a royal jerkface. 

Thanks. I already told him and other students how to calculate something that even junior high school students know how to do. He also sent me his difficult-to-read program asking me to debug for him. This shows that he really does not deserve the generous marks I gave him in his last assignment.

Professors in my college are required to post the marks of each assessment within a certain period of time. Given that I have already uploaded the marks for his last assignment and the test, is it a good idea to fail his assignment by giving the marks he really deserves and also apply a penalty on the test that he cheated? This may give him a topic to continue to bother me.

I would think that you would be able to correct any mistakes you made in grading.  Certainly if a student asked you to review a prior assignment grade, and it was graded too harshly, you would raise the grade. It may be appropriate to review all of the grades for that particular assignment and review it for errors (not pick his out in particular)  Is there a template or rubric you use for this assignment?  IF not, it may not be too late to make one and apply it to all. 

It is likely too late to deal with the cheating at this point as you ignored it earlier. 

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 19, 2020, 02:23:10 PM
Give jerkface one final email to the effect of, "I am sorry we cannot do not agree on XXXXX, but; these are the standards as stipulated in the syllabus.  I cannot accommodate you any further.  BestSincerely, Dr. Burger."  Copy your chair.  You may have to refer him up the line unless your chair is also a royal jerkface.

Like hamburger, I've been in situations where the students want ammo to take to the chair/dean/provost/presses.  Thus, I recommend being terse and factual in any email, as I've edited above. 

Refrain from anything that looks like an apology or accepting blame, even if that's what a normal person would say in person.  Every word will be thrown back at you in this situation.

Have a trusted colleague or even the chair review the email before it is sent to the student.

Quote from: hamburger on March 20, 2020, 10:37:12 AM
Professors in my college are required to post the marks of each assessment within a certain period of time. Given that I have already uploaded the marks for his last assignment and the test, is it a good idea to fail his assignment by giving the marks he really deserves and also apply a penalty on the test that he cheated? This may give him a topic to continue to bother me.

Do not regrade anything at this point.  All that will do is provide documentation supporting the idea of retaliation or capricious grading (i.e., more bother and definite grounds for the grade grievance committee to examine all your grades since you're not grading according to your stated methods).

I'm not sure at this point that it's a good idea to even apply the real standards to future work, since students will have evidence you haven't applied those standards in the past. in this course  When I've sat on the grade grievance committee, the only thing that ever went against the faculty was evidence of treating students differently like grades that were strongly correlated with agreeing with the professor or grades that suddenly changed from good enough to failing with no discernible change in the quality of the student work.

Someone who failed all term usually also failed the grade grievance.  Faculty who are notoriously hard graders never got overturned just for having even absurdly high standards. 

Someone who started failing later in the term with no discernible change in quality of work, but had emails/written comments indicating the faculty member was grading on something other than the presented work often won that grade grievance. 

One faculty member in particular had so many of that type of grade grievance that the provost stepped in and implemented an improvement plan for a tenured faculty member to start the process of firing her.

Adjuncts have simply been non-renewed (one was actually dismissed in the middle of a term) for validated student complaints regarding grading based on personal feelings rather than the methods in the syllabus.

Don't give students that ammo against you because just the process is more time and energy you don't have for things that cannot possibly benefit your career.

Thanks Polly. Won't make any change.

If I had a full-time permanent job, I would not have to care about giving students the marks they deserve.

Quote from: hamburger on March 20, 2020, 04:56:00 PM
Thanks Polly. Won't make any change.

If I had a full-time permanent job, I would not have to care about giving students the marks they deserve.

If you were at an educational institution, then the expectation is to record the marks students earn and people are fired for passing students who should fail.

I go back again to your assertions that some students have already failed this course multiple times.  That indicates professors can record the marks earned and submit Fs at the end of a term.

It's unclear why you thought giving unearned marks from the beginning of the term was a good idea and why you didn't record the marks earned at the time including a zero for observed cheating.  When I was an adjunct at a community college, my chair praised me for submitting a report on cheating on an exam.

Hamburger has provided yet another illustration among many as to why we need to talk about ways to end the adjunct death march.

Personally I have never seen anyone who lost a job over a student complaint, and I wouldn't think that this one would hold much water if you have a sane chair and dean.  But student evals and student complaints are always at the back of contingent faculty's mind. 

If you want to see this dynamic reversed, Polly, work to give contingent faculty FT jobs and a secure place at the table.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 20, 2020, 08:53:21 PM
If you want to see this dynamic reversed, Polly, work to give contingent faculty FT jobs and a secure place at the table.

You wouldn't like how I'd have to do that.

The straightforward mechanisms include:

* Closing institutions that aren't doing much of anything in the way of education and redistributing all the students who can benefit from an education and are currently being ripped off.  The overall result will be fewer jobs all around, but the jobs that remain are better.

* Renovating general education programs so that everything currently running with armies of adjuncts is just cut.  Again, the jobs that remain will be better, but there will be far fewer of them.  A liberal arts education can be a wonderful thing, but most people currently in college aren't getting a liberal arts education through the actually implemented general education program.  Accepting that reality and embracing other forms of postsecondary education, like much of the rest of the world, would be a huge step towards fixing the interchangeable warm body cog adjunct situation.

* Raising standards of admission for institutions that currently have set admissions low enough that essentially everyone who can fill out the paperwork, has their check clear, and hasn't recently flunked out of somewhere else gets admitted.  Again, the number of faculty jobs will be fewer if we limit admissions to people who are college ready, but those jobs will be better.

The idea that somehow we just consolidate the adjunct jobs that are available into better full-time faculty jobs was something to have done 40 years ago and not let the situation get to where it is now at some institutions. 

We don't need interchangeable warm body adjuncts at a table discussing decisions on how to keep perpetuating that system, but somehow have it suck just a little less for the  individual soldiers in the army. 

What we need is all those soldiers to desert and do something else so that the system is forced to abandon that model. 

What's going to happen as a result of the current pandemic is accelerating closures of the institutions that are already circling the drain and were relying on the huddled masses yearning to breathe free to pick a local enough college without asking too many probing questions on relative cost and return on investment.  With people unable to participate in DIII sports on campus, a fair number of students won't return because that was their primary motivation.  Once those folks went home and started a new normal away from college, it's entirely possible those folks won't be back.  The folks who scraped together every penny to bet on college only to be in bad shape upon having the dorm close with minimal support to transition to online likely won't be back.  The folks who were on the ragged edge of putting college on top of everything else in a complicated life who just had that life implode through being laid off and not knowing anyone who still has a job will not be back any time soon.

There is no situation under which all the people currently qualified to be faculty members who wish to be faculty members can have good, middle-class jobs as faculty members.  Even cutting all graduate enrollment for the next 10 years wouldn't work at this point since so many people who are only in their late-20s/early-30s are already qualified and not in full-time faculty positions.

You are correct, Polly, I don't much cotton to your ideas.

Fortunately you seem to be the only one who thinks that way----at least that I have known outside of the forum, and even inside the forum you are simply the most extreme of the malcontents.  All of us would like to see better higher ed.  Not all of us think the way to do that is to tear it down to a nub.

I do agree with you that the problem should have been addressed 40 years ago, but it wasn't.  So it is now up to us to begin to fix it.  Kind of like COVID-19----we should have been getting ready for years, but we weren't, so now we need to start looking at vaccines and making sure we're ready in the future.

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 05:25:48 AM
There is no situation under which all the people currently qualified to be faculty members who wish to be faculty members can have good, middle-class jobs as faculty members.  Even cutting all graduate enrollment for the next 10 years wouldn't work at this point since so many people who are only in their late-20s/early-30s are already qualified and not in full-time faculty positions.

Perhaps not realistically, not at the moment.

But you and Marshy are like the two types of global warming denialists: You deny there is a problem (or have in the past) and seem to see solutions predicated entirely on present economic conditions and attitudes.  In other words, you see the problem only in terms of today's dollars and the political moment while the planet continues to warm and our colleges continue to disintegrate.  Nothing can be done, you essentially say, because it is two expensive and too inconvenient. And, you assert, it is the mendacity of the scientists / professors who are milking the system anyway and who created the problem in the first place.  Never mind the increasing outcry by the public and the increasing demands for change----let's just pretend they don't exist.

Pretty much exactly the same mentality as climate deniers.

Marshy just believes dumb things and reacts before he thinks----the other kind of climate skeptic.

There are around 4,928 post-secondary institutions in the United States.  All of them use adjunct employment.  I can only speak about the discipline of English, but if we mobilized even half these to hire 1 full time faculty (and many could use many, many more) you can do the easy math.  I guarantee you that each of these has work for at least 2 FT English faculty (and probably more along the lines of between 5 and 20 FT faculty).  Again, the math is pretty easy.  347 of these are large D-1 schools, which could use a virtual army of FT English faculty to cover composition classes alone.  Even if some campuses "circling the drain" actually went down the swirl, we could easy hire 20K FT faculty.

Now go do the math about how much America just wasted on campaign ads and tell me we can't revive our higher ed.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 21, 2020, 10:50:59 AM

There are around 4,928 post-secondary institutions in the United States.  All of them use adjunct employment.  I can only speak about the discipline of English, but if we mobilized even half these to hire 1 full time faculty (and many could use many, many more) you can do the easy math.  I guarantee you that each of these has work for at least 2 FT English faculty (and probably more along the lines of between  and 20 FT faculty).

How many part-time faculty in English do each of these employ now? If it's more than 1 or 2, then many of those now working will be out of a job.

As you say,

Quote
Again, the math is pretty easy. 

Why do we need 20k more English professors? 

If we change to considering higher education as much of the world does (i.e., specialized education in a specific field), almost no one would be taking English classes based on current numbers of majors.

All those adjuncts at non-elite institutions with zero English majors are unnecessary if we believe that higher education is to learn things that only a college education can provide.

For example, I remember nothing from the two English classes I was required to take decades ago in college.  I can tell you about a handful of specific assignments in K-12.  I have a lifetime of knowledge as someone who reads every day with literally tons of books in my house and weekly trips to the public library.  My college knowledge I use every day is either specific to the major I had or are soft skills acquired by virtue of really wanting to know some thing and then communicate it.

A true liberal arts education with a third major, a third required distribution, and a third true electives can be a wonderful thing.  However, that's not the education someone is getting at a place with an army of adjuncts doing gen ed.  That's an education limited to a true learning community with some professional fellows and the occasional VAP to fill in.

The fact that you think I'm extreme in my views indicates you don't get out much either on campus to non-humanities departments or in the world of employers who experience the shortages in specific areas that require college study.

Quote from: marshwiggle on March 21, 2020, 11:14:30 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 21, 2020, 10:50:59 AM

There are around 4,928 post-secondary institutions in the United States.  All of them use adjunct employment.  I can only speak about the discipline of English, but if we mobilized even half these to hire 1 full time faculty (and many could use many, many more) you can do the easy math.  I guarantee you that each of these has work for at least 2 FT English faculty (and probably more along the lines of between  and 20 FT faculty).

How many part-time faculty in English do each of these employ now? If it's more than 1 or 2, then many of those now working will be out of a job.

As you say,

Quote
Again, the math is pretty easy. 

Are you serious?

You really know nothing, don't you?

As I said upstairs, Marshy just believes dumb things.

Look it up yourself, Marshburger.

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 12:13:37 PM
Why do we need 20k more English professors? 

Because we need more English professors.   We have the work for literally thousands of professional teachers in college.  They should be taught by pros.  That was the point.

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 12:13:37 PM
If we change to considering higher education as much of the world does (i.e., specialized education in a specific field), almost no one would be taking English classes based on current numbers of majors.

Sometimes we are on a hamster wheel, Polly.

English faculty will teach virtually every student in the school at some point.   You know that, Polly. Students should be taught by FT professionals.

Let's get more professors and see if we get more majors.

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 12:13:37 PM
All those adjuncts at non-elite institutions with zero English majors are unnecessary if we believe that higher education is to learn things that only a college education can provide.

Who said we believe that?  For someone as intelligent as you are, you sure like to throw strawmen into the debate.

This is the age of information.  A sufficiently motivated person could educate themselves to the level of a doctorate if they had the time and the Internet (and maybe a few library books).  One could discuss the "social environment" of college, but that is not what I am on about.

I believe college is a great place for people to learn things by interacting with experts---hence the emphasis on FT faculty with a stake in the institution.  Few of us enter college to "learn things that only a college education can provide."  In fact, most of us know a good deal about the things we are going to learn already----that's how we decide what we want to learn more about.  Come on Polly, you know that.  I entered college knowing a good deal about English and music already; I wanted to know more.  Along the way I learned a number of things I didn't know anything about before.  I actually learned a lot about things I didn't even know existed before I started college!  Very important there.

College is a great place to be exposed to all sorts of things and deepen the things you want to know more about.

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 12:13:37 PM
For example, I remember nothing from the two English classes I was required to take decades ago in college.  I can tell you about a handful of specific assignments in K-12.  I have a lifetime of knowledge as someone who reads every day with literally tons of books in my house and weekly trips to the public library.  My college knowledge I use every day is either specific to the major I had or are soft skills acquired by virtue of really wanting to know some thing and then communicate it.

Remember not to universalize your own experience too much, as that is folly, Polly.  You are a scientist; you should know this.  Don't be a Folly Polly.

You would have an amazing brain if you could remember classwork from two decades ago, a regular Sheldon Cooper.  What you cannot say is how that courses have actually affected you----try, but you will be lying.  I took biology in high school, and I have a few snippets of knowledge from those classes many decades ago.  I don't know exactly how that has changed my brain now that COVID is ravaging the planet, and I probably learned more about epidemics from reading The Hot Zone many years later, but I have no doubt my knowledge base was established waaaaay back then.  I certainly know my appreciation for science ballooned from the classes I was forced to take in college and H.S. even if I have forgotten most of what I crammed for back then.  I'm sure I would have found science interesting nevertheless, but my response is undoubtedly different today because of my exposure in school.

Congratulate yourself on your reading habits all you like, but they are also the result of the two English classes you were required to take decades ago.  Pretend otherwise if you like.

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 12:13:37 PM
A true liberal arts education with a third major, a third required distribution, and a third true electives can be a wonderful thing.  However, that's not the education someone is getting at a place with an army of adjuncts doing gen ed. 

Yeah, that's my point. 

We should have an army of FT faculty with a stake in their employer doing gen ed.

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 12:13:37 PM
The fact that you think I'm extreme in my views indicates you don't get out much either on campus to non-humanities departments or in the world of employers who experience the shortages in specific areas that require college study.

You know, it's funny.  I was going to tell YOU you need to get out more.  Funny.

You need to get out of the lab and out of your prejudices and resentments a bit.

I'm willing to bet I have as much if not more corporate experience than you do. 

And I bet I know as much as you do about what employers want (https://www.iup.edu/humanities/students/skills-employers-want/).

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 21, 2020, 04:52:09 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 12:13:37 PM
Why do we need 20k more English professors? 

Because we need more English professors.   We have the work for literally thousands of professional teachers in college.  They should be taught by pros.  That was the point.

But there are several thousand English PhDs produced every year. Assuming a career lasts 30 years or so, the number of retirements will be vastly less than the number of new graduates looking for work.

Quote

English faculty will teach virtually every student in the school at some point.   You know that, Polly. Students should be taught by FT professionals.

Why should that be more true for English faculty than for History, Math, or Psychology faculty?

Personally I would like to see all these PT faculty positions condensed into FT faculty positions despite discipline.  So there would not necessarily be more or less math or psych profs than English profs---there would be as many profs as we need in every discipline that needs them.   

Quixotic now, I know, but someday perhaps.

I use English because it is the discipline I know well enough to comment about. 

As to the numbers: Virtually ALL students in any institution anywhere are going to take at least one and usually two composition classes as freshmen or sophomores.  And then most students will take some kind of literature, film, business writing, tech writing, or advanced writing class during their time in school----most of these classes are now taught by PT adjuncts----not to mention the writing centers which are often administered by PT staff; all these should be FT faculty.  So if there are more English profs than any other discipline it's because there is work for English faculty that our institutions need done. 

If math and psych have the call for an army of FT faculty, let them have an army and cake enough for all.

And you are right, honey, there might not be enough good jobs for all, but this is why I'd like to see hard numbers on the numbers of English classes taught nation-wide vs. number of faculty.  We actually have work for literally thousands of English teachers in college.  Again, do the math.

You, my friend, are like the global warming skeptic who only has a fraction of the information yet believes he understands the problem. 

Now, I will ignore anyone who like you posts any additional idiotic questions on these boards.

Quote from: polly_mer on March 21, 2020, 12:13:37 PM


If we change to considering higher education as much of the world does (i.e., specialized education in a specific field), almost no one would be taking English classes based on current numbers of majors.

All those adjuncts at non-elite institutions with zero English majors are unnecessary if we believe that higher education is to learn things that only a college education can provide.

I completed 2 of my degrees at non-US institutions and that makes me agree with polly  on at least some of this.  The concept of a "general" education seems to be uniquely American.  My undergrad experience was exactly what polly describes - specialty courses  that required a university to deliver.  People in professional/applied majors like mine were expected to get their general education in high school. 

The distribution requirements that the US model of a general education demands, appears mostly to result in what someone once described as "Enough Spanish to order the soup, but not enough to compliment the cook." 

Does a general education accomplish what it purports to deliver?  Maybe.  But I'm generally not convinced.  I don't know that people I know who received a non-US specialist/professional undergraduate degree are any less well read or generally well informed about the arts, or literature or politics than those who were required to take 6 credits of English, 3 of history and .....  Is it really general education or just a job protection racket for faculty and a hoop jumping exercise for students?

Don't get me wrong.  I want universities to continue to offer education in the arts and humanities to everybody who wants to study those fields.  But I'm skeptical that it needs to be force fed to undergraduates.

Quote from: secundem_artem on March 22, 2020, 07:33:31 PM
I don't know that people I know who received a non-US specialist/professional undergraduate degree are any less well read or generally well informed about the arts, or literature or politics than those who were required to take 6 credits of English, 3 of history and .....  Is it really general education or just a job protection racket for faculty and a hoop jumping exercise for students?

If you are talking about academics or people with advanced degrees generally you have a bad control group----these are people who would be well-read and cultured anyway because of their natural tendencies toward knowledge acquisition. 

I see the point in restructuring gen eds, but I am a bit dubious about the theory that gen eds exist to create tuition and keep departments alive, mainly because our American pedagogic structure predates all of us.  We all entered the profession (and probably all of us our undergraduate degrees) with the core firmly in place.  I suspect this sort of suspicion is yet another symptom of restricted resources and public outcry against rising tuition costs.  We are snapping at each other like hungry big cats.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 21, 2020, 04:52:09 PM
... Students should be taught by FT professionals.

Oh, come on. In many fields an active practitioner, or a retired practitioner, is going to be a much better instructor than a full-time academic - because of, well, hands-on experience as a practitioner - direct experience of the "real world" profession rather than academic research.

A bit in the vein of Polly's thought experiment of how she's re-arrange academia, I'd do the following:

-Part-timers must all be concurrently practitioners, or be retired fult-time practitioners. No limit on the numbers of part-timers colleges can employ, but their benefits, bonuses, etc must be at least the pro-rated equivalent of what the tenured faculty get. That way, there's no incentive to use part-timers as a way to save money instead of as a way of bringing in valuable outside expertise. This would be enforced by being a requirement for accreditation and for receiving public funding, incl. student loans, tax breaks, etc.
-PhD programs would be required to show their typical alumni are earning professional-grade wages and benefits, though not necessarily in academia. If the typical alumni are doing their umpteenth postdoc or are teaching for peanuts, the program gets shut down. I'd also force PhD programs to do psychometric testing of all applicants - this would eventually cut down the numbers of people in need of personality transplants in academia.
-Students can either do a specialist education (as is the norm everywhere other than the US pretty much) or they can do a generalist degree - but it has to have a high standard in multiple fields. In my view this means calculus-based STEM courses AND coding AND a second language to at least semi-fluency, for example. Folks not going to college can do modern apprenticeships (an extremely successful model in Switzerland and Germany) and folks who do go to college get a high standard of education.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 22, 2020, 09:06:55 PM

Quote from: secundem_artem on March 22, 2020, 07:33:31 PM
I don't know that people I know who received a non-US specialist/professional undergraduate degree are any less well read or generally well informed about the arts, or literature or politics than those who were required to take 6 credits of English, 3 of history and .....  Is it really general education or just a job protection racket for faculty and a hoop jumping exercise for students?

If you are talking about academics or people with advanced degrees generally you have a bad control group----these are people who would be well-read and cultured anyway because of their natural tendencies toward knowledge acquisition. 

Are you suggesting the portion of the general citizenry of the U.S. having completed a degree is that much more well-read than the citizenry of any other western country which doesn't have the gen. ed. requirements? Based on what? I'm really curious to know.
 

Quote from: Stockmann on March 23, 2020, 12:08:34 AM

A bit in the vein of Polly's thought experiment of how she's re-arrange academia, I'd do the following:

-Part-timers must all be concurrently practitioners, or be retired fult-time practitioners. No limit on the numbers of part-timers colleges can employ, but their benefits, bonuses, etc must be at least the pro-rated equivalent of what the tenured faculty get. That way, there's no incentive to use part-timers as a way to save money instead of as a way of bringing in valuable outside expertise. This would be enforced by being a requirement for accreditation and for receiving public funding, incl. student loans, tax breaks, etc.
-PhD programs would be required to show their typical alumni are earning professional-grade wages and benefits, though not necessarily in academia. If the typical alumni are doing their umpteenth postdoc or are teaching for peanuts, the program gets shut down. I'd also force PhD programs to do psychometric testing of all applicants - this would eventually cut down the numbers of people in need of personality transplants in academia.
-Students can either do a specialist education (as is the norm everywhere other than the US pretty much) or they can do a generalist degree - but it has to have a high standard in multiple fields. In my view this means calculus-based STEM courses AND coding AND a second language to at least semi-fluency, for example. Folks not going to college can do modern apprenticeships (an extremely successful model in Switzerland and Germany) and folks who do go to college get a high standard of education.

Excellent suggestions!

Quote from: Stockmann on March 23, 2020, 12:08:34 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 21, 2020, 04:52:09 PM
... Students should be taught by FT professionals.

Oh, come on. In many fields an active practitioner, or a retired practitioner, is going to be a much better instructor than a full-time academic - because of, well, hands-on experience as a practitioner - direct experience of the "real world" profession rather than academic research.

Oh, come on.  I agree for some disciplines and some classes.  We will probably not employ the sheriff full time as a professor but it would be nice if hu would teach some classes. Come on!

For other disciplines that is not the case or not nearly as necessary.  If you want nurses teaching future nurses, fine.  I am primarily speaking of English.  But in philosophy, languages, history, math, literature, writing, fine arts, and even music the faculty ARE practitioners (come on, you know that, right?) and they should be FT faculty so we don't make a complete hash of our educational system.

And I'd be interested to know what the "real world" is.  Seems to me the "real world" has benefited a great deal from academic research in all areas.

Polly's reading list would be greatly reduced if it weren't for all that academics out there with their piddling academic research.

Quote from: Stockmann on March 23, 2020, 12:08:34 AM
A bit in the vein of Polly's thought experiment of how she's re-arrange academia, I'd do the following:

-Part-timers must all be concurrently practitioners, or be retired fult-time practitioners. No limit on the numbers of part-timers colleges can employ, but their benefits, bonuses, etc must be at least the pro-rated equivalent of what the tenured faculty get. That way, there's no incentive to use part-timers as a way to save money instead of as a way of bringing in valuable outside expertise. This would be enforced by being a requirement for accreditation and for receiving public funding, incl. student loans, tax breaks, etc.
-PhD programs would be required to show their typical alumni are earning professional-grade wages and benefits, though not necessarily in academia. If the typical alumni are doing their umpteenth postdoc or are teaching for peanuts, the program gets shut down. I'd also force PhD programs to do psychometric testing of all applicants - this would eventually cut down the numbers of people in need of personality transplants in academia.
-Students can either do a specialist education (as is the norm everywhere other than the US pretty much) or they can do a generalist degree - but it has to have a high standard in multiple fields. In my view this means calculus-based STEM courses AND coding AND a second language to at least semi-fluency, for example. Folks not going to college can do modern apprenticeships (an extremely successful model in Switzerland and Germany) and folks who do go to college get a high standard of education.

Yeah, okay.  My concern is that we are whittling down our educational system with an army of poorly paid part-timers and weakening our colleges. 

You do realize the number of "practitioners" you are going to need to find, right?

You also realize the extent of red-tape, government intervention, and paraprofessionals you've just created.

And you do realize your main criteria seems to be money.

Nope, dumb ideas.  You'd kill academia like that. 

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on March 23, 2020, 06:59:08 AM

You do realize the number of "practitioners" you are going to need to find, right?

Read that again:

Quote from: Stockmann on March 23, 2020, 12:08:34 AM

-Part-timers must all be concurrently practitioners, or be retired fult-time practitioners.

The requirement of "practitioner" only applies to part-time faculty. So if they're hard to find, that means more full-time faculy.

Quote
My concern is that we are whittling down our educational system with an army of poorly paid part-timers and weakening our colleges. 
.....

And you do realize your main criteria seems to be money.

Quote from: Stockmann on March 23, 2020, 12:08:34 AM

No limit on the numbers of part-timers colleges can employ, but their benefits, bonuses, etc must be at least the pro-rated equivalent of what the tenured faculty get. That way, there's no incentive to use part-timers as a way to save money instead of as a way of bringing in valuable outside expertise. This would be enforced by being a requirement for accreditation and for receiving public funding, incl. student loans, tax breaks, etc.

By pro-rating salaries and benefits, there's NO financial incentive to make part-time positions over full-time ones.

Quote
You also realize the extent of red-tape, government intervention, and paraprofessionals you've just created.

How does reducing the incentive for creating part-time positions wind up creating more paraprofessionals?