How to deal with student who told me that he pays for my salary?

[Kron3007]

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. 

[Wahoo Redux]

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.

[Wahoo Redux]

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.

[polly_mer]

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.

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).

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.

[polly_mer]

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.

[Caracal]

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.

[Wahoo Redux]

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. 

[Ruralguy]

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.

[Cheerful]

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.

[Ruralguy]

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.

[Wahoo Redux]

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.

[Caracal]

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.

[Ruralguy]

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.

[polly_mer]

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 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.  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.

[Caracal]

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.