Grade inflation "fix"

[jimbogumbo]

Courtesy of Tom the Dancing Bug: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/strips/?name=tom-the-dancing-bug&itid=sf_entertainment-comics

[Parasaurolophus]

That's very good, thank you.

For my part, there's no question that I inflate--the only grades I really stand behind are the As. Most of the upper Bs are fine, too, as are a decent chunk of the Cs. But the lower Bs should all be Cs, the rest of the Cs Ds, and all of the Ds should be Fs.

The fix, in my case, would be easy: guaranteed salary (or course loads, or a much lower cancellation threshold). There's no tenure here, and we're paid by the course, and courses are capped at 35 but start getting cancelled when they drop below 26 (even though they break even around 12-13 students). Because of the union's seniority system, and because I'm at the bottom of the departmental pile, every time a colleague's class is cancelled, they take one of mine. So we can't afford any cancellations, and I, especially, can't. Which means that I can't afford to have a reputation for being too demanding, since students just won't take my classes if I do (this is true of a few senior colleagues, which is a problem). And since we don't offer majors or minors (inexplicably), we don't get that enrollment safety net, either.

It's too bad, but there it is. Unless my "salary" is a genuine salary, I can't afford to apply the standards I should be applying.