Experience Working with Academic Partners?

[larryc]

Oh they'll learn history! The classes and professors are excellent.

Here's the real question:

Will the students who go through the program learn history, or will they have gone through a performance of learning history?  Or is it a mixed bag, depending on the skills and motivation of the individual student?

[larryc]

Thanks everyone for the replies and links. To answer a few questions our contract with AP runs another 3-4 years. The classes are excellent despite AP. Classes are capped at 30, which is a lot for humanities seminars, but we get graders and it's really manageable. But that 50% we pay AP means it does not quite break even for our department. So the dean's office asks if maybe we couldn't increase those caps? Also we're told the university "cannot afford" to have us teach in load, so we teach the grad classes as $5k a pop overloads. It is not sustainable.

[quasihumanist]

Thanks everyone for the replies and links. To answer a few questions our contract with AP runs another 3-4 years. The classes are excellent despite AP. Classes are capped at 30, which is a lot for humanities seminars, but we get graders and it's really manageable. But that 50% we pay AP means it does not quite break even for our department. So the dean's office asks if maybe we couldn't increase those caps? Also we're told the university "cannot afford" to have us teach in load, so we teach the grad classes as $5k a pop overloads. It is not sustainable.

To me, this sounds like the administration is pressuring you to make the finances work out better by not insisting on teaching history.

[Hegemony]

Does the contract with Academic Partners run out in a certain year (e.g. 2026) or after a certain number of years (e.g. "after five years of the program")?

If it runs out in a certain year, you could always tell the administration that you can't afford to run the program, given the percentage skimmed off to Academic Partners and the administration's reluctance to pay instructors enough to teach the classes. Therefore you are suspending the program until 2026, when you will resume.

I wonder if AP has foreseen this dodge, or whether you could pull it off.