His final statement in the blog caught my eye:
“Will I pursue cheating cases in the future? Never, ever again!”
(These are students who will be our future industry leaders)
Why he decided to expose it through a blog post instead of going to the administration is beyond me. Unless he felt the administration would take a blind eye to it all. But even then, it would have been the right approach.
It’s a shame Professor Panagiotis Ipeirotis mishandled this so badly. He should have stood up proudly for what he did, explained why the kids were better off being caught now than continuing to think their behavior was acceptable, and said he did the right thing and that ethics mattered more than pay (because character does matter more than dollars). As the whine was stated in his blog, he was implicitly endorsing their conduct when he implied that the effect on his pay mattered more than the underlying values, just as the students believed the effect on their grade mattered more than honor.
He’s just as morally corrupt as the students. He’s not willing to stand by his morals when it costs him financially. Instead, he caved to the corrupt system. So, how is he any better?
Cheap whore will sell his morals down the drain for a slightly larger salary increase.
He deserves the students he's got.
I am lucky that when ever I caught cheating in my classes, my superiors stood behind what ever decision I made, including failing 12 out of 28 students.
I don’t know if I’d be able to work in a school that didn’t.
The Catch-22 in the modern American university system is that professors are judged by their customers. In almost all other cases this is a good thing, as the customer is in the best position to judge the quality of goods and services purchased from a vendor. In education, however, students want As, whether they deserve them or not. The evals a professor gets often tracks the grade distribution pretty closely. As a result, professors who hand out As are rewarded (with tenure and promotion) for keeping the customers happy. This provides a dis-incentive for professors to hold a student’s feet to the fire.
A better way would be to:
1. Factor in evaluations of employers who hire graduates. Are they happy with them? Do they continually come back to the school to hire?
2. Have the graduates fill out survey at every year after they graduate (for 5 consecutive years) to rate a professor. Often a “hard”, but effective professor is better appreciated years later than during the actual class.
Both of the above are problematic, however, as they don’t provide the timely feedback needed for personnel decisions. Likewise, peer evaluation (from the same Dept) is often useless.
And, yes, I am a college professor too.
Maybe not the best way of handling this. If the students admitted cheating, then they at least have a conscience. I would have given them a chance to redo so that their belated honesty wasn’t merely punished. Now, the real problem is the students who cheated and didn’t come forward.
I graduated from NY (I O )U and am embarrassed for the university. He should have gone directly to the administration about those caught cheating. They should have been expelled from the school (so that MY degree is not tainted by this). At the least, those who were caught cheating should not have been allowed to evaluate the professor (kind of like the criminals running the prison, no?) Instead, we have whiney kids caught doing what they may well have been doing all throughout their education and not for one minute willing to deal with the consequences of their own actions.
In my view, the professor should have gotten the biggest raise of his career—it means a) he was auditing the students’ work carefully and b) valuing integrity/honesty and imposing consequence on short-cutting/cheating.
Higher Education is a total sham funded by the government to keep the Left alive.
The evaluation system that cost this teacher part of a salary increase equates to: “the patients are running the insane asylum”.
I once caught five (0f 24) students blatantly cheating. I gave the assignment a fair gread, then divided it by five. I also notified my department chair. at the end of the semester I got all generally positive student reviews, and five really nasty ones. they didn’t renew me after that citing bad student reviews.
My brother teaches high school technical classes. He caught around 60% of his stuents cheating. They all made the same mistakes. He sid the hassles he got from that were huge. THis was form the parents. The administration mainly supported him, because he had airtight evidence
So...the University is a scam?
Will they be subject to Federal Fraud investigation by the OIG as they are in receipt of Federal funds?
A real school would just kick the kids out and be done with them.