OMG! What about their precious self-esteem?
I took two engineering courses that where not a lot people passed; static/dynamics and solid state electronics. I have to say eventhough it may appear that people are complaining that it is “too hard” it may not tell the entire story.
I had a Finance professor who gave multiple choice take home tests with only 4 to 5 answers per question. It would take hours to get it right. Talk about nuance.
There was only one question on first exam:
Are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?
There was only one question on second exam:
Are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?
I taught university-level economics for over 20 years. At one institution (and you would recognize the name), it was my first semester of full time teaching. Two minority students from the basketball team came to my office about two weeks before the final exam and asked for the exam. I pointed out that the exam was two weeks away, whereupon I was informed that other teachers gave them a copy of the exam to use as a “study guide”. I told them that wasn't going to happen.
Within two minutes, a senior faculty member (who was so far left he though Marx was a sissy) marched into my office and asked why I refused to give the two a copy of the final. I simply said I don't do that. I then got a lecture on how it was my “duty” to help students who come from “disadvantaged” backgrounds. My response:
“Really? So when these two don't make it as professional BB players and get a job using ___ University as an selling point, and the company discovers two weeks later they can't even write a complete sentence, you think you've done them a favor? What you've done is slam the door for all subsequent graduates from this university who try to get a job with this company.”
In the remaining four years at that institution, I never had another athlete take my intro econ course.
Just wait until Medical Schools start this. There will be plenty of doctors for everyone, all dumbed down to eighth grade levels. “Got chest pain? Take 2 aspirins and call me in the morning.”
I think the LSU dean acted correctly, and admire his courage in overruling the professor. In academia it happens quite rarely.
Her multiple choice was poorly designed (10 possible answers). A large amount of time would be spent reading through these answers until getting to the correct one (imagine if it was the last in the list). If she did not want to reward guessing, then she should not have multiple choice - only short answer (granted it is a bear to grade but she is holding her students to a high standard).
Also you can define any test in such a way that the majority of good (perhaps not great) students would fail it. I had Physics tests in college with a 22 average, and that average reflected the poor quality of instruction and test design as opposed to the commitment of the students.
On the flip side, the fact that these are non-science majors should not have a bearing on the test and performance expectations. Engineers and scientists take the same English/Social Studies/Humanities courses as those majors, and there is no lesser expectation on them. In fact when I went through the highest grades came from engineers in these classes (I was an Engineering Freshman taking a Junior level core Communications course, and I had the third highest grade in the class). Virtually all of the highest grades came from engineers.
If you cannot pass a real science or engineering course in college, then you have no business being in college. The same can be said for English, social studies, communications etc. No ghettos with inflated grades - everyone takes the same science (Intro Chemistry, non-Calculus based Physics, and Intro Biology) and at least Precalculus.
It’s sometimes unfair to students when a professor in the sciences who normally teaches upper divisional electives and graduate courses is thrown into a survey course designed for non-majors.
Because so many American college students are not prepared for real college work, you have to met them halfway. Hopefully, the students who are better prepared are in better universities or in honors programs within their schools. Because, inevitably, the class is going to move forward at the speed of something like the median student. This will be too challenging for those at the bottom, and too easy for those at the top, if students aren’t adequately sorted by ability.
While I always have problems in the principles of economics courses I teach, I want to say that in my advanced courses for econ majors and in my MBA courses, I have really good students. It is a joy to teach them.
So, although we have some problems with our university system, allowing just about anybody to try to go to college, I think that - at least in economics and business - we can have some confidence in the product we put out.
On the other hand, I think a lot of people should consider mastering a trade skill and we, as a society, should respect people who work with their hands. Too many books, says Ecclesiastes, is a weariness to the flesh.
Science and math majors sit in the same non-science humanities courses as the arts majors, but arts majors get special watered down science courses so their puny brains won’t get fried. ( Hm?...What’s wrong with this picture?)
By the way...I have special contempt for education majors. If the U.S. was serious about having better qualified K-12 teachers they would do one simple thing! All education majors would need to take and pass Calculus I by taking the same course ( sitting side by side) that the science majors take. The average IQ of the typical American K-12 teacher would immediately rise by at least one standard deviation.
I have been very fortunate in my teaching career in having the backing of my supervisors, even when I failed 12 out of 28 graduate students for plagiarism.
I teach on both the community college and the University level. At the community college, when I teach an Intro to Computers course, I don’t even bother giving tests because at least two-thirds of the class would fail. I developed a system where all grades were based on the number of assignments completed. Each assignment was designed to teach a particular skill, such as evaluating the reliability of information at a web site, and each had a point value, do all the assignments and the student got 100 points. Students were graded by the number of points they had earned. The students were actually doing a lot more work then they would have if I just went the more traditional lecture/testing route, but I had much better luck actually getting them to learn something.
Describe the Universe, and give two examples."
From the perspective of the university, if barely anyone can pass the class for whatever reason, it will not “sell”.
One solution in intermediate courses (e.g. pre-calculus, non-calculus physics) was to offer the opportunity to those hardly able to hack it, to do extra work, a lot of extra work, to pass with a D. But I would never never compromise on an exam.
For those who are unfamiliar with the college academic environment these days, it is routine to get battered on testing from reading material, as opposed to just spoon-fed lecturing in class. This is corroborated by many instructors.
My view has always been the instructor/professor has a whole lot more experience than an eighteen year old mother pampered college juvenile, and should be trusted with the teaching responsibility.
In management/human relations the Dean here was absolutely wrong in overruling the professor publicly. You do not do that in the arena of juveniles. If there was a true issue then you ease that instructor out of that duty, absorbing the student hit for that period.
This reeks of the very atmosphere of pandering to the student.
My harshest two experiences were interesting. I was originally an EE major (before I bowed to the inevitable and got into programming) and the Jr. level core course that I took in 1982 was extremely difficult.
It was designed to make sure that you understood all the intricate mathematics you had to digest earlier and also included trick computations that if you mindlessly typed into a calculator you got the wrong answer due to loss of precision. It was homework only - no tests and there were two rules. You did your homework alone. You were not allowed to look at material taught in the course in previous years.
Unfortunately, there were graduate students in the course too and apparently too many of them were having problems. In the last couple weeks of the course the professor (Dr. Middlebrook, spit) announced that both rules were no longer in effect and made it retroactive to the beginning of the quarter, thus penalizing everyone who obeyed the rules all along.
The second was better. This was in the mid 1990s and I was taking core accounting courses by extension at the request of my (now late) Father who had always wanted me to get a CPA. This course had 3 tests + homework for grading. This course was the exact equivalent of the EE course I described above. On the first test the whole class got a shock. I got something like a 79 (out of 100) and that was one of the highest scores in the class. As he returned the tests he made the blunt statement - you people who got below (I forget the number, but it was 70 or 80) should not only think about dropping this class, you should also be reconsidering your choice of major.
I find it interesting that the hammer came down in a public school (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) and cheating was retroactively forgiven at a private school (CalTech).
Don’t worry, folks. One day maybe your brain surgeon will be a product of this enablement and acquiescence.
Why do so many assume it is all the teacher’s fault for tests that are to hard or the students for being lazy. Maybe she is a crappy teacher who could not teach a class on operating a door knob.
While in college I have seen all three.
Teachers who used failing student to boost their ego.
Plenty of lazy students.
And one teacher that could not understand that just because he understood what he said dosen’t mean that someone might not.
One math teacher who could not put his really true genius in words.
Atttrition rates are high for certain college classes. I took a stats course in college that started with about seventy students and ended with less than one third of that number. Stats is not considered to be hard math, but it is for many college students. I managed to finish with a borderline B of which I was very happy to get because the material was tougher than other classes I got As in. Tough classes test (no pun intended) your mettle.
That art course was the toughest-graded course I've ever taken. 30 students, no A's, two B's, the rest C's and D's and there were IIRC four outright F's from guys who figured they could skate and didn't get the message early on. Mind you this was the early 70's when a professor could get away with that stuff, but he was tenured, brilliant, and didn't give a rip. Try to imagine the screams. And I'm still proud nearly four decades and two professional careers later that I earned one of the B's.
And I can still sketch, even a talentless klutz like me. He's long dead now but I'll tip a glass to him because that guy could teach, but only if you wanted to learn, and God help you if you didn't and wasted his time.
One other story - he came in one day and canceled class, saying "Mahalia Jackson died yesterday." None of us knew who she was. He said "That's what I thought. Go home and find out. Don't come back until you know." It didn't have much to do with drawing but it had everything to do with education. I feel sorry for a generation that is denied that sort of challenge.