Posted on 05/24/2015 3:17:18 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
In what is apparently a vogue of Republican state legislators exercising misplaced vendettas against college professors, Iowa Sen. Mark Chelgren recently made headlines when he introduced Senate File 64, “an Act relating to the teaching effectiveness and employment of professors” at Iowa public institutions.
Each year, the bill stipulates, any faculty who fails “to attain a minimum threshold of performance” based solely on student evaluations would be automatically fired regardless of rank or tenure. Lest you think that firing professors based on a questionable assessment metric affords them too much dignity, rest assured there is more. Some beleaguered governing body would also publish the names of the five professors with the lowest acceptable evaluations, and the student body would then “vote on the question of whether any of the five professors will be retained.”......
.....When, for example, a diner at a restaurant pairs tilapia with zinfandel, and then raises a holy fit about how disgusting her tilapia tastes, the manager has little choice but to restrain the irate sommelier and comp the food, even though it is the customer’s fault the food was “bad.” The staff would not dare suggest the customer try a different wine, because that rude attitude would be yet more fodder for a scathing Yelp review; e.g., “If I could give this place negative stars, I would!”....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
The real customer of a college education is the gratuate’s future employer. Everyone in the process should be happy if the employer is satisfied with the final product. In addition, the market rate for the profession obtained through the education should be enough for the graduate to support his or her self and pay back the cost of the schooling they chose. Regardless of what the proponents of “education for education’s sake” may say, a graduate who is unemployable and therefore unable to pay back any education debt has wasted everyone’s time and money.
I really don't care if I make enough money to pay back the tuition spent. All of this effort is entirely for “education's sake”. To me it is like sipping fine wine instead of drinking water from the tap. It is purely for my enjoyment.
If students are customers, then the university is a business.
A university is a business, and poor business practices will make it go broke, and some have or are about to. But it is more than that, and professors are more than suppliers of a service. They are also paid authority figures in an environment where the "customer" is suspicious and resentful of authority (an authority that makes them work, for one thing, but that can also be arbitrary and harmful for another). To make those "customers" the sole arbiters of instructor performance is to provide disincentives for that authority to demand student performance. That isn't what we're after.
There are, for most universities (the one at which I work, for example - I'm staff, not faculty, so I have no real dog in this fight) existing systems of instructor performance that run from peer evaluation through department chair all the way to the various faculty committees and ultimately to the university president. These can, but rarely do, supersede tenure. Some do take student evaluations into account, especially the written comments pertaining to abilities to communicate and address student questions. The ones at our university are open only until just before finals, and contain the question, "What grade do you anticipate receiving?" which is a rather indirect way of weeding out chronic malcontents. The system is far from perfect but it is, IMHO, far better than taking anonymous student web complaints at face value. Hard-guy professors aren't always bad-guy professors, and students aren't always as interested in learning the material as in getting the grade and proceeding onto the next station in their educational pilgrimage.
However, for public universities there is also another customer, who pays in many cases more than the student customers do, and that is the taxpayer. State boards of education are very rightfully concerned with not wasting that customer's investment, and these are very rightfully subject to the vicissitudes of state politics. Faculties who take that coin know perfectly well where it comes from and sneering at attempts to control it as Republican plots is, IMHO, more than a little disingenuous on the part of the author.
Bottom line: I think the bill is a bad idea but I think the author's objections are a little specious.
That is fine assuming you aren't taking out debt to pay for it that you won't pay back.
All of this effort is entirely for “education's sake”. To me it is like sipping fine wine instead of drinking water from the tap. It is purely for my enjoyment.
Shame you can't just read a book, watch a documentary, or actually participate in the research or discovery of the underlying topic. Otherwise it sounds is if you need a better hobby.
Why do think that this effort isn't participating in original discovery that others may benefit from and enjoy?
The whole rotten system needs to be “re-engineered”. And yes, college students are their customers.
A lot of professors get great evaluations because they give easy grades and go drinking with their students.
Those which challenge their thinking and demand real work for top notch grades often get punished in evaluations.
...and limiting the choice of majors?
Great phrase.
No, no, no.
I’m wondering how long an “outside, objective entity” would remain either.
They are, however, always the customer...and the customer is always the point.
Using college degrees to sort out qualifications is easily understood and effective insurance against being sued.
Any criteria used for hiring must resist hostile hindsight.
+1
At a minimum, you would have to set up a System where the evaluators had no relationship with those being evaluated. But then there is the question of ideology. If the evaluator was a leftist, you’d expect a conservative professor to take a hit. That would be much harder to police, especially if the criticisms were not overtly ideological.
As my husband says about employers requiring a college diploma, “They do because they can.” He is very dismissive about Charles Murray's arguments.
By the way....Did you read Murray's Wall Street Journal essay? I posted it in post # 92.
Good points.
“Using college degrees to sort out qualifications is easily understood and effective insurance against being sued.”
I have no college degree and was an excellent employee throughout my entire career, advancing into positions normally held by college grads. I was more motivated, dependable, and competent than 90% of the grads. When a grad screwed up a project, it was assigned to me and I was instructed to “fix it”.
I’d never have sued my employer. When in a lower position covered by a union, a rep encouraged me to file a grievance in order to bump someone holding the job. I could have and I’d have won due to senority. But I wouldn’t, and didn’t.
It has to do with how a person is raised from birth; not whether or not he has a college degree. These days, anyone with a pulse can get a degree. Education... well, that’s something different entirely.
Commie activist students would swarm a conservative professor’s class and give him failing grades in order to get him fired. Any white male would be in danger of this attack by the liberal racists.
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