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 ...
I don’t think any of it should need financing.
But how is entering the military a sign of success for college?
That is the very definition of ‘Rat philosophy.
Hell..that's at least a little improvement over the Marxists we have now....a stand up comic lives or dies by how good he/she is perceived.....the "Best" would rise to the top...isn't that what we want??
The article is correct in that the students are not the customers. The loan makers are. Now it is the Fedgov. Also, the companies that are asking for the new grads to know X used to be, but they are being told to go shut up now.
The student isn’t a customer, they are a product. They don’t pay the cash, the loan department does.
Students are not paying for their education, the loans are.
The Fedgov now writes the loans. The colleges couldn’t care less about the students, they have their money upfront.
College students are paying for a service
They are the largest consumers in our country and they had better start acting like it
After attempting to talk sense with our particular university’s financial aid depth. Six different people there I am certain, by their outrageous lack of logic, complete inability to be efficient, communicative and orderly, that they have no respect for their customers’ money
Parents continue to refuse to be demanding
These kids are paying tens to hundreds of thousands in a matter of ten or so years.
It is outrageous that anyone should get away with telling them they’re not consumers
College students are paying for a service
They are the largest consumers in our country and they had better start acting like it
After attempting to talk sense with our particular university’s financial aid depth. Six different people there I am certain, by their outrageous lack of logic, complete inability to be efficient, communicative and orderly, that they have no respect for their customers’ money
Parents continue to refuse to be demanding
These kids are paying tens to hundreds of thousands in a matter of ten or so years.
It is outrageous that anyone should get away with telling them they’re not consumers
That will not happen in the current climate.
First of all, if you start limiting college to those who have a real need and ability to finish it, you will be called a racist (and the sports programs will fail).
Second, limiting the loans will mean the majority of the resort colleges will fail. These are large public schools who have vast political resources.
Third, the system is working as designed. It isn’t to give students an education, that is as best a secondary goal. It is to produce people with the “correct” worldview.
I had one prof who made the class a good deal harder than the others who taught the same class. Students fled in droves but a few of us stuck around and learned something (and no, I didn’t earn an A). Profs like that who raise the bar should be encouraged, other profs who use their position to exercise their prejudices, like the various anti-American biases I’ve run into in an American college, should hit the bricks with no delay.
I'm always leery of evaluation criteria outside the control of the evaluated individual. In this case, the economic state is a primary consideration, along with the choice of the student themselves - as was noted by another poster, some students may choose to work in a less lucrative post for their own reasons.
Whenever a boss has forced me to pin my performance rating on something I cannot control, or worse one completely outside my ability to influence, I know it's time to start polishing my resume.
1. Professors that heap on the work and are tough graders typically get lower evaluation scores than those who offer fluff classes and give out As like candy.
2. Even if a professor is "tough", they will still get get okay evaluations if students feel that the class was valuable.
3. Professors that do a consistently poor job will get consistently poor ratings over a period of years. This cannot and should not be ignored.
4. If you make a professor's job contingent on high student evaluation scores only, you may well end up with an education system that is biased toward push-over classes and grade inflation.
So, yes—analyzing student evaluations will weed out the obviously bad professors. However, you may also reward the ones that are bad because they don't really hold students accountable.
The best way to do it would be to more carefully scrutinize those professors with scores that are either too low OR too high. Because chances are that those at either end of the scale may be doing poor jobs. This is not to say that all faculty with high scores are too easy—some may well be truly excellent professors. However, you really do have to ask: why are the scores are so high?
I also think that you need an outside, objective entity to evaluate professors. Peer reviews don't cut it because faculty tend to protect their colleagues—many times out of a sense of self-preservation (e.g., you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours).
College students are paying for a service
Some “customers” don’t like that. They feel that if they pay their fee, they should get their B (or A). Of course, there are diploma mills they can go to that cater to those but employers tend to recognize those.
Speaking of which, employers are another (albeit more indirect) customer of colleges & universities. If an employer feels an institution puts out a good “product”, they will tend to hire from there. If not, not. Reputation and employment prospects are a reason why many students choose a given university. That reputation can certainly change over time.
Instead of attacking author Schumann’s arguments, perhaps we ought to cast a fishy eye on the self-satisfied, self-righteous dogma “the customer is always right”.
The latter has been enshrined in American commerce. Combining with the modern tendency toward self-regard and instant gratification, it leads daily to demands (from customers) that service providers violate every law of physics (not to mention legal codes); and it is demanded that they do so in a hurry, for not very much money.
College Students Are Not Customers
Well lets see.
The student pays for a product (an particular education)
He either gets it or he does not. That is a customer.
They are customers paying for an education but they are not paying for a degree and good grades. That is the distinction that this bill fails to make.
I am PhD grad student (two weeks until my defense) who is done quite a bit of teaching and this is spot-on.
I say put cameras in the classroom and base evaluations solely on 1) cogency and clarity of each instructor’s lectures and 2) keeping with high and consistent standards, set by the university, in assessments . Problem solved.
Most of the work done in the world does **not** require a college degree. Even being President of the United States of American does **not** require a college education. There are many still alive who remember Harry S Truman.
Suggestion: Employers could use SAT and ACT scores and internships to identify bright, teachable, and energetic employees.
Most jobs are learned on the job. Historically, nearly all the work done in the U.S. simply required no more than sound mastery of literacy and numeracy to the 8th grade level. ( No, algebra isn't used by many.) My grandmother who was born in 1894 would find it laughable that it now requires a B.S. or M.B.A. to be an events planner at a good hotel.
Where did I say that?
I happily paid full boat MSRP tuition and expenses for my kid's "elite" college education and that was to major in something that's close to useless in the real world job market.
I've said that I think that third-tier private colleges are overpriced. Harvard/Yale/Princeton are probably worth the asking price and the remaining ivys and other "elite" colleges might or might not be worth the cost, depending. Your mileage may vary.
If the median net median family net worth of ages age 45 to 54 is $117,900, I doubt that most parents are paying $250,000 in cash for their kids' college educations. But there do seem to be way too many graduates and their families left with with mountains of educational debt and no easy way to pay it off.
This is completely nutty! Very bad idea!
My experience:
Most of the students in any class are there **only** for the credential and would really rather be someplace other than in the classroom. This attitude shows in their assignments, classroom participation, and attendance.
Gee! Who are these laggards? Only a complete idiot even think of trusting them to evaluate a teacher's performance?
How about choosing only those students with a GPA of 3.8 or better to be evaluators as a **small** part of a evaluation by an outside agency?
I have lots of experience being a student. I have a diploma from a 3 year training program in a health career, a B.S. a doctorate, and now in retirement I am earning an A.A. in art. Many times during those years in the various schools professors have said at the end of the course, “I wish I had a whole class of Wintertimes.” Just this past fall a professor said, “The other members of the class should thank you because I prepare my class knowing that you'll be there.”
I partially agree with you. Having cameras in the classroom would cut out a lot of BS (just like it does with police). However, someone STILL needs to go over it and evaluate it. That is quite a Herculean task as a university typically has hundreds of professors (plus teaching assistants). However, even if someone does it once a semester (totally at random, without telling the professor when they are being recorded), you would see an improvement in teaching quality.
One other thing: university Administrations are often biased toward watering down curriculum. Why? Because it minimizes the amount of problems and complaints for them and, in the short term, makes students seem “happier” & increases revenue (fewer dropouts).
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