Let’s say Dr. A, a professor at a university who actually teaches a class, decides to fail all of his students in a given semester. That is, regardless of coursework or anything laid out in the syllabus, 100% of the students in his current UNFAIR 115 will get an F for the class.
What is likely to be done?
Does Dr. A’s tenure (or lack thereof) have anything to do with the outcome?
What if, instead, Dr. A decided to assign grades (and, therefore, fail students) completely at random?
An assistant professor failed all his Intro to Political Science students when I was attending the University of Tulsa in the late 1960s. It made a big stir on campus, and produced many angry letters and editorials, some of which were published by the student newspaper. After much discussion, the failing grades were waived, and all the students were given the option of accepting a grade of ‘C’ or retaking the class under a different professor. The assistant professor then quit without giving notice and went elsewhere. Dunno what his problem was.
I suspect that if this had been a full professor with tenure, the failing grades would have been allowed to stand.
Professors are generally accountable to a number of authorities, depending on how the university is structured. Generally, the department to which they belong (e.g. the Department of Psychology) is the first up, then the group of departments to which that department belongs (e.g. Social Sciences, or Arts & Science). Above that, they’re accountable to the university’s administration, all the way up to the governing body and it’s leader. Requirements for the success of the professor’s students may be set at any level; again, this varies between universities.
If too many students fail or do poorly in a course, it may reflect poorly on the professor who’s teaching that course; OTOH, if too many students do very well, it sometimes suggests that the course is too easy. Rules that require a C+ average (or something like that) with a roughly normal distribution of higher and lower marks are probably quite common, though often secret. (Where I went, the required C+ average was not spoken of, but at least one professor confirmed to me that the requirement existed.) This may only apply in certain courses, such as freshman and sophomore courses; in higher years, consistently high marks may just indicate that the students taking the course were all particularly good.
Techniques for ensuring the C+ average are usually as simple as adjusting the difficulty of the final exam, after considering the student’s grades on past work, to ensure that the average is C+. A certain amount of skilful awarding of part marks may be necessary (unless the exam is multiple-choice) to get a proper distribution. (Or to fail everyone. Part marks are basically up to the marker, and it’s very easy to make someone fail by giving, say, 4/10 to a substantially correct answer with one missing bit of information.) I had one exam where a question worth 10% was described as “extremely difficult” and “would be marked very strictly” – this was obviously to ensure that no more than 2-3% of the students got A+ marks in the course.
I’m not sure how this works for a tenured professor; the university might have no recourse but to reprimand them. Even so, they do have the option of changing the grades in the course or allowing the students to retake the course or the exam. For an untenured professor, they could make it very clear that they expect a certain level of grades, and it very well might endanger that person’s chances for promotion. Remember that courses in which every student, no matter how well-prepared, no matter how talented, is doomed to do poorly reflect very badly on the university and can result in someone deciding not to apply there – which means less money.
Hard to see how even a tenured professor could get away with this in a school that recieves state funds. Private University I could see, but even then it dosen’t pay to piss of the people (and thier possibly wealthy alumni parants) who pay the bills. I had a run in with the Dean of my Engineering College in a Private University and went to the Vice President of Student Affairs and got a refund for for the class that I was taking with him well after the cutoff date for getting a refund. But then, I’m not the type of person you want ranting around your office. :mad:
Actually I could see another twist to this where a professor (most likely in a Philosophy course) states on the frist day of class that everyone is going to fail this class no matter how hard they try. He could constantly give out failing marks to every essay/homework assignment. Arbitraily grade test to his liking. Constantly remind students that they are wasting there time coming to his class and that they might as well drop. Get into peoples faces when they show up late or leave early. And continue this even after a good 75 percent of the people have dropped his course. Then at the final exam, telling the surviours that they just wasted an entire semister without learning a thing. Only when they get their grades in the mail do they realize that they all got B’s.
Oh wait, that pretty much does desribe my freshman Philosphy course. 
At my undergraduate university, a state funded engineering college with a reputation for excellence, a graduate level thermodynamics class was failed by a tenured professor. The grades stood and the graduate students were required to retake the course to get their degrees. I do not think that the grade was taken into account with regards to the requirement of getting a 3.0 average to remain in good standing. This requirement was waived due to complaints from the students.
I wasn’t in the class but most of the faculty seemed to think the grades were merited and their disapointment was directed at the students. The graduate students all retook the course with the same professor the next semester and passed. Most of the students retook the class without complaint.
In general I agree with the professor. If a student doesn’t learn the material, they shouldn’t pass. I don’t care who is paying the bills and don’t see what state funding has to do with anything. If all the students don’t learn the material they should fail the course but the professors compentency should be examined carefully.
Yes, but he could probably show that he was grading fairly and that they deserved to fail. Not to be confused with the professor that grades arbitrailly or announces early in the course that he intends to fail everyone regradless. :dubious:
Does tenure gaurantee the professor the right to make the final call on student grades? Can the university, “Okay, we can’t do anything against the professor, but we’ve decided to ignore the marks he gave out and give everyone a B for the course instead.”
As a teacher I’d like to say that I don’t fail anyone. I don’t give anyone any grade, they are earned. I believe that I am willing to do anything in my power to help my students succeed, but my students have to meet me half way. Be it meeting before or after class, asking for different material, or studying extra hard, they have to earn their grade. Effort that does not yeild positive results should not be rewarded…
“Jones, I know you worked really hard on this peice of shit. Yeah, it is a peice of shit and is of absolutely no value what so ever, but you worked really hard, so I’ll give you a raise anyways.”
yeah…right.
Keep in mind, too, that although the university might not be able to kick a professor to the curb for lousy teaching, they can certainly play around with teaching assignments to a large degree. Most tenured faculty that teach a lot (at least at a big research university) do so because they like to teach, and likely take their responsibility a bit too seriously to grade completely at random or fail anybody. By the time professors that hate teaching get tenure, it’s common knowledge, at least at the department level, that they hate teaching, and thus unlikely that they’ll be assigned to teach much unless the department is really stretching.
A lot of teaching these days, especially a lot of teaching for introductory lectures, is handled by non-tenure track lecturers and instructors anyway, as well as assistant professors trying to look good for tenure. While colleges might not be able to outright get rid of a lousy-teaching full prof, they can do a lot to minimize the amount of teaching he or she actually ends up responsible for.
Universities all have there own politics and policies. Some Proffessors are treated like gods by the students and administration alike. As such they can use or abuse thier power as they see fit. But there almost always is a forum for students to air thier conflicts with them. Department chairs, VP’s and the press. Some areas of study are more open to abuse than others because the course material itself may be open to interpitation. Some, like lower level math, can be gauged by common standards. Others like law, may be strictly the professors domain (like Kingsfield in “The Paper Chase”).
I believe most universities have in place a policy about arbitrary and capricious grading. A student who believes he or she received a grade that was not based on his or her performance in the course can take the matter higher up within the department, school, or university, as described upthread.
If the entire class of students can demonstrate that they probably didn’t deserve those F’s, then I’m not sure what would happen next. It would be a mess. If the professor refused to reassign fair grades, one option would be appointing a panel of faculty in the department to evaluate the students’ work and assign grades.
The professor would probably lose his or her teaching duties. I suppose the university could fire him or her as well–even the AAUP agrees that grading has to be based on something.
This thing about public universities being held to a different standard in terms of being more likely or more liable to change the grades “to soothe the angry taxpayers” is a little backwards. It’s more like the public university is more likely to be sued for violating the free speech rights of its faculty employee (by forcing him to change grades he believes were valid) or denying him due process before taking away his classes.
At the (private) University where I teach and administrate, assigning grades is considered one of the exclusive rights of the faculty. Read that as “the faculty” as a body, not necessarily any one particular faculty member. We have a formal grade appeal policy a student can use if she feels her grade has been assigned unfairly; I suspect all colleges have at least an informal policy. Essentially, the student talks to the faculty member, then climbs the ladder as necessary, speaking to the department chair, the dean, or the provost. None of these administrators has the power to actually change the grade, but can call on an ad hoc faculty committee to consider the matter; if it feels so inclined the faculty committee can order that the grade be changed. (It’s a bit of a gamble; the committee is empowered to lower the grade if it decides that the grade was actually too high.) Ah, the joys of faculty governance.
The point is that the faculty is afraid that the administration would change grades any time a student complained, just to keep them happy. The administration, on the other hand, would just as soon not get into the business of deciding grades, a rather grueling and painful process, when done carefully. (Yes, all you students out there, assigning grades is by far the most unpleasant part of teaching. That and reading student essays, of course.)
But then, we do have occasional cases where a faculty member (usually part-time) leaves after a semester without having assigned any grades at all. Or one will lose all the final exams and decide to give the whole class C’s. In a case like that we would put together a group of reasonable faculty to try to figure out the right thing to do for the students who were so victimized.
What happens to the faculty member (assuming failing the whole class wasn’t actually justified)? A part-timer would not be invited back. A full-timer without tenure will find it hard to get tenure after pulling a trick like that. But a tenured professor? A firm talking-to, but unless it becomes a pattern there’s not much else to be done.
I took an English Lit course once, when the prof had announced she was grading on a curce. I got the highest score in the class, and was graded a B++. I complained to the Department chair on the grounds that with 200 students on a curve, there should be at least one A. Also, I could not find any evidence that the grade B++ existed – wouldn’t that be an A minus, I argued.
The grade stood. The teacher simply determined not to hand out any As for that assignment.
A political science teacher in our school was of the opinion that any of his students who could’nt identify 75% of the countries in the world should fail his class.
Good for him. He has standards and he let his students be aware of them.
Yeah, what Si Amigo said. Unless it was, say, never mentioned until the final exam, where any grade below 75% caused and F for the whole course, that’s pretty fair. And easy.
Now I have the urge to go see if I can get 75%.
Do I have to identify the countries on a map or just by their name? Do I have to “know” them by just saying “Ahh, Krygzystan, that’s a country in Central Asia that just had a change in government!” Or do I have to pick out on the map.
It’s a bear picking out those former Soviet republics.
Unless, as elfbabe suggested, it was a surprise, I don’t see the problem at all. Course, that might partially be because it would be pretty easy.
Easy for me, I mean.