I’ve been a grad teaching fellow/assistant at two different universities, and have taught my own courses, and have never heard of such a thing.
For the OP, students would be able to go to the department or some higher authority and appeal their grades. The class will have some sort of grading standard set down in the syllabus and arbitrarily flunking students won’t pass muster w/ the standard established in the syllabus.
Even if the prof couldn’t be effectively fired or sanctioned, it would ultimately not be worth repeating because the hassle of all the appeals and the political ramifications w/in the university would make the prank too expensive to keep repeating.
If the assignment of memorizing the names and locations of 75% of countries was given a reasonable amount of time, then I don’t see a real problem with it. But there are political science courses where I would deem such an assignment inappropriate - “introduction to political behavior” or something - and where an automatic failure would be unreasonable.
As far as what would happen if I professor failed everyone … well, are we assuming that he capriciously decided to fail everyone in the class despite the quality of each student’s work? Most of the real-life examples already in this thread don’t really match the hypothetical situation very well, because the teachers may have been justified failing everyone.
I can suggest how such a problem might be solved at the school where I’m an undergraduate. Last semester I took a discrete mathematics course with an untenured but full-faculty professor. For one exam - not even the entire course! - many students thought that he had graded unfairly.* Several complained to my department’s director of undergraduate studies, some pressure was applied, and new points were assigned. I imagine that a failure of everybody would be met with significantly more anger from the student body than a few Ds where there should’ve been Cs.
*To correct for a too-long exam, he weighted each question so that that the lower ones counted for more. This pissed off students who had skipped lower numbered questions to work on higher ones. Eh. I didn’t care; I had an A in the course either way.
Well, at the university where I teach, the administration has recently started to complain about our department (the math department) because we fail too many students.
But what do you expect when the university will accept any student, no matter how low the grades (really poor students are accepted “on probation”)? Students who refuse to learn the material (or sometimes even refuse to show up for class) have to be failed, and there’s not much ambiguity in a math class as to whether or not the students know the material.
Of course, that just means that the students go over to the local community college to take certain classes, where they don’t learn anything since the community college has no academic standards whatsoever, and then the university has to give the students credit for the classes they took over there.
Yeah, we’re working on ways to deal with this problem, but the state has mandated that the obvious solution (Don’t accept credit for classes taken at the community college) can’t be taken.
And yet, the other departments in the university don’t seem to have the same problem with failing too many students, making one wonder what their academic standards are like.
FWIW, my law school had a strict grading policy which enforced an average of 62 per cent for each course, if the number of students sitting was 50 or more (IIRC). Exam results were standardised to fit a pre-determined distribution. Depending on student numbers, only a small number of High Distinctions (80%+) could be awarded in each class, with a greater number of Distinctions (70-80%). The bulk of the class would necessarily receive a Pass or Credit grade (50-69%).
This of course lead to tears and recrimination, since most people entering law were accustomed to scoring 80 per cent or better. In the longer run, however, it enforced a greater sense of competition.
Not a specific class, but a couple of years before I entered my graduate program, the faculty there determined that they had somehow admitted a crop of losers into the program and instituted a comprehensive 2nd year exam that was intended to weed them out. After the smoke cleared only 3 of the original crop of students was allowed to stay in the doctoral program. It was referred to thereafter as The Bloodbath. They kept the the test as a requirement for a number of years after that, for the sake of appearances. So my cohort had to take it in our second year. (We all passed.)
Failing an entire class is ok if it can be justified. But failing everyone on a whim (as suggested by the OP) will not stand up. From my experience, students can petition for a grade change and the prof will have to justify the grade given. That’s why there’s generally a rule for faculty to maintain exams and records for some time after a semester is over. Admittedly, for some courses (such as non-science ones) where the grading has some subjectivity, it’s going to be pretty tough to have any grade overridden. I must also say (my experience only) that it’s rare to see a prof’s grade overridden without his/her consent.
Students have much more power than they realize and if they ever did realize it, I suspect that it would change the way colleges work.
Students spend a huge amount of money on getting an education (or at least their parents do) and they sacrifice four or more years of their income producing lives in the process. It’s well recognized that students are responsible for studying hard, going to class, and all the rest to earn their grades and ultimately their degree, but what is often overlooked is that the schools have a responsibility, also. They are responsible for providing teachers who know the subject, come to class prepared to teach it and can present the material in an organized and lucid manner.
I’ll bet everyone of us who has gone through college can remember at least one teacher who failed their end of the bargain. And what did you do about it? Probably nothing.
IANAL but it seems to me that this is basic contract stuff. The student is paying for knowledge and for documentation proving he has that knowledge. If the school or teacher is unable or unwilling to provide that knowledge or if they refuse to provide the student with proper “certificate” (grades or diploma), then it seems to me that the school has not upheld their end of the contract. I myself would love it if incompetent teachers started getting sued.
So, given that attitude, in the case presented in the OP, if the administration refused to do anything about the grades, I would try legal channels.
Fair enough but then the coursework and tests/papers/etc. also need to be appropriate to the class being taught.
In college I was in an Astronomy class (as a Sophomore) where the professor failed 100% of the class (I forget but something like 75 students) on one exam. The best score was 54% on the test. The students appealed the test as unfair. To check it out several Astronomy graduate students took the test…best score from them was 68%. It seemed pretty clear to everyone that the test was too difficult out of all proportion as to what would be expected for that level. Some in the class were on a science track but it was still a 200 level class and many there were just killing a science credit (which is to say no one was expecting it to be the equivalent of a graduate level class).
This was appealed to the administration and was a decent stink on campus for awhile. The administration ultimately refused to change the grades but after that the tests became considerably easier (which is not to say easy). I had heard a rumor that his tests had to be vetted by graduate students first before being given but I never verified that.
Point is…earning a grade is fine and correct but the coursework/grading likewise needs to be appropriate to the class.
Most of you are interpreting my OP correctly: In my hypothetical, the professor simply decides to grade arbitrarily. The students aren’t notified beforehand (the syllabus doesn’t mention that the course is graded on a whim) so they don’t have any time to drop or switch.
And I expected the real professors to respond that the students earn their grades. That is how it works in the real world assuming the professor is being professional about things. That isn’t how it works in my hypothetical. In my hypothetical, the professor obviously isn’t a Doper.
When I was at the University of Illinois, they had something called the Capricious Grading Committee, to keep instructors from grading on a whim, though this is more applicable to cases where a professor graded some students differently than others than it is to the OP’s situation. And, with Google as my friend, I see that they still do. If you’re interested, you can read all about it here, but here are some highlights:
At many (most?) schools, students are provided with a syllabus at the beginning of each class that spells out, in more or less detail, how their course grade is to be determined, and instructors are expected to abide by that. If he/she didn’t, this would presumably be “the assignment of a grade representing a substantial departure from the instructor’s previously announced standards.”
First of all, I think it’s been pretty well established that under the scenario described, it would be unusual in the extreme for the administration to refuse to do anything.
As for all this “power to the students!” stuff, I’d like to hear more about how you think it would change the way colleges work.
In the U.S. colleges are already obligated to meet certain expectations. Even if the students were all sheep, they answer to the U.S. Dept. of Education, to their accreditation boards (at both the institutional and discplinary levels), even to organizations like the AAUP. Best of all, students can vote with their feet. College is not prison, and attendance is not compulsory. Not only can students attend a competitor (one of 2500, actually), they can eschew higher education altogether. If a college is doing a bad job, they will lose students. I’m not entirely sure what practices you think would so drastically change if students became more litigious.
Your argument might apply to something as insubstantial as, say, a restaurant, but not to something of this magnitude. I am a landlord and when a tenant signs a lease they are entering into a binding contract. They are expected to uphold their end of the deal and I am expected to uphold my end. When one of us fails to meet our obligations, bad things can happen, and that’s the way it should be. This is the reason we have contracts. It’s not enough to say that my tenants can just find another place to live or that I can just find replacement tenants. A significant commitment has been made by both parties.
I see teaching, whether in academia or in the corporate world, as something akin to women’s gymnastics 50 years ago. The expectations are so low and the recognition of excellence so insignificant that no one really tries that hard. (I do recognize that there are some excellent teachers out there.) Only when we start demanding more from them will the teaching improve. One way to make that demand would be for students to demand their money back from courses that were not well taught.
I wasn’t stating this as a matter of “if you don’t like it, get your degree elsewhere.” I meant that given so many alternatives for the students they recruit, colleges have an incentive to address pedagogy.
My real question was about your prediction of changing “the way colleges work” via litigation. So we’re talking about colleges changing the evaluation system? The weight placed on teaching in hiring and promotion?
Not really. Unless things have changed radically since I was in college, teachers are promoted, given tenure, etc. not on how well they *teach * but on their research, publications, respect in their academic field, etc.
I’m not suggesting litigation as a first step but as a last step. What I would really like to see is students going into their classes with an attitude of, I dunno, empowerment, maybe. On that first day of class when the professor tells the class what he expects of them, I would like to see some of the students stand up and tell the professor what they expect from him. What’s wrong with that?
Certainly true at some schools, not so much at others. It varies from school to school (and perhaps even from department to department), especially depending on what type of school it is (i.e. big state university, private liberal arts college, etc.)—which is something prospective students need to be aware of when choosing a college.
Another college professor reporting in here. I just want to make two points:
Most colleges/schools/departments have Grievance Committees which is empowered to handle complaints of this type. Many faculties have an explicit rule that grades can be changed by such a committee, by another committee on standards, or the faculty as a whole. Some colleges actually have a rule that grades cannot be changed by an individual professor (except in the case of a misgrade of an exam or somethign similar) except by such committees.
Tenure does not guarantee a job for life. Tenure can be lost for malfesance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance. (That would be doing your job badly, misusing your position, and not doing your job). The hypothetical situation would be eaither malfeasance or nonfeasance and coudl well result in the loss of tenure and a job.
Those things are important to tenure, true. That doesn’t mean that professors don’t care about pedagogy, that colleges have no regard for teaching quality, and that student evaluations count for nothing.
There’s been something of a movement to make teaching quality a little more transparent to students. Some outside the system, some within. One of the major goals of the NSSE project, for example, is to help students evaluate prospective colleges on things like how students experience faculty, whether they are judged as teaching effectively, and so on. And then we’ve got the sometimes-lamented websites rating professors for all to see.
The problem seems to be that students are suppose to know what they are getting into. Sometimes it dosen’t become aparent until after they have achieved thier education. ;j
It is a learning process. Maybe that asshole of a prof really taugt you something . . . besides spelling obviously :wally
