By way of preface, let me state that I think the answer to the first question is “Probably not” and the answer to the second question is “I have juicier fish to fry,” but I’ve often thought that the book might just exist.
Among my more suspicious thoughts is this: college students have a manual whose subtitle is something like “How to Pass College Courses Without Actually Learning Anything.” (The title would be something catchier.) It gives “students” various techniques for conning their professors into passing them in courses they have failed, or giving them grades higher than the ones they’ve actually earned.
I used to teach college for a living. Got pretty high up on the food chain, as a matter of fact, and after a few decades I began to notice a pattern: term after term, I would find a few students coming into my office, usually a week or so before grades were due, pleading the following.
“Professor, is there any extra credit I can do to compensate for [my low grade on the final/my spotty lab attendance/my numerous missed assignments/ etc.]?”
“Okay, Professor, it’s too late for extra credit, plus it’s extra work for you at your busiest time of year and unfair to my classmates, but can you re-assess my grade? Maybe you missed something I did correctly, maybe you neglected to grade my quizzes properly, maybe you marked a paper I did as missing when you actually misplaced it [etc.]… There must be something you can do to bump up my grade a little.”
“Okay, Professor, you’ve given me the best possible grade you could, given my lousy work, but can you bump my grade just a little anyway? If not, I’m going to lose my scholarship, and I’ll get thrown out of school, which will break my poor old mother/father/grandma/etc.’s heart.”
“Okay, Professor, but instead of failing me [or giving me the C- or D that I deserve] can you at least do me the kindness of allowing me to drop the course, even though the date for withdrawing from the course has long since passed? Can you write a note to the Dean explaining that I’m in an extraordinary circumstance—and I did try to kill myself a few weeks ago, plus I’ve been battling the flu all semester long, and a few close relatives have died recently and my parents are getting a divorce—and a ‘W’ grade instead of an F/D/C- would be appropriate.”
There are a few more steps in there (I’ll spare you) and a few variations (students guessing at my ethnicity try to find a common bond between us, students swearing that they’re excellent students in every other subject but they have a phobia about my course, students accusing me politely of being biased against their race, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, etc.,) plus the inevitable step of weeping somewhere late in this process, but my point is: It’s a process.
Students with no intention of learning anything follow this game plan from Day One of the term: do the minimal amount of work to stay enrolled in the course, and pull the tactics outlined above (according to the script provided) in the approximate order I’ve listed the steps. Of course, the first step is to try to enroll in a section of the course that has a professor with low standards. Some of my colleagues were notorious for never failing a single student, and others were known to award all A and B grades. (A “B-” was considered punishment enough for atrocious work.) So these students would try to enroll in as many “easy pass” courses as they could find, but when they were faced with professors who had unreasonably high grading standards, they could employ the sure-fire tactics, and the script, above, which would probably limit the number of failures in a given semester.
Why did they do this? I don’t know, but I suspect that such students didn’t want to be in college in the first place, were attending only because a parent was insisting (and paying tuition), and they could enjoy the benefits of college life (partying, meeting new friends and sex partners, generally having fun, avoiding earning a living) for at least a few semesters before Daddy/Mommy/the Dean etc. pulled the plug, and possibly, just possibly, even graduating if the cracks opened up just right for them.
I can testify that it was a far easier path for me to bump the student’s grade a bit than to sit there and explain (often in several separate sessions) why this excuse or that explanation wasn’t going to help. And as long as the tuition was getting paid, the Dean had no real motivation to expel students who failed a course or two every semester—it took some genuine effort for a student to get expelled; there was at least one semester of probation, sometimes two, plus the initial semester of failing work. Expulsion could be warded off or delayed by using the tactics described above. Generally, it took about two years to flunk out for a ‘student’ who wanted to remain in college without doing any real work.
Which is to say; if such a manual doesn’t exist (What to Say to a Professor, How to Say It, When to Produce Tears, How to Produce Tears), there’s some money to be made by writing it. I suspect that someone may have already written such a manual. It seems unlikely, though possible, that simple word of mouth would result in such almost-identical strategies and wording of these special pleas. I’ve devoted enough thought to this issue that I could easily produce, I think, the actual manual formalizing the methods and techniques of staying in college despite doing virtually nothing of an academic nature.
Essentially, its thesis is “It takes only an hour, maybe less, of your time talking your professor into being charitable compared to the hours and days and weeks of studying hard, reading difficult books, thinking about the content etc. it would take you to get the same, or similar, results by so-called ‘legitimate’ means.” The thesis works only for students seeking to pass, or get a C, or a B-, at best—this method will not work, of course, for students looking to get “A” or “B” level grades, though I’ve gotten some of the pleading from legitimate students who are extremely grade-conscious. (“Honestly, Professor, I’ve never gotten a single grade other than A in any other course…”, which rarely checks out when I’ve taken the trouble to talk to their other professors.)
If anyone thinks me harsh, by the way, for denying desperate students a shot at last-minute extra credit, please be assured that I’ve built in numerous chances to earn extra credit throughout the course itself, and I’ve explicitly labeled these chances as “extra credit.” What I found, in my early years when I did give in to these particular pleas, was that they would hand in execrable work, just dashed-off, inept, totally incompetent work that often didn’t even attempt to meet the terms of the assignment, and then insist, “Yeah, okay, that’s your opinion, but I DID do extra work, so I deserve some credit, don’t I?”
What I guess I’m asking (sorry for the length) is whether you think there actually exists such a document. I’m inclined to think not, but if not, then it’s a bit surprising to me that students so consistently attempt the same tactics, often using the same language, in the same order, simply by chance, semester after semester. I’m not really asking if I should write such a manual—I really do have several book-length projects on the back burner, and one or two on the front burners, more than enough to keep me occupied for the rest of my life, plus I’m a bit offended by the notion that such a book would exist, though I believe it would be popular if I could find a way to market it to freshmen. If not as an actual printed book, then it probably exists as a website or a Youtube video. Or do you think these tactics occur by chance?
