Heh. Personal responsibility is just not cool enough to catch on, but I keep trying.
Its not cool because its hard and it sucks. If we were actually at fault for the disasters of our own making we might have to work to get out of them. I find it facinating to watch people who think plagarism is worth a grade. And the consumer mentality in universities is entirely misplaced, but we need a better way to pay for education or the capitalism is just going to keep on coming. (Not that I don’t love capitalism, but its not the best way to educate a populace.)
That said, some professors are just as insane. (I had one who would assign about 40 hours of homework a week for a four person team. I shudder to think of trying to do the class alone. Literally a full time job to do the class. And refused to hold office hours because he “put so much time into the lectures”.)
Just today I gave a student a makeup final during which he repeatedly asked me (the TA) for the answers and even offered me money (quite a bit of money) for my help. He was quite good-natured about it, when I would say no he wouldn’t badger me again for the answer to that particular question, but he seemed to think this was quite reasonable, normal behavior, to bribe the TA to take your test for you. He even offered in front of another student who was also taking a makeup. Not necessarily directly connected to personal responsibility, except that only someone who has completely divorced themselves from the idea that their grade should be based on their knowledge, work, etc. would do such a thing.
Also, when I finished grading all the finals, I had a pretty thick stack of exams with notes for the professor offering excuses/justifications for why they needed a certain grade. Yet more signs that apparently your grade should have nothing to do with learning, but rather with how good a sob story you write on the final.
Several of my daughter’s high school classmates just returned from an academic competition out of state. One of them finished in the top ten in this national competition, one of them didn’t place. The one with the lower finish is now convinced that the contest was fixed. The really scary thing? She’s number one in the class and the daughter of the superintendent. Apparently she is so used to having everything go her way that she just has never learned that sometimes life is like that. I hate to think what she’ll be like in college.
This reminds of my my friend telling me yesterday that her company makes you sign a form when hired acknowleging that you’ve been offered certain benefit options, and you are responsible for any cotsts not covered by the plans you’ve chosen.
In America, a college education is now a required commodity, not a process of improvement. A college degree is an entry-level job requirement for almost every field now, where once (not so long ago) it meant you were well-prepared for a particular field.
Sad thing is that the administrative policy at many colleges and universities in this country are what causes the problem… quantity, over quality, in the student base.
Condolences to the OP’er for being stuck in the middle. I’m back working in academia, and it’s changed greatly, even over the past 10 years.
An interesting offshoot of the electronic revolution: It used to be that a student who wanted to complain directly to the University President about a professor would be stopped at the office door by the President’s secretary and told to go through channels. If they tried to phone the Provost, the Provost’s secretary would refuse to put the call through until the student had taken the complaint through channels.
So the student with a complaint (legitimate or otherwise) would first have to speak to the professor’s Dept. chair. If the complaint had merit, it would probably be resolved at that level. If it was obviously without merit it would be dismissed. Only if it had merit and could not be resolved would it move on to the Dean, and then to the Provost, and then to the President.
So the upper echelons of the University came to believe that, if a student complaint actually reached their ears, then it obviously had merit and was serious enough that it could not be resolved at a Departmental or Collecge level - and the only problems that can’t be resolved at those levels generally involve firing someone or taking other strong disciplinary action against an employee.
Now fast forward to the 21st century. Students can easily find the email address of the University President and other upper University administration, and they routinely cc: everyone from the Dept Chairman all the way up to the University President on even their first message of complaint to a professor. And the upper administration still believes that, if a student complaint actually reaches their attention, the situation must be serious and somebody’s head needs chopping.
So, yeah, those of us teaching in universities these days do have to worry about the fallout from these kinds of complaints. There’s hardly a month that goes by without someone from our Dept getting hauled up in higher-administration-crisis-mode for matters that we used to resolve quietly and routinely.