By Professor
Doom
In times past, tenure was awarded by
scholars, to scholars, as a reward for scholarship. Those days are gone. Today,
tenure is (theoretically) awarded by administrators, to scholars for, well,
reasons that have little to do with scholarship. Having the right skin color
can certainly be a factor, and covering up pedophilia is certainly a
possibility…but
scholarship no longer seems to be on the table at many schools.
Administrators know nothing of
scholarship, so it’s understandable they can’t use scholarship for tenure. One
of the weird things now is promotion (and tenure is controlled by admin like everything else in higher ed) is determined mostly by student evaluations.
It doesn’t matter that we know teaching effectiveness is negatively
correlated with student evaluations, or that evaluations are worth very little at best, admin
uses evaluations to determine promotion.
It’s also well known that the easier the
grading, the better the student evaluations, this obvious fact has been shown
by many studies. Be a bad teacher who grades easy, and admin loves you.
I saw the net result of these policies
time and again when I was at a community college: the least effective, most
clueless, teachers had no trouble getting praise from admin…they just gave
every student an A, even the ones who never came to class a single time. Admin
was fine with that. Teachers who actually did their job with integrity were
actively punished by admin.
Now, it’s not just at my old school, at
many schools if you have any standards at all, it will negatively impact your
career. If you have standards, then you’ll fail students at some point in time.
A failing student is an unhappy student. I don’t have a study to back that up,
but anyone in the industry will tell you that, yeah, failing students give poor
evaluations of the teacher. It’s the students you fail, and not scholarship,
who determine the success of your career in higher education.
The gentle reader might think I’m
exaggerating, but allow me to demonstrate:
The article above actually highlights several
insanities in higher ed today, but allow me to show how little it takes to wipe
out 6 years of work for an academic. Let me clarify that before moving on: it
takes at least 6 years to even be up for tenure, and if you’re turned down,
you’re fired. So, a few unhappy students in 6 years and it can easily be game
over.
Seriously, it’s not a puzzle why the
average college grade is A- now...everyone in higher ed has figured this
out.
So let’s get to how little it takes for
students to destroy an academic’s career. It used to be it required, you know,
something serious, like a rape accusation…but now? You just have to fill in a
bubble, anonymously:
Yet, one year later, in the same course, 12 students provide
a score of 2.83 out of seven on the question ‘used class time productively.’
You earned a mean score of 2.83 out of seven on your overall performance. The mean score for the
course was 3.33 out of seven points.”
Now, average is “3.33.” According to the
Poo Bah, this was a good enough score to merit tenure (seriously what about
scholarship?). Student evaluations are given at the end of the year, and
usually at a time when nothing important is going on in class. So, on the day
she gave out evaluations, maybe only 9 of the 12 students were there (keep in
mind, on community college campuses, you can lose half or more of the class
once the student loan/grant money checks are handed out).
So, 9 students fill out the form. Let’s
assume 7 of them fill in the “3.33” bubble, which would be good enough. Then
the fool of a teacher actually failed 2 students (gasp!). These unhappy
students fill in a “1.” Guess what the average is? Well, take 7 times 3.33, and
add 2 points to it (1 for each unhappy student), then divide by 9 students:
[(7 * 3.33)
+ 2]/9 = 2.81.
Hey, look, I’ve pretty much matched what
happened (the teacher’s average was 2.83). How fair is it that 6 years of work
is wiped out this way? Fail 2 students in a class, and you’re gone? Seriously?
Another professor explains what horrible
thing she did to make the students so upset with her:
“She’s firm on deadlines -- that’s what professionals do,” he
said. “We’re not training people to be researchers of communication or teaching
them to be teachers -- we are teaching them to be journalists. In the
professional workplace, there is no coddling of students.”
That’s right: she insisted students turn
in their work on time. It’s very clear a few students taking fake courses
elsewhere on campus, weren’t used to actually having to be responsible, and so
they didn’t do the work on time (they were probably surprised they had work at
all to do), so she failed them.
So, she lost tenure because she actually
expected her students to show some professional responsibility. Goodness, with
admin defining down what it means to be a tenured professor to this level, soon
it’ll be a point of embarrassment to have tenure.
Tenure really did mean scholarship for
most of the previous century, so again I ask: what about scholarship?
American’s School of Communication will by the end of
this semester lose four faculty members of color, including Brown, who is
Latina -- though she’s currently appealing her tenure denial…
Carolyn Brown is Latina, and her picture
looks about as “Latina” as her name. I know, I’ve mentioned campuses are now
notorious for their racist and sexist hiring policies, but I want to reinforce
the confirmation of my claim here:
“They used me as a face of diversity,” Brown said, “and
when I went up for tenure, they threw me away. It’s really disappointing. I’m
still kind of devastated.”
Gee whiz, Professor Brown, don’t you
think maybe they want someone who looks more Latina and also has a more Latina-sounding
name? That what higher education seems to be about nowadays.
Again, I ask, what about her scholarship?
To be fair, admin defends itself. First,
it uses administrative racism as proof admin isn’t being racist here (I can’t
make this stuff up):
…incoming fall 2017 professors “are 44.5 percent
self-identified faculty of color, with slightly more than 26 percent
self-identified as black or African-American. Total full time faculty are 18
percent faculty of color. These numbers represent growth from prior years. …The
administration has committed to increasing the number of faculty of color at
American and has demonstrated its commitment through dedicated resources to the
recruiting process which yielded this year’s positive results.”
Why is admin tracing race so closely? I’m
sorry, but if you’re clearly making faculty hiring decisions based on race,
measured to the nearest half of a percent…you’re racist.
Similarly, admin laughably defends its
decision to use her teaching evaluations so capriciously:
…the university's Committee on Faculty Actions that
Brown’s teaching record is not tenurable, based on the variability of her
teaching ratings from students: some high, some low.
Well, there you go, a Committee filled with people who will
be fired if they disagree with admin…agree with admin. How many times have I
cited fake committees much like this which support bizarre administrative
actions?
Again, the “some high, some low” is a flag that she’s a good teacher. The good students like
her and give her great scores, the fake students get failed, and slam her on
the evaluations. A terrible teacher would have all high scores (because of just
giving A’s to everyone). Too bad admin never teaches, and so doesn’t understand
stuff like this, and instead simply wants a school full of terrible teachers.
Oh, I still am curious: what about her scholarship? American is a
research university, so they have policies about promotion:
By American’s own standards on tenure, assessments of one's
teaching should not hinge on students' evaluations alone.
As I’ve highlighted so many times before, admin never lets policy get in
the way of whatever it wants. Scholarship should be on the table, since
evaluations are not supposed to be a major factor…too bad admin can’t really
judge scholarship.
There’s so much idiocy touched on this article, it’s hard to just focus on
one thing, but something merits a digression:
That's partly because numerous studies suggest that
student ratings are inherently biased, particularly against women and minority
faculty members.
The interpretation of those studies is “inherently biased,” but the
studies themselves are not biased. The studies absolutely show that women and
minority faculty members tend to rate lower on evaluations. But, for some
reason, even though evaluations are being used in serious decisions, we can’t
just take the studies at face value: women and minority faculty members aren’t
as good at teaching as “others.” I’ve addressed this in more detail elsewhere, but I’ll summarize: I’m fine with tossing or ignoring these studies for a number
of good reasons…but reinterpreting the results to whatever suits your ideology
and calling the results of the studies “biased” is ridiculous.
So, um, what about her scholarship? To be fair, the article does discuss
that her scholarship is excellent. Good for her.
Ultimately, however, we learn that racism will protect her, and that we
shouldn’t worry about her being fired based on failing a couple of students:
“…scholars of her stature, particularly scholars
of color, get offers to go elsewhere fast.
“It’ll be a yearlong process to replace
her," he said. "The likelihood we'll get another woman who is a
minority is a tick above zero."
On how many levels is it pathetic that the guy is upset that they
won’t be able to get another minority female to replace her? He’s right,
however, that she’ll have no trouble getting hired elsewhere, because all many
schools look at when hiring is genitals and skin color.
So, she’ll
probably get a nice hiring bonus at some other place, one which will likely
“clear out” a position for her (i.e., someone with the wrong genitals/skin
color will be out of a job) so it’s all good. Hopefully she’s learned her
lesson, and won’t fail any more students. I’d hate to see her waste another six
years of her life just for having integrity.
But I still
think scholarship should have been a factor here…
www.professorconfess.blogspot.com
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