tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-491174673971804494.post4957925726414983211..comments2024-03-22T01:06:23.845-07:00Comments on Confessions of a College Professor: Study Finds Community College “Unhinged”Doomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04528555392898760692noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-491174673971804494.post-10002932442081489342014-08-09T18:04:44.220-07:002014-08-09T18:04:44.220-07:00Then there's what happens in the accreditation...Then there's what happens in the accreditation process.<br /><br />During the last accreditation application I took part in, I became aware of how bogus some of the dog and pony shows really were. I taught a number of service courses for a different department and I remember revising the outline for one of them.<br /><br />I taught the material in that covered in it several times in a number of other courses, so I was quite familiar with what was involved. The course in question had a lab session and I knew how much time I needed. The department head told me to put down double the figure in the course outline, though I emphatically told him that much time wasn't necessary. It didn't dawn on me until after the accreditation committee had come and gone that the time officially allotted was merely for show, used to convince the inspectors.<br /><br />The result was that I went through each lab session in the same amount of time as I did in the other course. So, if I needed an hour for what was supposed to be a 2-hour block, I often had a lot of free time left over. I ended up padding out that time with extra material, though it didn't do much good. The students were even more bored than before, as the stuff went in one ear and out the other, and I looked like an idiot for filling that free time.<br /><br />However, everybody seemed to get what they wanted. The accreditation committee got the lab time figure it was looking for, the department administration successfully successfully duped the inspectors, the students figured they got a deal and were only too glad to get away from me quickly, and I got the twerps out of my hair that much quicker. I usually went back to my office during that extra time and had a cup of tea or did some work.<br /><br />That wasn't the only time the department pulled a stunt like that. I prepared the outline for a new course which, honestly, was quite ambitious. That same outline was included in the presentation made to the accreditation committee, so I'm sure that the amount of material that was supposedly to be covered impressed it.<br /><br />Once the inspectors had left, I was told by the department head to drastically scale back the course content. Part of the reason was to make the remaining material so simple that all the students should have been able to pass. Of course, it was likely that it was all part of the illusion it wanted to convey to the committee, though nobody officially admitted to it.<br /><br />Quarter Wave Verticalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03173446011323023116noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-491174673971804494.post-35941800127846686242014-08-09T12:32:18.079-07:002014-08-09T12:32:18.079-07:00Oh, I totally accept that there are artifacts in s...Oh, I totally accept that there are artifacts in school documents that are a decade past being updated. The study is well past that point.<br /><br />It's not simply that the textbooks are not being used, except perhaps for 10% (heck, Education students often don't buy the books because they aren't even used.<br /><br />No. It's instructors typing up and passing out syllabi semester after semester, knowing that the course does not actually follow the syllabus. That's not simply an oversight, that's systemic fraud.<br /><br />Or, as the study puts it so politely, "unhinged".<br /><br />Doomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04528555392898760692noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-491174673971804494.post-69289995837107481302014-08-07T18:43:50.200-07:002014-08-07T18:43:50.200-07:00Sometimes, though, that may be due to an inadverte...Sometimes, though, that may be due to an inadvertent oversight.<br /><br />My alma mater used to issue printed student calendars that, among other things, included brief descriptions of each course. Eventually, they became about as thick as the telephone book for a medium-sized city. Keeping its contents updated may have been a major task.<br /><br />While I worked on my second master's degree, I took a course that, for the most part, didn't match its summary. I reprimanded the professor for it in the post-course review and, if I recall correctly, that had been revised in subsequent editions of the calendar.<br /><br />I suspect that someone in the system hadn't changed it until I drew attention to it.<br /><br />Quarter Wave Verticalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03173446011323023116noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-491174673971804494.post-52660745630186611062014-08-07T15:08:38.600-07:002014-08-07T15:08:38.600-07:00And, for what it's worth. Seeing course after ...And, for what it's worth. Seeing course after course be completely fraudulent (i.e., what goes on in the course being nothing like what is being reported as going on in the course) was what tipped me off to the nature of the scam. More accurately, seeing these courses go on for years with no repercussions from accreditation for admin tipped me off that something wholly corrupt was going on where I was working.<br /><br />Then seeing it at institution after institution...Doomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04528555392898760692noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-491174673971804494.post-56542958302945828292014-08-07T15:06:45.550-07:002014-08-07T15:06:45.550-07:00That explains why such things are kept...and, as a...That explains why such things are kept...and, as a private enterprise, it's not my concern.<br /><br />The reason CCs spring up is they are a reason to suck massive amounts of money from the taxpayer, in a hidden way (via the Federal government). CCs don't impact the community in the same way as a university, at least if there's already a university around (remember, CC's draw "real" students and faculty from the uni, while supporting an extra legion of administrators). Shut down the CC, and you won't see quite the economic impact, except at the high end, since those 100k administrative jobs dry up. The faculty and students will just go back to university.Doomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04528555392898760692noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-491174673971804494.post-59771396989679567572014-08-07T13:19:59.220-07:002014-08-07T13:19:59.220-07:00The rationale behind the proliferation of communit...The rationale behind the proliferation of community colleges reminds me of a discussion I had with someone many years ago why the city I live in absolutely had to keep its NHL team rather than, say, build a new hospital or library.<br /><br />The issue, according to that person, wasn't the actual activity of playing hockey. It was a way of creating and maintaining jobs, ranging from people who made sports souvenirs to someone who ran a bar close to the arena and where fans went after the game.<br />Quarter Wave Verticalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03173446011323023116noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-491174673971804494.post-27490820645843552112014-08-07T12:57:42.594-07:002014-08-07T12:57:42.594-07:00The tech college I used to teach at wasn't muc...The tech college I used to teach at wasn't much different.<br /><br />Each course offered by that institution had an official outline, a document which had to be prepared by an instructor and approved not just by the department administrators but the dean as well. A number of the courses I taught never covered most of the material mentioned in that outline.<br /><br />The rationale? I was to be concerned with teaching whatever I covered well. That may be obvious to all and sundry but, at that institution, it often meant only a fraction of what was promised. It's like offering a course in trigonometry and not making it past Pythagoras because the students enrolled in it during a given term could only handle that much. Forget trigonometric functions, let alone associated expressions in which they are used.<br /><br />Those course outlines were actually on file in the library, or so I was told. Oddly enough, I don't think any of my students actually looked them up to see what the details of those courses really were. Personally, I don't think any of them really cared, so long as they got the grades they expected to receive.<br /><br />Quarter Wave Verticalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03173446011323023116noreply@blogger.com