Please No More Leaders For Higher Ed!

By Professor Doom

     Our colleges campuses are drowning in leaders. I’ve literally taught courses where I had to report to 4 different bosses (in addition to the department head and Dean) during the semester regarding every issue that came up in the class.

     It takes some effort to teach a class, but not that much (it’s why faculty often teach 4 or 5 classes a semester, and adjuncts often teach 10, so as not to starve to death on their pay). Teaching is the real work requiring actual time, but every semester or so, you do get one problem that the teacher really can’t, or shouldn’t, handle on his own.

      But, that’s it. I’ve never really understood all the “extra” leadership we have now, even as I concede you really should have someone in a position of authority to step in on those occasions where an issue between student and teacher requires an impartial arbiter.

     Where do they get these leaders? Well, in times past, they were drawn from faculty. Usually an older faculty member (because you needed someone with wisdom) would step in and serve as Dean. He’d get around $2,000 extra a semester, because it really isn’t a full time position, and in exchange he’d have to handle the occasional crappy situation where someone needed to do something. It was considered good money, but fair enough: you might well get put in a position of angering a colleague, so the money had to be good enough to take that risk.

     Today, we pay full-time Deans around $100,000  a year to do what used to be a part time job for few thousand bucks if that much. These new Deanlings aren’t even faculty and never were, so they often have no idea what’s going on. Thing is, the job doesn’t require any particular skill, just experience as a teacher, and so the requirements for the job was simply having an advanced degree in, well, something—keep in mind, back when you drew from faculty, about the only thing all faculty had in common was having some sort of advanced degree. And experience.

     But the job itself requires no particular talent. We now have advanced degree programs in Administration, so that you can “train” to be a Dean or other administrative apparatchik without actually knowing anything. I’ve examined the programs, and even the most advanced material is laughable. These programs require no effort to succeed.

       And so our campuses are drowning in administrators with fancy know-nothing degrees, mostly working tirelessly to debase education in the name of growth. Adding yet another topic to the “I can’t make this stuff up” category, is our institutions of higher education think we need more of them:

Training the Community College Leader

NC State wants to help solve the community college leadership pipeline problem amid broader shift in focus of doctoral training programs.

     The insanity here is jaw-dropping. Our campuses are breaking out in riots, tuition is skyrocketing, on-time graduation rates of 0.6% are considered successful (on the curve), administrators outnumber faculty across the country, student debt is well past a trillion dollars and…the issue is we have a “community college leadership pipeline problem”! Yowza!

     With all the serious problems affecting higher ed right now (and the previous paragraph only has some highlights), our leadership is worried about the pipeline for getting more leaders at the community college level. Obviously, the real issue is we have a leadership problem, not a pipeline problem.

     The “pipeline” refers to the fact that community colleges are having a tough time getting enough “leaders” to fill administrative positions. I guess hiring some of the impoverished faculty there isn’t a possibility? I can totally see why they’d have a problem if they were to hire faculty, as community colleges represent a huge source of fraud in higher education today. Faculty attached to a school don’t approve and enhance fraud like the nomadic mercenary administrative leadership we use now.

For at least the past 20 years, everyone from community college advocates to trustees has been bemoaning the increasing number of open and unfilled presidencies at two-year colleges across the country.

      While one faculty position might open up every few years, ever semester sees multiple new administrative positions, so I can see how it’s hard to fill them all. They especially seem to have a problem with finding Poo Bahs. I’ve highlighted many of the frauds community college Poo Bahs committed (my favorite being the personal 5 star restaurant), but obvious fraud aside, I do ask the gentle reader who went to community college: do you remember the Poo Bah doing anything at all for your education? I know in my decade working at a questionable community college, the Poo Bah, nice as he was, was only seen on campus a handful of times, and had nothing to do with any of my students, ever.

       So how can a true steward of higher education, one who knows higher education is about education, care even a little about non-education positions being empty? That should be a good thing, right, the savings of a million tax dollars a year per Poo Bah position unfilled?

      North Carolina is working hard to fix a problem that shouldn’t be fixed:

So this past year, NC State redesigned its three-year doctoral degree in adult and community college education

      Weird, a Ph.D. program in many fields takes 6 years or more, and 4 years is considered fast. But you can slam down a Ph.D. in “adult and community college education” in 3 years? I’m telling you, there are valid questions to be asked about the legitimacy of such a degree, or of any administrative degree for that matter…

Now the program is focused more on labor market outcomes, learning, equity and completion in an effort to make future presidents more effective, 

     Make presidents more effective? What? Let me explain the business plan of most community colleges: advertise as much as possible to find people who want checks. Pell Grant fraud is massive in community colleges, as it’s easy to sign up and get actual grant money in your pocket.

     It doesn’t take 3 years of training to be successful at this.

      Well, it didn’t used to, anyway, but nowadays we have community colleges all over the place, and the vast bulk of our citizenry has already shown up on campus to get the free checks. Heck, we have bands of nomad “students” wandering from campus to campus to get these checks, because admin doesn’t care about the fraud. There are so many such colleges that the market is saturated, all they can do now is cannibalize each other, as campuses within 10 miles of each other have no choice but to fight to take each other’s students. Is this really what higher education is supposed to be about? They race to offer to the most convenient, easiest, fastest coursework possible.

     That’s what being a community college leader is today: be effective by committing greater fraud than the other leaders…and now you can get a Ph.D. in this “skill” in a mere 3 years. Neat!

      “Every decade we say there’s a leadership crisis, but it almost deserves that designation now,” O’Banion said. “The job has become too difficult…

--emphasis added.

     So, uh, you were crying wolf for 10 straight years before, but now you say it “almost” is a problem now? Seriously, do these people listen to themselves?  That said, I concede the job is difficult, but only for the reason I’ve touched on above: our country is overwhelmed with the fake schools plundering the tax dollars. The reasons given in the article are laughable, but I’ll highlight the most hysterical:

Faculty unions are in control of a lot of places.

      Really? Where? I’m sorry, but this is insane. If faculty unions had any power, any power at all, this might be a concern, but honest, if faculty were “in control” tenure wouldn’t be nearly dead and there wouldn’t be food banks specializing in feeding your average college teacher because the pay is so low…like there are today.

     The article drones on about the “almost” problem , but the comments section laughs at how idiotic it is. A few highlights:

Why don't these colleges simply announce the jobs when these people retire? I'm sure a bunch of qualified people will apply, especially since NC community colleges pay presidents very well compared to the size of the colleges. NC community colleges are typically quite small, and the presidents still make very good money.

     Seriously, a Poo Bah can make hundreds of thousands a year at even a tiny college, and there are no particular skills needed. Just advertise the position, I’m sure you’ll get applicants. In particular, consider hiring faculty to the position, get someone who will serve not as a plundering leader out to debase the school as quickly as possible, but someone who has invested years of his life in the school, and doesn’t want the place to be considered a joke. What a silly idea!

This feels like a solution in search of a crisis. My community college just hired a new president and we had over 200 applicants (reducing the pool of highly qualified down to around 70). There are plenty of VPs and Deans out there, along with many "business leaders" that local Boards of Trustees seem to like to hire more and more. Most Dean-level (and up) administrators already have doctorates, usually in their current subject area, whether academic, student services, etc, so I'm not sure who the target audience is for this program.

      Yeah, no kidding. Times are tough right now, lots of folks would be interested in a $250,000 a year job where you advance and get bonuses no matter how badly you screw up, and get a golden parachute if they fire you, or even if you quit.

      Seriously, please, no more leaders for higher education. The system is at its breaking point already trying to support the leaders we have…

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

      

Wisconsin to Remove Academics From Higher Ed

By Professor Doom

     When I cover the madnesses affecting higher education, California comes up often, although I certainly cover schools in the rest of the country.

      Wisconsin has avoided the madness, with nothing in the way of riots or flamboyant frauds that seem commonplace elsewhere. You’d  think the state government there would leave well enough alone, but such is not the case. Are they jealous? It would seems so, because when I write of events in Wisconsin, it’s always about the ways the government there is working diligently to undermine the success higher education has seen in Wisconsin.

     I’ve written of the methods to destroy higher education going on there, but the latest move is even more grotesque:

Fighting to Keep Leaders Who Are Academics

      One of the key factors in the destruction of higher ed, identified by everyone who works in it, has been the infestation of a greedy administrative class filled by people with no actual education experience.

Dean: “We need to have a meeting regarding a student complaint about you. She said the final exam she took didn’t have the questions on it that it was supposed to have.”

--the gentle reader needs to understand the only way a student could make this complaint is if she had access to the final exam questions—I was tipped off that the student had access to the final, so, yes, I changed some things around. The Dean, having no education experience, could only determine there was an unhappy student.

     Every campus has legions of administrators, filling hives which eventually turn into palaces. The way how higher education is set up, especially community colleges, makes it particularly easy to stick a few dozen friends and family into 100k a year “do nothing” administrative jobs with nobody the wiser. Yes, every once in a blue moon we find out about it, but it won’t surprise me to eventually learn that dozens of states have systems with such activity in them.

Admin: “It is now mandatory that on the first day of class, you are to assign all students into groups, for purposes of group projects and in-class work. You will maintain these groups for the entire semester.”

---I’m serious, yet another utterly inexperienced Deanling tried to cram this down our throats, because “group projects improve retention.” Only after faculty explained to her repeatedly that attrition made this idea completely unworkable (because about half our students were fake students who were only there for the checks) did she relent….I can’t recall if it was 3, or 4, weekly meetings until she acknowledged reality. I kid myself to think the faculty convinced her directly, but we were smart enough to tell the students stuck in 1-person groups to complain to the Dean about it.

     While many of the deanling positions on campus are pure patronage, the top position is particularly precious: as I’ve shown many times, the Poo Bah, the self-aggrandized leader of the campus, can rake in millions in plunder. Thus it is we quite commonly have campuses ruled by leaders with no understanding of a university’s mission of education and research, and thus become more interested in flitting around the world and living the high life than serving as a steward (the gentle reader is encouraged to search my blog under “administrative corruption” for a 6 part series relatively briefly covering the highlights, and I’m not even talking about Napolitano’s 100+ million dollar looting).

Administrator: “You need to be more clear in your writing on the board. The little numbers, the ones up top?”

Me: “The exponents?”

Administrator: “Yeah, those. You told students that there’s always a one up there, but you don’t always write it. You should always just put a one up there.”

Me: “Thank you.”

---When I do open my mouth to an administrator, it’s usually to say ‘thank you’.

      A clueless Poo Bah can do great harm to an institution (for example, Bernie Sander’s wife’s school is doomed because of her leadership), although the higher ups, like chancellors and provost, can ameliorate some of the damage.

 ‘…Madison campus policy holds that its chancellor, provost and vice chancellor must hold a tenured faculty rank -- effectively disqualifying nonacademics.“

      The institutions in Wisconsin can be led by political friends, but those other positions must, by Wisconsin rules, be academics, with a record of scholarship and all that entails. Could this be why Wisconsin has avoided so much scandal? Moot point, as the state government there seeks to remove one of the few remaining roadblocks to plunder. The change of rules was nearly stealthily accomplished:

“There was no advance notice, it was never given a public hearing, and no legislator publicly took credit for it,” the group wrote. “Although PROFS had been meeting with members of the committee as well as legislative leadership, this proposal was never mentioned. In addition to the lack of transparency or opportunity for constituent input, this is also inconsistent with the committee leadership’s expressed desire that nonfiscal policy be removed from the budget.”

--PROFS is a group of the Faculty Senate.

      Honest, allowing academics to have a role in academia is a good idea. Is there any other industry (and I hate that higher education is considered an industry) where there is such an active effort to assure the managers have no knowledge, experience, or understanding of the industry?

This requirement is among the reasons why Madison is consistently ranked one of the top universities in the world.” Rebecca Blank, Madison's current chancellor, is a professor of economics.

     The power grab here is pretty obvious, and, again, everyone who works in higher ed knows exactly what’s going to happen when they change these rules. The article I’m quoting from naturally is unwilling to call the spade a spade, but one comment sums it up nicely:

The professors are opposing the converting of university presidencies into sweet plums for political hacks and termed-out partisans and giving political appointees power to take away livelihoods of scholars whose research or teaching counters the party line. With so many universities in WI, where real tenure no longer exists, a lot is at stake here.

     I know, I’m at the age where being opposed to change is hardwired into my nature but I just don’t get it: Wisconsin has avoided the riots and huge scandals of other states. Why is there such a push to debase Wisconsin’s system to the level of known failing systems?

       Trying to answer that question gives me no choice but to consider the possibility of a conspiracy here…but I still lean towards simple greed.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Make University A Boiler Room = 100% Pay Raise

By Professor Doom

     Some time back, I mentioned Arizona State University’s plan to increase faculty workloads 25%, for no additional pay. This policy idea was part of a larger plan by the ASU Poo Bah, Michael Crow, to debase education as much as possible.

      The primary motivation for doing so is to get more money for administration—every dollar not spent on education is another dollar for admin, after all. I know, there are those who believe the dumbing down of higher education is part of a master plan, and I certainly can’t prove that not to be the case, but it’s very clear that simple greed is a factor here so allow me to focus on what I can show.

      I feel it’s worthwhile to mention just how helpless faculty are in the face of this debasement. I assure you, faculty have protested turning ASU into a boiler room, with complaints and “no confidence” votes a’plenty. Surely, making all the workers so unhappy would have repercussions, right? Where might we see them?

     You sure won’t find them in Crow’s paycheck.

     The Chronicle of Higher Education has a helpful table of Poo Bah compensation at public institutions; it’s well worth consideration. We see that in 2015, Crow’s compensation was a mere $701,000—this includes a $40,000 bonus, but probably misses quite a few perks that serfs can only dream of. We might find out about all the extra pay later, but for now let’s just take this at face value.

      Still, that’s not awesome pay, it doesn’t even put him in the top 20. Let’s zip forward a year, where his compensation is a jaw-dropping $1,554,058, including a $150,000 bonus. Completely discounting “other” compensation in there, is anyone else scoring pay raises like this? Does it bother the taxpayers of Arizona even a little that not only is their money going to hurt their children, the one doing the hurting is profiting so mightily?

      In addition to debasing education, these guys are hired to grow the student base. But…our schools are finally losing students. So Crow is getting this raise despite failure and committing atrocities. Besides, that kind of huge pay raise is not so extraordinary for a Poo Bah.

     Consider the most recent year’s #2 Poo Bah for pay, William McRaven. His compensation was a mere $1,500,000 (including a $300,000 bonus). I feel bad for him, his pay the previous year was a lousy $1,090,000. Only a crappy 50% increase in pay? Man, it must be tough to suffer like that.

      Still pay raises are pretty good in Arizona and Texas. How about Florida? The Poo Bah at University of Florida earned a mere $505,000 a couple years ago. Not much by today’s standards. He clearly complained to the Trustees, and they gave him a bump, doubling his compensation to $1,102, 862.

      Goodness, another doubling of pay. Perhaps he’d been there a long time, and this was just a long overdue pay raise? Nope, Poo Bah McVulture Fuchs is relatively new hire, coming to campus in 2015. I promise the gentle reader, no actual educator in Florida received a 100% pay raise.

     When I get a pay raise, it's around 2%, and it's always merit-based. I have to be doing very well at my job to get 2%. So, if this guy is scoring a 100% raise, he must be quite awesome. I have to be curious what amazing things are occurring under this guy’s leadership to justify the bonus plunder. Thank goodness for Google:

Enormous sex scandal envelopes the University of Florida

     By the standards of Penn State, it wasn’t that enormous. Their Title IX coordinator (you know, the person supposed to control sexual harassment and discrimination) was, well, engaging in inappropriate behavior with university money:

 “…he also bought pornographic videos with titles that included erotic torture and rough sex, cyborg sex, threesome sex and more.”

     As I’ve documented many times, when administrators get caught like this, it’s no big deal, they just move on and up. Sure enough the pervy anti-sexual harassment guy, Loschiavo, landed another plum position in short order:

Loschiavo was recently hired as the Title IX coordinator of Florida Polytechnic University. His UF supervisor, Jen Day Shaw, gave him an effusive recommendation.

--Shaw’s salary was nearly 180k a year, by the way, and her title was University of Florida Dean of Students and Associate Vice President for Student Affairs. She’s moved on and up as well…

     You know the leader of UF could show a little integrity here and warn the next school that, maybe, this guy isn’t a good choice for a position where sexual decency is a requirement. Does anyone suspect the new job is payoff to keep quiet about the extent of corruption? This type of thing happens so often that it really is time to ask some hard questions. Once might be a fluke, but time and again? C’mon, there’s gotta be a real reason…does Florida Polytechnic not know about the internet? Granted, FP figured it out eventually on their own, so I guess it’s ok.

     So, the Poo Bah has a serious sex scandal here, anything else happening at UF? Maybe the Poo Bah is noted for fiscal responsibility, justifying handing a ridiculous amount of money over to him, and then doubling it. Let’s look at some more news under his reign:

UF’s top lawyer resigns, will get $175K severance

…Keith, one of UF’s senior administrators under UF President Kent Fuchs, has been on paid administrative leave since April because of the investigation.

     Hmm, top lawyer resigns, and the Poo Bah hands her a big bonus on the way out. Am I really the only person on the planet with a suspicious mind? When I resign from an institution, even with a perfect record, I get…nothing. Anyone else out there get a huge cash bonus for saying “I quit” while under investigation for possible criminal behavior?

     I keep mentioning how perks can really add to the compensation. It’s not just the Poo Bah who gets great perks, consider what this lawyer gets:

The $175,000 severance includes $10,000 to relocate from Gainesville and a payment of $50,000 reflecting two full years of service under her 2014 contract. Her annual salary was $389,500 plus a $10,000 car allowance. When Keith was hired in 2006 she also got $7,500 a year to pay for her son’s private school tuition.

--any taxpayers even a little insulted by a state school paying its employees not to get a state education for their kids?

     Ok, we have a sex scandal and a lawyer scandal with a big payola. Any other scandals? Sure:

University Of Florida Announces SALE On Academic Scientists: Buy One, Get One FREE!

     Ok, the above is a parody site, but the core idea is correct, as UF scientists were selling out their academic integrity to sing praises of Monsanto.

     I don’t understand, in my career in higher education, every time the school has even the tiniest bit of success, the Poo Bah rushes in to claim full credit for it, and that credit always merits rewards. But don’t any of these little failures, at least one of which is clearly tied to the Poo Bah, put even a slight damper on that huge pay raise? If truly none of these scandals have even the slightest bit to do with the Poo Bah, why do we even need him? These scandals affect administration, legal, and academics at UF, so what does the Poo Bah here do, exactly, if he’s not involved in any of that?

      Well, at least he’s kept sportsball there free of scandal, right?

NCAA suspends Florida QB Will Grier for a year over banned substance

     Oh, never mind, then. Seriously what are we paying these guys for?

     The gentle reader should understand that I’m not picking on these three different schools in three different states. I only chose to pick state schools because all these shenanigans are financed through tax dollars, either by the states involved or by the student loan scam. Much of higher education is run like these schools, they are not particularly special, really.

     Please keep the above in mind the next time tuition and fees are raised due to budget considerations…there’s plenty of money in the system, but it’s all going to the top, every time.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Fail 2 Students In 6 Years = Promotion Denied

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:

Student-Evaluated Out of Tenure

     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

College Requirements Just Empty Calories

By Professor Doom

     A college degree, at least in theory, takes 4 years to complete, no matter the major. It’s puzzling how there are few questions about why it takes exactly as long to train a hotel manager as an accountant as a kindergarten teacher…it’s one of many questions about higher education that needs asking, but today I want to talk about what all these varied degree programs have in common: general education requirements.

     Written into accreditation is a mandate that all college degree programs must contain coursework in certain general education fields. So, all students must take a couple English courses, a couple Math courses, “and so on.” I put that last part in quotes because much of what used to be general education courses that anyone could concede have academic merit and contain knowledge that an educated person should know have been removed, to be replaced with ideological courses that contain very little at all.

Student: “All I learned in my last 2 years of Education courses was how not to get sued by the parents.”

      These fake courses needed to replace the more legitimate courses in, say, psychology or science, because of the general structure of most degree programs: 2 years of general education, and 2 years of actual training. While, granted, the “actual training” that goes into some degree programs (hi Education!) is so minimal that getting rid of it and replacing it with (different) fake courses would be harmless enough, legitimate subjects simply cannot remove courses to make way for the latest political fad.

     So, students really only have 2 years, no more, to waste on general education coursework. Admin could have kept the legitimate coursework and not used the fake courses, but once they saw the kind of money they could save by getting rid of academics and using the cheap labor force of the fake subject teachers, it was a no brainer.

      These fake courses were somewhat justified as an attempt to placate the rowdier students on campus, demanding “social justice” coursework. Insidiously, the fake courses started to warp the few remaining legitimate courses. The fake courses had no coursework in them, all that was demanded was the students agree to the ideology, or watch a few Powerpoints. The fake courses naturally were loved by the students, and entire classes were given perfect scores of “A” (when there are no tests or assignments, this is easy to get).

       Admin looked at the “success” rate of the fake courses, and brought the hammer down on the legitimate courses: “If Gender Studies can have 100% retention and 4.0 GPAs awarded, you need to do the same thing in Calculus, or we’ll cut your pay!”

      It wasn’t just Mathematics that received this treatment, to be sure, and all faculty eventually received the memo to stop challenging the students, that the fake courses were now setting the standards for academics. Sure, some faculty complained that the fake courses weren’t legitimate academics…but admin knows nothing of education, and thus didn’t care at all.

Poo Bah: “[Fake state school] is pleased to announce that any of our graduates not qualified to perform their jobs are granted 2 free full year’s tuition to come here and take more courses.”

--I’m serious, this actually happened. Which part of this is more ridiculous, the fact that the school was graduating incompetents, or the fact that the Poo Bah knew the graduates were so foolish that they’d actually come back for more fake training?

      The end result is we’re now commonly producing college graduates that know very little of anything. There’s been some backlash (not enough) against the schools for it but, no, the response won’t be to actually restore standards and remove the fake classes.

      Instead, they’re going to double down on more fake classes. They won’t be honest about it:

Institutions across the country have been considering carefully scripted general-education courses in lieu of traditional distribution requirements (see “No Math Required,” “Rethinking Gen Ed” and “Gen Ed Redesigns”). Some months ago, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni issued a report pointing out the efficiencies that would be realized by sequenced general-education courses with prescribed curricula, little student choice and lots of requirements.

     Note that the “prescribed curricula” and “carefully scripted” mentioned above will annihilate faculty choice in the courses. Instead, admin will mandate what this new sequence of courses would have in them. I’ve dealt with this many times, and always, admin-designed courses consistently have any material which challenges students removed…standards will be defined down until we get those 100% “A” grades.

     I’m not a jerk, of course I want students to do well, and I’ve even had a (small) class or two where all the students received an “A.” But if everyone is to get a college degree, and if everyone is to have a 4.0 GPA…how can we justify charging more for a degree than a glass of water?

      I’m quoting a Poo Bah’s post here, and it’s funny how insouciant he is about what’s going on in higher ed:

“…deploring the fact that most college students could not identify James Madison as the father of the U.S. Constitution (most chose Thomas Jefferson) and that 40 percent did not know that Congress has the power to declare war. Their solution: a course on civic literacy required of every college student…”

“…Other groups decry college students’ lack of mathematical and quantitative literacy, of historical knowledge, of basic financial knowledge, and of writing skills. Common to all is the proposed solution: new required courses…”

     He uses the administrative destruction of legitimate courses as justification for the bold plan of giving admin more control, but the gentle reader needs to understand that college graduates used to learn things like the above in legitimate courses that covered quantitative literacy, historical knowledge, and so on…but administrative control forced the teachers of the relevant courses to remove more and more material.

      And the admin thinks the solution to the failure of administrative control is to have more administrative control…

      Seriously, anyone with half a brain can guess what will happen here:

The push to require courses even comes from student groups. Last semester, I talked with a group of student activists concerned about their classmates’ use of phrases that had been used historically to demean others and the chilling effect of such discourse. Their solution: a course on cultural competence required of every college student.

     Does “cultural competence” really have the academic gravitas of “Early American History,” “Accounting,” or “Calculus”? Our campuses have riots because of all the culturally competent ideological garbage on them. The Poo Bah should have explained to the students that higher education’s mission isn’t cultural competence, but knowledge. Oh, wait, that would require the admin to know higher education’s mission.

      I grant I’m being a bit hard on the guy, as he clearly suspects something might go wrong with making higher education even more like high school:

I’m not suggesting that colleges and universities should have no requirements. Just as unregulated free markets concentrate capital, unregulated curricula concentrate enrollments. Think massive, entertaining, undemanding lecture courses. But the opposite -- centrally planned, highly sequenced curricula with lots of top-down requirements -- are precise analogues of Marxist economies. And we all know how those work.

      The above said to his credit, it’s still funny that he can’t connect the dot (sic) regarding where the laughable idea of “new college courses to address the topics no longer being addressed in current college courses where such topics used to be addressed” came from, or figure out that the new idea will just put more power over education into admin’s demonstrably unworthy hands.

      Still, it’s clear that the public is slowly figuring out just how desolate much of college education is. There’s a hunger for education, but a great deal of what’s going on in college is just empty courses, filled with ideology but little knowledge, and thus unsatisfying in addition to being ridiculously expensive.

     Too bad administrators can come up with but one laughable idea to fix the problem. If educators were allowed to help, we’d simply ask to allow us to have standards and cover legitimate material in our classes.

      We’d also say to get rid of the fake courses, too.

      Trouble is, both such ideas would cut into those sweet, sweet, student loan checks, so admin won’t consider either of them…but if we could shut down the student loan scam, maybe then integrity would be considered?

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