Oh, the things I've seen since I left my paradise.
This has got to stop:
In our modern world, colleges and universities routinely submit "course evaluation" forms to their students at the end of each semester. Using these forms, the students are enabled to reverse the roles of academia, grading their professors on the course they taught them. Many universities heavily value the outcome of these evaluations. Now, remembering those boring professors from your academic past, you might think this a good development. This way, professors are given an incentive to develop more dynamic lectures and use more successful teaching techniques, right?
WRONG.
Instead, professors find themselves beholden to grade inflation and the omission of any "uncomfortable" truth, simply to keep their jobs. That's right, many universities will fire their professors if their students think their classes are too demanding. Students (on more than one level, I might add) are treated as customers, and "the customer is always right". When homework is too heavy, they say things like, "I'm paying your salary - you have to make me happy." Then, since colleges and universities are much too liberal for their own freaking good, it's bye bye to decent educators.
Now, how, in the name of Bob, do people get so stupid?
AAAAARRRRG.
2 comments:
I will give Ave Maria this though: I was once in a class where everyone hated the teacher because she was so tough. People misdiagnosed a lot of homework for "she doesn't know how to teach". "Why, thank you sophomores for your professional evaulation!" I wanted to make sure I talked to Dr. Dauphenais before anyone else did. He told me that he was thankful that I spoke for the teacher and that he doesn't fire teachers over bad reviews because he thinks part of an education is getting teachers who, as students say, "suck".
Yeah, I wasn't so much referring to the practices at AMU. I would hardly think, from witnessing general goings-on, that any amount of feedback, from anyone, could deter the powers that be from doing things exactly as they see fit.
I can say, however, that I've heard the professors at AMU speak of what they get back from these evaluations and I can't believe how irreverent some students are. But that's a separate issue.
No, I'm speaking about what I've heard from AMU profs about other places they've been, before here. Some of their former colleagues left the realm of the intelligentsia because of this practice.
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