Noncompliance

I fought the law and the law won

Why I’m Sticking to My ‘Noncompliant’ Learning Outcomes - The Chronicle of Higher Education

 

So, to be clear, this professor was told he had to put in learning objectives that were actually relevant to his course. Rather than either removing the lengthy quote, which addresses the merits of a university education and not of the upper level genetics course he was teaching, or at least adding more compliant language to it (I imagine he also could have just created a new "learning objectives" section and made his Woodrow Wilson quote just a standalone piece that accreditors wouldn't have cared about) he decided that this was the battle he would pick with his Dean and was worth his kicking, screaming and whining about it.

My suspicion is that he doesn't actually want to teach and felt that being a martyr was a more just ending for his career. He's been there for 34 years. I won't even speculate as to why he's still an associate professor after nearly 4 decades there. But I wouldn't be shocked if a smaller series of temper tantrums like this were cause for his lack of promotion. But this is a silly hill to die upon, in my opinion. And I am positive that if the University of Phoenix got dinged by HLC for using lengthy presidential quotes in lieu of course learning objectives the public would be rising up and calling for their head on a silver platter as it would clearly be an indicator that they were trying to glide through the accreditation process with fluff and no substantive learning.

In short, I'm glad he was suspended. The only real shame of it is that he gets to punctuate his career with what he, any some others, will regard as a just cause.

 

"Sanctimonious Games" Yep, his boss has it right. I bet he's didn't hesitate a millisecond to bounce his sorry butt.

 

I would love to see the escalation of the event. I'm imaging a fairly innocuous meeting with the Dean where he just said "Hey listen, we have to adjust the learning objectives for the accreditors, here are some examples." I'd bet the dean didn't think it would be an issue. Heck, this was probably started via email. He probably expected a revised syllabus a day or so later and the problem to be avoided. Instead, this guy just continued to resist and tried to make it a statement about the role of a university and the value of a liberal arts education.

His behavior is enraging enough but when you consider that this guy had 34 years of opportunity to impart this level of arrogance upon students it is incredibly disappointing.