Pay Your Fees and Get Your B's

This would be just as true at non-profit B&M state schools, as they are the largest consumers of financial aid.

 

My wife is getting her MFA at SCAD and she tells me that she has to work much harder on DL than she did while attending classes at the University of Kentucky. And its not just because she is balancing home, work and school. Its harder because of the lack of access to facilities and more importantly because of the mindset of the professors at SCAD -- that they seem to believe that the students must be pushed harder on DL than those that are in class primarily because of the perception that its harder to teach/learn when not in the classroom. She hasn't mentioned any grading on the curve in this program.

 

There is one professor in particular whose initial lecture for the year in political theory was prefaced with his unique resolution to grading biases (his opinion vs. the Harvard "average" of B-) that made the media rounds via the Atlantic.

I'm leaving out the name of the prof for courtesy reasons, the jist was: Since the establishment insists on grading favorably and I insist on grading fairly I will provide you with your actual grade for every paper and assignment you submit during the term and then take your final grade and average it against the mean Harvard B- at the end of the semester, with that grade submitted to the registrar.

Paraphrased: This will be your ironic grade, irony being used in lieu of the older term, "lying". Only you will know what grade you truly deserve.

This one professor's lecture managed to get enough press that a lot of people are taking it to mean that Harvard does this across the board. That's not the case; but I won't state that it's only done by this one prof at this point. I'm sure that some others on faculty might have thought it a great idea.

My own opinion:

Problem is it's an easy way out and another shining example of why academic intelligence alone is not as useful or viable as practical common sense. The era of student as a consumer of education needs to be retracted in favor of student as the product of these schools. It's worth noting that the primary reason given for his policy change to the students was that he realized that by grading fairly all he was doing was punishing his students who otherwise had better records.

This sort of thing only happens when students are allowed to rate or survey their professors and the metrics are used irresponsibly or without appropriate context by administrators.

 

As an add-on to the opinion statement in the above (as I thought of this after the 10 minute limit)

Probably also an example of what happens when research is not considered as important as teaching in the all-important tenure debate at these schools.

 

I am attending American Military University (APUS) and I received two C+'s so, I think it depends on the instructor. I went to UOP for a year and I got all A's and I did the bare minimum. I was apprehensive about the school so I started to plagiarize on purpose to see if I would be caught and I got A's off of other people's work. Thereafter, I knew it was time to change schools.

 

That information about UoP is frightening and dismaying. It does seem to be a product of teacher evaluations done by the students. If this practice became widespread, it could destroy DL in the long run.

 

That was something Harvey "C-minus" Mansfield did several years ago at Harvard.

 

This is exactly why I posted earlier about hearing some stories about UoP. I have heard the same thing from other people as well. Interestingly, however, I've seen posts here from people that went to UoP that say it was much harder than the above.

 

I know for a fact Ashford will let you fail. In Quant. Methods I actually made a 36% on a paper once. It was pretty eye opening.

Also my last class at Bellevue I made a 0% on one of my business cases that I forgot to do...and no late assignments were accepted.

 

At any school you are going to find ridiculously easy teachers and ridiculously difficult teachers. Maybe an individual's experience at UoP depends on which profs he/she draws.

 

There may some within UoP that might let students get away with this, but no faculty I had.

Like I said, I got one C+ and had to work dammmm hard to get that one. Hard class. It really was.