Student Evaluation of Professors is Causing Grade Inflation Online and B&M

Here is another interesting idea from Thomas Sowell's book: Inside American Education This one I wholeheartedly agree with.

Sowell states that the ability of the student to evaluate the course and even the professor at the end of any given class and to post those reviews to a school database at many schools, is causing many professors to dumb down their courses and inflate substandard student's grades. If they don't, the lousy students will give them a bad review and it can actually reflect on their employment prospects with many schools.

 

I know I have failed 50% of my classes at some points. I have gotten group messages from my mentor at one school (who looks in on the classes every week) that he is concerned about the grades - they are a little high on average and the grading rubric should be strictly followed. I really don't care about bad reviews. I give the grade they earn

 

Randell, if all of your students give you a low evaluation at school X and you end up leaving, when you apply at school Y, is school X able to give anything more than title and dates of employment to school Y when they call for a reference?
I know in my industry we are not allowed to give anything but what I just mentioned. So if that were the case, then the teacher reviews wouldn't affect one's employability very much.
And I doubt the administration takes student reviews at the students' word. Its not like customer reviews of a restaurant.

 

I did apply for one position and they requested a copy of my student evals. I gladly submitted it. I have found that most of the students that take the time to complete the evals are the same ones that took the time to do the work! I have only had a handful of bad evals.

 

That is very sad.

 

Abuse of adjuncts by some of the for profit schools generate grade inflation. Adjuncts rely on good course evaluations that normally lead to grade inflation. I know that there are good adjuncts like Randell that do the right thing but the vast majority tend to inflate grades because the fear of losing contracts.

That is why tenured faculty tend to be tougher than adjuncts as the first ones do not have any fear of losing their jobs because below average evaluations.


Another grade inflation generator with for profit education is the use of canned assignments, if you google assignments, you will find that most of the assignments' solutions are already posted or ready to be sold from a particular site. As assignments are recycled term after term, this opens to businesses selling solutions on the internet. I raised this issue few times but it appears that schools are not willing to invest on new assignments for every term as this reduces profits. As many online for profit do not have exams but only assignments, this also leads to grade inflation. Nobody is doing anything about it as it is just too expensive to create new assignments.

Between the grade inflation due to abuse of adjunct use, lack of exams and availability of canned assignments' solution online. I'm afraid that online degrees granted by for profit will be worth only paper soon.

The solution to these problems would be faculty evaluation based on performance and not only student evaluation (This is too expensive as requires external evaluators that need to be paid), new assignments every term (Again, too expensive as instructors would need to be paid extra for this) and proctored exams (These inconvenient exams just make you lose money as you need to organize examinations centers and make lose students than rather go to schools with no exams).

 

NCU is a for profit online school and the courses I have been exposed to are assignment based for the most part. These assignments are research assignments, however and the school uses turnitin.com to ensure academic integrity.
The assignments are not multiple choice or fill in the blank. The require the student to read the course text, perform scholarly research, and produce papers, powerpoints and other forms of writing to address the learning objectives for the course.
This format does not lend itself to cheating so I think other institutions should consider doing this as well.
And that includes non-profits like Thomas Edison State College. I recently finished Computer Architecture and Environmental Science at TESC and the Env Sci assignments were essay based, while the Computer Architecture assignments were short answer. I think students could have cheated on the Computer Architecture class but not on the Environmental Science class merely based on the format of the assignments.

 

I've taught since 2005, so I've had hundreds of students, and (last I checked) I have exactly one review on Rate My Professor, and the only reason I know that is because the student who submitted it let me know that she did, well after final grades were submitted. As for official student reviews, those are anonymous to me, and I don't see them until after final grades are submitted.

 

Please specify the school names. This will help members of this board to make an educated selection of schools.

 

I have been teaching online since January 2006 and I have exactly zero reviews on RMP.

 

I would agree that NCU does a pretty fair job in maintaining academic rigor. They are the focus of a great deal of ridicule from many around here, but I feel it is undeserved. I did several classes in one of their PhD programs and then finally moved to another school, but it was not because the classes were not rigorous. I learned a great deal and had to really work to get by.

 

You teach for DeVery, don't you? How does your employer treat you? I have always wondered about their policies.

 

For all the bad press DeVry gets I have to say I found my experience with them to be great. Maybe it was just different back then since I took classes from 1986-87 at the South Jersey campus. The support was great, classes we really tough, instructors were excellent, I learn a ton of stuff.

What is it like now?

 

Same here.

 

I would like to think we are just so good words can not capture our charm!

 

I'm feeling queasy.

 

I don't buy it. I get the argument, but the reality is that schools don't especially care what's written on RMP by students, and schools are looking for liability issues, not personality. Schools want to know if the syllabus matches what's taught, or if the faculty members showed up/were available, etc. They want to know that special needs were catered to, and that you can document every freakin low grade.

Classes fill and schools are happy. Classes fill because students are required to register. Students are required to register even if they have crappy professors. Seriously, count on all your fingers the last time you know a fellow teacher (FIRST HAND) that was fired /given fewer sections because of the RMP website? Add to the the ones who were fired/given fewer sections because of a school-issued student eval. Who has up more than 1 finger? I started with Eastern Iowa Community College District (3 campuses) in Jan. 1992. I have never-ever-not once heard of a teacher getting fired- ever! And we (in theory) have the lowest hiring standards among higher ed, making our applicant pool the largest (in theory). AAS/AOS faculty don't need a degree, and AA/AS faculty only need a masters...so it's certainly possible to find replacements.

Yes, we get evals. Yes, my dean reads them. Yes, I've had students write crap about me that was bad. <shrug>

Of course, it's worth saying that even IF someone wanted to fire a FT faculty member, they'd have a huge battle with the union. I've not met too many CC instructors who EVER felt their jobs were hanging in the balance.

 

Hmm, I applied at one point and never even got a thanks-but-no-thanks letter :disappointed: