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It seems there is a moral hazard involved here- administrators pressuring professors to pass more students, which leads to grade inflation. All this to retain s

• phlyingpenguin 8y ago
  I teach. I can say that I have never had direct pressure to pass students or raise grades, but there are two issues that I run into related to grades. First is the ever-growing methods of academic dishonesty. I do not have enough hours in my life to create and design new homework that prevents cheating. It's possible for some assignments, but not all. I don't give up on cheating detection, but this leaves tests and participation (be it simply turning in work or in-person) as the primary grade-changing events for many students. Second is the issue of student "litigation". It is not unusual to find a student that will fight to get their 4.0 by attrition, and that requires very good record keeping on the professor's part, taking away from time for other tasks. My situation is at an extension of a very large university. We focus on teaching and student connection, not research. I know that these experiences change drastically when professors have graders and a research program taking their time away from teaching duties.
  • ryandrake 8y ago
    Can you explain more about this “litigation”? Your students actually sue over their grades?? That’s nuts!
    • phlyingpenguin 8y ago
      No, that's why I put it in quotes. They will often keep in incessant contact and try to escalate matters within the department or school. This is still somewhat rare, but happens often enough to complain about.
• d-- 8y ago
  I'm at a large research school teaching computer science. Anecdotally, I have not received pressure from administrators. I have gotten pointers about the expected number of As and Bs from senior faculty though. And, the curves do go both ways.
• analog31 8y ago
  I taught for one semester at a big ten university, many years ago. And I live in a college town, so I have a lot of friends and relatives who are teachers. It's widely held that student evaluations are proportional to the grades that the students expect to get. My office mate, and a professor, were co-teaching a course, and they got into shouting matches about grades, because the professor was up for tenure, and wanted better evaluations from his students. In addition, students will badger their teachers for better grades, and dealing with it adds to the workload and stress of teaching. After each exam, I had a line of students at my door, asking me to review the grader's marks. My view is that it's always marginally easier to give out higher grades, even if there's no overt pressure from above.
  • danieltillett 8y ago
    As a former professor, there is some correlation between grade and evaluation, but there is a much higher correlation with workload. The less work in the course the higher the grade. I needed to maintain a teaching evaluation over 3.5 / 5, but I cared that my students actually learnt something so I would aim for a score of around 3.6 - 3.7 and then loaded up my students as much work as I could and achieve this. The sad thing with teaching evaluation is they are collected while the student was doing the subject. I can't tell you how many of my students complained like crazy about the subject while doing (what you expect me to work), who a year later told me the subject was the best one they had taken in their whole degree because they had learnt so much.