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> Years of administration telling the math department that our passing rate is too low have led me to pretty much pass everyone who takes the final exam. Last s

> Years of administration telling the math department that our passing rate is too low have led me to pretty much pass everyone who takes the final exam. Last semester 80% passed but only around 50% deserved to Doesn't this contribute to lower the reputation of the universities? I mean, I did sociology in a small university in northern Spain and there was debate between the stats and methodology professors and pretty much everyone else about this. In the end I'm grateful to my stats and methodology professors, because having to work very hard is the only thing that actually gave me something useful to go and fight with the world. Many of my peers had to go to other unis because they couldn't pass there, so in the end they get a pass like me, the same in the eyes of employers, but they know it's bullshiting, and I know too. IDK, It seems to me that there's a lot of lazyness in social sciences, and this kind of hard attitude to it is not only good for the students, but needed in the field. IDK in the US, but this professors got a lot of heat for their stances on what a university is about, but they stood their ground, even when they've got hit by political bullshit, denied money for research, etc. There's another thing (again, IDK if it's the same in the US), but why don't you see it in CS or Engineering faculties? I mean, I remember in my uni the students of this faculties had maybe a couple of professors that where ok to lower the bar a bit, but most of them just assumed that you gotta learn what you gotta learn. And many of them where pretty hostile to students, 180º stance from what I see in Stanford Moocs for example.

stathibus 5y ago
Maybe this is a stupid question, but is there any indication that most US universities cared about their academic reputation in the first place? I don't see any.
- spaniard89277 5y ago
  Well in Spain everybody says to care, yet I see what I see. Not to mention that everyone complains about the low rankings of spanish unis, but I'd say that's mostly a consquence of money and some biases at play.
syops 5y ago
Yes, this has long term negative effects but I need a job and don’t need the stress of being hounded by administration. In the old days the state funded a much higher percent of a student’s higher education. In those days, society was the client. Today the student is the client and the student does not want to fail.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > Yes, this has long term negative effects but I need a job and don’t need the stress of being hounded by administration. The way to make sure your students all pass is to do your job, those students need a teacher that cares and not one that 'needs a job', and preferably one that does not start off with the self-reinforcing viewpoint that a good fraction of them are too dumb to learn the material on offer. Seriously, consider changing jobs to something with less of a negative effect on people's lives. I've been on the receiving end of this attitude and it harmed me quite a bit, later on, with better teachers some of the damage got fixed but I most certainly would have traded two of my math teachers that 'needed a job' for some of the (much) better ones. Thanks to Fred Pach and one Mr. Groot I'm not a total loss at math and it ended up not being my skills but those of the teachers that were deficient.
  - syops 5y ago
    You know nothing about my teaching or what I do for my students. Did I say a good fraction of the students can’t learn algebra? I never said or implied anything of the sort. All I said is that some people can’t learn it. I gave an extreme example of such a person. I didn’t say anything regarding how large the set of people who can’t learn algebra is other than that this set is larger than the set of intellectually disabled people. It appears you are letting your past personal experiences distort your judgments about me. It’s ok. I understand this. It’s natural but it makes it hard to have a discussion about whether or not it’s the case that everyone can learn algebra. You made a statement that the way to pass everyone is to do my job. Clearly you have not taught much in a classroom with a wide variety of students. Consider the possibility that you simply don’t know anything about the craft of teaching other than your very limited experience of being a student and that as such you should be wary of making negative conclusions about me.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
I have always found the university ranking game to be screwed up. Are the best Universities good because they have the best teaching, or are they just selecting the best people, who would be successfull no matter what? The universities are penalised in rankings when a student fails to pass, but they are not penalised if they are so selective that the student never got a chance to study in the first place. This breeds an elitist system that does not let students rise to the challenge. Thats also one of the reasons why european universities do worse in rabking than UK ones - it's common there to start with a huge class, but only small part will co plete the course. In UK its harder to get in, but vast majorty seems to pass. If universities worked like a normal business does, you'd expect that the best universities would grow, expand, and eventually there would an Oxford in every major city, with oxford teaching methods. But that's not how it works. But people still keep trying to appply 'free market theory' to education, when it obviously works very differently. Lastly there is perpetual conflict between research and teaching - many professors want to do research and don't like teaching, many post graduate teaching assistants are folks that, no matter how briliant, were afraid of the job market, etc.

stathibus 5y ago

Maybe this is a stupid question, but is there any indication that most US universities cared about their academic reputation in the first place? I don't see any.

spaniard89277 5y ago
Well in Spain everybody says to care, yet I see what I see. Not to mention that everyone complains about the low rankings of spanish unis, but I'd say that's mostly a consquence of money and some biases at play.

syops 5y ago

Yes, this has long term negative effects but I need a job and don’t need the stress of being hounded by administration. In the old days the state funded a much higher percent of a student’s higher education. In those days, society was the client. Today the student is the client and the student does not want to fail.

jacquesm 5y ago
> Yes, this has long term negative effects but I need a job and don’t need the stress of being hounded by administration. The way to make sure your students all pass is to do your job, those students need a teacher that cares and not one that 'needs a job', and preferably one that does not start off with the self-reinforcing viewpoint that a good fraction of them are too dumb to learn the material on offer. Seriously, consider changing jobs to something with less of a negative effect on people's lives. I've been on the receiving end of this attitude and it harmed me quite a bit, later on, with better teachers some of the damage got fixed but I most certainly would have traded two of my math teachers that 'needed a job' for some of the (much) better ones. Thanks to Fred Pach and one Mr. Groot I'm not a total loss at math and it ended up not being my skills but those of the teachers that were deficient.
- syops 5y ago
  You know nothing about my teaching or what I do for my students. Did I say a good fraction of the students can’t learn algebra? I never said or implied anything of the sort. All I said is that some people can’t learn it. I gave an extreme example of such a person. I didn’t say anything regarding how large the set of people who can’t learn algebra is other than that this set is larger than the set of intellectually disabled people. It appears you are letting your past personal experiences distort your judgments about me. It’s ok. I understand this. It’s natural but it makes it hard to have a discussion about whether or not it’s the case that everyone can learn algebra. You made a statement that the way to pass everyone is to do my job. Clearly you have not taught much in a classroom with a wide variety of students. Consider the possibility that you simply don’t know anything about the craft of teaching other than your very limited experience of being a student and that as such you should be wary of making negative conclusions about me.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

I have always found the university ranking game to be screwed up. Are the best Universities good because they have the best teaching, or are they just selecting the best people, who would be successfull no matter what? The universities are penalised in rankings when a student fails to pass, but they are not penalised if they are so selective that the student never got a chance to study in the first place. This breeds an elitist system that does not let students rise to the challenge. Thats also one of the reasons why european universities do worse in rabking than UK ones - it's common there to start with a huge class, but only small part will co plete the course. In UK its harder to get in, but vast majorty seems to pass. If universities worked like a normal business does, you'd expect that the best universities would grow, expand, and eventually there would an Oxford in every major city, with oxford teaching methods. But that's not how it works. But people still keep trying to appply 'free market theory' to education, when it obviously works very differently. Lastly there is perpetual conflict between research and teaching - many professors want to do research and don't like teaching, many post graduate teaching assistants are folks that, no matter how briliant, were afraid of the job market, etc.