“My grades aren’t as high as I think they should be, so we have a dispute.”

[Are_grits_groceries]

Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.
<snip>
Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the University of Vermont, agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html?_r=4

Oy! I never had a default grade of "C" in a class much less an "A". These kids are going to have a hard time in the real world.
I taught kids like that in high school. They also didn't understand the word "No."

[Donnachaidh]

1. "40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

And people wonder WHY we have turned into a culture of greed and cheaters. "I did the reading, so I AUTOMATICALLY should pass" :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[itsrobert]

6. All the classes that I have been in, required a test

As long as you can pass the test and turn in a half decent essay (if required) than you pass the class. Of course partiicapation in class is part of it too. If you ace the test and assignment than that's an A. If you average in the 70's that's a "C".

[Winterblues]

30. It has been a long long time since I was in school but it used to be anything below 70%

Was failing..:shrug: Very high seventies to mid eighties was a C

[proud patriot]

88. how I remember it

100-91=A
90-82=B
81-73=C
72-64=D
63 or less was failing

and the grade was based on
different things test scores
homework turned in and class
attendance/participation .

[mike_c]

2. OK, I have to run to class RIGHT NOW...

...but I am SO coming back to this thread in a couple of hours. I cannot tell you how much the OP resonates with me!

K&R in hopes that lots of people, and especially lots of students-- read the OP.

[Mz Pip]

3. Unfortunately, that's a carry over

from some high school experiences. I worked in high schools for 20 years and it was very common for teachers to "reward" students with As and Bs for showing up and not causing trouble in class.

I remember one "A" student who came to me after a dispute with another student. I told him to put in writing what happened. He wrote a paragraph that was a about a third grade level. It was not even close to what a 10th grade student, who was receiving an A in English, would have been capable of doing. The kid came to school every day and didn't give the teacher trouble so he was rewarded with an A. I saw this kind of thing over and over.

If he ever got into a college he would have been in for a rude awakening.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

26. That was a major component of the school's culture where I used to teach.

I disagreed with that philosophy. Now I don't have a job and am sufficiently soured on teaching.

[Mz Pip]

29. It drove me nuts

I was a guidance counselor and part of my job was to counsel kids on their educational options after high school. Some of these kids with really good grades thought they could go to Berkeley or Harvard when they could barely write a coherent sentence.

I talked to the English teacher about his A student and he really seemed to think he was doing this kid a favor by giving him As. Somehow this would encourage him to do well. To me, it seemed like the kid was just being set up for future failure in a big way.

[Warpy]

4. Highschoolitis

is what I called it when I tutored my way through nursing school. They actually expected to sit there passively while I poured vast knowledge into their skulls. It was as though life was a TV show, nothing but lounging on the couch required, certainly no practice or thought was ever necessary.

These weren't dumb people. They had managed acceptable scores on college boards. They could read, although they never really got why they should read the book instead of the summary of its story.

I collected quite a history of complaints, especially from the math students, outraged that I actually expected them to solve problems and would tell them to stop wasting my time if they refused.

I imagine it's gotten even worse in the 30 years since then.

[drmeow]

5. A contributing factor in why I

stopped teaching.

[gratuitous]

7. In 16 years of schooling, I never challenged a grade

I always thought challenging grades was for malcontents and whiners. If a teacher or a professor gave me or someone else a bad grade, I figured we earned it. Maybe instructors aren't spelling out their expectations like they used to? I always knew what was expected from me for a grade; if I did it, all well and good. If I didn't do it, I knew my grade wasn't going to be so good. And merely trying or trying hard wasn't the standard.

[InvisibleTouch]

9. Usually malcontents and whiners, yes.

When I taught undergraduates, I saw my share of them - students who would come in and try to wheedle extra points out of short-answer and essay questions by explaining what they "really meant," even though they didn't write it as such, or if they got really creative, try to explain why a wrong multiple-choice answer could actually be interpreted as correct. I usually gave them a couple of points here and there just to get them off my back; they went away happy, and it didn't change their final grade in the end. We did sometimes bump up students who were right on the borderline for such factors as effort and good attendance, but the habitual whiners never received that benefit of the doubt.

Only one time did I almost challenge a grade myself, and that was on a test question where I absolutely knew my answer was right (it was in an area of personal expertise). The professor reluctantly agreed, but refused to change it right then and there; he said if those points made a difference by the end of the course, he would add them back at that time. Fortunately I squeaked by with the lowest-possible A by the end of the course, so I didn't have to go back and insist on those added points. (A few years later I ended up teaching that very course, irony of ironies.)

But I agree, usually the grade-challengers are just trying to get by with something for nothing.

A former boss of mine once told me a story of when he was teaching. Students would come in and claim they would do anything, absolutely anything, for an A. And he'd say, okay, here's what you do: study hard. :)

[petronius]

59. That reminds me of the only redeeming portion of "The Eiger Sanction":

Dr. Jonathan Hemlock: Are you busy this evening?
Art Student: No.
Dr. Jonathan Hemlock: You live alone?
Art Student: My roommate's gone for the week.
Dr. Jonathan Hemlock: Good. Then... go on home, break out the books and study your little ass off.

It loses a bit without the audio, but you get the idea...

:rofl:

[leftyclimber]

77. Actually, Eastwood's climbing technique is really darned good for a nonclimber.

But the scene you mention was definitely one of the better scenes overall. ;)

The climbing stuff's only important to climbing nerds like me. :hide:

[petronius]

103. Those things are pretty important to me, too. Even if I don't have

the expertise to recognize a particular (in)accuracy, I like knowing when a movie has made the effort to get it right. i think we're all entitled to raise a fuss when a movie has taken liberties with a field or skill we care about it (whether it's climbing, firefighting, surfing, meteorology, military tactics, airline piloting, or whatever...)

[rockymountaindem]

11. I challenged grades throughout college

and almost always got my grade raised, sometimes considerably. Once the prof even demanded a written statement from the TA to me explaining why the TA had messed up in interpreting my argument, and then gave me a much better grade. That was not the only time a prof. told me that the TA was mistaken, but it was the only time I got it in writing. Another time I had a grade raised from a D+ to a B+. The TA asserted that I had no research question based strictly on the criteria that there was no question mark in my first paragraph, and the prof was able to read for context and determine that I had, in fact, followed the guidelines for the paper.

It's not like the grading system is infallible. Sometimes there are flagrant mistakes made by TA's who are probably working at 2am on the 4th cup of coffee and their 100th essay to grade. I've always felt that if I felt wronged, it was up to me to explain myself. The worst the prof. could say was no, which did happen on some occasions.

[Xithras]

15. Very true

ALL students should verify their grades. I've actually had instances where students were awarded the wrong grade simply because they were entered into the computer incorrectly (two grades were transposed, the wrong key was hit, etc). Mistakes happen, and both professors and TA's can get in a hurry. If a student thinks their grade is genuinely incorrect, they should always challenge it. As you said, the worst we can say is no.

[gratuitous]

16. I went to school when we had to dodge mastodons on the way to class

I took my courses directly from the professor or teacher, and we established a relationship in and out of class. Grades were kept by a quaint system using a writing implement called a "pen" or a "pencil" and a medium called "paper." It wasn't infallible, but as I said, if my grade wasn't very good (which didn't happen often), I knew I had usually earned it. If I thought an instructor had it in for me, I tended to avoid taking any other classes from him or her.

[hfojvt]

23. I felt like I had to challenge some grades in physics

when I clearly had the right answer and clearly had underlined the answer or put a box around it. That did not always work as one time most of the class got dinged for not using calculus to get to the answer, an answer that many already knew was MGH. Another time I had a professor dock me because he did not like the method I used. "That method leads to mistakes" he said. Which I thought was true, but irrelevant. Because I had not made a mistake on the test, so why should I be penalized because I might make a mistake?

Still, this was math and physics where there is no judgement call and the graders still got it wrong.

[Xithras]

42. That sort of thing can be understandable in math & physics though.

I'm not a math teacher (computer science) but I do have a math degree and a few years ago was asked to cover a remedial pre-algebra course (the adjunct who was supposed to teach it bailed a few days before the semester started, and my section was canceled, so they asked if I'd be interested in covering it). What many students don't understand is that instructors aren't just tasked with teaching you how to solve a problem, but with teaching you all of the various ways to do so. I had many problems with students in that course who would complete assigned work using the wrong method, and who were furious that I marked their "correct" answer as wrong. Several protested my grades because of this, and all were shot down.

If we're studying equation graphing and I tell my students to plot an equation using slope-intercept, and they hand me back a paper with a bunch of correct points and graphs that were drawn using x/y intercepts, they're going to get it wrong. Even though the final answer was correct, the wrong method was used...and the method was part of the problem.

In the end, that one semester taught me to never teach math again. Especially remedial math.

[hfojvt]

54. that's apples to oranges though

In your example, they were not just told to solve a problem, but told to solve it a certain way. "I tell my students to plot an equation using slope-intercept." My problem was about solving a differential equation. Which I did, and correctly.

[xocet]

73. Interesting POV...

The point of view from the other side of the grading pen has a lot more to do with method: to wit, either a coherent method is used to arrive at an answer or not. If no method is indicated, no points are awarded.

People who grade are seldom interested in a boxed answer by itself. The correct answer is necessary for full credit, but it is not sufficient.

It seems that you may have a misconception about the value of the "correct" answer. Take a derivation of an acceleration function from a position function, for example. If the calculation of the velocity is left out or botched, yet the correct answer is boxed, the result remains that the student could not carry out the procedure. SOMEHOW, MAGICAL HAPPENSTANCE came in and saved the day with the correct final answer, but the student could not demonstrate the answer. There is little merit in this sort of an answer - only partial credit would apply.

So, NO, the graders were likely not wrong in downgrading your work. Instead, you chose not to use the more general method which they were trying to teach you and were caught out on it.

It sounds like you probably wanted to skip the calculation (by integration) of work done on a mass in a uniform gravitational field. These people were probably trying to teach generally applicable methods to you, why not learn from them?

Sorry for the abrupt answer, but you could not perform the calculation and have the temerity to boast about it and claim credit is due you?


Here is a special inspirational verse from Sir-Mix-A-Lot (Testarossa) for you:

"I ain't the joke so don't hope for my throat
There it is, the whiz gets his
The word quiz is what it is and Mix don't give
Sight to the wack who act like Max
And try to jack a pop rap to hit the map
That ain't like me, it ain't cool
To rob another fool then claim you rule"

[hfojvt]

102. actually I got the credit I asked for on re-grades

except the one time the Prof was kind of a dickhead about it. The other time when almost the whole class didn't use calculus I was fine with the lower grade as explained. Although I thought I should get some credit for working through the problem. The Prof, however, admitted as much too, that some people worked it the way I did, which was slightly better but still wrong.

It's kinda rare for a correct answer to happen by magical happenstance, although sometimes errors do cancel each other out.

[blue_onyx]

27. That's interesting that the TA graded papers

I never had a TA teach a class or grade papers. I don't even remember any professors having assistants. I think it's odd to have one person teaching the course and another grading papers. I figure if I'm paying to learn, I want the professor to do the job they're being paid to do.

[Posteritatis]

43. How big a school did you attend?

Your typical five-digit-enrollment university's lower division classes are usually going to be full of TAs; one prof can't handle a thousand-student class. I did my undergrad at an 8,000-student school; the larger freshman courses were a couple hundred students and usually had one or two TAs for discussion sections or grading minor assignments. My master's was done at one of those absurd, gigantic horizon-to-horizon research universities, and at least the history department used the graduate TAs as a firewall to keep the undergrads away from the professors. (One of the many things I hated about that school.)

Also remember that at a typical school, only a third or so of what a professor is being paid to do is teach. If it's a research school, it's often closer to a fifth.

I did papers and subbed a few classes TAing for a prof in my final year of undergrad, and did an annoyingly less involved TAing job in graduate school (although I liked the class and especially the students). In both cases I'm pretty sure I was competent to do the job, and anything I did involved heavy consultation with the prof ahead of time. The prof I TAd for in my undergrad was especially good about it; he gave me and his other TA for another class somewhat excessive tasks now and then, but did so very much on purpose so we'd have at least some experience on the fun side of the lectern. He was a high school principal coming back for his doctorate, so he'd been around the educational block a few times.

[blue_onyx]

49. My school has 8,600 students now..

That's probably about the same number of students they had while I was there (I graduated a few years ago). Some of my classes were bigger, like the science classes, but the tests usually involved scantrons. Most of my classes were around 30 people. Personally, I prefer the professor teaching the class to judge the work I do. Not that the TA can't do the job but I think the professor will be better able to judge whether the student meet the requirements they set.

[leftyclimber]

76. Students SHOULD track their grades.

Professors, instructors, and TAs are all human and make mistakes. And sometimes TAs are working without a consistent grading rubric and are making wild guesses about what's what (sad but true).

My personal rule is that if I make a mathematical error when I calculate a score, I will fix any errors that were to the detriment of the student as quickly as possible. Any points in the student's favor they get to keep, because I didn't get the math right.

[Posteritatis]

45. I almost did on a couple of occasions

One involved a very clear dislike on the part of the prof - to the point of faking records in view of the other students in ways that docked my grade and a few other students'. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle at the time. The other was about as transparent; my undergraduate thesis was about mental illness and one of the profs grading it was postmodernist enough that he didn't believe such a thing existed. In that case saner heads prevailed.

Of course I consider both of those a little different from "but I showed up to every class!" or "opinions can't be wrong and my paper is my opinion!" Guy I knew in my undergrad was (A) convinced of his own awesome and (B) equally convinced that he was being oppressed over it; he'd formally appeal every grade he got of A minus or below. His time at the university was a bit truncated when it turned out he was destroying library books he didn't want others to read, at least.

[Silent3]

71. I HAD TO challenge my test grades in my college physics class...

...because the grading was always done by grad students who were terrible at it. They either didn't recognize a right answer plainly in front of their eyes, or even if you had a right answer, if they didn't recognize the way you solved the problem, even if it was a completely valid approach, they took points off.

Of course, this wasn't a matter of whining about how much effort I made, it was a clear-cut case of incorrect grading, easily recognized by the actual professor as such.

[Still Sensible]

8. Part of the problem IMO is that both viewpoints are

essentially saying that it is the effort that is being graded... it should be the mastery of the subject and the corresponding (if applicable) critical thinking skills should be what is being graded.

Obviously, there will be a correlation between the two, but I think they are looking at the wrong thing.

[Caliman73]

19. Agreed

I was always under the impression that mastery of the subject was the criteria for grading. I think that effort is important and may be factored in, but to get a B or an A in a class, It has always been my experience that you had to demonstrate thorough to superior knowledge of the curriculum material.

I agree with the OP that the attitude of entitlement has increased as the years have passed. My wife was a teacher for 10 years and often had difficulties with parents and students who felt that they should have passed a class for which they had done nothing but show up. She would take the parent and student down her grade book and show failing grades in quizzes, no homework turned in, and limited participation in class. Sometimes the argument would continue or be taken to the principal.

Effort is important, but having and displaying knowledge of the course material through completing the assignments, participating in class discussion, and passing exams is the basis for grading.

[rtassi]

33. I mostly agree ... but ..

I taught high school level music in public school in the mid seventies, and I had students in "beginning band", "Chorus", or even "folk guitar" who clearly would never master an instrument, or voice, but put forth great effort, and were fun to teach, and therefore required a grade IMO commensurate with their efforts. I was a young teacher and made some mistakes however in an effort to be thought of as "cool". The "grading dart board" being one of them. In the advanced classes, if a student wished to challenge a B-, B, B+ or and A- and through the available challenge process which I was required to provide at that time, no compromise was arrived at, I would offer the student the chance to stand in front of a dart board outfitted with A,B,C,D, and F rings ... "A" being dead center from 12 ft away with one dart ... Victory or defeat ... It never stood the test of time as a serious option for all of the obvious pitfalls, and raised the ire of some parents, who possessed a different sense and level of humor than I did! For everyone's good I've been out of the classroom for many, many years ... I also acknowledge the difference in expectation at the college level.
rt

[Xithras]

10. I've had students like this in my classes.

It never fails that I get at least one a semester. "But I worked so HARD on these assignments! Shouldn't that get me a decent grade?" My answer is always the same: "The amount of effort you put into the class doesn't matter one bit to me. It's the RESULTS of your efforts that determine your grades." Students are regularly dumbfounded by that response. I personally don't care if a student spent 100 hours writing a two page paper...if the resulting paper is lousy, the grade will reflect it.

I begin every semester with a lecture on what I expect out of my students, and every first-day lecture ends the same way. "As of this moment, you all have an F in my class. If you want anything better, you'll have to earn it." Students used to modern high school grading standards have a difficult time adjusting to that concept.

[Morning Dew]

28. Default is an F. That's how it should be. nm

[leftyclimber]

47. That's my "favorite": "But I triiiiied so HAAAAAAARD!"

What amazes me even more is that I have heard MASTER'S students in faculty offices trying that tactic. It must have worked for them in undergrad.

[Xithras]

60. My typical answer: "Maybe this class is just too advanced for you right now"

When someone leaves my class at the end of the semester, my grade reflects my faith in the fact that they know the material in the syllabus. The amount of effort required is irrelevant to their familiarity with the subject matter. If a student is spending an inordinate amount of time on my course materials and STILL isn't getting a passing grade, I usually recommend that they move down a level because that sort of think typically indicates that they're in the wrong class for their aptitude.

Those students really don't bother me all that much. The truly frustrating students are those who fail to do the work and then come in with sob stories. "I know the paper was supposed to be three pages long, but I couldn't find a babysitter and only had time to write one." "I know that the assignment was supposed to do X, y, and Z, but my boss has been working me overtime and I haven't had time to finish it." Or my personal favorite; "I know that assignment was due today, but my lit professor and my math instructor gave me a ton of homework yesterday and I couldn't get to it."

And then they expect you to give them a good grade ANYWAY, as if their personal problems should somehow qualify as grade points in the class. I once had a student complain to my dean that I was being an unfair teacher and gave an illegitimate grade (an F in her case) because she'd missed half the classes and two-thirds of the assignments. Why? Because her mother was dying of cancer, and had passed away during the semester. I'll admit that it was tragic, but the girl honestly believed that she should get an A simply because she endured a personal tragedy. When I suggested that she should have dropped the class and retaken it when her life had settled down, she called me a "heartless bastard" in front of my dean and went on a tear-filled rant about how it was "unfair" (another word I love) for me to punish her because her mother had died. You want to know the really shitty part? My dean asked me, "Can't you just give her a D and be done with it?" THAT is why your Masters students pulled it...there ARE softies who fall for this crap.

For the record, the F stood.

[leftyclimber]

61. I'm still in grad school, so I have to run everything through the faculty.

Sometimes I feel like I'm parenting instead of teaching.

Once I have a faculty gig and my own grad students, I'll be taking the same hard line you do with yours (likewise with the undergrads). I'm not young, and I faced the same thing in the corporate world with some of my employees, who usually became former employees after they pulled crap like that.

From what you've posted here, I think I'd like taking classes from you. :) Professors who let their students know exactly where they stand and then remain consistent with it are my faves.

[DCKit]

12. NCLB in action.

Can we give NCLB an "F" now?

[Dr. Strange]

18. You can give it an "F", but not for this.

This predates NCLB by quite a few years.

[acmavm]

13. They also expect to be president of a major American company

right after graduation.

And most of 'em can't spell cat if you spot 'em the C and the T.

[EstimatedProphet]

14. This isn't anything new

It's been this way for years. Students have always acted like this.

[Arugula Latte]

22. Now the difference is the parents step in more to push the teacher for better grades for the kid.

[EstimatedProphet]

25. Yeah, that's a new element

Of course, at the legacy schools, students of Senators or governors were always expected to receive passing grades. That's how we got W in the first place.

[dana_b]

78. true

parents used to turn to their kids and give them a "wait until we get home" look. I was petrified of bringing home a bad grade. Not that my parents would beat me or anything, but it was the sterness of their looks and voice, the disappointment and of course grounding!! Ugh!!

[pnutbutr]

17. This must be why

all the recent college grads around the office here are clueless. You can read all you want and attend every class but unless you can apply the knowledge it's useless.

[csziggy]

20. One of the last college classes I took let the students suggest their grades

And the final was to write an essay to defend the grade they thought they deserved. It was actually a freshman English course - it's a long irrelevant story why I was taking it as a senior - so I thought this was a good way to demonstrate to the students why they needed a writing course no matter what their major.

I indicated that I thought I deserved a C. I had gotten A's on my papers, but did not really participate in the class or contribute anything to the discussions, so I considered that I had only average performance in the class. The instructor gave me an A. When I asked him later why he gave me a better grade than I had suggested, he said it was that he enjoyed my defense of a lower grade than most. He had intended to give me a B until he read my essay. :party:

[Mugweed]

21. Spoiled kids

From middle school (grades 5 - 8) through college, the standard was that you were graded on doing your homework and passing tests. If you completed and turned in all your assignments and got all the answers correct, no points were taken away from you. If you got every answer on every test correct, then you ended up with an A for a grade. Participation was not a factor beyond showing up for class. Showing you learned the lessons by doing the homework correctly and passing your tests was what counted.

I never disputed a grade. I got what I got based on my own activities. Some things I could just never get right....like a Laplace transform.

[antigone382]

62. Yeah, I'm like, totally spoiled.

Despite barely supporting myself at a grueling job (where I don't dare complain about not getting so much as a five minute break in a nine or ten hour day), buying groceries for my mother (who can't find work and doesn't even have running water most of the time), owing thousands in student loans because an annual income well below 20,000 dollars last year put me above the line for obtaining need-based financial aid, fewer and fewer scholarships available even to students with exemplary GPA's and test scores, and the steadily declining opportunities to have any kind of decent standard of living without at least a bachelor's (more like a master's degree these days), I (and the millions of students at the fucking breaking point just like me) must be completely rotten and unappreciative if making it to class, getting 100's on all my tests, putting every spare second I have into my studies, and completing every assignment correctly and on time means that I should get a grade that might actually get me somewhere in life.

[Xithras]

65. Three important points you need to remember about higher ed.

1) Your personal life doesn't mean a thing to those who are grading you. Only your mastery of the material. That is how it should be.

2) The default grade in most classes is a C. Simply completing the assignments as posted and turning them in, and scoring well on tests, will get you a C. B's and A's are usually earned by doing work above and beyond the requirements of the assignment. A 2500 word writing assignment that is 2501 words long, and padded with lots of short words to qualify, will get a C. A 2500 word writing assignment that is 4000 words long and eloquently written will get an A. This is how it works at the college and university level. An A is reserved for those who demonstrate a MASTERY of the material. A grade of C simply means that you're competent enough in the material to pass and move on to the next class. You did what was required, and did it reasonably well, but did nothing beyond that.

3) As the old saying goes, "Even C's Get Degrees". Unless you're angling for a job with a top tier Wall Street firm, the unspoken reality here is that almost no employers will ask you about your college GPA. I've only been asked once, and I was applying to TEACH college courses at the time. For 95% of the employers out there, the simple fact that you HAVE a degree is enough to land you a job, so stressing over a GPA is unnecessary for most students. One of my college buddies made a comment years ago along the lines of, "If I knew that my transcript would be this unimportant in life, I'd have smoked more weed in college." At the time, he had NEVER been asked about his GPA and he'd held several very good jobs.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a C student, and there's a LOT wrong with the idea of killing yourself for an A that nobody will care about in a few years. A C student has demonstrated that he or she has learned everything required for the degree, and that they have acquired the skills needed to perform just about any job in any field that degree applies to. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

[antigone382]

68. There can be something wrong with being a C student, if...

1) You are studying for one degree with the intention of obtaining another (I'm at a community college right now, intending to transfer to a four-year school when I can afford it. Eventually I plan to obtain a master's degree). Not only do your grades affect your likelihood of being admitted, they also affect your likelihood of being awarded one of the fewer and fewer scholarships that are available.

2) The grade is clearly based on a professor's personal bias. Professors are human beings after all, and their prejudices and personal tastes can affect their evaluation of another's work. In a post further in the thread (I don't remember the exact number), I outlined just such a situation which a good friend of mine recently experienced. There's nothing wrong with challenging a grade if you genuinely believe it doesn't reflect the quality of what you turned in. Professors can always say no, and frequently do.

I understand your points about how a college student should expect his or her assignments to be graded. Certainly a student with sincere interest in and grasp of a particular course should be rewarded with the highest grade, as opposed to one who goes through the motions. In fact I have never challenged a grade that I have received. Similarly, I ask you to understand how overextended and terrified many college students are at this point in history, and perhaps think before dismissing us as merely spoiled when we inconvenience the professors who, albeit learned and admirable, have the power to delineate our future with one penstroke.

[Tsiyu]

90. Well spoken

These threads always draw out the "Get Off My Lawn!" types.

Your generation is freaking out, with fewer prospects and an economy your elders sunk.

But this distracts them for a moment....blame the kids, you know. Old strategy.



:hug:

[tammywammy]

69. LOL, stupid essay requirements

You can easily have a professor that says "2 pages" turn in 3 and you get docked points too. *shrug*

Or I have a friend that when required to submit a 4 page essay on a topic submit it in 2 pages. First was given a lower grade, then he objected to it. Talked it out. "Does this answer the question presented?" It did, except it wasn't long enough. He said "So, instead of being succinct and to the point, I should repeat the same sentence/statement multiple times and BS the extra couple of pages?" He got an A.

Essay requirements are the death of me. I usually have more information that I want to include, but I've found if they say 2 or 3 pages, it better be that and no more. Or they have super long requirements and I can wrap it up in under that.

[leftyclimber]

74. Part of going to college is learning how to follow directions.

I say this as a former manager responsible for hiring, firing, and supervising; and a current Ph.D. student who is about a year from being a college professor.

The ex-manager part of me didn't particularly care about whether the person I hired had a college degree but the companies I worked for did. To them a college degree showed that someone was essentially trainable, could follow directions, and could follow something through from start to finish.

A lot of us who teach college (which I do, and I have a lot of educational training and in-class experience, before you go off on "no graduate students know how to teach," thanks) are in fields where the undergraduate program is designed to get someone with a B.A. or B.S. a job after they graduate. We are four-year vocational training programs, for all intents and purposes. We take this responsibility very seriously, and we know that being able to follow directions is part of keeping a job, no matter how dumb those directions seem.

So what may seem to be silly bureaucratic BS to you is part of both getting and keeping many jobs (where it is also silly bureaucratic BS, but you still have to do it in order to keep said job, assuming it's a line of work you really care about and want to make a long-term career of). It's learning to play the game, because the game will follow you in the workplace for the rest of your life, like it or not.

[rockymountaindem]

92. I've never had any experience with your point number two

I've had many professors say that "your assignment must not exceed a maximum of X pages, and if it does, I'm going to stop reading on page X so make sure it's not one line longer". Anybody who tries to score an A by writing 4000 words on a 2000 word assignment is just fooling themselves, as far as I'm concerned. Profs will almost never accept that they should read twice the required length. At the University of Toronto, where I went to school, there were so many kids who would have gladly written twice the requirement for a higher grade (myself included) that the professors were quite strict about length. If word got out that they accepted a 22 page paper from one student on a 20 page assignment, then everybody would want to do it. That was especially true because the average grade was *required* to be a C, so we were always competing with our classmates.

The professors would always tell us that having to fastidiously stick to the word limit would foster concise writing, which I suppose it did. On the other hand, I don't think I ever got a 2500 word writing assignment in Toronto. Even as a freshman, I think the shortest paper I wrote was 15 pages long. The only shorter assignments were book reviews, which are by nature supposed to be brief, and if we had to do those there were usually two per class in addition to the essay (or two essays if no book reviews), a midterm and a final, and possible seminar participation points. The only way to ensure that you got a good mark was to make sure that every page was really good writing. Going over the page limit was usually strictly verboten.

As I said above, I usually challenged one or two assignments every semester with a considerable degree of success. For instance, one time I got a 79 on a midterm, which was one point shy of the minimum for an A-. I just categorically refused to accept being one point away from a good grade. I noted that the TA had written almost all her comments in the form of a question, which while related to the topic were not the questions the prof had asked on the test. So, I went to the professor and said, "I'd love to answer these questions, but when I've got 55 minutes to answer your question, I can't spend any time thinking of what the TA might also want to know and then answer that as well, because then I'd do a poor job of answering your question, and then I could never win". He replied, "well, if you think you can also answer the TA's questions, why don't we talk about them now?" We proceeded to have a fairly lengthy discussion of the material, and I answered all the TA's questions to his satisfaction and he raised my grade. So, not only did I get a better midterm grade, I also demonstrated that I cared about my success in the course, that I could answer questions verbally and think critically about the material (Russian history) off the top of my head *because I'd done the readings*. That gave me bonus points with the prof far beyond just raising my grade on the midterm. That's a lot more than I can say for the dude who always attended lectures and then proceeded to snore so loud in the back row we could all hear him.

So for all the people who say that challenging a grade just makes you a whiner, I posit that it actually gives you a good chance to really show what you know face to face with the professor. It also makes you more than just a face in the crowd. As a side note, the same thing happened on the second midterm (this was a year-long course). I challenged again on the same grounds, and the professor raised my grade even more than he had done on the first midterm!

Who says the system doesn't work? :)

On edit: that same prof also gladly gave me very strong letters of recommendation to graduate school, where I am now.

[leftyclimber]

93. U of T is an incredibly rigorous institution.

I say this as someone who has experienced both the American and Canadian university systems, and has been exposed to a lot of U of T alumni (I've had more direct experience with Waterloo and Laurier, FWIW.)

There's a bit of a cultural difference here, rockymountaindem. The Canadian "big" schools are incredibly rigorous with undergrads. Their students have been prepared much differently through high school and are going to approach undergraduate higher education in a different way than American students. I'm assuming you're an Ontarian, and if so you likely went through Grade 13, which American students don't have, nor do Ontarian students now. Assuming this is the case, you started university a little older, a little more focused, and a little more mature than American students, who graduate after grade twelve.

The difference between 18 and 19 is pretty vast, and the grade 13-ers tended to start in higher education at 19, meaning they had an extra year to think about where they wanted their life to go. The student-professor relationship therefore tends to be a little more mature (because the students are more focused) and there is a greater expectation that students be able to defend their arguments the second they set foot on a university campus. Here in the States we expect people at the beginning of their education not to be able to defend their arguments, based on prior experience with first- and second-year students, and we expect to have to teach them how to do so. There's always a little thrill when a freshman can develop and defend a cogent argument because it's not a terribly common occurrence.

Regardless of where you live/what your educational experience has been, however, professors should be willing to accept that their TAs may have goofed and that their undergrads may be in the right.

The assumption that I, as well, apparently, as the American profs that have responded to this thread, have been operating under is that the students in question are poorer students who want a pass either because they tried hard, because something awful happened to them this semester (take an incomplete, for Pete's sake), or because Dad's a big donor to the university. That kind of thing. We deal with people like this on a regular basis, and it is just flat-out frustrating. The "I tried so hard" or "I spend a zillion hours" crowd, when said crowd has turned in work that doesn't meet the basic minimum requirements of the assignment, shows no grasp of the question on which the assignment was based, engages the material in a completely superficial fashion, and so on and so forth.

I think you'll find that no-one here on the professor/instructor side has an issue with students challenging grades. It's the motivation for doing so that's at issue. Personally, I encourage students to challenge grades. I just don't think that a student who has not met the requirements of the assignment deserves an A because they spent a lot of time to develop a final product that does not meet those requirements.

FWIW.

[rockymountaindem]

96. Thanks for that reply

Yes, U of T is a very rigorous institution, as I've found out from attending grad school in the US where lots of the upperclassmen undergrads I share classes with are not really in the same field as most students at U of T. That is simply because I think the bar here is lower, even though I'm at a school that is ranked top-50 worldwide (as is U of T). Here, lots of upperclassment think "ZOMG!!! A 20 page paper?" I think "welcome to my sophomore year"... I took six courses that year too (oy).

However, I'm not from Ontario. I'm from Colorado, but I went up there for school anyway. I entered in the double-cohort year, which is to say it was the last year of grade 13, and the first year you could graduate to university from just grade 12, meaning that there were essentially 2 incoming classes. There's no more grade 13 there.

[Political Heretic]

24. That's fine in theory, Proff, except that the market doesn't look at grades like you do.

When going onto post-graduate school, no one sees a "C" as just meeting all the requirements and doing solid work. The see a "C" as meaning you failed to grasp the material.

Some of this depends on how the grading is being done though.

For example does the course have objective measurements? If a student attends all classes, does all assigned work, and on objective measurements such as tests or something, gets 100-90%, and then that student gets a "C" - that's ridiculous.

If on the other hand, a bunch of kids are saying that just because they tried really hard, even if they only got 75% on objective measurements should get them an A, then no - that's lame.

[NeedleCast]

31. It Works Both Ways

When I was in college I had a jackass English Lit professor who openly bragged about how few people would get As. His comment on the first day of class was that basically one or two people will earn As, a handful of you might get Bs and the majority will recieve Cs.

Of course, that led to half the people in the class transfering to different classes. Which is probably what he wanted, less papers to grade.

I agree that the sense of entitlement has gone up, because I see it in the workplace, but at the same time, I don't think there should be a default grade at all, especially in classes like math or science where there are right and wrong answers. English is a little more subjective, but still.

[RandomKoolzip]

35. "Less papers to grade" should be "FEWER papers to grade."

Is this mistake exhibit A?

[Earth_First]

37. LOL!

:rofl:

[NeedleCast]

41. Damn grammar nazis

:P

[Shakespeare]

44. That professor wasn't a jackass; he was 100% correct.

C = average. Statistically speaking, yes, the majority in the class should expect to receive Cs. Those who do above average work would receive Bs, and only truly exceptional work is rewarded with an A.

Good students should see that reality as an incentive to outperform their peers.

[Posteritatis]

105. And those transfer students ran right into the same grade distribution in their new courses

Ever grade a college class, or talk to several people who did? If it's an intro level class they actually are going to average a C most of the time. If it's an upper level or graduate class, things are different because the weeding's happened, but freshmen? Yeah, if I pointed at a random face in a crowd of first-year college students and said "He'll probably have a C in half his courses by the end of the year," I'd more likely than not be right.

There's a difference between a "default grade" and the way things generally turn out. If you think the prof decided at the start of the year what his grade distribution would be, you're probably wrong. I've only actually directly encountered one prof who was explicit about that kind of grade distribution, and that one ran into problems with the department for playing games with grades. Most of the others got similar results without bending time and space to get them, though.

[alarimer]

32. There is an inflated sense of entitlement among a lot of people in this country.

I see it every day. They do not think the rules apply to them.

[antigone382]

63. See post 62, n/t

[RandomKoolzip]

34. I was just talking to one of professors about this....

She says that the nature and the goals of American education changed over the last twenty years or so. She calims that there's been a major shift away from merit-based or acheivement-based grading, and a shift toward grading based on participation, or toward "coddling" students' self-esteem.

As a returing college student, I can't disagree - students everywhere have this weird sense of entitlement, with very little in the way of physical evidence that they've done the work.

[leftyclimber]

51. My department head recently told me not to fail anyone.

ANYONE.

You see, if I give students the Fs they earned, I might hurt their little self-esteems. And if I hurt their little self-esteems, they might decide either to change majors or drop out of school. Either way, we lose headcount, and student retention is EVERYTHING (it affects internal funding distribution and hiring, among other things).

I ignored him and, I'm quite sure, wounded the self-esteems of a few precious little snowflakes in the process.

We also have "rescue classes" -- if students can't pass a particular required class outside the department, we have a thoroughly dumbed-down version of something vaguely related that gets 'em a passing grade.

Student retention, no matter what. Sigh.

[Arkansas Granny]

36. I hate to sound like an old fogey, but when I went to high school, the

A students were the ones who showed up in class, finished their assignments, scored high on the tests and turned in the optional, extra credit assignments. You really had to work for an A.

[WI_DEM]

38. kids do think they are entitled to this and that--computers, cell phones, good grades, you name it.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

39. I used to get parents complaing all the time about grades

why did their Peter get C instead of A and that I must be marking it incorrectly. They have a nerve! If grades are evaluated when they come from England an English C becomes an American B or B+

[cobalt1999]

40. I remember my first college class.

The professor announced he graded on a curve and that on his curve 60% of us would get an "F". If we even wanted a "D" we better work harder than 6 of the 10 people around us.

Almost my entire first 2 years, the university tried to weed people out that way. It was eye opening and good preparation for the real world.

[Tesha]

52. If 60% of the students in a class fail, then that teacher is a *FAILURE*.

The only excuse for that sort of performance would be if the admitted
students were grossly unqualified to be taking that class.

Tesha

[Xithras]

66. ANY teacher that grades on a curve is a failure.

If you had a classroom full of Steven Hawking's, why would any decent professor or teacher fail an Einstein simply because he wasn't as smart? If you have a classroom full of George Bush's, what teacher would give an A to Moran Man simply because he was a little brighter than the rest?

Grades should ALWAYS be awarded in proportion to the assigned work, and not relative to the performance of other students. I don't know of ANY teachers or professors at any level who still use grade curves for any binding assignments. I do offer an extra credit assignment or two that are scored on a curve, but those aren't required and (more importantly) there is no "failing" grade...some students simply get more points than others.

[Nevernose]

94. I disagree, to a point

You've painted a very black and white portrait of grade curving; I'd argue that it usually more situational than that. If most of the students do well overall, but most also miss question 18, then perhaps question 18 needs to be looked at. Was the question written properly? Did I teach that as well as I could have? The same goes for written assignments. If the students seem to be understanding the information and diligent in their work ethic, yet they all make the same mistake, a reevaluation of the assignment on the part of the instructor is in order. Were the written and/or verbal instructions clear?

We do make mistakes, and we do need to avoid the temptation to be heavy-handed or arrogant.

This is one of my biggest beefs with college professors. I've yet to meet one who didn't know her subject matter, yet most of them know very little about education. Being educated is not the same as being an educator. Too many of them are hired to teach with absolutely no training in how to teach. The best professors I ever had are the ones who'd taught either at the secondary level or who'd taken some kind of coursework in higher level education. The ones with fifty years of hands-on experience and the ones for whom pedagogy come naturally are a rare occurrence.

(For the record, I and my grandparents are/were high school teachers, and my parents are/were college professors. Education is pretty much the major staple of out conversation)

[cobalt1999]

89. I think he was just a tenured bitter man

However, you didn't ever rest on your laurels in that class.

[Posteritatis]

46. One of my profs was flaming death for all students..

I started university in '99 (well, technically 2000 due to illness) and kept coming back to his courses. He taught intro political science (very well) at the freshman level, and courses on terrorism, espionage and political violence at the upper levels (equally well). On average, between half and a third of his students passed his courses; one or two per course per term would somehow manage an A. Several books per course per term, often quite phonebookian, and the exams were 'nicely' designed to take exactly the length of the exam period to complete and not a minute more or less. He was open about his political views - he was a small-C conservative for the most part - but also utterly scrupulous about keeping his own views seperate from the material and the grades. You got a grade on one of his assignments or tests and you knew for certain that That Was The Grade You Deserved.

The neat thing, though? Even the students who bombed his courses loved them. Knew a few people who'd flunked his intro polisci course, but did alright elsewhere in their program, who came back to his upper level courses knowing they were toast anyway but not caring because they were gonna get worked over with the education bat but good.

If a good student went into one of his courses and walked away with a D (or, say, a B if they were a four-pointer student, or whatever), they'd be all cocky and proud about it because they knew they earned that grade goddammit. I've had courses that kicked my brain's ass like that before (and tended to do well on them regardless; I was really damned lucky with professors and HS teachers and know who to blame for my GPA being as good as it was), but I was always struck by the fact that just about everyone left every class, even the ones where they got their dismal, dismal grade returns, all buzzing and enthusiastic about the material. Never saw someone even think about challenging his grades, either; he didn't give much on them in terms of comments but was always willing to go over them with a fine-tooth-comb on an individual basis if someone wanted more explanation.

That school's going to lose big when he retires.

[dana_b]

80. I've had one teacher like that

a high school teacher who taught government and sociology. I loved that guy!! it was a lot of work but I learned more in that one class then probably all my other classes put together.

[Posteritatis]

84. I had a bunch like that

As I said, I was pretty damned lucky. I had eight or nine with teaching-fu levels at or near that kind of absurdity.

A few years ago I was doing some work on the provincial high school curriculum. In one of the status meetings about it, I took some flak from the board people for it not adhering well enough to the curriculum. They mentioned that since I went to high school here under the same curriculum as the one I was updating I should've been familiar with it, and asked who my HS history teachers were. I mentioned the two names and they basically went "...Oh. Oh! Yeah, you're fine then."

Turns out they were both regarded in the province highly enough as teachers that they were given an unofficial pass on needing to adhere to the curriculum. The board just assumed they'd cover it and much more besides without overwhelming their students. The eleventh-grade teacher, I found out a few years later, was actually teaching university-level stuff with only minor changes to take the school library into account; my first history prof when I got to university turns out to have been his favorite prof, and his global history course was very similar to the one I had in eleventh grade. I got to take the last class that guy taught before retirement, too, which was an asskickingly intense postwar European history seminar.

Rounding out the set was probably my Roman history prof, who had this weird ability to know how well a student should be doing and somehow compel them to perform at that level. If a student with a D average showed up in one of her classes and she figured he should be an A student, the student would leave her course getting As in other peoples' courses in the future. That one was kind of an interesting opposite to the general idea of the thread; instead of the students having a grade they feel they deserve and demanding it, she had a grade she felt the student could earn and got them to do so.

[leftyclimber]

82. I had a Poli Sci professor who made me (and many other students) cry

because he was so brutally hard.

He is now the outside committee member for my dissertation.

[tammywammy]

48. The worst class I ever had was World Lit

I had already read most of the pieces we read in this class. I attended every lecture and every little extra tutoring he offered. I think only a couple of people passed his class. You know why? He had unbelievably hard exams. In "Odsseus", who said "this line" and it would be an obscure minor character.

The worst part is I truly did understand the material, but all the exams were like that, multiple choice or fill in the blank. What pissed me off most was that he kept saying we were going to have to do a couple of essays (and I could have really proved to him I understood the material) and I asked and asked when they were going to be (they were on the syllabus) and we never had them.

I took the course at a community college that next summer and there were a couple of other people that had failed it in the same class with me.


I never countered that my grade should have been higher, I was clearly doing poorly on the exams. I was mad that the lack of an essay left me with no way to prove to him I understood everything.

[ieoeja]

50. Almost missed graduating college on time for just the opposite reason.

Showed up the first day, got the syllabus then showed up and aced every test without attending a single classroom session in between. Showed up the last day of class knowing instructors often have the final the last day of regular class instead of during finals week. Sure enough, the final was that day.

The teacher handed me the final and said, "oh, by the way, we had a quiz every Friday. Since you didn't bother showing up and got a zero on all of those, you must get a perfect score on the final exam just to pass this class."

I smiled, shrugged and said, "that's because I am not the slightest bit interested in learning French. But it is an archaic requirement for a Comp Sci degree. So here I am! And if I miss graduating on time, I'll just have to come back for this one class."

I had just survived an attempt to throw me out of college for embezzlement with a "trial" in which the accuser was also my appointed "defense counsel" and the prosecutor was the judge. The irony of then being failed by the French teacher struck me as quite amusing.

I then whipped through the final as fast as I could then ran across campus to wake up another student in the exact same boat but whose class was immediately after mine.

Except he had already screwed up and had to come back for another class. So he just rolled over and went back to sleep.

Don't know if I got the perfect score, or if the instructor saw no point in having me return to waste her time next year.

[donco6]

53. There's a difference between doing everything, and doing everything well.

Assignments are just assignments. The quality of the work determines the grade. There should be a clear rubric for determining what quality is required for an A. It's not that complicated, but college types often try to slide by with subjective grading structures. You can't do that in my school - parents will be all over your ass to show why Johnny Angel got a B. So you whip out the rubric, compare the paper and voila! Proof.

[wickerwoman]

55. I had a student storm out of my office because I gave her a B+

It was the last paper of the semester and she had to get an A on it to get an A in the class. She never once came to my office hours except to discuss the last paper and I gave her some suggestions for how to improve it. Her final paper was a B paper (in grade review I was told that the B was generous) and I gave her a B+.

She was furious and stormed out of my office and then challenged the grade (which was changed to a B.... whoops.) She sent me an e-mail saying that she had come to my office on the last paper (never mind the five papers before that when she obviously couldn't be bothered) and done what I said. What could I say but "yes, you did what I said but you didn't do it very well... maybe if you had started doing it before the last paper you would have had time to improve more" Welcome to life kid.

Clearly she felt that I wasn't a very good teacher because I couldn't get her to an A by the end of the class. I had so many students who bitched endlessly that they couldn't achieve because the readings weren't interesting or the assignments didn't stimulate them. My standard line was "Nothing is boring unless you're a boring person." An A student can be interested in anything and can turn even a crappy assignment into an interesting project. Too bad you've been puffed up by years of high school grade inflation to believe you're an A student when you aren't.

[TwixVoy]

56. I see this attitude

with the new college grads at work. VERY strong attiude like this.... they usually get a bloody nose when they realize it doesn't work this way in the work place.

[seabeyond]

57. i was a bit different. i figured i earned the grade from work and homework, not from attendence

high school and college, being anti social, i had a hard time going to class, but all the stuff was given to us to study, so i would do the homework, do the tests and get the grades of A or B and they would drop my grade, lol, cause i wasnt in attendence.

ah well

[SoCalDem]

58. Starts with pee-wee sports.. all kids get a trophy..first to last

and with parents who raise their children as if they can do no wrong, and the sun shines out of their asses..

All kids are different and all kids screw up..and they need to be TAUGHT that by their parents.. parents who run to the first grade teacher (and every one that follows) and complain about every perceived slight by the teacher, toward their little angel, only teaches the child that they are wonderful, and the teachers can always be made to back down..

Teachers should not be in charge of "self-esteem awareness".. They can only set the stage to TEACH the kids.. A teacher with 5 classes a day, with 30 each, is in charge of 150 kids a day.. They should be putting the learning opportunity out there like a buffet, but ultimately it's up to the kids and their parents to see that the kids get the veggies & salad..and do not spend the day at the dessert table..

Most kids bore easily (especially these days) and most do not like to study, but those things are responsibilities of the kid and the parents..

It's sad that teachers have been pushed into so many lame policies...like spelling doesn't matter, or that details are not all that important..and that kids are so "special", that you dare not criticize or correct them..

Are we surprised that so many kids think they are so much smarter than they are?

[antigone382]

64. Please, see post #62.

I'm sure you don't intend it as such, but "grading based on self-esteem" is a frequently bandied right-wing talking point.

I have a close friend who truly put every available effort into her work in a particular course, went above and beyond the requirements of every assignment, and aced every test, only to receive a "C" on every essay she wrote because the professor refused to acknowledge that curly blonde hair and a large cup-size did not equal intellectual laziness (despite her grasp of the material he treated her with a condescension and disregard that he did not extend to the other members of the class). Eventually she started challenging the grades he gave her, and succeeded a few times. Believe it or not, prejudice and personal taste can play a significant role in the grades that the human beings called professors give their students, and vigorously challenging those grades when this appears to be the case the only recourse we have.

[tammywammy]

67. Well then there's a distinct difference between her

Since she obviously grasped the material in that she was getting high marks on exams. Then those grades should be challenged. But I see it at the university I go to, where students don't attend class and then want to whine because they're failing.

[antigone382]

70. There have always been those kinds of students...

...but unless you are immediately connected to a particular situation, how do you know whether or not a student is justified in questioning a grade? The professor is under no obligation to actually change the grade, but he or she might explain what would be necessary to achieve more than a "C" if the student clearly wants to excel, but is unsure of what the professor expects of them.

[tammywammy]

72. Communication with the professor is key

I missed class yesterday morning, because I had a flat tire. Thankfully I didn't miss a quiz or anything, but I contacted the professor after the fact to ask what was discussed. But then I go to a small private university (around 600 students) and the professors really get to know you one on one anyways.

Very different than the much much larger university I went to before, where the world lit professor gave stupid exams "who said this line? LOL Communication is strongly encouraged here. Teachers want students to pass and do well.

[leftyclimber]

75. I'm at a monster-big land-grant university

and I'm still not going to ding someone for getting a flat on the way to class. That's unfair, because life happens to students the same way it happens to anyone else.

I want my students to do well, but ultimately it's up to them to do so. I can't go to their dorm rooms and make sure they're doing their homework, but I can and do spend time in office hours clarifying points that folks need help with, and I encourage them to visit me and to let me know when they need help.

Hopefully situations like the one you experienced yesterday, however, aren't a case of school size (although my classes are generally 50 or fewer students, not those big hurkin' 600-student survey classes). Regardless of where I teach, I encourage my students to be proactive and get notes from someone in class who is a good note-taker first, because learning to be (a) proactive and (b) responsible for one's own education to the degree *appropriate for one's level in school* are skills that will make the student more competitive in the workforce. If the student has questions after that I hope they would (because I can't make them do this) spend time visiting me during office hours or to make an appointment, at which point I am thrilled to help them.

OTOH, I once sent entire class home because only two students had done the reading and the other students were hoping someone else would carry their water. It cuts both ways -- both students and instructors need to keep up their ends of the bargain.

While sometimes "who said what" questions are important (it's all about context -- sometimes it's important and sometimes it isn't), the "what color was the man's hat on page 72" questions as a judge of how much people are learning are bullshit whether you're at a big school or a little one.

It sounds like you may have had a bad experience at the big uni you attended. I went to an enormous undergrad school and had an incredible experience, but it's simply not for everyone. It sounds like the more intimate setting suits you better.

[xocet]

79. A Tangential Aside...

As an undergraduate, I was acquainted with a female student who was in one of my major classes. The professor all but directly told her that women had no place in this field of study and that she had no place in the field. Ironically, she was hired within the last five years by this very same university to be a professor in this "forbidden" field of study. The older, sexist professor had many years earlier retired. However, I have always thought that her triumph over his attitude was admirable.

Here is to her perseverance!

[leftyclimber]

81. Good for her.

Women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) face harrassment and discrimination on levels that would seem incomprehensible to folks in the rest of the world. Assholes like Larry Summers point to the small number of women in those fields as evidence that women must not be good at math and science, but the fact of the matter is that STEM is an area that is a boys' club and women are for the most part driven out.

OTOH, fields with large number of women Ph.D.s (psychology, sociology) are considered "feminized" and have seen smaller increases in pay and sometimes pay decreases as women have come to dominate in the field.

I hate walking into the engineering building on campus (sometimes I have classes there). I get leered at and it's creepy, especially considering that I'm old enough to be these guys' mom.

Your friend is brave, strong, and doing a proud thing. I send mad props to her.

[RoyGBiv]

85. Let's try another angle ...

I was reading through some essays just a few hours ago and came across one written by a student who does not seem to have passed 6th grade English. I could detail the litany of problems with this paper, but that should say enough, and it's not hyperbole by much. I frankly do not know how this person managed to graduate high school and am certain he has either not yet taken a composition course or has and has failed it. I do not know if the student answered the question because I could not gather any coherent meaning out of the words written.

The odd thing is that this person also scores very highly on multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank exams, which are a requirement of the department. Rather, it would be odd if this sort of thing did not happen frequently. This was an extreme case, but variations on this theme occur in every class every professor teaches. The student does very well on one type of learning measurement and does very poorly on another. Invariably, the more outspoken among these students will complain when they receive that low grade, very often accusing the professor of bias.

When this student complains of the low score on this exam -- and he will -- he will accuse the professor of being biased against him because his professor is a flaming liberal, and he is an outspoken conservative. He may well further attempt to claim that the answer he thought he gave was actually correct but that the professor marked it incorrect because of this political bias. (Clearly a modern political bias changes the facts of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.) He will hold up his scores so far on the weekly exams as proof that he knows the material and that the professor is simply using the subjective grading involved in the essay to bring down his overall grade because he is disliked.

I've watched this happen more times than I care to count.

That said, the problem here is not challenging the grade. The professors I know often welcome such challenges (some have enormous egos and do not, I will grant), but only when the student presents the challenge in a intelligent, polite, and professional manner. If a student walks into that office with a chip on his or her shoulder assuming bias, it will most likely show through no matter what precise words are used in the challenge. However, in those rare cases when a student shows that he or she truly has mastered the material or at least understands it better than their score on that test would indicate, these professors have been known to increase the grade. At the very least they have offered the student clear instructions on how to do better on the next exam, sometimes even offering extra credit opportunities to make up for deficiencies on the previous tests.

If what you say about your friend is presented as a precise reflection of the truth, up to and including the professor's bias due to your friend's physical appearance, then this is a matter that needs to be taken higher than simply that professor's office. That's the first step, but you here are charging sexism, which is an offense that can and should be met with disciplinary action.

I don't know your friend's circumstances other than what you say, so I will not pretend to judge. As the subject line indicates, I am merely attempting to suggest this matter be examined from more than one perspective. The sad truth is that most students who complain about a grade have no valid reason for doing so, making, rightly or wrongly, the job of the student who does have a valid complaint that much harder. Whatever the circumstances, the student will go much further when approaching these situations diplomatically, which, frankly, most students do not do.

Disclosure: I am not the professor in the above example. I am an assistant. The professor grades essay exams and then has me or someone else read them as a check on her grading. She does this mostly because of the number of challenges she and her fellow professors receive. The tendency among many is to grade too leniently in order to avoid the stream of students in the office with complaints. In those few cases in which I have not agreed with a grade, I have often argued for one that is lower. The work I see in many of these students is truly poor, and unfortunately, they simply do not realize it and will refuse to accept it.

As stated elsewhere, communication is the key, but one must remember that genuine communication goes in more than one direction. Very often, professors have a legitimate reason for giving the grade they give.

[sofa king]

83. Cue the Futurama joke:

"The worst grade imaginable: an A minus minus."

[NJCher]

86. alternative approaches to assessment in courses

All this is true (entitlement), but as a professor, one has a great deal of latitude in how the course is conducted.

Yes, I have caught more than my share of grief for insisting students adhere to standards. This has led to some different ways of conducting my courses.

What I do now is make them work their @$#es off to get their grade. For example, in one class, they have to write out the point of each paragraph in the book. In exchange, they don't have to take a test.

In writing out the point of each paragraph, they have to discern what the point is. They have to think.

To hell with obscure questions about who said what. To me, that is not important.

In another situation, they have to fill out a workbook. That way I know they read the text. If they fill out the workbook correctly, I will give them 20 points of "A" toward their grade. After all, reading a textbook cover-to-cover is no easy feat and is well worth the 20 points if they prove they understand the material with their answers.

In addition, I let them assess themselves in certain situations. It is a wonder to behold: they can be very tough on themselves.

Yet another way I've constructed my courses is to make it so that excuses don't count. You either turn in your work on time or you don't. There is no accepting late assignments. I don't listen to any excuses.




Cher

[rucky]

87. They could always get a job as a Bond Analyst for Moody's

[lonestarnot]

91. A professor who says "gotten." Where does he profess? Omcumskokee?

[tjwash]

95. Tell 'em to get used to being average....if they are even that.

[BlooInBloo]

97. It's even better when they get their idiot parents to come in and bitch.

[FloridaJudy]

98. “My grades aren’t as high as I think they should be...

...so what do I need to do to bring them up?"

That almost always worked for me. I suspect it still would for most students. Approach the teacher politely, and then follow through.

Simple, though not always easy - I lost count of the papers and projects I had to do for that extra credit.

[alcibiades_mystery]

99. I don't give grades

I record deeds.

:-)

[ecstatic]

100. That prof sounds like an asshole

College is just a game. It's full of information we'll most likely never see again. Many students learn how to play the game and it's not fair for a prof to mess things up in the final hour just to prove a point. I happen to think that minimum effort deserves a C and full effort and completion of assignments (and good test scores) should equal an A.

[Posteritatis]

104. Behold! The Modern Entitled Undergraduate! (nt)

[Initech]

101. I had a teacher I used to constantly dispute grades with.

It was an algebra class and the jackass had literally 1,000 things that he needed to have put on the heading of the paper, and if one was even slightly off (seriously, he REQUIRED a fucking comma between the last and first names), he'd completely discredit the entire paper despite me having 100% correct answers. That still angers me every time I think about it.