"Professors are so petty because the stakes are so low." -an old academic aphorism
I remember a quarter of a century ago, in my first year of full-time teaching as an instructor in the last year of my doctoral program, sitting in a faculty meeting where the topic of the day was essentially "Can we increase the number of credits per class so we don't have to teach as many classes?" While the infinite bounds of self-interest never cease to amaze, this was nonetheless an eye-opener to the priorities of too many academics.
It is not surprising to encounter the "student as annoyance" mentality at research institutions, but you'd like to think that those at teaching schools are a bit more responsible, if not altruistic. Today I cancelled one class and added another for the upcoming semester. Hardly an unusual activity for a department chair, and one that ultimately will be appreciated by students who are in a bind and need the class to graduate. What students could not see were the myriad of machinations that finally led to this solution for having too many students for too few seats. The logical solution would have been to simply add a few more students- probably not more than three- to the existing four sections, and problem solved. In fact, the instructor for one of the sections was willing to take up to five more, but the instructor for the other three sections was not. The rationale given, as expressed in a faculty meeting, was that raising the number of students would lower the quality of instruction. While this truism likely applies to almost every class, the thinly veiled argument cloaked the real issue that even a minimal increment in workload, despite being of great benefit to students, would require a marginal increase in effort from the instructor. The cloistered response, then, was students be da--ed if it causes me any more work, but let me hide this in the hypocrisy of defending student learning (hardly suprising from a faculty member who will not return student phone calls, though).
Some things never change.
I remember a quarter of a century ago, in my first year of full-time teaching as an instructor in the last year of my doctoral program, sitting in a faculty meeting where the topic of the day was essentially "Can we increase the number of credits per class so we don't have to teach as many classes?" While the infinite bounds of self-interest never cease to amaze, this was nonetheless an eye-opener to the priorities of too many academics.
It is not surprising to encounter the "student as annoyance" mentality at research institutions, but you'd like to think that those at teaching schools are a bit more responsible, if not altruistic. Today I cancelled one class and added another for the upcoming semester. Hardly an unusual activity for a department chair, and one that ultimately will be appreciated by students who are in a bind and need the class to graduate. What students could not see were the myriad of machinations that finally led to this solution for having too many students for too few seats. The logical solution would have been to simply add a few more students- probably not more than three- to the existing four sections, and problem solved. In fact, the instructor for one of the sections was willing to take up to five more, but the instructor for the other three sections was not. The rationale given, as expressed in a faculty meeting, was that raising the number of students would lower the quality of instruction. While this truism likely applies to almost every class, the thinly veiled argument cloaked the real issue that even a minimal increment in workload, despite being of great benefit to students, would require a marginal increase in effort from the instructor. The cloistered response, then, was students be da--ed if it causes me any more work, but let me hide this in the hypocrisy of defending student learning (hardly suprising from a faculty member who will not return student phone calls, though).
Some things never change.
posted by Dead Man Blogging at
11:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home