@dfbdfb Public or private?
@TomSrOfBoston: Public.
@Much2learn: I was being sarcastic. Faculty across the country, particularly at public institutions, are currently under pressure to increase their institutions’ graduation rates. Of course, the simplest way to do this would be to simply pass students through no matter how they actually performed. I don’t think there are many (I would say any, but I expect we’ve got a few bad actors here and there) faculty who would do that, but I don’t know that any of us at non-high-end publics (and, I’m certain, more than a few privates) can deny there’s some pressure to bend over backwards a bit more than is comfortable to “encourage student success” at whatever cost.
And back to the original subject of the thread, there’s been some interesting movement on this:
I don’t think this is behind the Chronicle’s paywall, but in case it is, the teaser that came in the “breaking news” email with it read:
More precisely, the professor (Thane M. Naberhaus) is quoted as saying in email “Hell no…Not going back until [Simon P. Newman]’s gone”.
Well, yes. A lawyer must have told the president that firing a tenured professor without due process would lead to a lawsuit, hence the change. The president’s stance has not changed plus he sent that letter to students’ parents, so…
The president simply needs to go. Seems like a lot of the Board of Trustees needs to resign too.
From IHE about Mount St. Mary’s (highlights added) -
Personally, my favorite aspect of the version of the letter that I saw was that it was signed “Yours in Christ.”
I don’t think so.
Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’… rawhide!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/12/mount-st-marys-president-offers-to-reinstate-faculty-who-were-fired/
^see #202/#203 
for our cynical views
^Absolutely right to question whether “Mr. Bain” will acquiesce to the wishes of those he views are beneath him.
I don’t think he wins this, however.
Something similar happened at Rollins College a couple of years ago. It took a year or so, but the Rollins College president blinked first. Now, Rollins has a superb president.
The sad thing is that early intervention really works. We have an advisor who is very aggressive about that. In his latest report, he says he got faculty alerts on I’d guess 10% of our students. They get help finding tutors and study groups and often advice to drop a class they’re not ready for. We’re already a top 10 community college, so we don’t do it to boost retention numbers. We do it to help kids out.
What Newman has done to this idea is perverse, and his quasi-Rorschach survey is nuts. Does anyone know if they designed that in-house? If there’s research indicating it really identifies kids who need help? Or is it just wishful thinking?
@dfbdfb “I was being sarcastic.”
I understood the sarcasm. My question was about the low graduation rates of the unprepared students.
Do the schools not adequately remediate these students to prepare them for the level of rigor?
I understand that they are behind, but from a first hand perspective, I am wondering, why do you think is it so difficult for schools to remediate them and get most of them up to a functional level?
210 THAT's what you do for struggling students: you organize support, help, guidance, tutoring (mental health counseling if need be, for depression for instance). Congratulations WasatchWriter to you, your colleagues, your administration, and your college!
The difference with Newman’s plan is just glaring.
You’re right: so far, we have no proof of the survey’s validity beside the president’s say-so.
“why do you think is it so difficult for schools to remediate them and get most of them up to a functional level?”
I don’t mean to suggest dfbdfb won’t have a good answer also. I teach at an open admissions community college, so I have similar experiences. Also, half my teaching load is remedial writing.
What people don’t realize is how unprepared a lot of students are. Many read at a third grade level and cannot write a complete sentence. Often its because they didn’t care and the schools passed them along. Often they have learning disabilities that went undiagnosed for too long. Often you have second language interference. To really remediate these kids would virtually mean putting them through the equivalent of high school and middle school. Yeah. Literally 7-10 years of remedial classes to get them ready. Reading, writing, math.
And that assumes they cooperate. They don’t always. I’d guess more than half my remedial kids just don’t care.
MYOS, you’re very kind. I’m very lucky to have excellent colleagues and-- after a long wait – an excellent president. My old one could be Newman’s twin
What @WasatchWriter said. Also, there’s solid evidence that the more remedial courses students take, the less likely they are to complete, in part because they get discouraged and in part simply because it takes extra time and money.
For some students, the goal of a college like mine (and, I presume, @WasatchWriter’s) is less to get them college-educated and more to get them to a level of functional literacy and numeracy. (We can argue about whether that should have happened K–12, but it doesn’t always—and there’s a point where you age out of that system.) At some level, low completion rates are baked into that sort of system.
The college president reinstates the professors he fired.
You can’t un-ring that bell.
ETA
You know, I just hate this story. Newman said stupid stuff. But maybe he had a right to expect confidentiality, given the limited audience. But if he was motivated by retention numbers, that really is something to complain about. I hope that the whistle-blowers exhausted their legitimate means of dissent before going to the paper. But maybe they didn’t. Certainly it’s wrong to fire tenured faculty without due process. But even so, those faculty members should have known they were taking a risk.
It’s just too messy to draw clear lessons from.
Isn’t it illegal to ask students if they have disabilities? Isn’t that just flatly against the law?
If its truly confidential, maybe not. If its not, then yes, a clear violation. As a professor, I have to wait until the student tells me before I can go anywhere near that subject.