<p>Ahhh, grade grubbing seems to be alive and well. Most profs have little sympathy.</p>
<p>news:</a> University students not shy about asking profs to reconsider grades</p>
<p>Thats just wrong… If you want good grades you have to work for and earn them yourself. The students shouldn’t be buging the professors about reconsideration, cause they only have themselves to blame for the bad grade…</p>
<p>I went through this stuff when I was a college prof. My H still has to deal with it. I loved being a professor, but looking back, I’m glad to have moved on so I don’t have to deal with this type of tripe. Those students are going to have a big surprise when they enter the work world – if they’re even able to get jobs in today’s economy. </p>
<p>"Sure, effort is good. But at this rung of the education ladder it’s somewhat surprising all students don’t realize it’s the results that matter. So in an effort to clarify expectations, educators across the UW campus are taking steps to nip potential misunderstandings in the bud, starting with freshman orientation. Additionally, professors are seeking to avoid potential grade disputes by spelling out in class syllabi and on their websites what is expected of students and how grades are determined. Still others are using lecture time early in the semester to further outline expectations.</p>
<p>Wren Singer, director of UW-Madison’s Center for the First-Year Experience, which helps facilitate students’ transition to college, has been interviewing faculty who teach freshman classes about these issues. Many, she says, have had students who have challenged their grades. Singer says it’s time to refocus attention on the real goals of a university education: “I think it’s important to turn the tide on how students view learning and how they view higher education.”</p>
<p>The study by the Cal-Irvine researchers found that nearly 41 percent of students thought they deserved at least a grade of B if they completed most of the reading for a class, and more than a third believed they deserved at least a B for simply attending most classes."</p>
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<p>When I was a student, several professors simply stated in the first class of the term, “Your grade is your grade. Unless you think I’ve made a calculation error, don’t ask me to change it.” When you did that, did students still ask you to change their grades?</p>
<p>The following article come to mind, while reading this thread.</p>
<p>[The</a> Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids – New York Magazine](<a href=“http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/]The”>The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine - Nymag)</p>
<p>“When I was a student, several professors simply stated in the first class of the term, “Your grade is your grade. Unless you think I’ve made a calculation error, don’t ask me to change it.” When you did that, did students still ask you to change their grades?”</p>
<p>Some did. I didn’t change their grades, but unfortunately, the department chair was a pushover and would change grades behind professors’ backs.</p>
<p>One major example was a student who was in a class of mine that required her to get published. This was in a journalism class. The class offered plenty of help for students to get published, but this student did nothing. Absolutely nothing. She needed the class to graduate. Her way of trying to pass the class was to send me a graduation announcement, and have her sister call me telling me how the entire family was planning to come to the girl’s graduation.</p>
<p>I still flunked her, but the department chair changed her grade, so she graduated.</p>
<p>As I said, I don’t miss teaching. </p>
<p>I do hear back from students whom didn’t know to complain to the department chair about my grades. They took my course over and later thanked me. In fact, some volunteered after graduation to return to the class and tell the students why the class – and having a portfolio of published articles – would be useful to them.</p>
<p>The most interesting part of the article are in the comments’ section:</p>
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<p>There’s a word for that. I won’t say it out loud, but it rhymes with “schmincredibly schmunethical”. So sad that an administrator would undermine an educator like that.</p>
<p>Unfortunately UW professor does not work at a LAC and doesn’t realize that the UW is a research institution that happens to teach undergraduates and a lot of them. If you move money from research to instruction, guess what??? Your research suffers and the quality of the faculty will decline. </p>
<p>If you have one cow you have a choice – milk or steak.</p>
<p>If he wants a more satisfying teaching experience, s/he should go work at a LAC where teaching is the focus and research is not as important.</p>
<p>I once had a long conversation with a professor at Emory who said he never refuses to reconsider a grade—but what he does is take a clean copy of the paper in question and grades it over again from scratch, and the grade might be higher or lower…and the student must agree in writing to take whatever grade is earned on the regrading. A lot of students change their minds.</p>
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<p>Yes, this. I’ll also add that professors who attempt to not abide by their own syllabus comfuse the issue further. The only time I’ve gone to the Dean to change a grade was when my flakey professor let the class vote the week before the final to change how the final grade was formulated. There was nothing in the syllabus about voting.</p>
<p>I have had two teachers thus far that changed mid-quarter how she did grades. One was my English 1 teacher who let students take their two lowest graded tests and retake then then she would average the two tests and give a grade. I had one low test score (68) but opted not to retake.</p>
<p>My next one was my math teacher last quarter. Your lowest test score would be replaced by your final test if you made a higher score on it. If you were already passing the or all your tests were high and failed the final she did something I never understood that part. I had a 92 average before the final and passed the final with an 80 or 88 and walked out with a 92 average.</p>
<p>^ :eek: That was a math teacher?</p>
<p>Geek mom, The professor who pulled the “let’s put this to a vote” stunt was a Professor of Education teaching a course on that covered things like building lesson plans. This man’s mantra was “be consistant.” Oy!</p>
<p>Xiggi will be glad (;-0)to know they are working on hiring 75 more faculty in the College of Liberal Arts. That’s about a 10% boost.</p>
<p>[About</a> the Madison Initiative Madison Initiative for Undergraduates](<a href=“http://madisoninitiative.wisc.edu/about/]About”>http://madisoninitiative.wisc.edu/about/)</p>
<p>I see this reflected so much on CC, esp. with SAT scores. So many kids ask about the best way to earn top scores or how to turn their 1700 into a 2250+. I’m sorry, but the SAT is graded on a percentile. You can’t have everyone in the top percentile. </p>
<p>Some of the SAT is about working to know the things on the test, work efficiently, and adjust your thinking to the right way. But it seems that so many kids think that if they put in a summer or a year of non-stop study, they deserve to get their ideal score. It just doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>I also see it in responses to chance threads. “Oh, just get a 4.0 first semester senior year/junior year and you’ll do well.” 1)This has the presumption that a student has simply been slacking off all of high school, and 2) can pull an apparently “mediocre” GPA to something extraordinary with just some extraordinary amount of work. Sometimes it’s true. Often, it just isn’t.</p>
<p>I had a genetics professor who said that if you felt a mistake had been made you could appeal the number of points you got on a particular question on the exam, but that he reserved the right to then regrade the entire exam to correct any other “mistakes” that just might have been made in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>This tended to minimize appeals. It had to be open and shut in your favor before you would dare approach him with a question over your grade.</p>
<p>"One major example was a student who was in a class of mine that required her to get published. This was in a journalism class. The class offered plenty of help for students to get published, but this student did nothing. Absolutely nothing. She needed the class to graduate. Her way of trying to pass the class was to send me a graduation announcement, and have her sister call me telling me how the entire family was planning to come to the girl’s graduation.</p>
<p>I still flunked her, but the department chair changed her grade, so she graduated."</p>
<p>If I recall correctly you taught at Harvard, right?</p>
<p>No, I didn’t teach at Harvard, I graduated from Harvard. I’ve taught second and third tier public universities.</p>
<p>NSM - thank you so much for insisting (or trying to ) that your journalism students get published. I have been in the position of hiring many journalists over the last couple of decades and those with no published work stand little chance in the professional world even if they have stellar grades and a diploma.</p>