Pressure to Please Students – It’s All Over the Place

Dan Laroque responded (on the WSJ site)to my previous post.  I think it is important because, I have only taught at 3 places.  From that and newspaper articles, books, and data, I deduce behavior elsewhere.  His comment adds to our understanding.

Here it is.

“By the time I retired I was fully disgusted with fake teaching.  I had colleagues who refused to flunk anyone even when I called them on it.  I recall one colleague morally upset with himself. “But, I can’t flunk 75% of the class!”  The students pretty much knew that if they all did badly they’d all pass.  The professors “have to ” pass them or face retribution for bad teaching from dept heads.  I saw this time and time again over the past 15 years.

An ivy league degree is just as worthless as a degree from Podunk U. One of my sons is a self-made computer science expert.  He has found it hard to find decent people be they US citizens or foreign.  He has turned down as many as 50 applicants for everyone he finally takes because most are worthless at programming or show no creative skills at all.  Another issue is millennial delusional behavior that they are owed a job they did not earn. Some his company thought might be good were let go after less than a year.”