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Memorandum
To:
Dr. B. I. Duce
From: Professor G.
Fawkes
Date: Tomorrow
Dear
Ben,
As
you know, I have enjoyed our conversations about academic affairs in the
past. We seemed to share a
common viewpoint about the importance of maintaining standards in the
face of growing grade inflation in our profession. So I must say I was
taken aback by your stern line of questioning about my respectable
course completion rates at my post-tenure review “interview.”
You
know me well as an innovative, highly-skilled, dedicated professor with
a “medium-tough but very fair” reputation with the students. Despite
holding the line on appropriate academic standards, my peer and student
evaluations are overwhelmingly favorable. Even students with lower
grades have praised my teaching effectiveness. Yet, you have asked me
for a plan of action to improve my completion rates. Ok, then, please
see my three-point plan below.
1. I
will run an item analysis on all my exams. Any question that more than
10% of the students answer wrong will be replaced by a Blooms Taxonomy
Level 1 True/False question in future renderings of the exam. Even the
students who learned nothing should have a 50-50 chance of getting such
questions right. Maybe better if they bring their lucky coin.
2. I
will refuse to grant late withdrawals in the future. I don’t care if it
is an A-student who was in a coma for the last half of the semester.
Even if it destroys his GPA, the D he will earn (see #3 below) will
still count as successful completion for me. After all, it has been made
clear that completion rates are #1, right?
3. I
plan to adopt the following grading scale:
I
believe this plan will increase my completion rates to something
approaching 100%. You should see a similar increase in graduation rates
too. I have shared this plan with other high-quality educators at the
college who are sick of being judged by completion rates instead of
their excellent teaching skills. Professors who will be up for tenure,
promotion, or post-tenure review in the next few years (which is,
essentially, everyone) are all enthusiastic about implementing this
plan.
Oh,
and, no worries about the fact that our past graduating classes were
highly successful, and subsequent ones will be an embarrassment to our
institution. By the time everyone out there realizes we’ve become a
diploma mill, you will have moved on to bigger and “better” things at a
bigger and “better” institution, and I will be retired.
Thank you for your leadership and never-ending commitment to academic
integrity.
(In)Sincerely
Yours,
Guy |