A (moderately) Easy Way to Alleviate some of the Peculiar Dynamics of College Teaching

One of the first things that bother new college faculty is that, for the first few weeks of class, things are going swimmingly; the students are eager to learn, and they believe, for the most part, that the teacher is on their side; then, one awful day, it is time to administer a test.  This is where, in many cases, things begin to go downhill.  The teacher --in the view of the students, of course, not in actual fact-- becomes the Enemy, the Giver of Grades, the Dispenser of Red Ink.

It is difficult, but not impossible, to recover from this setback.  But it is a setback that returns intermittently, especially in the sciences, because there is a greater proportion of what might be called mechanics in the sciences: standard skills that must be mastered by the student, and verified by the instructor, which are crucial to progress, even within each course, and certainly for subsequent courses.

People familiar only with US education have lived with this contradiction all their lives --or at least, the portion of their lives that they remember.  The teacher is both the Coach, and the Examiner.  But in grade school, the Examiner aspect is downplayed, and most kids remember their grade school teachers with some degree of fondness.  In recent times, teachers have been confronted with external examinations, which are outside the ability of the teachers to control, so the teachers (who have been able to set their own tests thus far) are completely discombobulated with the fact that the students are no longer able to rely on the benevolence of the teacher to adjust their grades.  But look on the bright side: the teacher is now firmly in the position of the Coach, and not the Examiner.

In College, however, the tension between the teacher's role as Coach and Examiner persists, and results in students regarding the friendly advances of their instructors as being two-faced.  Here is old professor C- trying to schmooze me again.  And it is no surprise.  (The negative stereotype of the slime-ball professor is probably reinforced at home, especially by parents who struggled in college, and are still paying their student loans!)

There are two, entirely different, solutions.  I will describe the easier, more innovative solution first, and the more traditional solution later.

Solution One.  Make it easier for the student to raise his or her grade, by repeating the course.  At present, my school like most schools, charges the full tuition rate for a student who repeats a course, despite the fact that they've already made their money from the poor kid the first time around.  This certainly has the desirable effect of forcing the kid to take the first pass through a course more seriously.  But having to pay anything for a repeated course is deterrent enough, in my humble opinion.  Why not allow any student to repeat a course for a fraction of the cost, or even for free?  Why not allow better students to carry a repeated course as an overload (that is, as extra credits, beyond the usual full credit load)?  And why not completely erase the unsuccessful earlier attempt from the transcript? The only reason for keeping the bad grades on the transcript is to bolster the impression that the school has high academic standards: Look, we give bad grades.  We're awesome.

It seems unnecessary to emphasize the dollars and cents aspect of this idea, but for the sake of the cash-hungry administrators: it is probably more likely that a student will stay in school and complete a degree if repeating courses was made easier, than if a student was thrown out of school for getting below the required course point average to stay in school.  Classes will be larger, if more students repeat courses.  But if students are encouraged to lose weight, more of them can be squeezed into the classrooms.  Lots of things to think about.

Remember, also, that if students are encouraged financially to repeat courses and raise their GPA, the average GPA of the student body will rise, which is always a good thing.  And it is done honestly.  And don't forget the advantage to this system in recruiting.  We need not advertise this program to stronger students, but for students with parents fearful about the success of their offspring, an honest way to improve their chances of success will be very encouraging indeed.  In any case, this simply codifies a discretionary course of action that deans and other administrators could have followed in any case, but codifying it makes it possible to administer the policy more uniformly.

Solution Two.  Have every course final set by an external examiner.  This is an idea used extensively in Europe and many other foreign countries, at least in the past.  This puts the instructor firmly in the role of Coach, which makes it much easier to develop a rapport with the students, and establish a friendly relationship with them.

There's no need to get sentimental about student-faculty relationships, but every teacher knows that some of the most enduring relationships are between faculty and their best students.  The question is: are the relationships strong because the students were strong, or were the students strong because the relationships were?  Why not try to extend your relationship to all your students?  Many's the time I thought a student and I were friends, only to find that the relationship was completely soured by a bad grade.  The easiest thing in the world is not to give any bad grades, and that path of least resistance is the slippery slope that leads to intrusive Assessment, and ultimately government interference in academic standards.  All a student needs, sometimes, is a second chance to ace a course, without it costing an arm and a leg.

Finally, one of the advantages of distance learning is that a student can, in most cases, take a dry run of the course first, and then take the course "for real."  This is a parallel plan to the one I suggest in Solution One: some students just take longer to pick up certain sorts of material.  Unfortunately, administrators are more happy to go whole hog into distance learning than to try more innovative approaches to raising academic achievement, simply because administrators are more focused on marketing than on the services they have been hired to deliver.  But this is America; everything is at the service of the marketers.

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