

Professor makes his mark, but it costs him his job - mad44
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090206.wprof06/BNStory/National/home

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pchivers
This article reminds of another Canadian university prof named David Noble who
doesn't give grades either. He seems to have found a way to do it without
getting fired though.

 _Giving Up the Grade_ \- David Noble

[http://www.policyalternatives.ca/MonitorIssues/2007/05/Monit...](http://www.policyalternatives.ca/MonitorIssues/2007/05/MonitorIssue1639/)

 _Throughout the 30-odd years of my university teaching career I have always
found ways around grading, primarily by giving all A’s, thereby eliminating
grades de facto, if not de jure. Last year for the first time, after long
bemoaning my “anomalous” practice, York University officials formally
prevailed upon me henceforth to designate my courses “ungraded “ (a pass/fail
option without the fail), thereby taking them off the radar screen and perhaps
unintentionally establishing a promising academic precedent._

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jballanc
As someone intimately involved in the art of assigning grades in a university
setting (I'm a TA), let me let you in on a little secret...

Around 10 years ago, universities across the country awoke to a surprising new
fact: they we're no longer bound by the expectation of being a benefactor of
humanity. No! They were free to become thriving enterprises. And what was the
product they should sell?

Grades

~~~
SapphireSun
Can you elaborate on that? Do people brazenly purchase grades? At my
university, I have to fight damn hard for an A.

~~~
jballanc
Economics involves more than just the exchange of money...

For example: Student X, a member of the sports team (any sport will do), has
been missing classes, not paying attention to the material, and doing poorly
on the assignments. Then, X sleeps through the big exam. X comes to me, saying
that (s)he should still be allowed to take the exam. I send X to the dean, and
not more than 15 min later receive a phone call from the dean: "Couldn't we
just let X take the test?" Me: "X is a poor student, has shown no remorse for
missing the exam, and by all right should fail..." Dean: "Yes, but couldn't we
let X take the exam?"

True story...X did get to take the exam, and got a C in the course.

The school has sold X a grade in exchange for X playing on the team, which
brings revenue in to the school. Even when X isn't an athlete, the school is
exchanging tuition revenue for grades.

...it's a shame, but people were really sweating last time the accreditation
board did their once-in-a-blue-moon review. All the higher-ups wanted to skate
a thin line between remaining accredited and still allowing as many students
to get by with Bs and Cs as possible.

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aaw
If he wants to teach his students that grades "poison our educational
environment", why is the solution to give everyone an A+? He's just using
grades as currency to buy his students' support for his experiment in anarchy.
I wonder how many of them would have still participated in his class if he had
announced on the first day that everyone would get a C, a D, or an F?

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bestes
Good for him. The idea that trying different techniques in education (i.e. Not
giving grades) seems silly. The system will not fall apart. College is not
vocational school, although you can hardly tell the difference. Imagine if
science had a rule: we'll do things the old way so it doesn't cause problems.

~~~
jrockway
_Imagine if science had a rule: we'll do things the old way so it doesn't
cause problems._

I'm pretty sure that's called "engineering".

~~~
tspiteri
No, that is manufacturing. New technologies are developed by engineers. But
then, there is manufacturing engineering, so you may be correct for a subset
of "engineering".

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gaius
The important sentence in that story is _Prof. Rancourt's suspension is the
most serious step in a long series of grievances and conflicts with the
university dating back to 2005_.

Still, even if one-third of his colleagues have complained about him, I doubt
they'll be willing to set the precedent of tenured profs being fired, they'll
strike for him if the union requires it.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Honestly, this is my biggest problem with Unions. I've never had an issue with
them conceptually. For jobs that aren't in high demand it's strategically
foolish not to band together when dealing with an employer.

But for some reason Unions always end up answering to the lowest common
denominator. So you have a group of people who largely want to do their job
well being forced to walk away from that job to defend the idiots who do their
jobs badly.

~~~
rw
You really think this guy is an idiot? Have you attended college, seen what
grades do to those who already have a passion for the topic at hand?

~~~
gaius
I think there's such a thing as choosing your battles.

------
TomOfTTB
I'm not sure arresting him was justified but other than that I agree with the
University.

He might not like grades but they are a basis by which employers judge job
candidates. They represent a skill (hard work among other things) that
employer's value. By doing away with them in his classroom he is compromising
that whole system.

University teachers like this one need to realize that they have two tasks. To
open student's minds AND to ensure they are qualified to function in society.
He's completely ignored the second task and thinks he's a hero for having done
so.

~~~
Jebdm
I'd dispute the statement that good grades are a useful measurement of ability
to function in society. All grades really measure is students' abilities to
get good grades. There are lots of factors that can go into getting a good
grade, especially in courses where the grading process is necessarily
subjective: writing in a style which appeals to the grader, building a
relationship with the grader, studying in an optimal way for taking exams,
being dedicated to your studies, etc.

Parts of this skillset are obviously useful in general. A person who is able
to figure out how to appeal to their audience will do well in many fields.
Some are more tricky; for instance, one might assume that someone who studies
optimally for their exams will be able to figure how to perform other tasks
optimally as well, but this is often not the case. One particularly misleading
thing about grades is that they are often seen as an indicator of how
dedicated/good of a worker students are. This might sometimes be the case;
some students get good grades primarily because they work very hard. But some
students get good grades without much effort, some only work hard because they
have someone driving them (such as their parents), and some do well in an
academic atmosphere but will burn out in a more job-oriented one. The biggest
of these fallacies is that a student with low grades is a poor worker or bad
in their subject; there are students who worked hard but just had a bad
teacher, students who are overworked, students who prioritize certain classes
over others, and students who are disenchanted with academic work but who will
do well in a "real-world" atmosphere".

As an anecdote: I go to a fairly alternative liberal arts school that is
nonetheless highly ranked (not that rankings are good judges of schools, but
here's the US News page:
[http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/items/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/items/9645)
). My school accepts a fair number of students who in high school did not
perform well academically. Many of these students pick up their grades while
here; nearly all of these students are very smart and capable.

The problem with grades is that they fail to provide any breakdown of the
factors which contribute to them, which is the truly useful information. Even
in the cases where a student got all A+'s or all F's, where it seems that the
student is probably overall competent or incompetent respectively, there are
still external motivations which are not taken into account but which are
nonetheless vitally important.

Another big problem with grades is that they fail to take into account
differences between environments, school policies, and graders; that is, even
when grading policies are objective, they differ from place to place but are
compared nonetheless. Different graders grade differently; some may give A's
to everyone who is qualified, while some may give them to only those who are
_most_ qualified. Some of these effects can be damped through normalization,
but usefully normalizing grades seems difficult as well. Imagine trying to
normalize grades between MIT and community college students. Additionally, the
information required to do any significant statistical tricks is often not
avaliable to those who could use it, and those who could use it would probably
not take the time to even if they could.

Finally, I feel like you completely missed the professor's point. (I'm
assuming he believes arguments similar to mine.) Since grades don't provide
signifcant metrics of anything, using them to judge people is both
discriminatory and a bad idea. Thus, the responsible thing to do would be to
get rid of them altogether (or at least reform them so that they actually
measured something). But since he doesn't have the power to do that, he does
the closest thing he can: give everyone the best grade possible. This has
several positive effects: it lessens the potential future discrimination
against his students; it, as you said, "compromis[es] that whole system",
making more obvious how arbitrary it is and hopefully leads to its undoing;
and it (he believes) makes students learn better.

He hasn't ignored the second task at all.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Honestly, though I know you are well meaning, I think you (and hte professor)
missed the point. You (and he) could be completely right about grades. But
It's not his place to do away with a system simply because he believes it to
be ineffective.

In fact, that mentality is nothing short of disasterous.

To give an example, I live about 2 miles from my work. In that 2 miles there
are 9 stop lights. They are timed so that you hit each one. This was done on
purpose to prevent speeding. I feel that's ineffective (they're timed at 45mph
meaning speeders can go 65 mph and get greens).

But I don't run the lights. If he truely feels grades are ineffective he
should lobby his industry and get things officially changed.

~~~
Jebdm
You're comparing apples and oranges. In many cases, it really is a bad idea to
circumvent the current system. But there are a couple of big differences
between traffic lights and school grades.

For one, traffic lights work. When people obey them, they (excepting a faulty
light) don't get into wrecks. They may not be efficient, but they get the job
done.

School grades _don't work_. Because people make comparisons between things
that aren't really comparable, a lot of people get jobs when perhaps they
shouldn't or don't when they should. This is much more like a system where
traffic lights are sometimes all green than ones which are timed in an
annoying way.

What's the right thing to do when traffic lights are malfunctioning this way?
The first thing you should do, obviously, is call the authorities. But what if
the authorities don't believe you? You tell them that the lights are all
green, but they _know_ their system works perfectly.

This is further complicated in the case of grading, because there isn't one
central authority. There are thousands of schools and employers who all work
with this system; getting them all to switch is no mean feat. So let's instead
imagine that every traffic light is independently owned and operated, and that
while the traffic light operators _feel_ like they are all working together,
there are some subtle differences between their algorithms which obviously
lead to screwups.

Since the people who run the traffic lights aren't responding to you, what
should you do? Obviously, for your own safety and the safety of those around
you you should stop at every intersection regardless of the light color. And
if you have the ability, it would probably be a good idea to climb up and
cover up the lights yourself, so that others who come to the broken
intersection don't get confused.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Again though, the whole basis for your argument is that you are unquestionably
right. Many people believe grades work just as well as traffic lights. I'd
argue the majority of people in academia do (since they haven't been
abolished). Employers hire based on grades so many of them do too.

The only way your argument makes sense is if we take your contention that
"grades don't work" and treat it like gospel

(For the record, I'm not a believer in the grading system. I agree with much
of what you are saying. I simply don't believe my opinion justifies throwing
out the rules in and of itself)

~~~
Jebdm
I see what you mean, but I don't think I agree. For one, direct action seems
to often be the best way to at least get started the sort of revolution that
would have to occur to get this change made. (I'd argue that the only reason
that the majority of people who believe in grades do is that they haven't
taken much time to think about them.)

In addition, this isn't a case of, say, someone believing that people would be
better off if they were occasionally hit with water balloons and thus deciding
to throw them at random passerbys. (Whether that person would be justified in
pelting everyone is subject to debate.) Instead, this is a case which only
effects the people who chose to become his students. And how is he hurting
them?

He isn't hurting their future prospects of getting a job (though I guess that
maybe you could argue that he is diminishing his school's reputation or
something like that). He isn't hurting their ability to learn--I think he's
right that not using grades helps students learn better, and either way we
generally give teachers the right to choose how to teach their students, since
they're usually the most qualified to make that decision. The only possible
way that he's hurting anyone is if later on one of his students get hired when
they shouldn't have (or visa-versa), and arguably that decision isn't on him;
if he's truly wrong about grades, then the rest of the students' grades should
reflect that.

(Perhaps you could say that if some of the students wanted a grade, they
should be given one, but I feel like he would be willing to give them
feedback/change their grades if they asked him.)

~~~
TomOfTTB
I broke up the points here:

On Direct Action: Action can mean a lot of things. Maybe...MAYBE if he’d
worked for years to abolish the grading system and gone out and debated
proponents of the system and still failed...then maybe his actions might be
justified. But he hasn’t done that.

People who act unilaterally aren’t trying to start debate they’re afraid of
it.

On hurting the Students: The question was never "is he diminishing the
prospects of his students" it’s "is he diminishing the prospects of other
students." His students are getting A+ grades so it’s unlikely they’ll be
hurt? But what about the person from another university who is trying to get a
job where grades matter? What if that person got a B at their university and
is competing against one of this professor’s students who got an unjustified
A+?

Systems exist to create a scale by which people judge. Even if that scale is
as flawed as you contend it’s the scale that exists and he doesn’t have the
right to tip it based solely on his own arrogance.

~~~
Jebdm
There are a number of people who have worked to abolish grades over the years,
so I don't think your direct action point makes much sense. Additionally, this
seems like the sort of issue that, simply due to inertia, won't be changed
without some sort of revolution.

Again, I'd argue that he's not diminishing the prospects of other students
(assuming most other graders grade "normally"), simply because other grades
will balance them out. One A+ isn't going to make or break an interview.
Besides, this sort of thing happens constantly anyways, simply due to the fact
that different graders grade differently.

I think your last point comes down to a moral value judgment. You say that he
doesn't have the right to try to fix the system on his own; I'd say that he
has not only the right but the responsibility. I think this especially makes
sense when you consider that, if grading is as flawed as I say it is, using
grades to judge is _discrimination_ (and I mean it in the pejorative sense).

Think of it like racism. If there really is an intelligence gap between
different races, and you are supposed to label peoples' races so that
employers could judge them, then my moral intuition would line up with yours;
it would be wrong for you to label everyone as white (or whatever the best
race was supposed to be) just because you believed that race was a good
indicator of intelligence.

But if race _isn't_ an accurate indicator of intelligence, but people were
using it as a measurement of intelligence anyways, then my moral intuition
says that you would have a responsibility to do everything you could to fight
against racism, which could include labeling everyone as white.

Actually, it seems a rather sticky point.

~~~
TomOfTTB
One last point. Again, having done a Google Search I couldn't find a page that
even debated the issue as much as we have here.

So if there's no record of the issue being debated even as much as we have in
the last 6 hours or so how can people claim it's time for drastic action?

~~~
zasz
Try Googling "Alfie Kohn." He's an educator who's a big fan of abolishing
letter grades, and also homework.

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tspiteri
One of the professors during my degree used a different method. It was
difficult to fail his subjects; he could not fail a student because of a poor
showing in a three-hour test. But to get an A, you had to show him that you
knew exactly what you were talking (writing) about.

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azharcs
_He has also been an outspoken critic of “Israeli military aggression” and is
not shy about expressing those views with students._

I am certainly seeing a pattern here, first victims of the aggression are
critical, world doesn't listen to them. Then neighboring countries are afraid
and criticize Israel for being an aggressor. Then slowly decades pass by,
smart people of other developed-countries start criticizing them for human-
rights violation and then slowly most people will listen to the smart people
of their own country and change their mind about Israel. So according to me,
it is just a matter of time before everyone is critical of Israel (you can't
fool all the people all the time).

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andreyf
A couple of my professors at Rutgers did something like this in advanced
classes, albeit at the end of the course.

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endtime
It sounds like this guy is a bit of a nut job and this was just their excuse
for getting rid of him.

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brianobush
wish I could've had him for physics...

