View the H-Adjunct Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Adjunct's November 2007 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Adjunct's November 2007 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Adjunct home page.
May I suggest to the list that IF students of adjunct faculty are awarded more A's than the students of full time/tenured faculty, could it be the students EARN higher grades because adjuncts are more attentive to students needs and/or contribute more to their learning experience? Peg Shultz Adjunct Instructor William Paterson University ________________________________ From: H-Net Network on Adjunct/part-time faculty issues on behalf of Howard Smead Sent: Mon 11/12/2007 8:13 PM To: H-ADJUNCT@H-NET.MSU.EDU Subject: Do Adjuncts give more A's? Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 From: Tim Lacy <timothy.n.lacy@gmail.com> Subject: Re: Do Adjuncts give more A's? The issue really is not whether adjuncts give more A's---although I suspect they might. This issue is the continuing lack of employment protection ~and~ lack of academic freedom for adjuncts across the country. Both are kinds of de facto structural incentives to give A's. How? The adjunct feels inclined to pander to students to get good reviews. Give them what they want (within limits). Adjuncts also feels she/he should not make waves with administration by coming down on the bad students. What if they all deserve C's? The only way for adjuncts to feel comfortable balancing these issues to gain some kind of collective bargaining protection. Now one might happen to have an exceptionally understanding department chair, which makes you feel comfortable enforcing standards, but even that doesn't stop the infringment on academic freedom. Again, how? Fear of student or administrative reprisal causes one to self-censor. You might repress historical perspectives and arguments that you know your students won't like---but from which they could benefit. You repress the full range of critical thinking. This isn't about grade standards, but about laying low. If you say something that makes waves, you risk being non-tendered. But isn't this repression just as bad if even you give the normal distribution of A's through F's? In sum, the at-will nature of adjunct positions contains a number of implicit pressures that affect the normal distribution of grades. Perhaps it should be the case that every adjunct is assigned a tenured mentor, a protected sponsor if you will? Adjuncts would then be like super TAs, but their actions in the classroom---their content presentation---would be protected by the tenured professor. This ~might~ help with the academic freedom issue (within the bounds of the mentor's opinions), but then collective bargaining would be necessary. I'm just thinking out loud. Maybe there is just no comfortable solution to these problems? Still, the number A's or C's given are just symptoms of larger structural problems. Sincerely, Tim Lacy Independent Historian and Sometime Adjunct Chicago, IL On 11/12/07, Howard Smead <howard@howardsmead.com> wrote: > There is a small but persistent controversy on the campus where I teach. > > There is an apparently widely-shared belief (supported to a degree by > statistics) that adjunct professors consistently give far more A's than > tenured and tenure-track professors. Recently, I was in a meeting about > this where it was my task to defend adjuncts against this and the > implied charge of being less intellectually rigorous. The disdain of the > panel of senior professors and departmental chairs for Adjuncts was > palpable. One full professor replied to my presentation by stating that > all adjuncts should be replaced. Her ignorance of the situation is > typical, in my opinion. > > In any case, if this grade differential is true, or if the perception is > widely held, it undermines the already tenuous credibility that adjuncts > already have on many if not most campuses. At the very least adjuncts > ought to be aware of this particular monkey on their backs. > > Howard Smead > The University of Maryland, College Park >
|