The following excerpts are illustrative of the type of spontaneous feedback that has been received about the book and its message from people who have listened to media interviews or read the newspaper stories.
Feedback from the fall of 2007:
Responses to the “Panel Discussion” held at Western on Nov. 5.:
#1: I thought the panel discussion went really well, save the one lady’s odd and meandering comment about not being pork. Coulter really misses the point, of course. She just ignores the stats. I was happy she got that collective groan from the audience. It certainly seemed to me she was making the claims that Anton went after her for. The way she backed down from them and then tried to turn it all around on you two was pretty weak. Davenport, of course, has a vested interest in not agreeing with you, but I am concerned about his supply and demand mentality towards pumping out MAs and PhDs. Is there going to be a supply of fulfilling jobs for all these PhDs? Already we’re being told that the job market for [**] PhD’s is pretty limited. A friend who was with me now feels compelled to start marking her students harder, so your ideas are getting through. Good stuff.
#2: I attended the panel discussion of your book yesterday. I haven’t read your book, but I found the issues you raised legitimate and the discussion was thought provoking. Jim, in your presentation you mentioned the Economics Department. In fact, we decided to give up trying to maintain the old guidelines. We have been rowing upstream in an increasingly strong current for too long, with negative consequences. We have developed a reputation as being “tough” and students avoid economics courses because they are afraid doing so will hurt their overall averages. This has contributed to declining enrolments. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s we had as many as 2000+ students in Econ. 020. By ’05-’06 enrolments in 020 had fallen to a low of 850. The numbers seem to have recovered in the last year or two and we are now back at around 1200, but this is still much lower than historically, and also lower than one would find at other similar universities. The decline in enrolments naturally causes us some anxiety because we operate in an environment where the funding formula equates student numbers with dollars.
For students who do take our courses, the relatively low marks have caused some dissatisfaction, and this is reflected in the workload for our faculty members, Chair, and Undergrad Director and Coordinator, as well as in our departmental teaching evaluations, which are lower than average for the Faculty. I have heard some say that my department’s teaching evaluations only reflect that we don’t care about teaching. These sorts of remarks are prejudiced and unjustified, and they make me extremely angry, but I’m not surprised to hear them.
Last year we began to ease our grade guidelines a bit. This year we did a thorough review of our grade guidelines. After comparing our grade distributions to those of the Faculty and rest of the university, we decided to set our grade guidelines for 020 equal to the current averages for Social Science 020 courses. Our view is that 020 should not be a “tough” course that scares students away, but a course that invites students to give economics a try and teaches some basic economic principles that will help them be informed citizens.
Frankly, I would prefer to keep our grade guidelines unchanged, but it is not workable to do so when surrounded by substantial, long-term grade inflation in the rest of the Faculty and university. Maintaining grade guidelines requires collective effort at the Faculty or perhaps university level.
3#: Thought I’d forward this article on higher education in Britain. I
have to say I was a bit disappointed in the debate yesterday because it
drifted very quickly away from the real meat of your book – student/faculty disengagement and mark inflation. I am not sure at what point the debate veered away from these very important findings (but it was intentional??). Nevertheless you stood your ground. Thanks! There seems to be an attitude, at least with my colleagues, that there may be a problem, but in their classes it is up to the students themselves to become engaged – if they don’t, then that is too bad. It goes far beyond that, I’m afraid. Student disengagement = faculty disengagement = student disengagement, etc. What about the “best faculty experience”? Looking forward to the next book.
From university faculty:
[From England]: I have just read your book Ivory Towers Blues. May I say that I found it insightful, provocative, and inspiring. As a junior lecturer in England, I have myself complicit in many of the issues you highlight – and your book has helped me place myself better in the education system and hopefully improve both my teaching and the student ‘experience’ here. … Thank you again for an invaluable book that brings into the foreground many issues that have remained in the shadows for far too long.
[From Israel]: It’s o’ so familiar here too. … last week we got a letter from the university that the Israeli legislature just approved a new law- called the “law of students’ rights”. Among other things, it is now the students’ lawful right to have access to all graded work. The legal advisor at [**] informed us that this means that all multiple choice questions should now best be rewritten each year because he interprets the law as meaning the students will be able to take a copy of the exam home (they couldn’t take them out before and question were reused every so often). At the same time, the limit on the number of students in my introductory class in social psych just got increased from 60 to 80. Turns out our department is a gold mine because they can stuff tremendous amount of students in big classrooms – all students by law pay the same tuition but social science students cost almost nothing to the university which is now trying to buy some sort of multimillion dollar equipment for the physics department. Now I’ll have to be grading 80 open question papers instead of the computer checking multiple choice items. Lots of my colleagues told me they have gone from writing exams with 5-6 essay questions to asking students to answer only 2 essay questions. Nobody has the motivation to grade these anymore. What’s worse, students are expecting to get graded around 90 out of a hundred on seminar papers without reading anything written in English- just using Hebrew secondary texts. The university has to compete with small “easy” colleges for these students who give the university income so no one wants to dissapoint the students and give them low grades.
From Canada:
From a perspective of someone who has taught undergraduates … for 39 years, I found your book … describes very accurately what I have seen happening over the years. I was very pleased to see that you have supported the case for these conclusions so well, and expressed them in such a diplomatic and constructive way. From what I see at the moment, I doubt that administrators will be very receptive to making real changes, but I am very glad to see someone has pointed these things out in such a convincing way.
I would first like to thank you, and your associate Prof. Allahar, for writing “University Blues.” As a student at … for 11 years, both as
an undergraduate and graduate student (having recently completed my Ph.D. in Chemistry), I can sympathize, both as a student and a TA, with many of the problems you identify in your book. … I have always fancied I would become a professor, so that I could tryand pass my love of learning and knowledge on to like-minded, eager students. This class of student is becoming extinct, and makes me question if I could stay sane at such a job. I commend you for maintaining the standands in your job, and, together, can hopefully try and change this disasterous course.
Re Cross Country Checkup. I wanted you to know how much I appreciate your efforts and how extremely important it is that people like you are speaking up on these issues. I was recently involved in a major plagiarism case … Let’s just say that this experience strongly reinforced impressions that I had already formed about problems in our graduate program, and it revealed a serious difference of opinion [among] colleagues. … It is extremely encouraging to know that I am not the only one who thinks that lying to students about their abilities is an injustice both to them and to the very ideals of scholarship. … There is absolutely no doubt that political and bureaucratic pressures to arbitrarily and unrealistically increase the size of our graduate programs has contributed to the dumbing down of our degrees. We are faced with a double-edged sword: students make enormously inflated self-evaluations of their abilities, and professors are rewarded for agreeing with them.
From elementary and high school teachers:
I appreciated your recent comments about grade inflation on CBC television. When I graduated from Grade XIII at [**] in Toronto back in the early Sixties, I believe that there were only two or three Ontario Scholars; now, of course, it is not uncommon for a majority of graduating students from any given high school to gain such recognition. As you are aware, such a laurel is no longer the mark of a scholar, and thus the title, “Ontario Scholar” has become the norm, not the exception, and rather than signifying an honorific status it has become practically meaningless.
… How did things ever come to this? When I graduated in English Literature from the [**] in ‘66, A’s (a few) and B’s (many ?? and a few B+ marks) were solid enough for me to be admitted to Osgoode Hall Law School; instead, I took Graduate Studies at U of T and earned a Master’s degree. As we both know, however, such “solid” undergraduate marks would be disdained today at virtually every law school and most graduate schools.
… Unfortunately, the mark inflation I experienced ?? and was a part of ?? as a high school teacher has been the progenitor of the unfortunate state of affairs which you have experienced in the academy. Realistically, I believe that you are correct in concluding that mark inflation will soon degrade the value of an undergraduate university degree, giving it little more cachet than a high school diploma.
I had to write to you after listening to you on The Agenda. As a former Ontario high school teacher I sympathize and apologize for the current state of affairs at the post-secondary level. After teaching for five years I became disillusioned with the entire education system. The main problem is a lack of academic standards starting at the elementary level, where it is virtually impossible for students to fail (it’s called “social promotion”). There is now a similar practice at the secondary level. For instance, before removing marks for late work, high school teachers must go through a lengthy process with the students and their parents; the end result is students do not appreciate the importance of getting their work completed on time. … My former principal told me that it is “not the job” of high school teachers to prepare students for the post-secondary level, it’s merely to get them through high school no matter what. In addition, he said attendance at school is more important than focusing on literacy. He continually underfunded our school library (there is no standardized funding for school libraries–it is up to individual principals to decide how much funding their respective school libraries receive). I once suggested to my principal that we hold a “reality check” session with representatives from the post-secondary level to meet with our students to discuss what the students can expect when they enter the post-secondary level. My principal was not supportive of this suggestion. … Please continue getting your message across. If there is enough public outrage, the system will improve (simply adding more money to the system is not enough). I look forward to reading your book!”
The first wave of feedback:
From university faculty
“As a mid-career professor struggling with the frustrations of the “massification” of our post-secondary education system, your work resonated with me. I have been considering writing something of a treatise on these frustrations, so I was delighted to see that you have written a book on the issue. Kudos to you and your co-author for that. I hope your work and your book will lead to a national discussion on the issue. I have tried to introduce it on my own campus, but I am generally disregarded as a complainer and troublemaker. But I persevere. In any event, I wanted to contact you and congratulate you.”
“I heard your Sunday Edition interview and am in agreement with all your points about student attitudes of entitlement and the evaluation of student learning. … the design, administration, and analysis of teaching evaluations is tenuous at best. And, since they are not considered in comparison to a given student’s mark for the course, a course in which C is the average grade will surely result in poor teacher evaluations. Experience suggested they be tossed unread, but knowing that many evaluations were marked and comments added in good faith, I always read the lot. However, by the mid-90s I grew weary of the growing number of students disgruntled by having too much lecture material included on exams, especially since my lectures contained material not found in the text. These same students thought that class attendance should be optional, and if they must attend, I should show more videos and have more guest lecturers. The learning style of the new generation was visual, so listening to a lecture was not stimulating, regardless of the quality of content. Many students complained about having writing assignments judged on the basis of their skill at sentence structure, punctuation, organization, and some demonstration of critical thinking. Finally, with [my university’s] acceptance of a numerical range for letter grades that inflated all students’ marks and clearly gave students the expectation that B was only satisfactory, I retired completely. I hope your book helps elevate the discussion on these issues and helps reverse this trend that I am afraid is deeply imbedded in most universities in this country.”
“I just heard your interview on CBC’s Sunday Edition. It is a relief to hear someone speak to the realities of contemporary academia. I will certainly read your book, and encourage my colleagues to do so. Congratulations on what promises to be a vitally important piece of work.”
From elementary and high school teachers
“I’m an elementary teacher … and our stage of education is making a big contribution to this situation! Those of us ‘over 50′ and others spend a lot of time bemoaning things and comparing the lessons learned when we were young to what young people are learning today. We are now starting to see the new teachers in their 20’s bringing the same attitudes, behaviour and lack of rigour into their work that you describe, despite their good skills and instincts as teachers. With respect to a “C” being viewed by students as inappropriate, have you connected this to Premier McGuinty’s promise to have 75% of Ontario students achieving a Level 3 or 4 (B or A) on EQAO scores? That means that 75% of Ontario students are to be “above average” just like Garrison Keillor’s mythical Lake Wobegon!! Meanwhile, a lot of money and time are being thrown at the system to achieve this or at least, if the test becomes easier and this goal is achieved, to explain away the successful results. … All this creates a climate of entitlement and a lack of understanding that you achieve things that you desire through striving. It also desperately lowers the quality of the ‘product’. Thanks for exploring this important topic in your writing. Keep up the great work.”
“I just heard your discussion with Michael Enright, on the dumbing-down of education in Canada. After 25 years out of teaching I recently returned to teach one secondary semester each year and have observed this phenomena with incredulity. Now, I teach classes of 35 at-risk students; now I have encourage students to shoot for a college education even though they cannot write; now I pass students in grade twelve courses who do not distinguish between ‘where’ and ‘were’. And then there is the pervasive disengagement, the sense of entitlement. Your concern for Canada on the international stage is well-placed. I thank you for making this phenomenon known and support you in your efforts.”
“Just read your article in the Post. You are bang on. Stuff I have been saying for years, but no one pays attention at my level. Students are coddled, babied, coaxed and given extra chances to do their mediocre work for high grades. The high school 80 means little. I watch as students cut and paste with no reference citation, then print out on their lunch for a class which is coming next period. When I tell them I would give a zero for such work, they hand it in anyway, and they pass. The implementation of Turnitin.com has helped. But I had a mom call and say her son was not allowed to register his work through the program. Community service hours are a grad requirement and many parents lie for their kids so they will graduate. Deadlines mean nothing. The literacy test is based on grade 7-9 skills and kids can’t pass it but they are passing English anyway. So we offer after school help and the government now has a course to make up for failure on the test. I am glad I am almost out!”
“I am a senior level high school teacher … in Western Canada …. Thank-you for having the courage and tenacity to address what I see as a main concern with high school education today. … While I am somewhat constrained in my own institution from criticizing the evaluation of my colleagues, there is no doubt that mark inflation is going on at the high school level. Our senior students have a lesser work ethic than I have ever seen, yet the overall averages they are departing the building with in June continue to climb. Perhaps with authentic voices such as your own, my colleagues who believe they are doing students a benefit by giving out 90’s and 100’s as if they were bingo chips will reconsider what they are doing.”
From employers
“Thank you for your comments on The Sunday Edition. As someone who has to work with recent University graduates (i.e., new company employees), I am constantly amazed at the sense of entitlement and poor work ethic in these new graduates. It has become my fault if they don’t succeed at what I perceive to be simple research tasks. Your comments on grading for effort as opposed to merit rang too true for me. … Good luck in your efforts.”
Others
“I [coordinate two postgrad programs at a community college]. Both programs admit applicants who have already completed a university degree (min BSc is required). … The programs are very well respected by the industry and the hiring rate after any of the programs is 100%. However, the point that I want to make is that I see many of the university graduates, which you referred to in the interview. The number of applicants for one seat is about 6 for both programs but despite such a high competition it is challenging task to find sufficient number of suitable candidates. As you may guess, many of our applicants are exactly from the pool of university graduates who where “pushed” through the system. As a part of the admission process, we conduct personal interviews during which the lack of knowledge is evident.”