Our Amazing Academics

By

William D. Dannenmaier

As a retired professor, of over twenty years at the university level, I find two things amazing about our current academics: both administrators and teachers. First, is their interpretation of academic freedom. Second is their blind trust in students.

As a professor, I had the silly notion that when I taught a class in educational psychology or statistics, I was supposed to teach educational psychology or statistics. It is true that before class or after class, often in the coffee shop, I would joke, or talk politics, or car repair or, with older students (graduates of Vietnam) reminisce about combat situations, but not in class. From the time class started until the bell rang ending the class, I taught the subject assigned. I did believe in academic freedom, but I thought this meant I could teach in the way I wished, provided I was on subject. Thus, in statistics, I frequently put students at the board to solve problems and then reviewed their solutions for the class, just as I had in mathematics classes before starting college instruction. In educational psychology, I would use real life examples to illustrate principles. This latter confused some students, but they learned to apply academic ideas to life situations. Now, stories I hear from students tell of professors who spend class time discussing subjects completely irrelevant to the subject they are paid to teach.

A student I know signed to take English Composition II during summer school at AustinPeayStateUniversity. The first day the person attended class, the professor spent the entire class time expounding on why students should not vote for John McCain and why he should not be president. 

Let us assume that the student was not alone, that others signed up to study English. Summer classes at Austin Peay last five weeks and meet for an hour and a half each day for a total of 25 meetings.

Each student paid approximately $600 dollars for the class, plus other fees. Assuming that there were 25 students enrolled, a reasonable assumption, the teacher, or school, was receiving $600 dollars a day, for instructing students in English. Preaching a political stance instead of English took that one class away from the students. In effect, that professor stole from them the $600 dollars of instruction that they had paid for. 

If the school administrators know the professor is doing this, they are taking money under false pretences which should be fraud, if it isn’t.

I assume that teacher would defend her actions on a basis of academic freedom, but does academic freedom mean that the teacher is entitled to talk about any subject, whether an expert in that subject or not, without regard to the subject that he or she is being paid to teach? 

This is not academic freedom, it is academic theft!

The second amazing element in today’s colleges is the blind faith in students. Many schools now use the Internet to assign problems and conduct tests. Each student has an identity number to permit them access to the computer program, be it an assignment or a test. Has it ever occurred to anyone in higher education that it would be very easy for a student, interested only in a degree not learning, to log on to the computer and then have a competent friend, or paid helper, do the assignment or take the test for them? 

Approximately forty years ago, Dr. Don Black at the University of Alberta decided to test the honesty of a class of some sixty graduate students, all working teachers. Following a test, he graded them without making marks on the papers and recorded those grades. He told me that when he returned the tests he apologized to them, saying he had not had time to grade them. He then had them grade the papers themselves and report the grades to him. Approximately 80% of the class cheated in their scoring and grading. It may amaze the reader to know that all of the students’ grading “mistakes” were in their favor. 

I must confess that this tendency of students to help themselves is not new. If I go back to my days in college, now some sixty years past, that tendency of students to help themselves existed then. In fact, I would not have passed Zoology, had it not been for some illicit assistance on the final examination from my friend Joe Gore, later Dean of Education at a major university. 

The Internet may make life easier for professors, but it is not as if they were overworked. Few lecture more than 12 hours a week and for many it is 9 hours a week, often in classes they have taught frequently and for which they need little or no preparation. Using the Internet for assignments and examinations only makes cheating easier and more attractive.