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University Overrules Professor Who Failed Entire Management Class
McGruber writes: After a semester of disrespect, backstabbing, lying, and cheating, Texas A&M Galveston Professor Irwin Horwitz had all he could take. He "sent a lengthy email to his Strategic Management class explaining that they would all be failing the course. He said the students proved to be incompetent and lack the maturity level to enter the workforce." Professor Horwitz's email cited examples of students cheating, telling him to "chill out," and inappropriate conduct. He said students spread untrue rumors about him online, and he said at one point he even felt the need to have police protection in class. "I was dealing with cheating, dealing with individuals swearing at me both in and out of class, it got to the point that the school had to put security guards at that class and another class," said Horowitz.
However, Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Patrick Louchouarn made it very clear that the failing grades won't stick. The department head will take over the class until the end of the semester, according to school officials.
However, Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Patrick Louchouarn made it very clear that the failing grades won't stick. The department head will take over the class until the end of the semester, according to school officials.
He didn't approach this in the correct way--rather than announce what is going on, he should "adjust" his curriculum on the remaining tests, projects and labs. First make the students sign a (re)acknowledgement about the school's policy on cheating & plagiarism. Next adjust the projects/labs--make them "in class"---you can work with people (including seeking info from the instructor/teachers assistants), but no internet, only allowed to use the course material etc. (I had a teacher who did this--and was interesting approach as you actually learned more than straight lectures). This mitigates plagiarism. Next bring in half a dozen people for the exams to proctor it (if this is where the bulk of cheating was happening). If you are caught, then it's a dead to rights thing, and you are turned into the university. This mitigates cheating. Finally, from personal experience, in some cases if you get a "D" in a class, you have still technically "passed" but most of the time you have issues later on if you try to use it (most universities won't accept it if you transfer for instance). Change up the tests (and curve) enough that the class still passes, but with a VERY low mark--enough that the majority of the students have a "D"
Obviously the university can't afford to punish its customers. At least, not for very long.
I'm also skeptical that 100% of students deserved to fail. Maybe they did, but that should be a consequence of individual evaluations that have a coincidental outcome, not a group evaluation that affects every individual. The older we get, the more we tend to use the shortcut of categorization instead of individualized evaluation. Categorization is efficient, and often "good enough," but honestly, students deserve the individual evaluation they paid for.
I had a high school teacher burn out in much the same way. He was actually a great teacher -- excited about the material, animated, and he always encouraged debate. He had a large number of students in one of his classes that would taunt him for childish reasons like his mannerisms, and eventually he lost it and told the entire class that they had failed, and told everyone to report to the principal's office in an expletive-laden tirade. Teachers are people, and they have limits. The behavior of the students was inexcusable, and while the reaction of the teacher was understandable, it was unprofessional and thus unacceptable.
The entire class did not fail, nor did it deserve to. It wasn't the job of the well-behaving students to moderate the behavior of the bad actors -- the other students were victims as well. I think the lesson is to really nip this sort of thing in the bud. If disruptive students had been removed after a couple of infractions, it would have both decreased the level of disruption and set an example to the rest of the class. Allowing things to get to the point described in the summary is the real failure.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Well, we can eliminate possibility two right off the bat, since the prof admitted in an interview that some of the students in the class were actually good students and doing well academically, and he failed them all anyways.
Also, other details skipped in the top-linked article: The class size is somewhere just above 30 (likely less than 40), the prof is non-tenured, at least one of his cheating accusations was already investigated and overturned as without merit, and there apparently multiple complaints about him from past students already.
When I was taking electrical engineering classes, we had a midterm while the professor was out. Being the future engineers that we were, we decided upon ourselves to make the midterm a group effort. One of the non-science professors walked by at one point and saw that and decided to make a big deal over it. Funny thing was, our defense was that part of the lessons in that course was to teach the students how to work collaboratively and the importance of that type of effort in engineering. Our professor admitted that the midterm wasn't clear on whether it was to be done individually or not (poor requirements), so we went from being threatened with expulsion to hearing that what we did was actually correct given the recent lessons we had.
I can't tell from this one if it's the professor or not, but it sure could be. Just like any profession, there are good ones and there are not so good ones. Some just like to start fires.
Which brings up the question of was the classroom really rampant with disrespect and cheating in the first place?
I am sorry unless you have hard evidence of a major and specific conspiracy that everyone of your students participated in you CANT fail an entire class. The reality is there was probably a few students who are innocent or whose infractions don't justify an automatic failing grade, so its punishing the innocent. The optics of that just are not appropriate for an academic institution.
Yup. By making a blanket judging that is clearly unfair to at least a few students, the professors is demolishing his own case. Challenging the 'F' is a slam dunk. When it came to having guards in his class, he should have quietly made his ultimatum to the department already -- that they were going to back him with X, Y, and Z or he would resign. That it came to this suggests egregious failures by the school itself.
I ran into this line in a Wikipedia article last weekend and just stared at it in amazement for a few minutes:
"Others may want a high school diploma to represent primarily a certificate of attendance, so that a student who faithfully attended school but cannot read or write will still get the social benefits of graduation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-stakes_testing
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
"If the professor was at all smart, he would have identified the worst offenders built a solid case for them and crucified them before an expulsion board to send a message to the rest of the students, and any one taking his class in the coming semesters, that he isn't to be 'fucked with'."
Exactly this.
It sounds like Prof. Horwitz did just about everything wrong. He wasn't objective, he didn't grade students individually, and he blind-sided the school administration.
You do get crappy classes once in a while. I had a class a couple of years ago - it's a class that I teach every semester - but this particular group of students was just special. The social leader of the class hated the subject. He convinced most of the rest of the class to follow his lead: skipping lectures, or coming to class only to surf or game, not doing assignments, etc.. He was a total pain in the a**, and most of the class followed his lead.
Fine. You buckle down and teach. You focus on the students who aren't being idiots. At the end of the course, you write a final exam of exactly average difficulty, make extra sure that the questions are clear, and that the grading criteria will stand up to a formal review process. You warn the administration of what is coming. Then, you fail everyone who deserves to fail, based on absolutely objective criteria. In my case, it was 3/4 of the class.
Importantly, those students who resisted the peer pressure - they did just fine on the exam.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
No, but it should at least be possible to earn a passing grade and learn something in the class, if a student is willing to work for it. Failing the entire class robs them of that chance, regardless of how they actually behaved.
I am sorry unless you have hard evidence of a major and specific conspiracy that everyone of your students participated in you CANT fail an entire class. The reality is there was probably a few students who are innocent or whose infractions don't justify an automatic failing grade
The reality is that this professor sounds like a paranoid wackjob. This doesn't sound like a case of student entitlement. It sounds more like the case of a professor who's mentally ill and probably has a long history of this sort of behavior. I knew a few of these sorts back in university, though none as bad as this guy. The university couldn't get rid of them because they had tenure. And students dreaded having to take them because they knew that they would have to deal with all sorts of insane behaviors.
I had one nutjob prof who would throw a temper tantrum like a three-year-old and storm out of class if one student showed up late. Nevermind if the late student had a great excuse, nevermind that this unfairly punished the 30 students who showed up on time, nevermind that this motherfucker had a JOB to do and said job *wasn't* to act like a petulant child...nope, Senor Egomaniac had to have his moment in the drama-queen spotlight. And he was equally erratic in everything else he did. You would turn in two papers of equal quality and one would come back with an A+ one week and the other would come back all marked up with red ink with a D grade the next week. And you never knew what might set him off. Students quickly learned to shut the fuck up and NEVER ask questions in class. But then he would get pissed because we WEREN'T asking questions. We finally learned to just parrot his own views back to him with praise whenever he asked for student input.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
As security guards had been assigned, I doubt there was any form of "blind-siding" going on. Perhaps the administration were wearing blinders, but they certainly were aware that things were seriously out of whack.
it sounds like it is his first time with undergrads.
A&M lists this as a 400 level course - As in, targeted at graduating seniors (and actually has that as a requirement to take it without an override). Technically still undergrad, but if those students haven't mastered the concept of "pay attention and don't screw around", they won't, and deserve to fail.
1. These students are taking more than just His class.
2. Chances are the class is required.
The BBA curriculum at A&M lists that as the only required class for 8th semester students (with three other electives) - It counts as the goddamned capstone course for the degree. Any student who has too hefty of a workload that semester aside from that one class has only themselves to blame.
3. The students are filled with other concerns then just that class. Finding a girl/boy friend, trying to keep on on what he should socially be.
Sooo Not His Problem that you have me at a loss for words on how to phrase this more strongly. When paying $22,470 per year for a piece of magical job-paper - Sit down, shut up, and pay attention, or GTFO.
4. Because he specialized in that topic for so long, there isn't any empathy on the fact that people just don't get it, the first time.
I have taken strategic management (though not at A&M). Really not much to not "get" - You learn about Michael Porter and SWOTs and Jack Welch. Even if the professor completely sucks, you just watch powerpoint slides and memorize facts for the test. If he doesn't suck, you have fluffy group case study discussions where you basically have no wrong answers. If you don't "get" it at that point in a business degree... Well, to reiterate my opening paragraph, you shouldn't pass.
You want to know what really happened here? In every class, you have a handful of waste-of-flesh whiners who will bitch about every lecture as too boring (or alternatively, that the professor actually expects them to participate instead of letting them read Facebook on their phones in the back of the room); every assignment as too hard (even the ones where the professor all but gives the answers right in class); every paper too long. This poor bastard just managed to get an entire class packed full of them.