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.

Comments

Fast track

[Carewolf]

Those students sounds like perfect management material. Don't fail them, but them on fast-track to vice presidents of fortune 500 companies! They will fit the job perfectly.

Re:Fast track

[Austerity Empowers]

No, while I agree with the sentiment, the key lesson they have failed and perhaps the single most important one: don't get caught. Clearly the professor is correct, these students have not demonstrated mastery of the material and need to retake the course.

Re:Fast track

[Opportunist]

Getting caught is ok, think of how many managers get caught and at worst they're sent off with a golden parachute. And they even learned a valuable lesson: Even if you get caught, someone will come and bail you out.

Re:Fast track

[cayenne8]

Actually...sad.

These might just have really *BEEN* some of the coming entitlement generation kids, the same ones that always got a trophy growing up just for showing up at a game or whatever.

Maybe they all did deserve to fail?? I hope they at least have to take the class over and aren't all given automatic passing grades whether they deserve it or not...?

Re:Fast track

[gstoddart]

Sorry, what? 2-4 amount to "waaah, I don't want to actually learn the stuff I'm taking in school because it's too hard and gets in the way of my social life".

The answer to this is "too fucking bad".

Everyone else who got an education had to deal with this stuff too.

I'm afraid I have zero sympathy for a bunch of kids who think it takes too much effort to complete their education.

Re:Fast track

[DarkOx]

Yes well the Vice President of the university certainly did not fail his management course!

He recognizes that most University students today are someones precious little snowflake. That someone might stop sending checks, students may transfer and worse the best prospective students might choose other institutions where there is not a perception their on-time graduation plans might be derailed by capricious professor.

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.

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'. He probably would have gotten support for the university and the public for doing so rather than tossed under the bus. Like it or not politics and perceptions matter, you'd think a business professor would know that.

Re:Fast track

[Minwee]

I have found professors who are fresh out of the trenches often fail to comprehend, the following.
1. These students are taking more than just His class.
2. Chances are the class is required. Meaning most of the students don't have too much interest in the class.
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.
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.

And what the students fail to comprehend is this:

That's. Their. Problem.

This isn't Kindergarten. Nobody is there to hold your hand. Just because you paid for the class doesn't mean that anybody owes you a passing grade. If you can't be bothered to pay attention to class, or don't think it's important, or just don't like the professor, then _you_ get to deal with that. If you can't, then you're going to fail.

And if "But I have other classes!" is the best excuse that you can come up with, then you're going to deserve it.

Re:Fast track

[anonymousJUGGERNAUT]

The "coming entitlement generation" has been on its way since at least the late 1980s when it was supposedly my cohort...and probably much, much longer. Although you can always find a few examples of entitled brats--and that's nothing new, of course--the whole "kids these days" thing appears to me to still be as much of a myth as it always has been. From https://www.insidehighered.com... : "Asked if the decision to fail every one of the 30-plus enrollees was fair to every student, Horwitz said that "a few" students had not engaged in misbehavior, and he said that those students were also the best academic performers. Horwitz said he offered to the university that he would continue to teach just those students, but was told that wasn't possible, so he felt he had no choice but to fail everyone and leave the course." "A spokesman for the university said via email that 'all accusations made by the professor about the students' behavior in class are also being investigated and disciplinary action will be taken' against students found to have behaved inappropriately. The spokesman said that one cheating allegation referenced by Horwitz has already been investigated and that a student committee cleared the student of cheating." It looks to me like the instructor had a melt-down and attempted to combine rage quitting and collective punishment. I'm sure some of the kids were a-holes, but not all of them were, by the instructor's own admission.

Re:Fast track

[jmauro]

The "coming entitlement generation" has been on its way since at least the late 1980s when it was supposedly my cohort...and probably much, much longer.

Those articles started to appear in the 1880's. Every upcoming generation has been described as some sort of variant of entitled, lazy or "me first". It's the "get off my lawn" version of a newspaper editorial.

Re:Fast track

[bradley13]

"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.

Re:Fast track

[Orange Crush]

Just because you paid for the class doesn't mean that anybody owes you a passing grade.

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.

Re:Fast track

[Muros]

The "coming entitlement generation" has been on its way since at least the late 1980s when it was supposedly my cohort...and probably much, much longer.

Those articles started to appear in the 1880's. Every upcoming generation has been described as some sort of variant of entitled, lazy or "me first". It's the "get off my lawn" version of a newspaper editorial.

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” - Socrates

Re:Fast track

[TsuruchiBrian]

It's the American way, the administration bails you out if you pay their salary.

We don't bail out people, if there is not something in it for the people doing the bailing-of-out.

We bail out large investment banks that donate to political campaigns and swap managers with the treasury department, but we don't bail out people who can't pay their mortgage.

Re:Fast track

[pla]

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.

Re:Fast track

[mt42]

This article suggests the most likely source for the quote commonly attributed to Socrates was actually crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907.

Looking at the digital copy of the dissertation linked in the above article, it looks like the source for the Socrates quote is a combination of two sections of text on page 74 of the disertation.

Socrates quote from grandparent:
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

Quote noted as misattributed to Socrates and suggested as paraphrased from Aristophanes at end of wiki link from parent:
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Excerpt from Kenneth John Freeman's 1907 dissertation:
[Lines 5-7] "The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. [Lines 19-21] Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters."

Hard to take sides

[Anonymous Coward]

With so little information it's hard to take sides. Is it wrong of me to think that maybe this professor is incompetent AND the entire class still deserves to fail?

Re:Hard to take sides

[Penguinisto]

Thinking the same thing here, methinks.

If what the guy says is true? A competent prof would have taken the most egregious examples and kicked them out of his class - right after informing them in front of one and all that they in particular will fail the semester, why they will fail, that they are to leave immediately, and that anyone else in class who exhibits similar behavior will get similar treatment. Do it early and as soon as trouble arises, so that you can solve the problem while it is still small and contained, much like you would control a small brush fire. It's a tried-and true tactic: make an expensive and career-harming example out of the ones who deserve it, and the rest will fall in line very quickly.

...did they not teach this guy how to control a classroom, or at least leadership skills, when he was getting his (bare required minimum to be a full-blown management professor) MS in management?

Re:Hard to take sides

[MozeeToby]

He is certainly incompetent. Any idiot could see that the university wouldn't let a blanket fail stick, you can't fail an entire class based on group behavior that's just not the way academics works. If everyone in the class was really that bad, he should have been documenting specific incidents and then failed them individually at the end of the semester.

Re:Hard to take sides

[HappyHead]

From the articles I've read about it, the prof even admits that some of the class were honest, hard working, and doing well academically in the class. He threw a temper tantrum because some of the other students were mean to him, and failed all of them, good and bad.

Also, at least one of his cheating allegations was investigated and overturned by their university's administration. This sounds mostly like sour grapes.

I taught at a university for about ten years before moving off to private industry (sessional prof jobs pay poorly) and I've run into almost every behavior he complained about in the article and more, but never even once would I have considered punishing the students who were actually showing up and doing the work for the behavior of the ones who don't.

This guy picked the wrong way to deal with his problems, and the university administration is right to overturn his grading. Especially since he even admits that not all of the students deserved it. The USA is full of lawyer-happy lawsuit maniacs, and this is a situation where the university would be absolutely buried in litigation, which it would rightfully lose, if they didn't overturn it and assign grades based on academic performance.

Re:Why even have a class ?

[MozeeToby]

This is actually quite the opposite. I find it hard to believe that there wasn't a single person in the back of class just trying to get their work done and get out. Not everyone swears in their day to day life, let alone at authority figures. Not everyone cheats. Not everyone lies.

The correct decision

[wile_e8]

I've seen a lot of whining about special snowflakes always needing passing grades, but in this case I think the overrule was the correct call. From the Inside Higher Ed write up on it, this is the section that gets me:

Asked if the decision to fail every one of the 30-plus enrollees was fair to every student, Horwitz said that "a few" students had not engaged in misbehavior, and he said that those students were also the best academic performers. Horwitz said he offered to the university that he would continue to teach just those students, but was told that wasn't possible, so he felt he had no choice but to fail everyone and leave the course.

Instead of failing just the students that deserved it and giving appropriate grades to the rest of the students, he decided to fail everyone because the school wouldn't let him quit the course. So several students are doing the work and paying the tuition only to get a failing grade on their transcript because the professor wants to make a point. That's why it's getting justifiably overruled.

Re:The correct decision

[Copid]

It's really too bad he didn't hang in there until the end and give legitimate supportable F grades to most of the class while showing good faith by giving appropriate grades to decent students. Getting an F that sticks stings a lot more than making news while your professor melts down and having your grade adjusted by the university.

I'd love to see a world where professors hand out failing grades more liberally. I got really sick of seeing cheaters and whiners get their way when I was in college.

Re:You can't control the class, so you've failed.

[Opportunist]

All it takes for this strategy to fail is that the most disruptive students being in some way "special". And I'm not even meaning that they're retarded or belonging to some minority and failing them could get the PC crowd breathing down your neck. All it takes is that the parents of such an asshole student are "important" because they donate money into the school's coffers, basically buying their precious little dud a degree.

Should use "Guerrilla Teaching"

[Mahldcat]

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"

Re:Should use "Guerrilla Teaching"

[dcollins]

The guy's a temporary adjunct (as most college instructors are nowadays). He probably gets paid about $3000 for all the work all semester for this course. He may not even know 6 other people at the college, never mind have any way of getting them to work for him as proctors. Is all the extra work and re-design worth the $1K left in the semester? Just walking away seems at least arguably better for one's mental health.

Re:How to be successful in business...

[Cederic]

Depends on your criteria for success.

My friends tell me they're amazed and jealous of my career, and consider me a beacon of success in a corporate environment.

I'm in a corporate environment so I know many people more successful than me, and work for some of them. They're going higher, faster, and earning more money. Some of them are arseholes, some are not.

I'm always trying to be nice to people, make constructive relationships and not be an arsehole. Hopefully sometimes I get that right.

But my personal achievements and those of the people I see in management positions above me do show that you can achieve success without being an arsehole.

Maybe not Steve Jobs level of success, but frankly I don't want to be a Steve Jobs level of arsehole either. There's a happy compromise, and it's making me happy enough and successful enough and people don't accuse me of being an arsehole. Often.

Re:Why even have a class ?

[gstoddart]

If all of the people coming out of your school have diplomas, but no clue ... eventually people look at diplomas from your school as being worthless.

Oddly enough, people expect diploma actually translates into "has received an education".

This isn't only happening in America.

[MindPrison]

I used to be a part time teacher since I am an animation/computer specialist and the schools hire me for the things they can't teach.

One of those things I've noticed is that the teachers doesn't have any say anymore, it's all about the money and how happy the kids parents are. The happier the parents, the more attendance they get. And if they get a lot of attendance, then the government will increase the schools income and support. This breeds a new kind of school, an unhealthy school system where teachers are constantly burned out, have to suck up to kids and their parents instead of concentrating on the real job at hand, teaching!

Teaching AND learning demands a lot of focus, and focus demands discipline.
Kids are NOT stupid, they will figure out that they can get away with whatever they want and will naturally do so - kids being kids, testing new grounds.

We need to give more power back to the teachers, and educate parents to discipline their kids into wanting real achievements instead of "whatever they can get away with to party every night". Discipline never hurt anyone, it helps you to FOCUS.

P.S.

[mariox19]

As found by another Slashdot user, the following article gives a much more complete picture.

Re:P.S.

[Ichijo]

Asked if the decision to fail every one of the 30-plus enrollees was fair to every student, Horwitz said that "a few" students had not engaged in misbehavior, and he said that those students were also the best academic performers. Horwitz said he offered to the university that he would continue to teach just those students, but was told that wasn't possible, so he felt he had no choice but to fail everyone and leave the course.

Re:Why even have a class ?

[dcollins]

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