Comment by glimshe
11 hours ago
I'd never pay to have you as a teacher, I'm sorry. Maybe your move makes a sense for the reputation of your university's degree, but as a student willing to pay to learn remotely, I'd not accept to be treated like children.
Regular graded assignments is the "treated like children" version. The adult treatment is that you can come to class if you want, you can do the assignments if you want, but if not, that's fine too. There is one test at the end, and it's your responsibility to prepare for it as you want. You manage your own time, we offer consultation, lectures, assignments, tutorials etc. but you can reject all of this and learn the material from some other textbook, and as long as you've mastered the material, you'll get a good grade at the exam. This is how German universities work, for the most part.
The problem is the vicious feedback nowadays of online student evaluations of professors. Professors that are rigorous get complaints and low rankings, kids don't sign up for their sections etc. Kids (parents) pay the administration and the administration wants to keep the customer happy. The only real answer are standardized exams (such as licensure exams) which are beyond parent pocketbook capture.
Or like Europe. You don't pay tuition, but if you slack off, and don't progress properly, you only have a limited number of exam retries and limited number of funded semesters. If you fail, you're out, choose another profession. You're not a customer, you're someone who is trying to prove themselves and get certified by experts on their knowledge. The "customer" of the university is whoever will glance at the degree paper and tries to ascertain the skill/knowledge level of the outgoing student. They have to give a good signal there. The reason this doesn't work in the US, is because they want mediocre children of rich parents to be pushed through, because college is a networking and social class-based finishing school, not a place for acquiring knowledge.
(Also, there should be electives, but the rigorous backbone of a degree should be mandatory, so "students won't choose this course" doesn't come up.)
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Tenure protects professors against students' complaints (often for the better, sometimes for the worse). Also, the administration already knows that students complain about professors who are tough, and don't typically pay heed to those complaints. Parents don't really have recourse either: what are they going to do, send their kid to Podunk State instead?
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If you only care about the learning, then you could just take the incomplete. You don’t somehow lose the knowledge you gained.
The only cost of an incomplete is it doesn’t help towards a degree, but a degree is just a signaling mechanism. If you want to be able to use their degree to signal something to someone, you will have to jump through their hoops.
Adults don't have to prove things?
As AI eats up the need for half-assed "I googled a few things and wrote something up and then slacked off for five hours" white-collar-paperwork jobs, it's gonna be pretty hard for people not willing or able to demonstrate that they can do anything that couldn't just be fully done with an "agent" instead.
> I'd not accept to be treated like children.
What is your expectation from such a class? What are you hoping to get out of it?
If you merely want a tutor that will help you out navigate a topic you are interested in, with no strings attached, then sure, yes. No need to take exams.
But if the goal is to get a formally recognized degree in some topic, then you will need to accept that there will be oversight over how you understand that topic. Because the institutions granting those degrees need to sign them off. And if they care about their reputation, they would be interested in signing off only on those students, who actually understand the topic.
So there will need to be exams. In the AI era, it is close to impossible to guarantee that a remote exam will accurately evaluate your understanding of a topic. So the exams would need to be carried out in person.
There is nothing children-specific in using such approach. It is merely one of the few still somewhat objective ways to actually test people's understanding of some topic.
Do you think 'At the end of the day, they can either demonstrate mastery of the material at an exam or not' is a reasonable expectation for an adult?
If so, how would an adult be treated while still expecting them to demonstrate mastery?
If not, what do you think a reasonable expectation for an adult should be?
You can learn remotely in his class. That's the whole point he is trying to make. Hybrid does not mean fully remote. If you want fully remote take a full remote class.
Are you after learning or an accredited degree?
Are you willing to pay to learn remotely from a university with crappy reputation?
Well that's part of the issue with for profit education, if the student pays significant money for tuition, is he a customer or a student?
"The student is the customer" is a stupid metaphor that only caught on because a lot of people would rather just bring in dollars than worry about "are we actually teaching anything?"
It's not a metaphor. They are literally the customer.
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