Beer and Circus

by Murray Sperber

  The Insider’s Guide (op. cit.) discusses the LSU student dress code in the 2000 edition, and an on-campus visit to Ohio State made me aware of the “Cake Lady” tradition. The questionnaire for this book (op. cit.) revealed how students spent their time during the average school week; the statistic that 32 percent of male students spent more hours per week as sports fans than they did studying and doing course assignments was ascertained by comparing each respondent’s totals for the question on studying versus the one on sports fandom. The Ohio University student attending Bristol University put his comment in the P.S. section of the web survey form, 9/10/99. Scott Edelstein’s remarks are in his book, The Truth about College: How to Survive and Succeed as a Student in the Nineties (New York, 1991), p. 103.

  Lou Harris announced the results of his polling in a talk to the National Alliance for College Athletics Reform at Drake University, 10/22/99; he also supplied the audience with a handout of his results. The Boyer Commission’s comment, “At many universities, research faculty and undergraduate students do not expect to interact with each other” is in Reinventing Undergraduate Education (op. cit.), p. 9. A good example of undergraduate contempt for professors was provided by Chris Edwards, a student columnist for the Indiana [University] Daily Student newspaper on 10/18/99: “In small-town Indiana the guys who stagger around town in cheap suits and blather incoherently about things that no one cares about are called town drunks. Here [at Indiana University] we call them professors.”

  William Tam’s letter appeared in the Indiana [University] Daily Student on 3/28/95; Mea culpa—as a faculty member at IU, I did not attend this university-wide Founder’s Day ceremony. I cannot remember what I did during that time period; however, I did attend my department’s Founder’s Day ceremony held later that day. U Magazine reprinted the cartoon entitled “University X” by James Lasser of the University of Michigan in the 3/96 issue.

  The Princeton Review’s explanation of its rankings are from its website: www.review.com/ college; it offers a brief explanation of its methodology at the front of each edition but provides a much more complete one on its website. Julie Mandelbaum, guidebooks editor of the Princeton Review, provided me with a copy of every set of rankings for every year of the guidebook’s existence, and also explained how some of the categories have mutated during the past decade. In terms of the “Party school” list, although the big-time college sports schools have dominated it over the years, some minor Division I institutions and some not in that division have appeared on it: in 1999, SUNY-Albany headed it, but was followed by major athletic powers, and in 2000, California State at Sonoma snuck on. Their presence seemed more anomalous than trend-like, although the University of Rhode Island’s high ranking in 1996 heralded its debut in big-time basketball.

  The Princeton Review‘s comments on Rice University appeared in its 1999 edition. Rice was thoroughly researched for this book, including extensive on-campus visits in November 1995, August 1997, November 1998, and June 1999. Christopher J. Lucas commented that “students do not need to be talked ‘at’” in lectures in American Higher Education (op. cit.), p. 293; he titled this section of his book “Neglect of Undergraduate Education.” In addition to the big-time college sports schools on the Princeton Review’s negative academic lists, other institutions made the top twenty in recent years: some of the military academies, probably because of their relentless lecturing; a number of historically black institutions, again probably because of their historic commitment to lecturing; and Canadian schools like the University of Toronto and McGill—again, these institutions feature massive lecture classes, and very few small discussion ones. Even the exceptions to the big-time college sports/beer-and-circus rule prove that lecturing deadens education.

  11: The Faculty/Student Nonaggression Pact

  Anne Matthews’s comment on the “mutual nonaggression pact” is in Bright College Years (op. cit.), p. 206; Arthur Levine’s “tacit agreement” is in his book, When Hope and Fear Collide: A Portrait of Today’s College Student (San Francisco, 1998); and Dorothy Puch’s remark came in the Chicago Tribune’s series on higher education (op. cit.), 6/23/92. The Boyer Commission report Reinventing Undergraduate Education outlined many of the maladies discussed in this chapter, and also provided the quotes beginning, “Ironically, the first years of university studies,” p. 29.

  In doing research for this book on the topic of class size for introductory and/or freshmen courses, I was amazed at how schools, particularly public universities, stonewalled on this subject. Psychology departments seemed especially sensitive, and even the one at my university was reluctant to divulge class sizes. However, for the spring semester 2000, the numbers appear to be 255 students enrolled in the smallest lecture class and 377 in the largest; also department chair Joseph E. Steinmetz acknowledged that the department employs an adjunct lecturer—not a regular faculty member—to teach “one section of P101 in the fall [semester] and one section of P102 in the spring to about 450 students [for each section] using a lecture hall,” 11/29/99. To be fair to the IU psychology department, nationally ranked for its research, its large introductory lecture courses are the norm across the country, not an IU aberration. In addition, this department, like an increasing number of others, uses unpaid undergraduate students as teaching assistants to lead discussion sections; Ms. Holly Welker, a student at Indiana University, described her experiences as a UTA (undergraduate teaching assistant) in sociology, and the experiences of some of her friends as psychology UTAs, 3/23/00. The psychology professor who remarked, “That’s the whole idea,” explained: “Going public with my comments would do me zero good. I benefit from the current system and do not want it changed.”

  The University of Missouri (Columbia) undergraduate filled in the P.S. section of the questionnaire on the web (op. cit.), 9/17/99. The 2000 edition of the Insider’s Guide to the Colleges had the comments on Ol’ Mizzou quoted in the text here, as well as the 90 percent figure for this school’s acceptance rate. Christopher J. Lucas wrote about “Gigantism” in American Higher Education (op. cit.), p. 289; Anne Matthews (op. cit.) quoted the “anti-‘Cheers’” remark, p. 51; and the Ohio State female wrote her comments on a hard copy of the questionnaire filled out on the OSU campus, 11/17/98.

  The Indiana University survey of student attitudes, “Senior Satisfaction Study,” was published by the IU Office of Institutional Research, 1/20/99; I am indebted to Deb Olson of that office for a copy of the survey. Emily Chui, a columnist for the Indiana Daily Student, wrote about staying awake in class, 3/6/98. Folklorist Simon Bronner (op. cit.) studied the desktop carvings, p. 203. Amy Webb published her column on student attendance in the Indiana Daily Student, 1/20/97. U Magazine’s article, “WHAT ME STUDY?” appeared 9/94 (no author given); and the Chicago Tribune discussed the study guides, 6/21/92. Student newspapers often discuss test files and test banks; Christopher Smith wrote a revealing article about the subject for the Texas Christian University paper, The Skiff, 10/1/07; and Pauline Vu of the UCLA Daily Bruin explained how exams are stolen from examination rooms, 1/14/99. The Purdue undergraduate put his comments on the web questionnaire for this book (op. cit.), 6/6/99; the questionnaire asked respondents to state their cumulative GPAs, and these averaged 3.3 (out of 4)—this number is slightly above the national average.

  The Chronicle of Higher Education headlined a long letter-to-the-editor from Syracuse University professor Frederic A. Lyman, “Education’s Dirty Secret: Grade Inflation,” 2/10/93, p. B3. Christopher J. Lucas in American Higher Education (op. cit.), chapter 6, wrote about faculty attitudes toward most undergraduates; Joseph C. Goulden in The Best Years (op. cit.) commented on the GI vets’ scorn for traditional faculty attitudes, one ex-GI saying that if the student vets could grade the average professor, they “would give him a big red ‘F’ and rate him as insipid, antiquated and ineffectual,” p. 79f. Arthur Levine discussed the results of his research on grade inflation in an op-ed piece, “To Deflate Grade Inflation, Simplify the S
ystem,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/19/94, B3; and biology professor Rose Morgan informed the Chronicle of Higher Education about grade inflation in the sciences in a letter, 1/27/93.

  In addition to the causes of grade inflation discussed in the text, other factors contribute to it. At some schools, instructors do not have a plus/minus option for grades, and teachers tend to bump high C students into the B range, and high B’s into A’s. In 1999, the faculty at the University of Maryland at College Park—a school without plus/minus grades—debated this issue, with some professors arguing that plus/minus grades would enable faculty to make greater distinctions among students in a course, and deflate grades. John Henderson, a reporter for the student newspaper, The Diamondback, covered the debate, 4/27/99. Unfortunately, at many schools with a plus/minus option, grade inflation has never abated.

  Some critics of grade inflation also argue that fear of bad student evaluations motivate faculty to give high grades. Possibly this occurs at some schools; however, as Anne Matthews points out, few officials ever read these evaluations, and even fewer act upon them. Moreover, student evaluations—good, bad, or indifferent—tend to be neutral items in promotion, tenure, and salary decisions. A faculty member’s research is the key factor in these decisions, and student evaluations are used to confirm already-decided-upon judgments; for example, good evaluations for a good researcher adds to that person’s success, and bad evaluations for a bad researcher seals failure; however, bad evaluations for a good researcher tend to be ignored, as do good teaching evaluations for a bad researcher.

  Indiana University, Bloomington, introduced an interesting anti-grade inflation plan in 1998 called “Expanded Grade Context.” Student transcripts now reveal, in addition to the grade for each course, the “complete distribution of all grades awarded in the class” (how many A’s, B’s, etc.), and various other items placing the student’s specific grade within context. This tends to reveal whether the course was a “mickey” or not. Students decide whether to have the university send the expanded transcript or the standard, grades-only one to prospective employers, etc. Sarah Rupel of the Indiana Daily Student reported on the plan, 3/10/98; in the years since its inception, the average GPA of the student body has not declined.

  The late Dennis Turner, a cinema studies professor at Wayne State University, often used the expression “The River of No Return” in the context of grading hard, referring to one of Marilyn Monroe’s films and her suicide. William Cole wrote an op-ed piece, “The Perils of Grade Inflation,” for the Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/6/93, B1. Undergraduate opinion on grade inflation is very mixed. For example, Baylor University student Paul Gibson wrote in his student newspaper, “Looking at my GPA and knowing how easy some of my classes were … I’m inclined” to complain about grade inflation. “Not that I didn’t like getting the grades. So-called blow-off courses help revive some low grades … [from] more serious courses” (The Lariat, 3/31/99). Going into the Lexis-Nexis database with the U-Wire file (a collection of college newspapers) reveals this ambiguity from coast to coast.

  12: Cheating

  Professor Richard A. Fass wrote his comments in an essay, “Cheating and Plagiarism,” in the anthology, Ethics and Higher Education, edited by William W. May, published by the American Council on Education (Washington, D.C., 1990), p. 180; on that page, he also commented on administrators blaming the “deficient moral standard of our students” for the cheating. Helen Lefkovitz-Horowitz (op. cit.) related the cheating at “Yale in the 1860s,” p. 33; and Simon Bronner (op. cit.) discussed some of the traditional cheating methods, p. 31f.

  U.S. News polled a huge sample of students and placed the results on its website, 11/13/99. Marie Miller, director of Undergraduate Affairs for the Indiana University School of Business, noted, “Cheating is so commonplace at IU that for every student caught and reprimanded, one hundred more get away with it” (Indiana Daily Student, 4/10/92); by all accounts, the situation became worse at this school and others like it through the 1990s. Marie Miller’s comment connects to another result from the 1999 U.S. News poll: “Ninety percent of college kids believe cheaters ‘never pay the price.’” Donald L. McCabe and Patrick Drinan wrote an op-ed piece, “Toward a Culture of Academic Integrity,” for the Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/15/99, in which they cited the research on 13,000 undergraduates. The Michigan State sophomore left his “eye for an eye” comment on the web survey for this book, 10/10/99. Julie Farren of USA Today quoted Michael Moore, the author of Cheating 101: The Benefits and Fundamentals of Earning an Easy A (Brunswick, N.J., 1992), and Prof. Michael Moffat, 1/7/92.

  Anthropology professor Peter Wood of Boston University saw the course lecture notes on the web as an “assault on the integrity of higher education” in USA Today, 9/15/99; that newspaper printed its editorial on the subject the same day. The New York Times tracked the topic through the fall of 1999 and into 2000, even putting an article on it by Jacques Steinberg and Edward Wyatt on the front page of the Sunday “News of the Week in Review” section, 2/13/00: again, the main issue for faculty was whether they owned the copyrights to their lecture notes or whether their universities did; both sides saw big bucks in the e-commerce involved, and neither considered the possibility that this form of pedagogy might not succeed on the web.

  University of Texas (Austin) student columnist Rhys Southan wrote his comments in the Daily Texan, 11/3/98; he also described the UT lecture situation of “sitting in a bolted-down chair, staring forward for endless hours.” Jacques Steinberg reported on the lecture notes on the web controversy in a front-page article in the New York Times, 9/9/99; he quoted Mark Edmundson, an English professor at the University of Virginia; and Anthony Scimone, in a letter to the editor responding to the Steinberg article, gave his views on the new websites, 9/12/99. Kim Porter, an official at the University of North Dakota, told the student newspaper, Dakota Student, about cheating in lecture classes versus small upper-level courses, 3/25/99. Carolyn Kleiner and Mary Lord wrote a cover story on student cheating for U.S. News, 11/22/99; in it, they quoted Bob Corbett, an expert on the subject, “when students really care about learning”; Donald L. McCabe and Patrick Drinan (op. cit.) discussed the research on honor codes. The information about Rice University was gained from an on-campus visit, 6/28—30/99; the Rice student who commented on her school’s honor code was Giselle Everett, 6/30/99. Mary Beth Marklein of USA Today wrote an excellent feature on honor codes as the solution to cheating, 1/5/00.

  Professor Ronnie Hawkins of the University of Central Florida complained about “the increasing casualness” of student cheating in a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/26/99; the student at the University of New Mexico left her comment on the web survey for this book, 7/17/99. Indiana University undergraduate David Vrabel created “The Only Syllabus You’ll Ever Need” for the Indiana Daily Student, 2/7/97. The U.S. News cover story on cheating (op. cit.) discussed the use of alphanumeric pagers, and quoted English teacher Connie Eberly about the “thrill” of cheating. The University of Iowa student “into gambling” was interviewed on campus, 5/29/99; the student admitted that he was in debt to student bookies and did not want his parents to find out.

  Alison Schneider of the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the faculty reaction to student cheating, 1/22/99; she quoted Northwestern University classics professor Daniel H. Garrison and other academics on the difficulties of pursuing student plagiarists and other cheaters. Stephanie Corns, a student reporter at the University of Arizona, wrote a story about James Karge-Taylor’s problems in his history of jazz course in the Daily Wildcat, 9/21/98; the U.S. News cover story on cheating (op. cit.) contained the anecdote about “Tim, a University of Arizona senior” buying a paper for his jazz lecture course. U.S. News did not identify the course as Prof. Karge-Taylor’s, however, the university’s schedule of classes on the web disclosed that he was the only professor teaching this course, and so probably Tim was in it. David Plotz of Rolling Stone discovered
the flaws in the anti-plagiarism search engines (10/14/99). The Indiana University professor with the note in his course syllabi is the author of this book; hopefully, the reader, like an experienced teacher, recognized the telltale stylistic signs—particularly sentences containing dashes—and overuse of such conjunctions as “however.”

  U.S. News commented on the academic scandal in the University of Minnesota athletic department, 11/22/99; that article also quoted sports expert Richard Lapchick stating that “in the past year alone, [he] counseled tutors and former players at six different schools to report cheating, only to have every athletic director—and one college president—investigate and deny there was a problem.” The St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis (MN) Star Tribune covered the Minnesota scandal in voluminous detail—unfortunately, the website of the former paper does not provide free access to its back issues. However, the Tribune does, and the reader can follow all the twists of the story there. Of particular value are the following articles: the long summary of the university’s report on the scandal, 11/20/99; Jay Weiner’s history of athletic scandals at the university, 11/22/99; and Chris Ison and Paul McEnroe’s piece on the never-ending recruiting problems of coaches in a state without many blue-chip football and basketball players, 12/17/99. Ison and McEnroe quoted faculty member Sander Latts on “star forward Courtney James’s” paper, 3/14/99, and the lack of administrative follow-up, 3/18/99. Apparently, as a result of the investigation, the president of the university, Mark Yudoff, has reprimanded some administrators and faculty members for their roles in the academic fraud but, as of March 2000, the first anniversary of the scandal, these penalties have yet to be enforced.