The letter I would have sent to my daughter's university, but didn't
When college instructors send their kids to university.....
I’ve cut the names out of this letter, to give a shred of privacy. The actual letter I sent is different—it’s a bit more polite.
The actual situation is even worse than I described it in the letter. The instructor in this class does no grading other than looking at a screen and copying a number. When I took Calculus I, assignments and tests were graded by hand. If you had four-fifths of the problem right, but you flubbed a step at the end, you still got some credit. My daughter and her study group are fighting a web-based testing system where the answer is either 100% correct or 0% incorrect. That, as much as anything else, explains their low scores.
I can tell you how we got here. More than two-thirds of the instructors as US universities are adjuncts, working for $3,000-$4,000 per class, and you can’t have a decent living unless you teach at least 15 of those classes in the year, or accept voluntary poverty, as I did. So, my adjunct friends had to teach in multiple systems, and basically their offices were out of the back hatches of their cars. Then came web-based learning systems, which expanded the reach. The professor at issue in this letter doesn’t live on campus, therefore his connection to the department and the university is more tenuous. He might cobble together his necessary six classes in six different systems!
The students get a lecture on schedule, remote office hours, and that’s it.
How can students be assured access to an on-site professor who won’t grade off a web page? The departments need to offer better pay and benefits. That requires more funding, either through higher tuition or through better state funding. The former is possible at elite universities, but not so below that level, and the latter requires substantially more political will. I wouldn’t expect much change here, so most college students had better get used to taking remote Calculus from a harried instructor. If they don’t “make it,” that isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s everyone’s fault.
The letter follows:
Depaartment of Math and Philosophy
cc: Dean of Instruction, President
My daughter is in a no-win situation in her first semester, and I thought you’d like to know about it.
She was assigned an online Calculus I class at a time when the wifi connection is poor. (MWF @ 0900) This way, even though we purchased her a laptop whose specs met your university’s specifications, she could not consistently see and hear her lecture. She has tried several locations and has yet to find a “best” connection. She tells her mother and I that 70 percent of the lecture is the best she can receive.
She was given a professor who does not use Zoom (he uses Google Meeting instead) and does not record lectures for review on any site, let alone leave any supplemental materials. That professor claims he doesn’t know how to record and save lectures. When she contacted her professor for help or advice, her professor told her she needs to take better notes. I would have been more satisfied if he had replied that he is not obligated to help her in any meaningful way, and the she could go fly a kite, for all he cares. Furthermore, this professor is not even on site, so all office hours are also conducted online.
If I knew this was the way my daughter and her classmates were expected to learn Calculus I, I would have urged her to withdraw immediately.
That professor gave her a homework set that couldn’t be checked, so she was entering problems (again online) without knowing exactly whether they were right or wrong. Her homework scores suffered as soon as she was in new material. In place of feedback, she has only percentages of correct answers, and those kept going down. She doesn’t even receive correct answers to compare.
She has been suffering stomach pains for the last week, and her mother and I think that is a result of her stress. She was referred to a hospital today. She is depressed. She’s not getting anywhere in the reading and note-taking and homework solving that she does. She takes as many notes as she can, tries quizzes and homework as well as she can, but gets low double digit scores, which depresses her further. This is her first brush with failure, and she wasn’t prepared for it—that is my fault. She is meeting her academic advisor later this week. I’ve told her that struggling to get a “C” in Calc I is the best outcome; it’s not a good grade, but she can hold her head high, knowing it could have been worse, and that she survived a class that many students fail. (After talking to the study group, I now realize that she has no chance of getting even a “C,” but she will try anyway.) The second best outcome is dropping the class, but that is problematic since she would then be at eleven credit hours, below full-time status. I welcome any advice you can give me to pass along to her.