Sunday, January 2, 2011

Should faculty be compensated for student success?? (contributer post)

Speaking of the Lord!

Sam, showing a little city and state pride, kicked back last night, grabbed a beer, sat with his big Husky dog, and watched the Rose Bowl. Maybe the Lord was with Texas Christian U, as this little rinky dink bible belt college in don't mess withTexas slew big bad Madison in the Rose Bowl. Now this has to be a first. Instead of saying hi mom like most jocks, the winning quarterback, during his nationally televised interview after the game, peered into the camera, smiled and quoted scripture. TCU has about 9,000 students, Madison has 35,000. Madison's endowment is 1.5 billion, TCU's is 158 million. TCU is private, Madison is public. I guess the lesson here is that hard work and dedication pays off in life, classes, and along with a little divine intervention or inspiration, even wins bowl games. Here is the question. Madison football brought in over 90 million this year. Given this success, should the UW Madison coach, already paid a cool 2 million annually, be given an additional 1 million dollar bonus? If you answer affirmatively, do you think that it would be also appropriate to reward faculty members for student success in their classes? 


Before answering, consider the benefits. By increasing student success in classes, the institution could save resources and be able to re-direct them elsewhere to meet other pressing campus needs. For example, reducing the failure rate in gateway courses like math could potentially save a huge amount of resources. Math 141 has one of the highest failure rates of any course on campus, around 30 - 40 percent. The failure rate is so high that the department created a second more easier course for mathematically challenged students. Next, Whitewater has a 56 percent graduation rate, Madison is around 80 percent, while elite institutions are over 90 percent. The bottom line is just about 1 out of 2 students who enter Whitewater do not finish, and just about 4 out of every ten student have repeat a math class. This is a huge waste of resources! However, to end on a positive note, Whitewater is doing much better than area community colleges. You do not want to know the numbers!

My question again - should we pay faculty members for student success? They have been given merit awards for their own individual success, namely scholarship.

Sam

9 comments:

  1. Ok, I'll bite.

    1. If fewer students graduate next year compared to this year, does that mean we start docking faculty pay?

    2. Student success is a variable dependent on a whole number of possible factors of which faculty involvement is but one factor. Why single out faculty?

    3. Maybe we should start paying students for their successes (?).

    4. Are you sure that is the question you are really asking? Or is there something else in your bonnet that is driving the question?

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  2. Now anon 12:00, you addressed the question by changing the focus but I will bite. In general I believe that faculty pay should not be docked if fewer number of students graduate in the following year. However, a strong case can be made for doing something to faulty members who have an inordinate number of failures in their classes compared with their peers teaching the same class. Right or wrong, faculty, public school teacher, along with coaches, are "singled" out whenever students or jocks at the high school or college level do not perform up to expectations. Next, students are already paid for success, its called an academic scholarship. Sam's idea is really not that revolutionary. Faculty members are already rewarded for "individual" success in teaching, research, and service, its called tenure and merit awards, but there are no incentives for success in the classroom. I could be wrong here, but the student evaluation form used does not even consider overall student success in the class. All Sam is saying here is to consider the idea. By the way, Sam does not wear a bonnet. Anon 12:00, don't always think that Sam has an ulterior motive or agenda. Sam just loves a good debate.


    Sam

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  3. No! Faculty should not be paid extra for student success. What a stupid idea. Faculty are having a hard enough time just doing there job as is. I dont think putting a carrot out in front of them is going to help my professors last semester do better. They were either too boring or didnt really care about the class. Money doesnt solve everthing you know!

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  4. Anon 6:37. Ok,I have not convinced you so let try a different approach. You seem like a very caring person, so Sam thinks that you tip the pizza delivery person, perhaps tip the porter who takes your heavy bags up to your hotel room, or even tip the waitress for good service. This is the American way! Reward people for excellent service. Regarding faculty, lets not call it extra pay for student success, lets just call it a tip for good service. Would this make the idea more acceptable? On your other point, I could not agree with you more, money can't solve all the problems of the world, but as my dad used to say, money will not buy you happiness but it will put a damn good down payment on it. So do you object to giving your favorite "excellent" faculty member a little tip? Sadly, we don't even give teachers apples anymore!

    Sam

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  5. Sam, i have to say that the "tip" approach seems like the best way to go about this if we did consider the idea at all. I most certainly believe that any person who does a excellent job should be rewarded for the effort. We have all heard of the industrial age "bonus" offered to all the employees of yester year for hard work and dedication to their craft. Why not do the same for our own profs?

    A few questions though. First, how are profs going to get this "tip"? Students hate it when you raise fees by 5 dollers let alone give profs more money. Second, how do we define what makes a prof excellent? We could do a overall poll or consider a "grading sheet" like student evals. Having this system in place could motivate profs to make classes better, it might even help with our previous arguement about gen ed classes.

    Prof.Chaos

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  6. I think this idea is great in theory. However, the question is how to we determine this tip. Student evals is something that i think wouldn't work because fact of the matter if i'm getting an A in a course i'm rating that professor higher than if i get a C. Ultimately this would result in the professor getting paid extra for the amount of A's given. Now yes if a professor is good at what they teach more A's will be given out but doesn't this just provide incentive for profs to just give out A's or make their class easier so more students achieve an A? I would have to say if we would want to give professors more money for doing a better job we would have to have the students take a standard test not written by the professor that would assess their actual knowledge of the course material. The test would have to be applied to the students overall grade in the course so the test wouldn't get blown off. So i would say the approach would be a standard test that would apply to the students overall grade.

    Snoop.

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  7. Anon 12:00 says that maybe we should start paying students for their success. This piece was posted today on the Chronicle of Higher Education blog:

    Cash Rewards for College Grades Show Some Success

    January 3, 2011, 12:08 pm

    Students at an unnamed Canadian university who were randomly assigned to a group eligible for earning money based on their grades performed somewhat better academically than did their peers, at least in the short term, according to a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The first- and second-year students in the sample were given $100 for each grade of 70 percent they received and $20 more for each percentage point they scored above 70 percent. That incentive had an effect on the grades earned by second-year students, and the greatest effect on second-year male students. The paper is part of a growing interest in evaluating performance-based scholarships for students, including a continuing study by the research group MDRC.

    Sam

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  8. What should drive education? What should a college degree mean? What qualifications should be required of a given job? How should we educate our citizenry?

    I think a balance between ideals and pragmatism is the answer. That is, until this system collapses, which seems to be imminent.

    X

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  9. Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso parents wanted him to study something more practical, instead he studied art, grew up, and became Pablo Picasso, but this is Picasso's story. For most people, especially parents, who foot the bills, a college degree translates into a good job. While there are students running around campus reading Being and Nothingness, most students can be seen lugging heavy accounting or business books back and forth to class. They are following a national trend. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, members of the class of 2011 who majored in accounting will fare best in the current job market. NACE asked employers participating in their Job Outlook 2011 survey which majors they found most attractive. Respondents overwhelmingly said business, computer science and engineering were the most desirable. Some students appear to have taken notice of these trends -- according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 21 percent of all bachelor's degrees granted in 2007-08 were in business, and students majoring in engineering has risen by 8 percent between 2002-03 and 2007-08. (It is worth noting that computer science degrees fell by 33 percent from 2002-03 to 2007-08, but only after experience a whopping growth rate of 106 percent from 1997-98 to 2002-03.) (Huffington Post) So X may be right, the answer may be in seeking some sort of balance between ideals and pragmatism. By the way, did you know that William Jefferson Clinton (remember him) was a philosophy major. X may also be right, that a collapse of the system appears to be imminent but systems (Rome) can last years, sometimes centuries, before final collapse. Sam's motto is - its not over until its over!

    Sam

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