----- Original Message -----
From: Lee Reed
Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 6:37 pm

> To<BR>> my slight surprise, instead of saying "flunk her," he
> responded to the situation by observing that this student's
> parents were paying $40,000 a year for her schooling, and I
> should give her a makeup and final.

Lee, I feel your pain!

It is unfortunate that professors are told to pass students because they simply pay tuition. At a former institution (NOT the university I work for now!) I was in a department that was the 4th largest at the university level. Because we were the "catch all" for every other department in the business school for students who couldn't handle the work (my former department even offered a qualitative "substitute" for calculus!) my chair insisted that the number of Fs given be kept to a minimum. He didn't want the impression to go out that getting a degree from our department was hard because he thought it would scare people away.

So my last semester there, I had a student come into my office expressing a great deal of concern about passing one of my classes. My office was across from the department chair's and both our doors were wide open. In the middle of the student's pleadings for leniency, I stopped him and asked one question:

Did your check clear?

He looked at me blankly so I asked him again loud enough for my former chair to hear.  I then explained that as long as his tuition check had cleared and he didn't owe the university any money that I couldn't fail him by dictate of my (now former) chair.  When the student left my office, the chair, having overhead the conversation, walked into my office, smiled, gave me thumbs up and said "Good job!"  He was not being sarcastic!  

If colleges and universities continue to pass students up and graduate them as happens in high schools, then the shortage of business professors as reported by CNN earlier this week:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/02/21/teaching.business.ap/index.html

will continue to be a huge problem.  Before I landed this job, I was seriously investigating a return to the private sector.  Not everyone is entitled to a college degree and certainly not everyone deserves to pass a class just because they had enough room on their mastercard to cover the current semester's tuition.

RDP

---------------------------------------------
Richard D. Parker, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Marketing and Advertising
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
375 Reynolds Business Center
2801 South University Avenue
Little Rock, AR 72204-1099
501-569-8861
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