I read this book (you should read this book and "Good to Great" by Collins) and at the end of the first chapter I had the horrible thought, does SIUC management motivate professors to cheat?
As everyone knows, grade inflation is rampant at SIUC and all other universities in the USA. This really hits home when you start to interview the graduates for jobs. There are kids with 3.50 gpa's that are great, hard working, well prepared for a real job and others with the same gpa who know nothing (I'm going to claim to be an expert because in the late 90's I interviewed, hired and trained several hundred new college grads. I figure I have interviewed over 1000 people.). How can it be that there are so many losers with good GPA's?
If you dig into this just a little, you will find that about half of a professor's job review is based on teaching. Teaching results at SIUC are based on GPA of your students and student evaluations. There is no attempt to figure out if the students know anything, it is strictly by popularity and grades. Does this sound like the cause and effect would lead to professors giving away grades?
The administration is circulating memos each year asking professors to help the students and sending a clear management message that retaining all students is their goal.
I hear there are professors at SIUC that are giving 50% on assignments for students handing in blank papers with their names on them. I hope this isn't true.
Hopefully, you can connect the dots for yourself. Grade inflation, students who don't work, performance based on grades and student reviews for professors, no supervision or tangible follow-up based on results. This is how scandals are made.
I know there are best practices for all of this. I wonder how the best universities are dealing with this?
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