Ordinary Nothing

I have a friend who is studying for a Bachelor’s degree in Pol-Sci at TAU.

And one of their courses, passed by a lecturer who is not too good at teaching, introduces a new grading system. Nothing which isn’t widely used in some other types of degrees, but new for them. And the reactions of the students do not inspire too much confidence in the system.

This is from an IM chat with my friend, stripped of names and of interjected sentences that are not relevant to the subject, but not edited apart from that:

Yaron: How technical do they expect you to get?
Friend: very. Plus, since they are marking us on a curve as opposed to on the actual basis of merit, whoever gets the most intelligent person to do their homework for them gets the best mark!
Yaron: Youch!
Yaron: Don’t let the faculty dean or academic board catch you with that quote…
Friend: meaning???
Yaron: Grading on a curve is stupid. IMNSHO
Friend: yeah well, its their stupid system…. they have to take responsibility
Friend: and all people keep saying is:"I’m paying a PHD student to do mine, that way I definitely wont be in the bottom Part of the estimate…"
Yaron: That’s insane.
Friend: so….guess how much chance I have of getting a decent grade on my own…
Friend: but thats what happens when you add that element of competition to a bunch of deranged politics students
Yaron: Right. I forgot. PolSci. Where the subject material is used to bribe people…
Friend: see, i just figure its not fair if I try my best but get a 50 (or less) cause the rest of the class is paying a PHD student to do it for them. The exam is at least fair cause they cant cheat much on that
Yaron: If they know people are going THAT far out, they may decide to take the papers that don’t look like their students made, and disqualify them.
Yaron: It’s possible to differentiate between work made by BA students and work made by a PHD…
Friend: they wont. They cant prove it
Friend: plus, the lecturer would be flattered on his apparent teaching skills
Friend: This is why I hate political science this year…
Yaron: I can understand you, if this is the way things are going.
Yaron: Did I mention I think it’s insane?
Friend: I just dont feel confident in my ability to do a work that measures up to the "standard" if its going to be marked that way

We tried to figure out what may be good about the new system, but didn’t came up with much:

Yaron: There’s always the anonymous note option. Tell the lecturer, or someone higher up.
Friend: they dont care…
Friend: they just want money and jobs….
Friend: plus, the PHD students could do with the money at the moment….what with the taxes and all
Yaron: Trust you to find the moral justification. ;-)
Friend: ;)
Friend: its not their fault that people are taking advantage of the system!
Yaron: Maybe the university is doing it on purpose, as a community service.
Friend: exactly…

And in case it isn’t clear, a single student grumbling about paying someone to do a paper for them can usually be safely ignored, but when several start to exhibit this attitude it means they’re actually going to do it, and so are several more with enough intelligence to keep quiet about it.

That’s one way to show that even B.A. students serve mid-term papers at a level which wouldn’t shame a Ph.D. student elsewhere. It must be very impressive to show professors from other universities random sample papers from a B.A. class.

Oh, and just for the record, my friend did not pay anyone else to do the work. No one with, or studying for, a Ph.D. was involved.
I’ll know more about the actual grades in a couple of weeks.

November 16th, 2004 at 0:38 EET | Categories: Miscellaneous, Science | Track comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.