Yesterday's Chronicle reported on
the action taken by Louisiana State University's dean of basic
sciences, Kevin Carmen, to remove Dr. Dominique Homberger from the
classroom at mid-semester when her mid-term grades showed that 60
percent of the students were failing and that no students had earned
an A. Wow—this story raises all sorts of questions about the state of
higher education in general, and in particular at LSU.
As a former biology professor, I am not at all surprised by low test
scores or high drop rates among students who are enrolled in what
might be the first rigorous, fact-based course they have ever taken.
We know that our K-12 schools do not adequately prepare students for
college-level work, and especially college-level work in math and
science, which means that we should not be surprised when the majority
of those students struggle in an introductory biology course. We can
lament this reality, and work to improve K-12 education standards, but
we should not solve this problem by lowering the academic standards to
which college students are held. Instead, we need to be honest with
students about the amount of work it will take on their part to
develop the skills and attributes necessary for college success. We
need to put the burden of learning back where it belongs—on the
students.
Many students have spent their entire K-12 education - and a good part
of their college experience - being told that there are no right or
wrong answers, but instead that what matters most are their feelings
and opinions, that they understand broad concepts (which has become a
euphemism for not really knowing anything except the most obvious and
basic ideas), or that they must "own" the learning that is taking
place by "inventing" new methods for solving problems. Many would have
us believe that memorization is an outdated learning modality in
today's world where any "fact" can be found on Wikipedia. Of course,
most who advance this notion are housed in academic education
departments, where anecdotal support for feel-good theories dominates
the field and where there is a dearth of substantiated facts or
empirical evidence of anything. In the hard sciences, facts abound and
those who want to be successful better learn a few of them.
We could argue forever about which facts are most important to know -
an argument that we could never settle given that scientists tend to
be niche specialists who want to emphasize the supreme importance of
their niche over others, which confounds any genuine effort to focus
on generalized scientific literacy. But regardless of which facts a
student may or may not need to know, my sense from looking at Dr.
Homberger's exam questions is that her focus is not on the specific
facts themselves, such as whether or not domesticated animals are more
or less likely to have an overbite than feral animals, but instead on
helping her students develop the ability to read for content, and to
apply the knowledge and concepts they have learned to understanding
practical examples in the real world. While some professors might
simply ask students to recite the basic principles of evolutionary and
developmental biology or genetics, Dr. Homberger is asking students to
apply those concepts to answer questions about how selective breeding
may lead to morphological and behavioral traits among domesticated
animals that differ from those derived in nature through the process
of natural selection, genetic drift, or even genetic accident. If the
students had read the articles, the answers to the test questions
would be obvious. But I would also argue that those who had mastered
the basic concepts of evolutionary biology and genetics (which are
typical in an introductory biology course) could have deduced the
correct answers regardless of whether or not they had memorized any
specific facts from the assigned articles.
Of course, Dr. Homberger could have assigned the students to read
Darwin's On the Origin of the Species to see other practical examples
of evolutionary biology, but I suspect students would have found that
book to be far more challenging than the American Scientist or
Financial Times articles she assigned. Those are perfectly appropriate
publications from which to draw articles for an undergraduate
audience. In fact, I commend Dr. Homberger for going the extra mile to
find articles that enhance whatever basic information may have been
presented in the textbook or in her lectures. I disagree with Dr.
Cummins, a former graduate student and the wife of one of Dr.
Homberger's colleagues, who declared that Scientific American articles
are too challenging for undergraduate students. If LSU students can't
read a Scientific American article, then perhaps they shouldn't be LSU
students. Many high school teachers routinely assign readings from
Scientific American, and well they should.
I would agree that the format of Dr. Homberger's exam questions is
atypical in that there are more than five or six choices for some of
her multiple-choice questions, but atypical format is not sufficient
grounds for removal from the classroom. The real world is far more
complex than multiple-choice questions with five possible answers, and
perhaps our young people would be better served if we moved away from
the multiple-choice format altogether. Of course, we all know that
multiple-choice questions are not about pedagogical excellence, but
are instead designed to make the job of grading quick and easy for
professors. But regardless of how you might feel about multiple-choice
questions, the content of Dr. Homberger's questions that were posted
by The Chronicle did not seem unreasonable or inappropriate for an
introductory biology class. Demanding? Yes. Unreasonable? No.
It is possible that The Chronicle elected to publish the more
reasonable of Dr. Homberger's test questions or assignments, and that
in fact reality is much worse than is reflected in this article. It is
also possible that Dr. Homberger suffers from Queen Bee syndrome, and
that she is impossible to mentor or work with. Or, she might be one of
those aloof scientists who insists on speaking in tongues unknown to
the general public and the novice student. Or maybe she's just
forgotten how little someone knows about science when they haven't
spent the last 30 years of their life as a researcher and teacher. But
if such is the case, it would appear that some other corrective course
of action for either Dr. Homberger or her students should have
preceded her removal from the classroom ... and that such action
shouldn't have been delayed by 31 years. Perhaps Dean Carmen has tried
everything possible to mentor Dr. Homberger and improve her
performance, and the mid-term removal from the classroom was an act of
exasperated desperation. Or, perhaps someone in the administration has
decided that Dr. Homberger's retirement would be economically
advantageous to the LSU budget, especially if she can be replaced by
an underpaid adjunct professor. One would think that before removing a
professor from the classroom, the dean should have made a classroom
visit to evaluate the quality of instruction or even explore the
relationship between the work assigned in the syllabus and the
questions included on the exam.
Alternatively, perhaps the dean should have visited class one day to
explain to students that in college, homework and assigned readings
are not optional, that studying for the test involves more than
night-before cramming, and that credit is awarded based on certain
assumptions about the amount of time students spend in and out of
class working to master the material of the class. Or he could have
just bought some extra boxes of Kleenex for the "everyone gets a gold
star" generation of students who have been told since birth that
everyone's a winner ... that everyone is above average ... and that if
they fail, it is definitely somebody else's fault.
What concerns me most about this story, however, is the obvious
pressure that university administrators are placing on faculty to
retain and graduate students, regardless of whether or not those
students develop college-level knowledge and skills along the way. As
I have stated many times before, the unreasonable focus that
public-policy officials have placed on retention and graduation rates
may have the very significant unintended consequence of diluting
academic rigor to the point that an undergraduate credential will soon
be about as meaningless as a high school diploma. As we have learned
from history—and the simple economic principles of supply and
demand—when everybody holds a particular credential, the relative
value of that credential is significantly diminished. This is
especially true if the way we achieve universal undergraduate
education is by lowering academic standards rather than improving each
student's academic preparation for college-level work ... and holding
each student accountable for the effort they put forth to master
higher level knowledge, skills, and abilities. Bravo to Dr. Homberger
for holding firm in her belief that a college degree should mean
something.
It is time for college and university administrators to ignore the
demands of policy makers and philanthropists—people, who themselves
have never taught a freshman course at a public institution—to
graduate more students, just because. This focus on graduation rates
is shortsighted and misplaced. Graduation rates might be the easiest
indicator to measure, which is convenient for policy makers.
Graduation rates, however, are not the most meaningful or reliable
indicator of academic quality, especially since university officials
can easily manipulate these data by doing things that are ultimately
detrimental to students and our country.
Yes, institutions should understand what differentiates the successful
and unsuccessful students on their campus, and what programs and
activities could be developed to help more of the latter become the
former. We should support, mentor, and cultivate excellence among our
students, and work hard to help those who are falling behind. We
should never return to the "look to your left, look to your right, one
of you won't be here by the end of the semester" attitudes that once
dominated academic departments, and in particular, academic science
and math departments. And when instructors interfere with learning (as
opposed to when they hold students to high but reasonable standards)
we should take corrective action. But that doesn't mean that we should
eviscerate rigorous college-level science instruction just so that
everyone can get an A and put a diploma on their wall. What might make
for good stump fodder for politicians, and what might help rich people
feel better about the fortunes they have made at the expense of
others, might not necessarily be what is best for students who seek a
more meaningful existence and perhaps the chance for a better job.
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Comments
1. ledzep - May 18, 2010 at 04:28 pm
What's really weird is that this is a response to mid-term grades. What are those for if not to send students a serious message about where their understanding is and where it needs to be?