Emulating Our Heros

[woolcutt]

It's a rare occasion where we are given a chance to emulate our heros, but I believe I have such an opportunity:

I began graduate school with a great passion for my subject intending to pursue a PhD in mathematics. One of the great hurdles of doing this is passing the PhD qualifying exams of which there are two at my university. I spent fully a year (okay maybe it was more like nine months) studying for the exams and passed them on my first attempt. This was an extremely demanding task, but I am proud of my achievement and time spent.

This past year the professor I really wanted to work with was unavailable and I spent my time taking classes tangential to my interests and in private study. A handful of other graduate students attempted the exams in that time and didn't do so well, however, rather than fail these students the administration saw fit to give these students a second chance and a week to take the exam home and complete it with any resources they had on hand. Some of these students required even a third attempt (second take home!) to complete and finally pass the exam.

I feel that this diminishes the value of my achievement, and this and other factors are contributing to me considering a change of school and even possibly a change of career.

Currently I teach a relatively low-level course trying to save some money for whatever is to come in the months ahead. I've been toying with the idea of giving the students a surprise optional take-home final exam worth 100% of their grade, which would most likely take and therefore most likely all earn A's for the course. Passing 50 odd students with A's would be an unusual outcome for the course, but I feel it nicely mirrors my situation and sends the appropriate message to administration. It can only help the students pass the class and they would all most likely be elated. The class is a terminating course, meaning that it satisfies no prerequisites for advancement at the university, so I would not be inadvertently setting up any students to fail in a class ahead.

What do you think guys, is this my (mini) Howard Roark moment?

[softwareNerd]

Some question that come to my mind are:

What of the really good students in your class? Would you be putting them in the position in which you find yourself today -- exasperated at the injustice, feeling it diminishes the value of their achievement?

Are there alternative ways to raise this issue for discussion. Admittedly, they might be less dramatic ways, but will they be completely ineffective? If ineffective, would this dramatic protest be effective in bringing about change? What about a threat to do what you're planning? Could that be used instead?

What are the other consequences from the administration to you if you are seen to have given 50 students A's as a form of protest?

Added: I should point out that if someone told me they were going to blow up a government-financed building they had secretly designed, but had been built in violation of their secret instructions, I'd have advised them not to risk jail.

Edited June 24, 2008 by softwareNerd

[eriatarka]

A PhD is about research, not exams. I doubt your exam performances will be given much/any weight during your viva, and noone on a journal/conference submissions committee will care about them. The exams are probably only there to give people extra motivation to attend the relevant classes - the uni wont want to throw people out of a PhD program if their research is going well, so its not surprising that they got a few resits.

It sounds to me like youre too focused on inconsequential things - if youre a PhD student then your primary/sole concern should be research, not getting good grades in exams. Exams are fairly meaningless after undergrad - the value of attending classes is to learn things which will help you to do good research in the future, not to get an 'A' to put on your resume. If youre happy at your uni then I think it would be borderline insane to risk being kicked out over something as petty as other people being given exam resits.

I'm basing this on the UK system though, it may be different in America where theres more emphasis on taught courses during the first few years.

edit: since you brought up Roark, remember that his attitude towards exams during the start of the book was one of complete disinterest. Failing his exams was the reason he got kicked out of Stanton!

Edited June 24, 2008 by eriatarka

[D'kian]

I feel that this diminishes the value of my achievement, and this and other factors are contributing to me considering a change of school and even possibly a change of career.

It certainly makes the exam requirement meaningless. But as for vaues, it dmminshed their achievent, not yours. It is to your credit that you knew the subject(s) involved well enough to pass the exam. And to the other students' discredit that they did not, and had to be helped along. You could argue that if they coudl take the tests home, why not then simply give them a passing grade? But your achievement stands on its own.

As to your choice of school and career, that depends on what you want to do with your life, and whether or not that school can give it to you and on what terms. Not on how it helps other students along.

Of course you have to consider your future employment. If your current school becomes well known for giving grades and degrees away, then you may be wiser to change schools.

[JMeganSnow]

Roark got kicked out of Stanton because he refused to complete an assigned *project* in the proscribed manner: he even acknowledged that it was insubordination.

As for the rest, if you despise this college's practices so much that you feel the need to protest them, why the heck are you working there in the first place?

[eriatarka]

Roark got kicked out of Stanton because he refused to complete an assigned *project* in the proscribed manner: he even acknowledged that it was insubordination.

Oops sorry, my mistake.

Edited June 24, 2008 by eriatarka

[woolcutt]

Roark got kicked out of Stanton because he refused to complete an assigned *project* in the proscribed manner: he even acknowledged that it was insubordination.

As for the rest, if you despise this college's practices so much that you feel the need to protest them, why the heck are you working there in the first place?

Well as for still working here, I can't claim omniscience of all events - I just found out about this recently. I want to finish whatever work I said I'd finish and then I'm out of here.

I know this makes me seem petulant, but well, maybe I am in this. I just don't like the "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" attitude applied to academics. That the department is desperate to hold onto PhD candidates is just as good a reason to maintain the standards as to bend the rules to keep a few struggling students.

The exams are not just classwork, they are a necessary part of acquiring the degree. I never have cared about the result of a classwork exam nor my grade for a course. In three years of graduate school I've checked my GPA twice: after my first year and last night. I have a 3.97 - HA! Lowering the standards for this exam represents a significant decrease in the value of the degree overall.

Unfortunately, as the university seems to be the only venue to practice and teach higher mathematics it would appear that I'll have to tolerate some kind of silly politics anywhere I go.

BTW: I'm not really going to go through with this pipe dream. But I thought you all might get a kick out of the story.

[DavidOdden]

The fact that they were able to re-take the exam is not itself a problem -- presumably, department rules allow at least one re-taking of the exam (though it might have to be at the regular exam time). The question is or should be whether the filtering function of the exam was subverted in a way that harms the object that you're working for. Of course I don't know: it's a plausible concern. As far as the value of your exam performance to yourself is concerned, of course it has no effect (I would assume -- you know what you did). I suggest that the faculty also know what you did and what they did. In another discipline, it's possible that the real filtering is done at the level of the qualifying exam so that an incompetent could get end up getting a degree. I don't know how that works out in math -- either you have a result and a dissertation, or you don't.

But: I would strongly advise not following through on your plan, since you could get in bigtime trouble. First, I imagine that on the comprehensive, this take-home idea was offered after the fact as a make-up exam; you are not offering them the opportunity to fail on their own. Second, I bet the comprehensive make-up was in response to a surprising rate of failure, so if you want to "do something analogous", you need to wait for a large-scale pattern of failure. Third, I bet that the comprehensive make-up was made available after some "input from faculty" (the graduate committee said "Hell, what are we gonna do...Bill, can we give the exam again?"), and you are proposing to unilaterally give a non-standard exam, possibly in violation of university rules.

You might, however, construct a proposal to do something along those lines in anticipation of large-scale failure (erh, "concern over the students' inability to do math") and respectfully circulate it in the department, asking if it is okay to do such a thing. That might accomplish what you'd like to accomplish, in terms of message-sending.

[woolcutt]

The fact that they were able to re-take the exam is not itself a problem -- presumably, department rules allow at least one re-taking of the exam (though it might have to be at the regular exam time). The question is or should be whether the filtering function of the exam was subverted in a way that harms the object that you're working for. Of course I don't know: it's a plausible concern. As far as the value of your exam performance to yourself is concerned, of course it has no effect (I would assume -- you know what you did). I suggest that the faculty also know what you did and what they did. In another discipline, it's possible that the real filtering is done at the level of the qualifying exam so that an incompetent could get end up getting a degree. I don't know how that works out in math -- either you have a result and a dissertation, or you don't.

But: I would strongly advise not following through on your plan, since you could get in bigtime trouble. First, I imagine that on the comprehensive, this take-home idea was offered after the fact as a make-up exam; you are not offering them the opportunity to fail on their own. Second, I bet the comprehensive make-up was in response to a surprising rate of failure, so if you want to "do something analogous", you need to wait for a large-scale pattern of failure. Third, I bet that the comprehensive make-up was made available after some "input from faculty" (the graduate committee said "Hell, what are we gonna do...Bill, can we give the exam again?"), and you are proposing to unilaterally give a non-standard exam, possibly in violation of university rules.

You might, however, construct a proposal to do something along those lines in anticipation of large-scale failure (erh, "concern over the students' inability to do math") and respectfully circulate it in the department, asking if it is okay to do such a thing. That might accomplish what you'd like to accomplish, in terms of message-sending.

Thanks for your input.

I think I'm just going to see out the semester like usual. I still disagree with the university's policy, but I'm not calling the shots.

I'll shortly get over myself, lol.