A Critique of the Customer Model of Higher Education

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the author
• About the book
• Advance Praise for A Critique of the Customer Model of Higher Education
• This eBook can be cited
• Tabel of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Making a Multi-Faceted Case Against the Present Evaluation System
• Criticizing Some Students Is Not Criticizing All Students
• Some Past Research on Student Evaluations
• My Teaching Career
• Chapter One: Challenging the Customer Model
• Some Historical Background
• Collini Weighs in
• The “Economistic Idiom” and Right-Wing Think Tanks
• The Lowering of Higher Learning
• The “Disengagement Compact”
• The Previous Teaching Evaluation System and the New
• Some Sorry Examples of Student Power and Faculty Weakness
• Playing Fast and Loose with Academic Standards
• The Vulnerability of the Untenured
• Chapter Two: What’s a Teacher to Do?
• The Intimidation Factor
• “Don’t Let the Critics Get You Down”
• Is Emotional “Toughness” the Answer?
• General Impressions of My Own Evaluations
• Questions to Ask Before Reading a Colleague’s Evaluations
• Does Competition Among College Teachers Produce More Learning or Less?
• On Reducing Learning
• Lowering Academic Standards Elsewhere
• Other Ways of Currying Favor with Students
• “Let Me Entertain You”
• Apropos
• Are Student Evaluations Based on Non-Verbal Factors Valid?
• On Manipulating Students Subliminally
• Apropos
• Ms. Mentor and “Student-Centered” Learning
• Must Teachers Be “Performers” to Get Good Evaluations?
• Chapter Three: Likeability, Personality and Grading
• Likeability
• Apropos
• “Compassionate and Caring” or “Confrontational and Combative?”
• Grading
• Valen Johnson on Grade Inflation
• A Spoof About Grading at Harvard
• A Satire by Joyce Carol Oates
• “Professor X” and a Student “Friendship”
• My Own Grading
• The Lack of Grading Transparency
• Chapter Four: Evaluating the Evaluators
• The “ratemyprofessors” Website
• From the “Best Professors” List
• From the General List
• Critiquing Some of the Criteria
• Three Research Studies on Undergraduate Culture
• Rebekah Nathan’s Picture of Undergraduate Culture at “AnyU”
• Ditching Classes
• To Study or Not to Study?
• Cheating
• Currying Favor with Faculty
• One Professor’s Experience with Plagiarism
• Is It a Question of “Balance”?
• Chapter Five: Students at “Midwest State” and Elsewhere
• The “Generalized” Student Culture at Midwest State
• Student Subcultures
• Getting a Degree with a Minimum Amount of Effort
• Student Slackers
• How Some Students View Teachers
• Youth Culture in the Classroom
• Are Oberlin Students an Exception?
• Chapter Six: Is the Customer Always Right?
• Evaluating a Teacher Many Years Later
• Student Accountability: A Double Standard
• Whose Failure Is It?
• Jane Tompkins at Duke University: Liberation Pedagogy
• Accused of Being a Fascist
• Are College Students “Children”?
• Anonymous Course Evaluations
• A “Teaching Moment”
• Accused of Fascism Again
• The Cult of the Comfortable
• Apropos
• Trigger Warnings
• The “Coddling of the American Mind”
• “The Trivializing of Everything”
• Apropos
• Consumers versus Learners
• Chapter Seven: Out of Step with Some Students
• On Displeasing Some Students
• Student “Patriotism” or School Pride
• Inflated Self-Esteem
• “Oberlin Students Are Used to Being Praised, Not Criticized”
• “Top Down and Bottom Up Learning”
• Inflated Self-Esteem and Toni Morrison
• “You’re Not Special”
• Apropos
• Parenting
• Inflated Entitlement Feelings
• The Millennials
• Apropos
• Chapter Eight: Social Class in American Academia
• Social Class at “Midwest State”: “Talisha,” “Jim,” and “Amy”
• Students from Low Income Families
• Social Class at Oberlin
• Two Oberlin Students from Different Class Backgrounds
• Social Class and Entitlement Feelings
• Social Class and the 2008–2015 Recession
• “Stressed-out” Students
• Social Class and Course Evaluations
• Liberalism and the “Professional Class”
• Oberlin Students and Bernie Sanders
• Do Rich Students Feel Lucky to Be in College?
• Rejecting the “Wrong Kids”
• Sonia Sotomayor from the Bronx to the Supreme Court
• My Belated Awareness of Class Issues
• Apropos
• Chapter Nine: Social Class and College Teaching
• Oberlin Idealism and Social Justice
• “Leftism” at Oberlin
• Students for Bernie Sanders
• Anti-Working Class Biases
• Social Class in the Classroom
• Class Backgrounds and Oberlin Professors
• Faculty Culture and Middle Class Values
• Professors from Working Class Backgrounds
• Working Class Values
• On Teaching Rich Students
• Lower Class Work Ethic
• Academic Culture and Academic Language
• My Own Class Background
• Right Wing and Left Wing Populisms: Donald Trump Versus Bernie Sanders
• A Student Demonstration at Oberlin
• A New President of Oberlin College
• Chapter Ten: “To Disturb Is My Function”
• Moving Leftward
• Right-Wing and Left-Wing Feminism
• Apropos
• The Perils of Political Correctness
• Apropos
• Identity Politics
• Apropos
• Identity Politics at Oberlin
• Was Oberlin “Racist” in 2016?
• On Being a Pedagogical Gadfly
• Apropos
• Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure
• Old and New Threats to Academic Freedom
• Chapter Eleven: What Should Count Most in College Teaching and Learning
• “Innovative” Teaching
• On Using Humor in the Classroom
• Defending “Publish or Perish”
• Apropos
• Are Untenured Teachers Better Than Tenured?
• A School’s Scholarly Reputation
• Virtual Education
• Educational Narcissism and Self-Defeating Individualism
• Gide, Proust and Camus
• Getting Outside of Oneself
• Apropos
• In Praise of Effort
• Apropos
• Are College Students Being Worked Too Hard Today?
• Saul Bellow: “The Teaching of Literature Has Been a Disaster”
• Apropos
• Chapter Twelve: A Critique of Collaborative Learning
• Collaborative Learning at Oberlin
• Glorious Rhetoric and Inglorious Results
• Why Collaborative Learning Appeals to Some Students and Faculty
• “Active” and “Passive” Learning
• The Teacher Knows More About the Subject
• Teachers as Only “Facilitators”
• Apropos
• The Learning of Skills Is Not Enough
• Collaborative Learning at LaGuardia Community College
• Chapter Thirteen: A Dysfunctional and Misleading Evaluation System
• The Deprofessionalization of College Teaching
• The Fall of Two College Presidents
• On Misusing Student Evaluations of College Teaching
• A Teacher Rebels
• “How on Earth Does Anybody Know Anything About Anyone’s Teaching?”
• Do Student Evaluations Measure What They Claim to Measure?
• A French Professor’s Views on Student Evaluations of University Teaching
• Is the French Evaluation System Better Than Ours?
• Three Frustrated Oberlin Students Call for More Teaching Evaluations
• Disappointed Parents
• Chapter Fourteen: Solutions
• Academically Adrift and the “Race to the Bottom”
• Some Piecemeal Proposals
• Replacing the Customer Model with the Previous System
• Holding Teachers Accountable
• On Helping Beginning Teachers
• Student Demonstrations on Behalf of the Present System
• The Benefits of Making the Change
• Afterword
• Appendix: Chronicle of Higher Education Articles
• Bibliography
• Series Index