Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Outsourcing Grading

Chronicle of Higher Ed published a really weird article discussing how it might be a good idea to outsource the grading of student essays.
Lori Whisenant knows that one way to improve the writing skills of undergraduates is to make them write more. But as each student in her course in business law and ethics at the University of Houston began to crank out—often awkwardly—nearly 5,000 words a semester, it became clear to her that what would really help them was consistent, detailed feedback.

Her seven teaching assistants, some of whom did not have much experience, couldn't deliver. Their workload was staggering: About 1,000 juniors and seniors enroll in the course each year. "Our graders were great," she says, "but they were not experts in providing feedback."
That shortcoming led Ms. Whisenant, director of business law and ethics studies at Houston, to a novel solution last fall. She outsourced assignment grading to a company whose employees are mostly in Asia.
As we can see, this insane practice is justified by the claim that it's impossible for the professor to read and grade 500 papers each semester. In the discussion that follows, pros and cons of this kind of outsourcing are discussed at length. What is shocking, though, is that nobody stops to consider how it is even possible that such idiotic measures would be taken instead of simply opening more tenure-track positions. What our higher education needs is not people from other countries grading papers of students they have never met in the course they know nothing about. Rather, we need to stop cramming hundreds of students into the same classroom. We need to stop cutting down on tenure-track positions and stop saving money in these ridiculous ways.

All of this stupidity with on-line teaching, insanely huge classrooms, and now grade outsourcing is destroying our higher education system. This is wrong, people, and it needs to stop.

9 comments:

Pagan Topologist said...

Yes, exactly. Even more CNTT positions would be better than this. I am horrified.

Khephra said...

Yeah, tweeted this a few days ago... Do you follow them @ khephir?

Clarissa said...

I'm ashamed to say I haven't learned how to use Twitter yet. I am planning to learn, though, as soon as the semester ends.

Why is it "Khephir"? Is it because of the beverage? Which I really love.

V said...

This is indeed completely ridiculous. Another blatant example of turning education into the conveyor belt...

However, I am not sure about the solutions to the problem. Should one really bring the number of the teaching staff into agreement with the increasing numbers of students, or should one reduce the number of students and bring it in accordance with the numbers of existing faculty? Should higher education really be for everyone? (Of course, I am not advocating elitism based on wealth, I am advocating elitism based on merit. :) )

Clarissa said...

Oh yeah, I agree absolutely. I think both things should be done simultaneously. For now, however, we have this insane push to "increase enrollment numbers", like it's a necessarily good thing and a simultaneous push to casualize the teaching positions.

Actually, I think this merits a separate post. Thanks for the suggestion! :-)

V said...

---insane push to "increase enrollment numbers", like it's a necessarily good thing

I my view increasing enrollment is also a part of the "business model of education", where education (or, even worse, just a degree) is treated just as the same sort of a commodity as a car or a TV...

Clarissa said...

Even in terms of business, this is a very bad way of doing business. It lowers the value of our product, it offers a product under false pretenses, and it creates many unsatisfied customers.

V said...

Unfortunately, this idiocy is driven not only from the supply side. There is a large fraction of students and their parents who could not care less about critical thinking abilities and other things we consider important, for them higher education is just a necessary evil to get a paper allowing them to get higher-paying job. They are just smart enough not to go for a 3-month degree from some on-line university.

Clarissa said...

An on-line program, trade schools, associates degrees would be a great alternative for those who are not interested in accumulating "impractical" knowledge about Africa being a continent. I think more people should go that way if all they want is to get a job in the end.

there is this really funny commercial advertising some kind of an on-line college degree, where a recent graduate of the program says: "My outlook looked very bleak..." :-)