"But I worked really really hard! Honest!"

Two professors at Benedict College were recently fired for refusing to follow the college's "Success Equals Effort" grading policy. According to this policy, recently established by the college's president David Swinton, 60% of freshman grades, and 50% of sophomore grades, are based on "effort"; the remainder is based on academic performance.

Swinton said professors have some leeway in calculating what goes into effort, factoring in attendance, completion of assignments and class participation. The students “have to get an A in effort to guarantee that if they fail the subject matter, they can get the minimum passing grade,” Swinton said. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

He said the college plans to monitor the incoming class of sophomores, the first to be graded under the SEE policy, to determine learning outcomes. “If anybody manages to do effort for two years, they are going to learn something and develop the study habits that they need as a junior,” he said.[...]

Swinton disputes any violation of academic freedom. The professors “were not dismissed because they did not follow the policy,” he said. “They were dismissed for insubordination. They were openly defiant and in some cases hostile.”

Swinton said he would not tangle with [The American Association of University Professors], which promotes academic freedom and standards nationally. “It’s a faculty union, and we don’t recognize them,” he said.

I honestly don't know what I'm more disturbed by: the obvious violation of academic freedom, the deliberate lowering of academic standards, the college's secrecy about its grading policy (which is briefly mentioned once or twice on the web but never described in detail), the media's insistence on prefixing Benedict with the phrase “historically black”, Swinton's use of the phrase “do effort” in defense of his educational policy, or the mere fact that two professors were fired for being “uppity"—especially at (excuse me) a historically black college.

[via MeFi]

Update: According to The Chronicle of Higher Education^$, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Surprise, surprise. The AAUP formally sanctioned Benedict College in 1994 for a similar incident. According to The Chronicle^$ (June 29, 1994):

An AAUP team found that three professors who publicly criticized the president of the historically black college for his handling of faculty layoffs had been dismissed in 1992 in violation of their academic freedom.

John V. Crangle, a history professor, was dismissed because, the college said, he had falsified "information concerning [his] qualifications" when he was hired in 1979. Mr. Crangle admitted he had failed to note that he had jumped bail on a misdemeanor charge of assault and battery stemming from a protest against the Vietnam War at South Dakota State University in 1970. He later paid a $100 fine.

Robert M. O'Neil, chairman of Committee A, said the president had known of the incident for some time but had decided that it was grounds for dismissal only after Mr. Crangle criticized him publicly.

The AAUP also concluded that two other faculty members who criticized the president had been wrongly dismissed, one for insufficient cause and the other on a technicality.

The college declined to comment on the allegations or on the censure.

Comments

[Suresh]

Maybe this answers one question: what could you do to get fired from a tenured job ;)

[Anonymous]

Although not related to this post (could not find a place to write my comments on general questions on this blog), but would be interested in your opinion on the quality of ugrad education, as discussed in:

http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/archives/001848.html

UIUC comes up in this regard there.

[Jeff Erickson]

Thanks for the pointer; I added a few comments to Brian Leiter's post. The CS class that Lucas Wiman mentions was the algorithms class I taught last semester!