Sunday, July 30, 2006

I Want the Least Education For the Money dot com

In the past on this blog, I've supported the web site RateMyTeachers.com, even though my ratings there aren't the best. What I cannot support is a school's being *required* to provide grade distributions, by class, to a for-profit (or non-profit, for that matter) web site.

The for-profit company prevailed recently in a public-records lawsuit
against the University of California, Davis, that was seen as a test case in
California. (The school initially refused to hand over the letter-grade
information, then backed down and paid Pick-A-Prof $15,000 in legal fees.)


Now the company is seeking the distribution of grades at other University of California schools, the California State University system and the state's community colleges -- to the ire of faculty members who say students will shop for easy classes...

Los Rios Chancellor Brice Harris agrees, but said in a letter to faculty
and staff that it wasn't worth losing a legal fight after UC lawyers determined that the aggregate letter-grade data amount to a public record that can be given to anyone who asks for it.



This isn't a positive development.

2 comments:

Darren said...

I myself don't consider grades and grade distributions to be "public information", but apparently UC Davis felt they wouldn't win in court with that argument.

As for the down-side, please note the title of the post.

Anonymous said...

The reverse argument of this is that students will be able to avoid an incompetent professor. (every school has them) ratemyprofessors.com is a great tool for finding more information about this since students give comments about the class and professor. There are certainly classes where there is a poor overall GPA because the professor failed miserably, not the students.