Having come out of DeVry, I was accustomed to providing my number, being accessible to students broadly, willing to offer do-overs and take late work. With my online students (in my new role, I teach both on-site and online), I offered to meet with them on-campus as well. My supervisor gently encouraged me not to do so much--it makes other faculty look bad...how different from DeVry! He believes that if students can't follow instructions, can't manage their time, and can't get their work in, it's best for them to fail and take the lesson from it.
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Thank you for the rumor, but any evidence to back it? Multiple reports or just one?
6wup...are you suggesting she's not qualified?
looks like Devry is closing small centers but keeping some of the staff in shared work-space locations so they can fulfill the requirement of not completely closing any sites for one year after the transfer agreement.
according to Linkedin LB used to be a secretary. Now that's an inspiring story...
@1ltq, yes, I was also thinking of the good ol’ days in my post about having positive mentoring relationships. I left a few years ago so haven’t seen the latest insanity.
I did have to look up Stockholm Syndrome that someone had mentioned...it’s apparently real enough in workplace settings: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/277131
"He believes that if students can't follow instructions, can't manage their time, and can't get their work in, it's best for them to fail and take the lesson from it."
Shades of DeVry in the 1980s when we had students lined up out into the parking lot waiting to register.
Wretched are those of us who worship at the altar of Cognos, exalting the almighty ECE score as though it were an actual indicator of teaching and educational quality. Cursed as we are, we know the truth about what tracking this metric really incentivizes among the perpetually petrified professor populace, and the true meaning of the comical ‘culture of Care.’
My last year at Devry was utter hell -- there was more and more bulls**t about "focusing" on students which basically meant to try any means necessary to stop them to drop out of the class by calling/texting/etc. And then you have to record all of these interactions and then you have to sit in meaningless meetings. While the campus managers were sitting in their offices with their doors shut, watching movies and indulging in gossip about who might get laid off on the next inevitable "restructure".
Devry's model is not mentorship -- it is to engender a Stockholm Syndrome among the faculty at the mercy of students' every whichever whims to score a 3.6 for their evaluations.
My experience also, at least with undergrad students. Having been tainted by the Cult of the Late Do-Over makes traditional academics seem almost mean and vindictive by comparison. My new place is very much Do Right the First Time Or Fail. The rules are arbitrary and subjective and the meta-lesson is follow directions to the letter or risk financial penalties. Honestly there is much to be gained with a stronger mentoring relationship between faculty and students vs. capricious and arbitrary grade assignment. Students want to learn and we are in this business to help them, but there is a sense of gatekeeping and excess judgementalism.
It creates fear that motivates learning but actually caused a student to ask me why her teachers hated students. I didn’t, I said, I don’t. I explained that I was here to help them understand the material and try to do well. They looked at me as if I wasn’t serious. I explained that I was trying to be fair with assignments and exams. Something of a shock to them, honestly. I miss having undergrads be partners in their own learning. I don’t miss anything else about the DV educational model...but there is something of value in collaboration and mentirshipbunto success vs motivation by fear of failure.