Last week I applied to EMU and U of M. In one of my essay answers to U of M I mentioned my interest in online education. This week my employer went through with the layoffs we all suspected were coming. I was spared, but it's already left me with an increasing resentment concerning my current educational situation at JCC.
This semester I have an online course with a very attentive adjunct and one completely AWOL "Professor" meaning a full professor, not an assistant, associate, instructor, or adjunct. At first, I just assumed the professor's class was ridiculously easy and that she opened up all the discussions and course materials at once for no particular reason. I also believed when she said she read all of our posts everyday. But then someone violated one of her rules by posting something extremely racist and she didn't say anything. Then our discussion units weren't graded. Then I posted a question to the "ask your instructor" forum and it wasn't answered for a month. Then someone else posted a question and a month has passed without a reply.
Then I decided to do my research at ratemyprofessor.com and I noticed that the last couple reviews, spanning the last couple of years, were about how she had been AWOL throughout their entire online course. Clearly, this is an established pattern of behavior.
And here's my concern: Besides students learning less, degrees meaning less, and me wasting my money, I'm concerned about what this means for the future of tenure at universities. K-12 teachers have already witnessed an assault on tenure and collective-bargaining rights and this anti-education campaign isn't going away. Our economy still stinks, the cost of higher education continues to rise, and people like my coworkers who work their asses off are being laid off left and right! Some of them will enroll in school and, because they're going to be seeking employment and taking care of their children, they'll probably enroll in online courses. So, imagine how fucking pissed off they're going to be when they realize their tax dollars support the salaries of people who don't even bother to teach them.
Everyone expects online education to be cheaper, so the technology fee that JCC and other schools charge has always baffled many students. The Chronicle has recently reported that online education is becoming more and more profitable for colleges because there's better and cheaper software and infrastructure options needed for online learning.
Plus, online education is growing. EMU offers entire degree programs online and JCC is looking to do the same. More and more students are going to be learning online and when they see tenured professors being completely absent from their courses they are going to start demanding changes. Pay cuts, the end of tenure, more adjuncts, so on and so forth. And many of these online learners are adults, which tends to make them more likely to vote than the traditional eighteen year old student.
Professors who treat their online courses like vacations from teaching are not only taking a shit on the students, but they are taking a shit on future educators who will watch their tenure and academic freedom stripped away by angry former students.
I'm angry at these absent professors because I want a future in education and academic freedom is very important to me. I'm angry at them because I've seen what this assault on tenure has done to wonderful teachers, like my Aunt. I'm angry because I know that a lot of these anti-teacher decisions were probably made by people who still hold a grudge against some awful fifth grade history teacher who made them cry. I'm angry because if intelligent professors aren't going to try and TEACH their students, then their students minds are going to rot and they are going to latch on to the first thing that pulls at their heartstrings, like Waiting for Superman and Michelle Rhee.
I'm angry because the fight for control in higher education is coming, and professors who don't teach are going to be the greatest threat to good professors who can use their tenure to benefit their students.
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