[lit-ideas] Re: Masterly (or Personly) Outcomes
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:39:53 -0600
David Ritchie wrote:
Our college will soon offer an M.F.A. degree, but we are taking only
fifteen students a year and we will be offering them a wide variety of
routes through the program. One result will be that several upper
division liberal arts classes will soon have one or two masters
students in them or, to re-state that in U.S. jargon, some 3/400 level
courses will have a 500 level component.
When I was in graduate school, back when things were simpler but the
beer was horrible, in such classes the professor merely judged the
final essay and exercises--presentations, discussions etc.--by
reference to a higher standard, which was not spelled out. In the
current political scheme, where outcomes must be right there on the
syllabus, this old approach has suffered the Wrath of Accreditors; it
has been judged insufficient, too loose to track.
If it pleases you and you have the time and energy, please consider
describing for me how your institution copes with this issue of
Master's outcomes. How does your institution go about distinguishing
an undergraduate outcome from a master's level one? Does it require
the higher level student to read more books, to do more work, to
achieve a seventy percent or better level of pattern analysis,
measured on the Holmes-Watson Scale?
"My" institution has a similar but different problem--or the same
problem on a different level. Maybe some principles can be used in both
places. I teach at a community college that-supposedly--offers the
first two years of a 4 year ("Bachelor's") degree. But I've noticed
that almost all of our students wind up taking maybe 80% of their
over-all coursework in "100" level courses. We do offer a smattering of
200 level courses, but very few students wind up taking them; most take
two years of first year courses. This is partly understandable because
students usually meet their "general education" requirements with those
courses, reserving the few 200 level courses for those in their major,
but looking over the catalog reveals several programs where it would be
possible to do 75% of the work in a major field and only have to take
100 level courses.
The curious thing is that most statistics show that of "our" students
who DO transfer to 4 year schools, there is no measurable difference in
performance in grades or graduation rates when comparing students who
start at 4 year schools and students who start at 2 year schools.
To me, that suggests something (Only a suggestion, the slightest whiff
in the air really, but still a whiff): What matters more is the amount
and extent of work done, not the exact level. Having done 30 classes,
all at the 100 level, is just about as productive as doing 15 classes at
the freshman level and 15 at the sophomore level. I suspect that the
main reason for this is that even at schools that do take seriously the
"curriculum" and actually plan on how a 200 level course is more
advanced than a 100 level course, the effect is negligible; there isn't
really as much difference as we think there is.
Note: If your institution is, in fact, a freezer seal repair business
or a book-writing factory or a dust bunny farm, do not feel excluded;
please feel free to riff wheree'r the muses blow you, even unto the
geary plains of Godot, where lurks the fearful porpentine. And baby Jee.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
p.s. Did the debate about gendered rhetoric ever propose changing the
title of "Master's" degrees? If so, what was proposed?
Let me know if you run across any proposed changes, ESPECIALLY since we
have a (similar) problem with the even more problematic "Bachelor's"
degree. Most undergraduate students are women these days; what in the
world are they working on a "Bachelor's" degree for????
(I actually try to explain the degree name mess a bit in an introductory
philosophy class by saying that an "associate's" degree is really a
dependent degree, where one is associated with experts but where the
expectation is that one follows others' instructions, and that a
"bachelor's" degree is one where the person is expected to be able to
figure out things without as much direct supervision and instruction,
and that a "master's" degree is where one is not only has the capacity
to be somewhat independent (a "bachelor") in solving problems, but has
demonstrated a great range of success in demonstrating that they HAVE
solved such problems.)
Using all these ideas, one might argue that a "master's" level for a
class is just doing MORE of whatever the class is supposed to offer,
rather than demonstrate a qualitatively different understanding.
--
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
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John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
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