Grading as the New Battlefield
This guest post is authored by R. Thomas, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Grading might not be the most exciting aspect of a teacher’s career but it might be one of the best sources of job security - particularly in light of proposed online courses with automated grading that aim to put professors out of work or into unappealing, low-wage, jobs. Of course we’ve heard a lot about online education, MOOCs, merit badges, and competency assessments. As Clayton Christiansen describes it, universities save money with online education simply because there is a glut of PhDs. For years graduate schools have been over producing the amount of PhDs. Consequently talented instructors are more than willing to teach courses at low wages, with no benefits, and with essentially no job security. As he writes in The Innovative University , “Adjunct instructors give the online educators two advantages. Rather than receiving an annual salary, as full-time faculty at traditional un...