March 28

Late Grades? Pay Up, Professor

©istockphoto/Jason Reekie

Many professors hate grading, and like most human beings, they often put off what they don’t like. So at many colleges, the end of a term results in some proportion of the faculty turning their grades in late, much to the dismay of the registrars whose job it is to process the grades and make them available to students. The outcome can be more than just annoying to the registrars; late grades can delay diplomas, disrupt the awarding of financial aid, or get students into academic trouble.

Various institutions have tried various measures to crack down on the problem – sending nasty notes, putting warnings in instructors’ personnel files, even delaying the paychecks of faculty members who turn in their grades late, as the University of Iowa’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences threatens to do.

Florida State University once had a major problem with late grades, Kimberly Barber, the interim registrar there, told a large group of interested registrars and deans Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. About a decade ago, instructors in an average of 10 to 15 percent of the 8,000 course sections Florida State offered each semester at the time missed the deadline for turning in student grades, driving registration officials there nuts. Processing grades after the end of the normal process (which formerly involved scanning, and is now entirely electronic) was costly, and forced administrators to spend significant time telling students (and parents) why they couldn’t have their transcripts or financial aid or, in extreme cases, diplomas.

Registration officials complained to senior administrators there, prompting a scolding memo to the entire faculty from the university’s provost. Like many a memo, that one was largely ignored, Barber said.

The next year, when Barber says the provost, Lawrence G. Abele, was frustrated about the faculty’s reaction to something else, Florida State’s registrar at the time told him that professors were still consistently turning their grades in late. Together the registrar and Abele came up with an idea that they thought might drive home the seriousness of the late grade syndrome.

As Barber explained to a somewhat incredulous audience Wednesday: Florida State is what she believes to be the only institution in the country that fines its professors when they turn grades in late at semester’s end. The tab: $10 per grade.

“We charge for every grade for every student that is not turned in by our deadline,” Barber said, adding, slowly for emphasis: “I’ll say that again: Every grade for every student that is not turned in by our deadline.”

With that, the crowd broke into a wave of spontaneous applause. (Perhaps not surprisingly, when Barber asked for a show of hands about who was in the audience, it was dominated by administrators. If there were any faculty members there, they didn’t dare raise their hands.)

It was clear from their reaction and from the questions they posed that a lot of audience members were intrigued by the prospect of a solution that, as Barber put it, many have told her “would never fly at my institution.”

It did not go over well at first at Florida State, Barber said. The first term, there was little change in the traditional behavior, and when the registrar’s office sent bills to the dean of each FSU college with some eye-popping dollar figures — well into five figures in some cases, when you consider a survey course with 1,000 students, say – there was a “hue and cry on campus,” she said. “Even though we said we were going to do it, they didn’t believe it.” Strong support from senior administrators, including Abele, the provost, was essential, Barber said.

It took several years for the submission of late grades to “really taper off,” Barber said. But by the spring of 2007, instructors in just 59 of the more than 13,000 sections turned their grade rosters in late, and just 21 did so last fall. At this point, most of the laggards are graduate seminars or small courses with a new instructor or people who have forgotten to hit the “submit” button in Florida State’s now Web-based grading system; gone are the days of late rosters for 1,500 people, she said.

“Money’s not the important thing — money’s the vehicle that forces grades to come in,” Barber said. She clearly relishes being able to call a dean, as she did recently, and ask him where the grade rosters were for a large humanities class with multiple course sections. “You better get ‘em in or you’re writing me a check for $17,000,” Barber recalled saying. “They were there, on my desk, in an hour and a half.”

The registrar sent its bills to the deans of Florida State’s various colleges and made them pay up; some deans have historically paid the tab out of the colleges’ budgets, while others have passed the costs on to departments or even to the faculty members themselves, which can take a particularly heavy toll on less-well-paid teaching assistants and beginning instructors.

Many of the questions after Barber’s presentation focused on the kinds of practical issues, such as the need for an appeals process (a must), how often faculty members cite technological problems (“the browser ate my grades”), etc.

But ultimately, what most of the officials in the audience were clearly wondering was: Could I possibly pull this audacious idea off on my campus?

Yes you can, Barber suggested, but only with the right kind of support and preparation. Support not only from senior administrators like the provost or the deans, but also from key faculty members who get it, and lots and lots of preparation that explicitly explains the rules and makes the deadlines unequivocal. “Go to every faculty meeting, publish it in every newsletter you can, write in the sky, whatever you need,” she said. “When that first bill comes out, you’re going to have to deal with the aftermath, so be very clear in defining your terms.”

Most professors want to do the right thing, Barber said, and in her experience, even those who have missed a deadline have “gotten it” when she put it in terms they understood: “Don’t give me an excuse that you would not accept from your own students.”

— Doug Lederman

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Comments

cash cow

Great idea, which demonstrates, among other things, the at-least-occasional efficacy of deterrence theory. Now it’s time for the other shoe to drop -let’s levy a late charge for class assignments, too. All of which raises the question — what fine should be assessed against a late plagiarized paper?

Abbott Katz, at 6:45 am EDT on March 28, 2008

unionization

I assume that the FSU administrators want a faculty union with which to discuss conditions of employment.

David Fahey, at 7:45 am EDT on March 28, 2008

Cool

On student papers, I usually waste a lot of time putting comments on the papers that few bother to read. Under this system, all comments would be eliminated. You wonder if professors are now reading final papers less carefully than they were before this system emerged.

Also, Students should be charged a fee for bothering professors after the semester ended. Gone might be the days of hysterical protests over the poor darlings B+’s.

TS, Cog in the wheel, at 8:05 am EDT on March 28, 2008

FIning faculty members or witholding paychecks for late grades

Such practices may very well run afoul of state hourly and wage laws which usually prohibit these types of fines, etc.

I would advise any faculty member who is fined or has a paycheck withheld to contact their state commissioner of labor, or in Florida-United Faculty of Florida in Tallahasse.

Steve Finner, Senior COnsultant, Higher Education at United Professions AFT Vermont, at 8:20 am EDT on March 28, 2008

Late charges

Now, if we could only assess a fine for students and parents who don’t file their financial aid application on time.(;-))

Catalyst, at 8:50 am EDT on March 28, 2008

Timely Submission of Grades

Finner

Shame on you! It is never about the students only about the union members allegedly you represent. I do, however, admire your candor, to the extent that you do not keep secret the fact that it is all about the unit members (teachers) and not the students.

George Sutton

George S. Sutton, Vice President at Long Island University, at 9:45 am EDT on March 28, 2008

Come again?

How irresponsible, nay juvenile, does one have to be not to get final grades turned in on time, and because one doesn’t like grading? Of course, if departments had done their jobs and made sure their faculty had turned their grades in on time, this would not have been necessary.

rightwingprof, at 10:05 am EDT on March 28, 2008

Can anyone tell me exactly why FSU faculty who submit late grades have to actually pay the registrar’s office $10/grade?

Assistant Professor, at 11:25 am EDT on March 28, 2008

Unions-argh

What a great idea.

I am always surprised at people who don’t do the right and then go running to their union for protection. What ever happened to taking responsibility for your actions? What ever happened to understanding that when you do something wrong it can impact others in a negative way? Honestly, this is one of the great problems of our generation.

Bill Grau, at 11:50 am EDT on March 28, 2008

Responsibility — Mandarin Style

I never cease to be amazed at the indolence of the Mandarins. Do they not teach, often exhort, the merits of responsibility in their classrooms? Do they not exact penalties on their students for late submissions?

Yes, Finney, some forms of payroll withholding are prohibited by various state laws, but grow up. Why do you not remind the teachers you represent of their duty to be responsible? Instead you urge them to retreat to litigation to escape modest requirements to behave like an adult. BTW: Not prohibited is weighing irresponsible behavior heavily in promotion decisions. Even termination is possible if such requirements are written into contract renewals.

Why are we even having this discussion? In a complex social system, resources are lost when information is submitted after it is needed by various dependencies. Do the sub-performing teachers really expect someone else to underwrite the costs of their uninspiring behavior?

Senior Prof, at 11:50 am EDT on March 28, 2008

shame on who?

Oh for heaven’s sake, Mr. Sutton, it shouldn’t be too much to ask for a university administration to follow the law! Moreover, administrators have numerous ways to punish wrong-doing faculty, particularly in Florida where they have annual review, post-tenure review, etc. etc.

Isn’t it interesting that the preferred admin solution to a problem is always to punish the faculty? Maybe FSU should worry about things like student-teacher ratios and use of adjuncts and student academic support. Improving these areas would also affect whether faculty can manage to get it all done on time while still providing a decent quality of education. But maybe some administrator would have to forego his $25,000 raise to do so.

cga, at 11:50 am EDT on March 28, 2008

A minor caution

Before fining the professor individually, as opposed to the college or department, check with your lawyer. There are some tricky rules about paying people who are “exempt employees.” See, e.g., 29 C.F.R. � 541.118(a)(5). Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, individual fines are okay for safety infractions such as smoking in an oil refinery (an actual example in the regulations). Late grades are only metaphorically explosive.

Ann Franke, Wise Results, LLC, at 12:50 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

To Assistant Professor

I’ll take this as a serious question, assuming you have not had a course in economics.

Late grades cost real money. For each late grade there is the potential need to field additional questions from students, parents, and financial aid. This is inexpensive part. Some students enjoy employer tuition reimbursement and, when grades are late, reimbursements are late, and interest charges accrue because students had carefully managed short-term money on their credit cards. Late grades can have enormous effects on compliance with federal financial aid requirements, adding layers of reporting and recalculating. They can even create a situation of apparent non-compliance, placing the institution at risk of a costly audit. Then there are the situations where students have an application pending to another institution and, because grades are late, his application is incomplete and he loses his position in the application line. The costs here are difficult to generalize but they can be quite significant.

On balance, I would think that charging $10 per late grade is recovering less than half of the net cost.

The larger question is, why would anyone complain about following reasonable procedures that are integral to the profession, especially when the dates for these requirements are published one year in advance?

Senior Prof, at 12:50 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Language SKills

This is more than ridiculous. I do not charge my students for bringing in late assignments, but maybe I should (according to this). Neither do I charge student services personnel for allowing underprepared students to enroll in my classes. Faculty members have become the stepchildren of the education system. We attempt to help students to learn and to succeed. That is becoming increasingly difficult because students are entering our colleges with less and less skill in the basic learning process. However, the “faculty,” (spoken as an expletive) don’t like to grade? My response to that is BULL. Often, we have only half a day to finalize grades for all of our classes and turn in grades.

Faculty are very concerned with student success; yet, we are considered less and less by the college community. It is so easy for student services personnel to point fingers and lay blame. I suggest that they look within a little more often. Maybe I should charge them for allowing students to enroll in my classes when those students cannot possibly succeed in the class they’ve been enrolled in. Faculty are often swamped with grading (yes) and mandatory committee involvement, but we are dedicated to student success, and I cannot say that about students services personnel. So, when they begin focusing on STUDENT success instead of trying to alienate faculty, I’d like to see the student services personnel, deans, and other administrators with their checkbooks, paying back all of the students they’ve set up for failure!

Joanie DeForest, Professor at San Jacinto College, at 12:50 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Late grades

What Florida State University needs, and other universities like them who find late grades a problem, is to maintain two or three “dead” days before exams to clear the desks of all the accumulated grading that has piled up because of the students’ own submission of late papers during the semester. It is largely a problem that the students create, and FSU makes it all come down on the teachers because the school wouldn’t want to have any policy that might drive away students, such as taking final exams seriously. Furthermore, “dead” days before exams would make the exams legitimate testing experiences and the grades for the exams could be submitted within a reasonable time. What Kim Barber didn’t include in her speech, probably, was that exams used to finish on late Friday afternoon and grades were due by 9:00 am on Monday morning. Was that a reasonable time within which to accomplish the grading? No wonder there were so many late submissions....

Gene, at 12:50 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Should not be open to debate

How on earth can this be turned into a faculty vs. administration argument about unfair labor practices? Come on, people. Students pay their tuition, do the work, they’ve earned and deserve the academic credit that doesn’t exist until the grade is posted. What’s open to debate? Look at the link in the first paragraph to UMinnesota’s faculty website...shame on anyone who has to be reminded why students need their grades in a timely manner.

DS, at 1:20 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Bullet Dodged By Teacher Hits Class

I’m new at this game, but it seems to me graders aren’t at the bottom of this trickle-down scheme. As a grader, i try to encourage students to get work in on time, but i allow numerous extensions for students who want more time to properly learn the material. Then i try to read their solutions carefully and get back to them with useful corrections and comments. My impression is that my fellow TAs mostly do the same because we’ve been tasked with helping students learn and given sufficient time to do our jobs. It shouldn’t be surprising that people who opted out of the job market to get a doctoral degree care enough about their subject to do the job right. If we got this kind of pressure from above, our behavior would quickly change to avoid the fines, but we would be rendered completely ineffective as instructors. At that point the university might as well fire all of us and hire some upperclassmen on work-study to grade papers. Which is fine; we’d all be okay with full research appointments, but it would be silly to pay us the extra money to try and teach under those conditions. That’s an economic decision the university has to make.

Benjamin Shank, First Year Ph.D. Candidate at Stanford University, at 1:55 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Fine for late grades

Does the same standard apply to Deans? The only problem I had with not turning grades in was with the Dean os Academic Affairs who didn’t think the rules applied to her. She was TWO years late in turning in her grades on 10 L.V.N.to R.N. students. She only turned them in ehen they were ready to graduate and then with great because she wasn’t sure they had passed the class. By then whether they had passed that class was a moot point since they had completed the whole RN program. One student told me that it was like a sword hanging over her head for two years!There was no reprimand or any sort of punishment at all for the dean.

Wendy Hollis, Director of Nursing, at 2:25 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Baloney!

You make it sound like what should be the exception is the rule. If you’re sympathetic to a student not being able to complete coursework on time, you have the option of assigning a grade of incomplete. Is it fair to hold up all your students’ grades to help one or two students in the class?

What if the clerks in the Payroll department couldn’t get your paycheck out on time because a few people didn’t hand in their tax forms? You’d be screaming bloody murder, and rightly so.

IMHO, grades are the “payroll” of hard-working students and they deserve to have them on time, just as much as we expect to be paid on time.

Betty, at 2:45 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

As a faculty member who did on one horrible occasion turn grades in late (perhaps more than once, but I’ve probably blocked it out), loathing myself the whole time in a self-indulgent miasma of shame, I have to say that I’d secretly welcome this measure, even though in principle it is rather troubling.

I’ve thought a great deal about why I hate grading so much, and I identified a few reasons: 1) I love teaching, and grading is exactly the opposite of teaching; 2) when the students’ work is bad, I feel that I’ve failed as a teacher, so that grading them is like grading myself; 3) in my humanities discipline, I really do believe that my own judgement, however expert and unbiased, is not and cannot be purely objective; and 4) when everything is due on the same day, you wind up with a huge stack that’s intrinsically intimidating. It looks as though it’ll never be finished.

I’ve had some ideas of how to arrange my classes so as to give the students the good, quick, useful feedback they deserve without triggering my grading revulsion. Some of these I’ve used, some I haven’t.

1) Write very short, very clear, very specific assignments so that the students understand exactly what they’re to do.

2) Use a grading rubric.

3) Assign short, frequent papers rather than long, infrequent ones; I’d rather read 20 1-page papers every week than 20 15-page essays in one nightmarish weekend, and I think it’s better for the students’ writing skills.

4) Use rolling due dates chosen by the students themselves; often there’s no reason everything has to be due on the same day.

5) Give objective assignments such as quizzes and short-answer tests.

6) Give feedback verbally, in my office, rather than written comments on the assignment — more fun for me and for the student, well worth the logistics of arranging the appointments that must needs fall outside my office hours, and again I think the student is more likely to benefit.

7) Rely on others’ assessment instead of just my own — this is one I haven’t tried, but I really want to experiment with having students’ “softer” work (e.g., essays and othe rwriting assignments) graded its efficacy with the other students in the class. Say that they’re to write a paper arguing X; if 95% of the students in the class are CONVINCED of X after having read the paper, I’d say that’s an A, wouldn’t you?

BL, at 3:30 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

and a question

Just wondering... if that many students need extensions and are struggling to learn the materials, is it possible that the expectations of what can be learned in a limited amount of time are too high? Perhaps the course needs revision... which I think is in the hands of the academics — not the administration.

As are the requirements for registering in a class. I don’t buy the excuse about ill-prepared students. At my institution, at least, the faculty determine the criteria for accepting students to various courses.

Betty, at 3:30 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Logic Fault: Grades != Tax Forms

I was under the impression that the primary purpose of taking a class was to learn the material being covered. The Payroll department has no job but to get paychecks distributed in a timely manner. My job is to make sure that when my students walk away, they will have the necessary physics skills to pursue their chosen career. For me, even as a student, grades are a good motivating tool, but they are understood to be motivating toward something more important. If turning papers around is your chief aim, you should hire a grader. If you hire a teacher, expect grades to become subordinate to teaching. Of course other parties outside the school will need to know what the grades are. But i’ve never heard of a student on such a tight schedule that a built-in delay of a week would hurt them. If everyone who needed grades knew to wait a prespecified time for them, teachers would have time to properly turn papers around and no one would be worse off. As for issuing an incomplete, how does that look on scholarship applications, insurance records, etc.?Speaking of payroll, most companies issue paychecks one week after the end of the pay-period to let technical glitches and corrections clear. And that’s only a two week pay period. Shouldn’t we get at least the same time to clear a nine week quarter?

Ben, Physics Student at Stanford University, at 4:00 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Simple solution for FSU professors

There is a simple solution for FSU professors to avoid this grab at their paycheck. They can either devise an entire Scantron exam that can be quickly run after class or don’t bother to spend the time making voluminous comments on papers or written exams since few if any students ever look at their graded exams (especially final exams and papers). It’s all about the grades not the process of learning silly rabbit!

George, UNT, at 4:00 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Two Answers

Unfortunately, there is a fixed amount of knowledge needed to pursue most technical careers. We are always trying to find ways to teach more effectively, but like all research it’s a slow process. The department could try to split the material into more credit-hours, but administrators get upset when you do that. They could cut material from courses, but our students would just get slammed by their ignorance a few years down the road when their major courses required that material. Yes, we expect a lot of our students. We want them to get the best education possible in the time they have. Then we put a flexible support system in place to facilitate their efforts. Super-quick turnaround times don’t fit well in that system.Not being a prof, i can’t speak with authority to the prereq issue. I will note that it is very easy for me to sign up for classes which i am thoroughly unqualified to take. It’s not that the profs don’t list prereqs; but the registrar’s online course registration completely ignores them. At least in grad school the prof can politely suggest after seeing your first homework that you drop the course. Undergrads don’t get so lucky.

Ben, Physics Student at Stanford University, at 4:05 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Thank you, Gene

Dead Days during exam time would be tremendously helpful. We have semesters when we don’t even have the weekend to grade. This spring, for example, classes end Tuesday, May 13, and grades are due Wednesday, May 14, at 4:00 p.m. Of course it’s rediculous.

Faculty make up their own end-of-semester schedules. Some faculty will not conduct formal classes the Thursday and Friday before to conduct exams or collect final projects, leaving the weekend plus a few days to finish evaluation. Some will feel compelled to administer exams on Monday and Tuesday of that week. (And, of course, some will end classes a week early.) Dead days would alleviate nagging students, the burden of late work, and no other committee responsibilities.

As a chair person, I’ve had to make that phone call to faculty members. Honestly, it is usually the same few who don’t submit their grades. Occassionally it is a computer glitch. It happened to me. I entered five classes worth of grades, but one didn’t “make it through.” Boy, that was embarrassing when I received the call!

Jenna, at 4:20 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

To Senior Prof

Yes, yes, economics...blah, blah. That’s all nice and good. However, if a faculty member receives a bill from the administrators for turning grades in late, what obligation does he/she have to pay it? I’d just throw the damn thing in the shredder and move on.

Assistant Professor, at 6:00 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

incompletes?

As somebody who had taught for 45 years, I find the FSU scheme weird as well as insulting. Can’t instructors simply turn in incompletes?

David Fahey, at 8:50 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

What’s The Big Deal?

I can’t imagine why anyone would object to this ... I’ve been doing something along these lines for years. I have never fined anyone for anything; I have merely charged students and administrators for the privilege of the following actions ...

For Students:

Late to class = $15.

Leave class early without clearing it beforehand = $10

Wear baseball cap backwards to class = $10

Call phone rings in class = $75

Assignment turned in late or not at all = $25

Documented cheating (including plagiarism) = $500

For Administration:

Call and “facilitate” meetings with trivial agenda = $50 per participant.

Stupid remark in local media = $100

It goes on.

You may call this mindless if you want, but, over the years I have used these funds to finance my quite lovely condo in Kailua-Kona.

Frizbane Manley, at 8:50 pm EDT on March 28, 2008

Need A Strong Union

If you had a strong union, the Provost and Registrar would be run out of town. If you let this stuff continue, those administrators might get the idea that they actually run the place.

I hope that this was a pre-April Fools joke. I can’t believe that anyone would really pay this fine.

Anyone that does pay, shouldn’t be anywhere near a classroom.

James R. Kinfolk, at 7:00 am EDT on March 29, 2008

off the deep end

Personally, I’d like to know some basic facts omitted from the IHE article above. How much time do FSU professors actually get for grading? How much assistance do they get? How large, on average, are classes?

My institution gives us 72 hours from the completion of our individual final exams (which are scheduled by the school) to submit term grades. Students get 3 hours to fill their bluebooks with totally illegible scribbles. If I devote half an hour to each student’s final exam, that’s 40 hours of exam grading for a single 80-student class.

Personally, I can’t grade for 40 hours straight; I need a break after every five or six exams if I’m going to treat the students fairly. Once the spreadsheet churns out term grades, I try to review each student’s performance over the semester to look for aberrations or signs of improvement before filling out the term grade paperwork. Add in commuting time, eating, sleeping, and meeting the school’s grading schedule isn’t easy.

The challenges of grading vary dramatically from field to field. The time needed for grading essays can be quite variable depending on how much the students write. Grading problems can be time-consuming depending on how one handles partial credit and how much effort oen expends identifying where students are going wrong with their answers. Grading term papers is nigh unto impossible with my school’s schedule, especially in the Spring with the demands of the commencement schedule.

Do professors at FSU get a week at the end of each semester for grading? Of course students deserve their term grades promptly. But students also deserve to be graded fairly and thoughtfully. Does the schedule set by school administrators and students fairly in this regard?

NJF, at 7:30 am EDT on March 29, 2008

As a student, I think this is a terrible idea. The last thing I need to worry about at the end of a semester is the professors rolling up their deadlines because they’re going to get fined if they cross the magic date.

Also, I’ve never understood the mania some students have about finding out their grades. The longer, the better, in my view. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway, after the work is all turned in. I usually don’t check my grades until a good two weeks have passed and I’ve thoroughly repressed my memories of cat vacuuming and grinding out final papers.

Twenty years ago, as I understand it, you waited until you got the damn letter. I don’t see why students feel entitled to a faster process, just because there’s now a faster delivery.

hitnrun, at 11:55 am EDT on March 29, 2008

So there is no problem with the instructor or professor assigning these papers, quizzes, homework, tests, etc., but there is a problem when the instructor or professor does not grade these assignments on time and the institution chooses to fine those who do not do so on time? If there is a problem with reporting grades, how about assigning fewer assignments or not having so many assignments at the end of the semester — if time is an issue.

Walker, at 5:50 pm EDT on March 29, 2008

This semester, exams end on Apr 25. Grades are due at 4 pm on Apr 29. Graduation is on the weekend in between, so there may be events that one has to attend. Personally, I’ve stopped using final exams because I don’t want a grading crunch. Ideal? No. But you do what you have to do. We also have a ton of policies prohibiting final exams earlier in the semester, so you’re totally at the mercy of the exam schedule.

I know of cases with late grades, but the college or department has always absorbed the fees. Basically, this just means that the pressure is applied a little closer to home. However, the cases of late grades that I’m aware of are due to issues like new professors or graduate student instructors who aren’t aware of the deadline or someone who just plain forgot. I’ve seen people assign I’s for whole classes because that’s the way around this. It does, however, mean that you later have to fill out and sign a form for each student in the class and the secretaries then have to do their magic with them. So, if you do that you’ll have a lot of signing to do and your admins will probably not be pleased with you. But it’s happened, I’ve seen it.

Personally I have no problem getting grades in on time. That said, I was saved by a secretary once. I had entered all of my grades for the class and saved them, but apparently forgot to hit the submit button. Fortunately she was checking that grades were submitted and went in and submitted my entered grades for me at the deadline. It’s a crappy interface and easy to mess up like this.

Assoc Prof @ FSU, at 6:25 pm EDT on March 29, 2008

OK, maybe this scheme is illegal.

In that case, fine the department via that department’s budget. Then, as RightWingProf implied, departments will do *their* jobs and ensure their professors get their grades in on time.

Darren, high school teacher, at 6:15 am EDT on March 30, 2008

Job Responsibility

Students often have to sign up for classes with weeks to go in the current semester. Delaying grades can cause them to be dropped from classes, making it difficult to graduate on time. This is especially true for state schools that are running on thin budgets. What is truly bad about this situation is that if students take more than four years to graduate, they are penalized financially in our state. Yet, if they get dropped from a class due to faculty members failing to submit grades on time and therefore not having the prerequisite, it still ends up the student’s problem. I have three kids in college and while many professors have been helpful and accommodating, there are those who are unprofessional in many ways. And if nothing else, a professor has a professional and ethical responsibility to submit grades complete and on time.

Ellen K, at 6:20 am EDT on March 30, 2008

About time!

I am sorry but Unions can whine and faculty can bitch and we can even get into a discussion about legality and such, but the fact remains that faculty are horrible at turning in grades on time. I worked with the registrar at an HBCU for decades where some faculty were NEVER on time with their grades, and it held up the entire grading process. We can try and compare this with turning in papers, and any number of other analogies, but the fact remains we know when our grades are due, we plan for working that one last day to get it done, stop making it other people’s fault that faculty, some anyway, are lazy and pampered, and prone to be primadonnas. Buck up and do your job, go to work on time for a change, honor your office hours, work on diligently advising students, and for the love of God, GET YOUR GRADES IN ON TIME! Or, in the case of FSU, pay the piper.

Martin, at 2:50 pm EDT on March 30, 2008

Lazy, pampered, prima donas

Dear Martin,

As a visiting instructor at my institution, I am not lazy, pampered or a prima dona. Far from it. I teach more courses than the tenured faculty. I am then expected to get the grades in for my four courses in the same amount of time that tenured faculty have for their much lighter course load. I also, by the way, am paid considerably less than the tenured faculty get (less than half). When I am exhausted, mentally and physically, as I try to do six days worth of grading in three days, the low salary is hardly extra motivation. However, my concern for my students _is_ motivation—I worry greatly about the problems I may cause for them if their grades are not in on time. That said, I still turn some grades in late every semester because there is only so much I can physically do.

On top of that, the administration in its typical heavy-handed manner hands down decree after decree: we must all have final exams, we must have them during finals week, we must assign x pages of writing, your grades must be in within x hours of the final, etc. They make the decrees because it makes the university look good (so very concerned for undergraduates!), but they do nothing to make carrying out their decrees more feasible. Meanwhile, they browbeat us (or at FSU, impose fines!) for being “lazy” while ignoring how their own decisions (such as admitting more students than the school can handle and poor financial decisions) have created the conditions that lead to this problem. They too are in a bind, of course. The difference is, I’m not proposing that they be fined for it.

Are there bad profs? Yes. Are there lazy, pampered prima donas who don’t get their grades in because they don’t care? Sure. But a lot of those professors turning in their grades late are overworked, underpaid faculty and grad students struggling to teach and grade responsibly despite the horrible structural conditions that exist in our universities. As numerous responders have suggested, the solution for the teacher is easy: dumb down the material, cancel the last week of classes, give simple exams and avoid writing assignments (or don’t grade them meaningfully). But that, in fact, _would_ be lazy. So I don’t do that, and thus some of my grades are late....and people like you accuse me of being lazy!

Problems are rarely simple. So, Martin, try re-imagining the problem without the easy villain of the prima dona professor, and try giving us the benefit of the doubt instead. Most professors I know—including the prima donas—take teaching (and grading) quite seriously, and work constantly throughout the semester—in the classroom, in their offices, and at home in the evenings and weekends.

I’m embarrassed for FSU’s administration. An institution of higher learning should be about insight into the behavior of others, yet their punitive approach to this situation suggests a willful and self-indulgent ignorance.

Kelly, at 12:10 pm EDT on April 2, 2008

The late papers analogy

Many professors here have objected to fines for late grading by suggesting that they’re about as fair as fining students for late work.

This strikes me as a pretty bad argument. If I used it in one of my papers, I wouldn’t expect to get a very good grade — assuming the professor cared enough to give me something besides an A-, which often is not the case.

When students turn in work late without sufficient justification, they are penalized by a lower grade. When professors turn in grades late without sufficient justification, they are penalized by a fine. The penalties are appropriate to each person’s role in the educational system.

You can argue that there should be a better system for justifying late grades (in the case of trying to help out a student, or dealing with late work), and that the deadline should be more forgiving, with a few slack days. I agree with both points. But handing grades in on time is one of a professor’s duty as an employee, and he should be penalized if he fails to carry it out — that is how employment works in the part of the world where the luxury of tenure does not exist.

Many of the people above reacting against the fine system were not tenured professors — rather, they were visiting professors, or TAs. They claimed the fines are particularly unfair, since they are overworked and underpaid. They are overworked and underpaid because of the tenure system. Moreover, I would not be surprised if the most frequent late-grade offenders were those professors protected by the tenure system — that has been my experience as a student, at least.

Given the increasingly absurd fees undergraduates are asked to pay for their education, they can at least expect to have the work completed as advertised by their clients. Of course, such an expectation may just be yet another demonstration of undergraduates’ colossal sense of entitlement — if only they would go away entirely!

jhanson, at 6:40 am EDT on April 4, 2008

worked just fine

I taught at FSU for a couple years and timely grade submissions were stamped into our heads!

Department deadlines were a few days before University deadlines, and we were called and vigorously reminded about submissions, deadlines, and the fines [the dept. would face] should we fail to meet grade deadlines.

I worried about this as some T/A’s responsible for grade submissions would “guesstimate” the proper grade for a student when faced with both final exams and grade submissions — our backs were to the wall.

Luckily, only intro-level courses were taught by T/As, so no serious harm occurred. Honest.

As a former FSU student, I can tell you I was always happy to have my grades available when promised — a stark difference from my previous institution.

Far, Former FSU Student & Adjunct at FSU, at 9:40 am EDT on July 13, 2008

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