Academia And Elitism

by Anon
(Romania)

I'm going to start my year and a half at a Polytechnic, to get my Master's degree in engineering, next month.

So far, I've seen different types of favoritism, that I actually am not against. Some professors can be bribed to give passing grades, which are not high grades.

The people who bribe them are generally older people, perhaps already married and working in a field that they don't have a degree for, but they need one to satisfy the bureaucracy and to keep from getting fired or some other sort of formality.

These people don't have the time to study, they need to make ends meet, so they show up for a few of the lectures, then pay off the professor to give them a passing grade, which I don't really care about.

Another kind of favoritism that happens is when a student has been in a slump for a while due to circumstances beyond his control, like parents being about to divorce, or having a substance abuse problem.

Sometimes, students in such positions that know a professor or two will talk to them and ask them to give them a higher grade, or even a passing grade if they've had a really hard time focusing.

I'm not against this type of favoritism either, because life can be difficult, problems can just pop up and there's no way to be prepared for anything, so giving a student in trouble a little help doesn't seem like a huge deal.

The type of favoritism I am against and that turns my stomach every time I see it is likely due to the belief some professors have that only as few as one or two students from a class are actually worth the effort and will judge a student's worth based solely on appearances.

I'm not talking about giving higher grades to attractive girls, I'm talking about giving higher grades to students only because they have had high grades in the past, at other subjects, because they look like nerds (thick-rim glasses, buttoned-up shirts, dress pants) and they pretend like they care a lot about the subject matter.

At my diploma exam, after four years, this summer, after one of my colleagues presented his project, one of the members of the commission who was there to evaluate us started talking about what a wonderful boy X is and with how much enthusiasm he worked on the project.

It was sickening; usually (read: for everyone except special student X), after a student presents his project, there is a long question and answer round in which the flaws of the project are discussed, as well as its conclusions.

But not in the case of student X, in his case the professor he did the project with started talking BEFORE any other members of the commission asked any questions and it wasn't anything pertaining to the project, it simply about "how great X is, as an individual".

Truthfully, the project X made was quite boring and something we, the group, had done as part of a class, that semester, without bringing anything new or worth discussing.

But he got a much higher grade than one of my colleagues that worked over a period of months on his project and created, by hand, a new mechanism for capturing solar power and field tested it.

How is that fair? Judging between working off coursework, essentially copying it, versus making something new without previously having known anything about it should be a no-brainer.

And it happened again, when we all took the admittance exam this fall, the first thing the professor said after saying hello was an inquiry as to the whereabouts of student Y, another preferred student who is actually a person completely lacking in interest about his chosen field but talks while the professor is talking and that creates the illusion that he cares.


Student Y, when it came time to present a project for a different subject just emailed the professor a set of internet links to materials he wanted him to read.

This was actually intentional, as it was later revealed, he didn't make a mistake, he intentionally did nothing for the project and sent him links to raw information about the topic of the project.

Unfortunately this was not the same professor, because if it was the same one, he would have known the truth.

Student X got a perfect grade, much higher than me at the admittance exam, despite the fact I solved the subjects impeccably, even with a lot of pertinent conclusions and observations that were not in the original coursework.

Nobody else was near a perfect grade, it is a freak occurrence even when it does happen. Well, now I know its only because the examiner knew him and helped him, because he did so in the past.

Student X is a very competent student, as are we all, he shouldn't be helped when he doesn't need it in the least, it not only makes me sick it also harms him.

In fact, I've had numerous colleagues over the years that did in fact need help and they didn't get it, meanwhile those that don't need any help are helped, perhaps even without them wanting or needing it.

Now, we are all in the same boat, in the same group at the Polytechnic, we have gone through virtually the same experiences, we have studied the same things, we all passed our exams with high grades.

The weakest element of any system remains the human element, because our experiences, primarily our negative ones can affect us for a lifetime in unimaginable ways.

Why would a professor help someone just because he appears more interested than others? Perhaps because the student reminds the professor of himself and that the professor needed help in his youth and never received it, despite his efforts ?

Or maybe it's because professors become cynical after a certain age and fall into the belief that only a few students per group should ever get good grades and that others make up some kind of faceless mass of people that aren't worth any attention.

What I've learned after spending most of my life studying is that grades are a joke, they are merely the difference between passing a course and having to do it again. The fact that the grades are given by people invalidates the whole system.

Even if these were multiple-choice exams the system wouldn't be impervious to subjective interpretation, because people who are not that well prepared could just get lucky, I've seen it happen myself once.

Perhaps the best way to deal with this would be to institute only three types of grades: passed, failed and disputed. Disputed would warrant further examination. Such a system would accept that people are biased, although it'd probably create more work and none of the professors want that. However, this is probably an idea ahead of its time and should be discussed in a different paper.

Response from Carl: Thanks Anon. Wow, what a story. It sounds like this favoritism is really ingrained from what you say and seems to be quite accepted. I don't even know how you'd fight this as anything that would be done would need to be done from the top.

Carl