College Needs to be Hard. But Does it?

Is it just me or is there an implied idea that students “shop” for professors in college based on their perceived idea of someone being “easy” or “hard”? I went to a small college so in most classes, you got whoever was teaching the one available section.?But after teaching at a few large universities where you could have up to ten people teaching the same section, this is a constant theme I hear when I talk to students.

I want to make an argument that college courses, no matter what subject, do not have to be “hard” and A-grade impossible. ?Seriously, what message are we really sending as professors, if you get 3As and 85 Ds in a class of 120; ?Whose fault is it??Nowadays, I find ideas such as grading on a bell curve absurd. What do you mean, do we have a finite number of As to give out no matter what the distribution of the class??How is that fair to students? ??

Coming from a system in which As are not an option (had a middle school teacher once tell us that only God deserves As), in the beginning, the American system fascinated me. You mean I can show up, do my homework, and get an A? It seemed so at the American high school I landed for my senior year. And yet, when I got to college, I remember getting annoyed if I perceived a professor to be “too easy”, like half of the class getting As somehow diminished my A, which, in my delusional grandeur, was one of the few well-deserved ones.

The obvious interjection that I see from others is the “but doesn’t the subject you teach matter?”. I have seen this argument in various shapes and sizes, but it comes down to the professors, who mostly teach numbers related subjects, arguing that not everyone has the same ability and skill when it comes to a math intensive subject versus one in which you can just read and reproduce material (calculus versus history, anyone)? I used to buy this argument. Back in my young days, I had the privilege of teaching a basic corporate class about a gazillion times. Maybe 20-30 times in a period of 4-5 years. By the time I finished by PhD, I could produce a song and dance with a chapter on NPV and IRR. It was the best show in town. If you are not familiar, this is one of the few courses that is always discussed at faculty meetings. Everyone majoring in any type of business needs to take it and it has a very high failure rate. In other words, most non-finance majors look at it like death. It is one of those classes that keep tutors in business.

For the longest time, I was in the same camp. I believed this was not only normal but also some kind of a sign that I was good at teaching. I put effort into trying to figure out what worked when I taught a class, I provided incentive to students to complete the course evaluations so I can better understand what I needed to change. Btw, thanks, students for showing me that pop-up quizzes are a waste of everyone's time. ?I spent the last 14 years of teaching designing and, what I hope, ?improving my courses. ?So, for the longest time, seeing a positive correlation between comments like “it is a hard course, but fair” and “I am a good teacher” has been how I operated. After all, a corporate finance course is good for that purpose. Yes, it is hard; yes, we can conquer it but while I used to believe that Cs are for everyone, you really needed to be amazing to get an A.

Those days are gone. From courses that I have a real love for like Personal Finance to courses I have no business teaching, (Entrepreneurial Finance, anyone?), I seem like I am in a constant search of how to explain and present something in the least confusing way. This also means that my ideas about what I teach and the grades associated with assessing knowledge has changed. And slowly, by expanding my teaching repertoire, I also changed my ideas about the usefulness of having “hard” college classes. You could say that I completely turned around on this subject. The ultimate complement these days is a comment like: “this course is easy”. And while students may perceive it as easy, my goal is only to produce that perception by (1) making the class useful and (2) the acquisition of knowledge painless.

I want everyone to earn an A in the class. I am still on the do all the work and learn something here, please train but this is ALL that I require now.?Gone are the days when I used to think you had to be a genius to get an A. No more of those ideas that unless you catch on some little trick that the professor is trying to get you to see, you do not deserve an A. ?Ultimately, my goal is to make sure that a student left my class more educated and knowledgeable than she entered it. Maybe if I was teaching doctors and engineers, I would keep my “high standards”. But I am not, and I see it is a “crime” when someone must jump through hoops to earn an A in Personal Finance. What could be worse than being the professor that killed any joy or interest a student could have in managing money? And if this means letting my standards slide (sarcasm here), then I am OK with As for everyone. If you leave my class being able to figure out for yourself if it makes sense to lease your car versus buying it, you deserve an A and I did my job, even if you will never be able to figure out how to apply the principle of profitability index to anything out there.?