The Knucklehead of the Day award Part Seven

Our seventh and final winner today is Auburn University. The University gets the award for their sociology dept giving high grades to athletes(Mostly football players) for little or no class time.

Note- This comes from a lengthy and detailed NY Times article. Dr. Taylor at Poliblog did a excellent job of finding the highlights in the article and I want to thank him for his hard work.

The number of directed readings that Professor Petee offered had jumped to 152
in the spring of 2005, from 120 in the fall of 2004. Professor Gundlach described them as fake courses and said they were undermining the department’s integrity.

Professor Petee offered 15 different courses as directed readings both semesters, along with teaching regular courses. His full-time-equivalent number on his teaching schedule for the fall of 2004 was 3.5, or the workload of three and a half professors. In the spring, it rose to 3.67. He was not compensated for the extra work.

The numbers included his in-classroom teachings and directed readings, but they did not include the time commitment for his responsibilities as interim department chairman.

Dr. Taylor called this a insane amount of students and said the grading was suspicious also.

Also after the confrontation in the faculty meeting, Professor Petee’s grades for the football players dropped sharply. Professor Gundlach found that before the meeting, the players received 81.1 percent A’s and 16.8 percent B’s in directed-reading courses with Professor Petee. After the meeting, those numbers fell to 40.9 percent A’s and 51.7 percent B’s.

Read all of Dr. Taylor's post and the Times article. Auburn should be ashamed of themselves. Student athletes are mostly athletes first and students second but doesn't reflect well on any college. As the Professor says, why don't schools just offer majors in football. Auburn University is our 7th Knucklehead of the day.

James Joyner at OTB also blogged on the Auburn story.
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