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Grade Inflation Strikes Louisiana

According to this post on USA Today, biology professor Dominique Homberger was removed from her courses mid-semester for grading too strictly. Homberger has taught at LSU for 30 years, is a full-professor, and has never received warnings or any other sort of intervention from the administration in the past. University's publish no guidelines on how many students should pass (or fail) a course in a given semester, nor are there established baselines for how much a passing student should learn. We rely on academic freedom and peer review: she has the freedom to set standards and devise methods; her peers are charged with reviewing her performance at various intervals (tenure, promotion, raises, etc.). This intervention by LSU administration undermines academic freedom and also undercuts the value of peer review.

Personally, I am opposed to instructional styles that fail to challenge students and I am also opposed to challenging students through trickery. Our task is to promote learning and to make knowledge available. As far as I can tell, with only the information provided in this article, Homberger was successful at those tasks.
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