Profs now outsourcing marking to India

[CHIMO]

Source: Thestar.com

A veteran university professor frustrated with the tedium and time of grading papers has created a company that outsources the job to India.

With a dozen clients in academia and a thick skin, Dr. Chandru Rajam is prepared to weather the outrage EduMetry Inc. of Herndon, Va., has set off.

Virtual-TA, which hires offshore university-educated staff to assess, grade and comment on student assignments, is only one of the EduMetry services. But it is by far the most controversial.

“Our intent is not to cheapen or degrade the learning and teaching equation,” Rajam told the Star. “We think there is a better model. We never outsource the responsibility, we’re just outsourcing the activity.



Read more: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/802845--profs-now-outsourcing-marking-to-india?bn=1

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Adsos Letter]

2. Outsourcing grading?

I thought that was what Grad students were for.

[harmonicon]

9. and it would be if the grad-student union hadn't been killed a few years ago (nt)

[Lucky Luciano]

23. kinda hard to motivate grad students to really unionize

since they are guaranteed to not be grad students in only a few short years. Not worth the hassle.

[harmonicon]

33. that's not why at all - it's because of major union-busting by private universities

Many of the legal challenges have basically been to argue that these students wouldn't have their jobs if they weren't graduate students so their work is actually part of a financial aid package, thus not the same as being an employee, thus they aren't legally allowed to unionize.

[eppur_se_muova]

43. Actually, very few grad students can afford to sacrifice the time and energy.

They're kept too busy with their own studies. It takes exceptional drive and energy to organize people under those circumstances, and even good leaders can fail at it.

[Lucky Luciano]

47. Agreed...I was a grad student.

At my school they walked out, but I just kept teaching as did other math department TAs. I could not really complain about my situation. In fact, for homeworks in lower division classes, I even had a grader take care of that for me! Made my life simpler. I liked TAing the upper division and graduate level classes because the topics were a good deal more interesting, but with that came grading, so I stuck to the lower level classes as much as possible. I would say that between TAing 4 classes per week and having 3 office hours per week, and midterms/finals to grade that I average 8-9 hours per week of work on top of my studies. In return I got healthcare, free tuition, and $1,700 per month after taxes. My rent was $500-$1000 depending on the year, so there was room to eat, etc...of course, this was also Los Angeles and I wanted to have fun...so tutoring rich kids in Beverly Hills for $75/hr and student loans became necessary...Upon graduation, it became necessary to pay those loans back and I had to go to the private sector to nip that in the bud quickly.

I did find out later that grad students in other departments (e.g. English, History where grading involved lots of papers etc) had much bigger workloads on the order of 20-25 hours per week - but the math department had a good deal, so I could not see how to go on strike when we had a good deal. On top of that, grad school is only a few years, so fighting hard for those benefits will only be shortlived once those benefits arrive. I thought it better to focus on my social life and my studies....I think I was too focused on my social life (and the tutoring) though - would have graduated two years earlier if I was a bit more focused on my studies!

[greengestalt]

3. Hello "Term Papers Online"

Or whatever the companies are.


The Profs have trouble picking them out, the guy from India may be smart but until he gets the same one three in a row he won't have any idea who's term paper it is really....

[marasinghe]

29. yea; but better: it's the goldman-sachs business model; brought to you by the same people.

1. you undercut the smart profs. in a foreign country & take their jobs.
2. you outsource the grading of your students' papers to your own grading corp., in the old country.
3. you set those same employees doing the grading, to write term papers in their unutilized work time.
4. you sell the term papers on-line to the students' in 2.
5. corollary to 1-4 above, you dumb down 1.
6. the output from 5 = undereducated, underemployed & underpaid graduates.
7. as a result of 6., you move the manufacturing entity that was in 1. & move it to the old country in 2..
8. the working class of 1., joins the working class of 2. in the toilet.
9. the ruling class of 2. joins in the ruling class of 1. in monte carlo.
10. mission accomplished
:hurts:
the present india is the result of 3,000 years of predatory capitalism under the label of 'feudalism' - they are just the same thing: predators eating their prey. and that's the road the usa is going down.

the worst of this is: those benefiting from this in india, are the same elite rich kids who went berserk protesting & burning stuff - when their govt. tried to implement some token affirmative action & reserve places for the depressed castes in universities, in computer science, engineering & other tech. fields; the same elitist kids & their parents & intellectual & political lackeys, who come out whining about protectionism, when some right-thinking american starts to talk of tariffs, taxes & outsourced labor.

humans are worse than sheep. sheep don't kiss wolf ass, or aspire to become their destroyers. for us - this is the dream.

[Demeter]

38. I Wish I Could Recommend Your Post

There are so many things wrong with this: ethically, educationally, economically.
It's a cheat and a fraud. The US MBA schools taught them well.

[crazylikafox]

41. +1000

[Blue_Tires]

53. +1000

[dencol]

32. Profs shouldn't have trouble finding plagiarism.

Today, most papers are submitted in electronic format, where they are easily scanned by online services like "Turn it in," which I understand to be terribly reliable when it comes to finding plagiarism.

on edit: http://turnitin.com/static/index.html

[Indenturedebtor]

4. I hope there's a list of which uni's use this service

I want to be sure to be able to discriminate against potential new-hires... what a joke.

[im1013]

5. That is just totally ridiculous!

Someone should tell him that if he's tired of grading papers, then maybe he shouldn't be a teacher.



:banghead:

[eppur_se_muova]

44. Well, yeah. :^)

I don't enjoy the tedium of grading either, but it's a necessary part of my job. And at schools where the student/faculty ratio is low, it's not enough of a burden to be really objectionable. The problem is that (a) taxpayers don't want to fund public universities; (b) taxpayers (especially R's) expect their kids to get "their full money's worth" no matter how little money they're actually paying; (c) universities are forced to respond by having larger and larger classes, while providing less support in the way of TA's, graders, etc.; (d) inevitably the student/faculty grows to the point that new faculty find themselves doing almost nothing but grading, with only a distant hope that it will get better IF they are kept on and promoted -- which is getting rarer and rarer, as schools are hiring more and more "adjunct" and temporary faculty, who get lower salaries, no tenure, uncertain year-to-year contracts, worst choice of classes, and often limited benefits (none at all for adjuncts).

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Wouldn't outsourcing the grading of papers be a breach of the professor's contract?

Isn't it a nondelegable duty of service?

[Haole Girl]

7. We shouldn't be surprised, I guess.

:-(

[scentopine]

8. How the fuck will the teachers learn what the students

have trouble learning if they don't mark their own damn tests!

This shit just never ends. This son of a bitch should have his ass on the street.

Any university that endorses this should receive no federal funding.

[madokie]

11. outsourcing is killing us

just as sure as the reptilicons are

[Lucky Luciano]

12. professors rarely do grading. It is tedious and annoying...

so they have grad students do it usually..I was a TA. Usually the profs were humble enough to grade one or two of the questions per exam, but not more than that.

I can understand the hatred of grading. I despised it myself. It was monotonous to say the least. They often don't mind office hours and doing research was the primary interest.

[readmoreoften]

16. Unless you're a full-time lecturer. Which more and more people are winding up becoming.

Then you have 4/4, large classes, and no TA.

[scentopine]

37. I was also grad student...

the TA and teacher often communicate about students. If there is a dispute over grading the TA and prof can get involved.

Bad profs should be the exception not the rule.

I understand research and have been in R&D kfor 30 years. This is inexcusable.

[eppur_se_muova]

40. Actually, it varies enormously -- small colleges typically have NO TA's.

So profs are the ONLY graders. Even some smaller branches of state U's often have too few grad students (or none) to carry the grading load. I've taught at both -- and the only schools where I could get TA's or graders were schools where the classes were simply too big for any one person to do the grading, i.e. big state U's, which also had grad students.

If I'm teaching a small class within my own specialty, I much prefer to do my own grading. But when I'm teaching intro or remedial courses, or a huge class (I've had 200+ initial enrollment), it's a choice between farming the work out to graders, or giving only multiple-choice "bubble-sheet" exams and having them machine-graded.

Of course, it's really all about money. Hire enough profs to keep the student-teacher ratio low and grading is not a big problem. Squeeze the budget, hire minimum faculty, and herd students into huge lecture halls, and suddenly it's a big problem. "Humility" doesn't have much to do with it.

[OhioChick]

14. +1 and Agreed n/t

[tomm2thumbs]

10. 'We never outsource the responsibility, we’re just outsourcing the activity.' -those go hand in hand

or does he not get that part

[svpadgham]

13. I have no problem with this if...

I can outsource the assignments that my profs give me.

[wordpix]

15. good way to get to know your students - why not outsource all education for all grades in the US?

:sarcasm:

[PfcHammer]

17. In lower division engineering courses, there were like 5 TA's for a class

and the same person would grade the same question on all the students' exams, assembly line style to be consistent. The prof would grade 1 question too along withe the TA's at a single grading session. Article is a joke yo.

[truthisfreedom]

18. I think it's interesting.

Read the article. It might work for certain situations. I know I would have loved to have more feedback from my profs when I was in school. This service provides large amounts of feedback.

[ChromeFoundry]

19. This makes perfect sense...

Dr. Chandru Rajam, the prof. pushing the outsourcing is a Co-founder of the company he is pushing the workload to!

Talk about double-dipping and a conflict of interest! Sheez!

http://edumetry.com/management-team.php

[OhioChick]

20. Nice catch, Chrome!

Dr. Chandru Rajam, Co-Founder & CEO-Emeritus

[NoodleyAppendage]

26. He's not even a US citizen. So, he's here to screw Americans out of jobs while profiting...

...as a foreign national.

Dr. Chandru Rajam can KISS MY ASS.

J

[OhioChick]

28. Isn't that such BULLSHIT? n/t

[ChromeFoundry]

31. Seems there is a lot of that going around...

The price varies by length and complexity, but Virtual-TA suggests to potential clients that each graded assignment will cost $12 per student. That means outsourcing the grading of six assignments for 20 students in a course would cost $1,440.

http://chronicle.com/article/Outsourced-Grading-With/64954/

So why again is tuition still going up at literally every college and university? Oh, I remember, "greed"... almost forgot that this nation is based on selling itself out.

[BreweryYardRat]

36. He's a resident alien?

Would we be able to revoke his green card for this? Send his worthless ass back to India and dissolve his company?

[bamacrat]

21. This is fucking bullshit.

I say fire any and every teacher who uses this service.

[jody]

24. It's common practice among professors who teach distance learning courses. I know one instructor who

taught over 40 courses one year using grad students to monitor student performance.

Students took primarily true-false or multiple-choice tests from a test bank prepared by the book publisher.

Regional and special accreditation agencies do not monitor such things and are intentionally encouraging the practice.

[jody]

22. Cheaper still is outsource all university courses via distance learning. All we need campuses for

are athletic teams so alumni can cheer for their alma mater.

Since college sports are a training camp for professional sports we can require them to fund college teams and really save big time on funding college education.

I forgot, eliminate all science and mathematics courses since many students find them impossibly difficult.

Those suggestions should provide cheap degrees with students graduating in a year or two if someone else in India sets up a business to take courses over the internet using the name of a US student.

[New Dawn]

25. Keep this story in mind the next time a DLC hack cheerleads for "free trade."

[howaboutme]

27. Or outsource the Wall Street casino crowd

Take the too big to fail banks (Goldman, etc) and outsource them and the liability to other countries. Iceland found out a few reckless greedy bankers can offset a country full of financially responsible citizens, and unlike the USA they told their government to pound sand and that they were not covering the bad decisions of bankers and their debts.

[unabelladonna]

30. obscene

why not let assistants grade the papers? this is immoral. he should be booted off the staff.

[Better Today]

34. "We never outsource the responsibility," Nope, they're just making sure

our TAs go hungry while theirs get well paid.

Sucks to be an average American these days.

[BreweryYardRat]

35. If I'm going to pay good money for a course, I expect the ACTUAL PROFESSOR to grade assignments.

At least for papers and essay exams.

For a multiple-choice/short-answer exam, I don't mind having a TA mark it. But it should still be an American TA. That $500-$1,000 a month should go to someone HERE.

Also, allow me to point out an old saying: "You pull up a weed when it sprouts, it doesn't grow any more." This company has not yet become established and entrenched. We can -- and should -- uproot it.

[eppur_se_muova]

45. Your tuition does not cover the cost of your education.

Endowments and donations make up the difference. When I was an undergraduate (admittedly a long time ago), I read that my tuition only covered about one-third of the actual cost of my education. It is probably less than that normally, particularly at state schools, but you are still getting MORE than you pay for.

There are good reasons to object to outsourcing grading, but complaining about "getting your money's worth" is not one of them -- and just a bit Republican.

[johnroshan]

39. W T F. Don't do this America!

As an Indian who has seen both Indian and American higher education systems, please don't give in. Education in India, apart from a very few select universities, is a joke. The only reason that I came to the US is for the amazing higher educational system. Don't screw this up!

[eppur_se_muova]

42. I keep expecting them to outsource lecturing.

It's not that far off. Many job listings now require the instructors to be familiar with online delivery methods, so that loosens the requirement for the instructor to be in the same locale as the students. It also means that the instructor's work can be captured off the Web and recorded -- after which the lecturer may not be needed. More and more quizzes are being done online -- they are timed, and graded instantly when the student's time elapses. The questions are randomized to prevent cheating, so that even the instructor doesn't necessarily know what is on any particular quiz (I taught at one such school). Many schools now videotape or Webcast large lecture classes, and don't give faculty the right to decline. I don't doubt that somewhere in China those lectures have been captured and stored for resale, or reuse without compensation.

It's all about cutting costs, no matter how much that comprises quality.

[jody]

46. And many colleges do not require at least one proctored exam in a course to insure Doe is the actual

student doing the work.

That practice devalues a degree for all students with degrees from that college because college transcripts usually do not differentiate between classes taken in classrooms versus distance learning.

I know human resource managers with major corporations who filter out, i.e. ignore, degrees from such colleges and that's very easy to do because job notices typically require applicants to submit electronic resumes.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

48. Graduate Assistants don't work cheap enough?

Grading papers and lecturing for low pay. That was the good life.

Barely enough money to pay for beer.

:hi:

And now we're outsourcing that?

[boobooday]

49. That is appalling

They are called grad students, dude! Opti-Scan!!

Coffee beans!

It's your job!

(says the prof with a stack of papers sitting next to her, who is procrastinating by hanging out at DU)

[Sancho]

50. high stakes standardized tests are scored by hired hands; what's the difference?

the government wants to run education like a business, so that's what they get...I think Rajam is on to something!

[OhioChick]

51. Rajam, pushing the outsourcing, is a Co-founder of the company he is pushing the workload to!

Dr. Chandru Rajam, Co-Founder & CEO-Emeritus

http://edumetry.com/management-team.php

[tomg]

52. Right now I am in

the midst of grading 75 papers ( approx 5-6 typed pages each, 3 sections of 25 students per), all of them on Antigone for a core course referred to as "Dead White Guys on Parade." It is one of five such essays I will grade over the course of the semester. Frankly, regarding the majority, I would rather dental floss with brillo. It is not that they are bad or time consuming or plagiarized. Although they are often that. It is that, for the most part, many students are utterly indifferent to the ideas. They are content to be banal. The majority are mind numbing: Spark Notes meets Wikipedia. And that is what our jobs are about. Getting students to see relationships and to think about ideas. One of the ways I do that is by having students actually write, and by my commenting on their papers ( I have a rewrite policy). I find grading themes tedious, boring and, far too often, intellectually heartbreaking ( "Antigone is just rebellious and needs to grow up").

According to Rajam, "The idea that EduMetry can’t mark an English Composition 101 paper is ludicrous." That idea is utterly despicable.It shows such an utter lack of awareness of what education is about that I want to beat my head against a wall. Outsource all the bubble tests you want. Outsourcing essays is, in my view, the kind of activity that should cause your tenure to be pulled. Any institution that does it as a matter of policy should have its accreditation revoked.

error: grammar - I left out is and lack of:
the benefits of revision.