It’s not just Trump University; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3/20/16

Jonathan Zimmerman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; It’s not just Trump University:

"So it turns out that some teachers at Trump University pressed students to inflate scores on course evaluations, so the teachers would be rehired. But the same kind of thing has been happening for a long time at real American universities, not just at Donald Trump’s fake one.

That’s the real scandal here. We’ve turned our colleges into consumer-driven businesses, where student “satisfaction” is what matters most. And that makes the rest of us a lot more like Trump University than we’d care to admit.

Consider that over three-quarters of faculty in the United States are now “adjuncts,” meaning they work on short-term contracts (like Trump instructors) instead of on the tenure track. In 2014, a congressional study showed that a majority of adjunct faculty live below the poverty line. They drive from campus to campus, teaching multiple courses and sometimes even sleep in their cars.

And in most cases, they’re evaluated solely on student evaluations. Who can blame them for trying to gin up their scores? After all, their livelihoods are at stake."