I know a fellow who runs a karate school where they have high standards of performance. They are measured by how many external tournament champs they produce. It is hard to advance belts after Purple. He mentiioned another school he knew of where they had slack standards. People advanced quite easily, and they had a great social atmosphere. They made tons of money. Lesson? The first club measured excellence and they got it. The second club measured money and got it at the price of excellence. (The second club prudently kept its students out of external tournaments).

From what I have heard, at many Ontario universities, they measure headcount, and get funded accordingly. However, it costs much more to educate a 4th year than a first or second year student. The solution? Easy…let in anybody with a pulse to first year, pass them to second year no matter what. After that, let the achievers go on. The extra headcount dollars from the first & second year students is then used to fund the 3rd & 4th year students.

In big corporations, an executive’s bonus is often tied to reducing full time headcount. So they fire people and then bring them back as contractors. Executive gets bonus, some fired folks become contractors. Looks good…the organization is now lean and mean. Then it comes time to do something new. Oops. There aren’t enough good people around who trust the executives with job security to try a new project. (Trying a new project is always risky because you lose your status as a domain expert in the old project, and domain experts are usually secure). All of a sudden, the lean & mean organization looks emaciated and irritable. Overall…bad for corporation. Good for executive. To solve problem, corporation sets up a R&D centre where your job is to work on new projects. New projects happen, followed by business success. Over time, new executives complain that R&D centre is out of touch with reality. They are folded back into the corporation. Looks good because people from R&D side still think they can take risks on new projects. Over time economic downturns whacks the risk takers…and we’re back to where we started.

You get what you measure.

I knew that it was hard to fail people, but I had no idea that the faculty went that out of their way to let students get away with fake successes.

What’s Carleton’s measure of success then? Obviously not quality. Sad truth is that increased enrolment=money.

I have to say that I loved going to Carleton and I learned a lot (life lessons mostly), but if they want to get rid of the facebook group “I went to Carleton where the K stands for kuality…” then they should rethink their stance on actual quality.

Thanks for the comment Mitch.

I WAS an occasional sessional prof at an Ottawa university (rhymes with “ton”). I once had a student who attended only one class and didn’t complete a single assignment. I failed her. Well – I tried. She appealed her mark. I was politely told by faculty that I had no choice but to give her a simple project assignment and she had to get a B. The unspoken implication was that I would be subjected to a whole pile of trouble if I didn’t comply… did I mention I WAS a sessional??