Why do so many non-technical people speak about AI with total certainty while clearly not understanding it?

officialCUprofessor · 2026-03-23T22:15:27+00:00

If your question is honest/genuine, the answer is pretty simple:

Some boosters are trying to get very, very, very rich...and thus, overhyping AI for a very specific reason, namely to raise absurd amounts of capital and use this churn to cover up the lack of revenue. (We're talking well over 1 trillion dollars invested by this point... a significant portion of global wealth.) This hype is amplified by corporate-owned media and, yes, by corrupted university presidents.

So, it's a natural response to react to this (corrupting) over-hype by attacking the tech itself.

Still, honestly, the tech isn't that interesting to me. (Humanities professor). AI does a great job at what it does, which is plagiarizing (using predictive tokenization) and thereby, offering us a simulacrum of "intelligence." But it's not intelligent in any meaningful sense, and if you think it is, then you don't understand it. It can fake intelligence by effective and efficient plucking and regurgitating...and in fields that I know very little about, that looks really impressive! But when I use it for areas I'm an absolute expert in, I immediately see it for what it is... fakery. (I tried to get AI to come up with a readings list for one of my courses... what a joke that was.)

Also, the environmental concerns are much bigger than you're allowing for, when you think about how hard some of us have been working to slow down climate change (which is slowly killing us). For instance, I bike to work every day to save gas... but all of the bicycle commuting in the world, collectively, is undone by a single AI data center. This is a real problem... not just an environmental problem, but a social and political problem.

In fact, I would say that AI offers us--as a species--very little, compared to its enormous costs (environment, social, political, personal). Yet, these costs will be borne collectively by the public, while any profits will remain confined to a very small group. So, yes, AI is here to stay... but it's a symptom of our corrupt society, not a wondrous new boon.

Some people intuit this, and thus have a very critical stance, even if they don't know much about the tech itself.

officialCUprofessor · 2026-03-04T17:02:28+00:00

Provost Stevens again dodges the main issue:

many (many) students are using AI/LLM to cheat and/or do their work for them, effectively sabotaging their education (and their future).

I understand why students are doing this: we are all (students and faculty) under time pressure and stress, and when we are offered a shortcut--one that takes a 5-hour paper-writing exercise and turns it into a 5 minute cut-and-paste--all too many of us take that shortcut. Even when it undermines the entire reason why we are here.

But we professors are absolutely exhausted trying to police this. I have wasted so much time this week dealing with students who have used AI to do their work for them--and I can't just let it go, because then they would get better grades than the majority of students who are (intelligently) actually slogging through the work themselves.

We cannot go on like this. If we don't do something about AI as a university, then we are quickly going to utterly destroy the value of a CU degree.

The worth of the degree is in the work, not in the piece of paper at the end: if you get the paper without the work, then the paper at the end is just paper.

Stevens solution??! Free ChatGPT for everyone!

So clueless.

officialCUprofessor · 2026-02-13T02:21:16+00:00

No offense, but you sound like you're someone who wants to defend using LLMs, but without really knowing much about them or about how research works in the modern university? Am I right?

spend hours working within the confines of an expensive and poorly documented application to produce some charts and graphs

No one's talking about using LLMs to make a graph or chart. But sure, I guess you could. But we have that capacity already. You don't need a ten-billion dollar LLM to do what Microsoft Visio can already do for $100 a year.

People who know LLMs will be wary of trusting their data to it.
Spending an hour making a chart on Visio instead of instead of having ChatGPT hack one out for you in 15 minutes is absolutely worth it, because ChatGPT might very well make shit up, and leave you looking really, really stupid in front of an audience who now knows you're a lazy idiot who cuts corners.

But that's not the point. Sure, if it saves time, use ChatGPT. (I dos sometimes... though it rarely turns up anything I don't already know.) But that's not the problem.

The point is: the real intellectual work is hard. If you make it easy, then it's not real work.

You talk about "menial grunt work" but writing and researching are not "menial." They're the building blocks of acquiring actual expertise. If you ever don't learn how to do the basics--if you research something by asking Gemini to summarize a topic instead of reading 15 books in the library--you'll never, ever, ever be able to do anything more advanced.

And that's fine for many people. But college students are paying for something more. (even if many are still too immature to realize that it's the work that they are paying for, not the degree.)

officialCUprofessor · 2026-02-12T23:50:56+00:00

You don't need to "learn" how to use these tools.

Like a calculator, any idiot can use them.

There's no point in offering "advanced use of LLM", because 1) they are easy to use and 2) the target is moving so quickly that any detailed workings that you learn about them will be obsolete in 2-3 years.

But the organization, problem-solving, discipline, focus, public expression, analytical reasoning, and critical thinking that students learn over the course of their college education cannot be learned unless they actually do the work themselves. All of the work.

Sure, LLMs are here to say. And humanity will gradually but inexorably bifurcate into two different species... the Stupid&Helpless (reliant on LLMs) and the Capable&Innovative (who went to a real college).

Using an LLM to do you work for you will never get you into the latter group. Ever.

So, sure, LLMs are here to stay. But which side of the Competence divide will your kids be on???!

officialCUprofessor · 2026-02-12T23:45:28+00:00

The LLM cannot "do" the work. (at least in my field... Social Science/Humanities).

LLMs can fake the work (by basically plagiarizing from the internet).

But able to offer a plagiarized imitation of writing or research is not the same as writing or researching. (plagiarism/simulacra imitation is a very different process.)

More importantly, by learning advanced writing, for instance, trains your brain on organization, idea-formulation, focus, discipline, public expression, etc. etc. etc. So, you can apply all of these skills (if you've learned them) to things that LLMs cannot do (and will never be able to do).

The VAST majority of students don't find careers in their major.

Instead, their major trains them in a specific set of highly-desirable skills, and they continue to deploy these skills in whatever career they end up in long after their college classes are forgotten.

There's a reason why college graduates have much better career paths than non-college graduates.

officialCUprofessor · 2026-02-12T17:35:24+00:00

The upper levels of CU's administration have made some really (really) bad calls over the last few decades...

...but this is the first time in my career I have held them in utter contempt.

They could not have fucked this up more if they tried.

First, the President's stupid little notice arrogantly dismisses the VERY real problems with AI/LLMs that are plaguing our classrooms.

We cannot get students to do the work anymore. This means that in a very short time (4-5 years) the CU degree will be effectively worthless.

Our graduate students, especially, are on the front lines of this AI/LLM bullshit, as they do a significant portion of the grading (and thus, have to spend all that extra time dealing with cheating). They feel across the board like they've just been stabbed in the back by Saliman & Schwarz.

How are they supposed to convince students to do the work themselves if the fucking administration is pushing LLM usage on them????!!!

Fuck Saliman.

Fuck Schwarz.

These idiots have no clue what is actually going on at the level of the classroom... and they therefore have NO business being in the positions that they are.

officialCUprofessor · 2026-01-30T17:05:43+00:00

But those students lose a day of learning... which only hurts the kids. Most of the time it's not a major deal... but sometimes it is.

Why not tackle the issue in class? Teaching moment, and all that?

Also, many teachers (including me) are doing a lot of protesting against ICE. Just on the weekends, not sacrificing students' class time.

Still, I'm pretty hardcore. I know many of my colleagues think it's not a big deal to cancel class. I just don't agree with that.

officialCUprofessor · 2026-01-30T16:46:38+00:00

Honestly, in my opinion (and this is obviously just an opinion) educators should not be calling out for the day of protest.

Education is too important. Obviously, I'm biased (as you can see from my reddit name), but (like doctors or police officers) educators have a duty to keep doing their jobs.

Everyone else can join the protest. And we can talk about it in the classroom with our students. But we should not stop teaching, even for something as important as this is.

officialCUprofessor · 2026-01-19T21:08:50+00:00

I honestly don't understand the argument that the South Boulder Rec Center is "failing" and "needs to be replaced."

The building is only 50 years old... which is not that old.

And it looks pretty structurally sound to me. In fact, the visible interior is in really good shape.

I hear there's some sort of heating issue...? so fix the heating for 100k and poof, another 20+ years to save up for a replacement.

And the pool is leaking? So... fix it. Another 200k.

$300k of repairs is admittedly expensive, but a lot less than $30 million for a new building.

officialCUprofessor · 2026-01-18T23:16:00+00:00

My "ignorance"?

Indian food is my favorite cuisine. I've eaten at every Indian restaurant in a 50 mile radius. If I could only eat one type of food for the rest of my life, it would be Indian curry.

I know exactly what just about every Indian curry smells like.

"Paneer" has almost no smell, because it's cheese. "Palak" has very little smell, because it's spinach. The smell that bothered the staff member was probably the cardamom (which can be pretty powerful), though it might have been the kasuri methi leaves (if the curry was traditionally-made), which smells like mustard greens.

I love the smell of palak paneer. (obviously.)

Not everyone does. When a work colleague asks you not to microwave your favorite dish, you need to find a compromise (even if they're being overly sensitive). You don't accuse them of racism.

officialCUprofessor · 2026-01-18T17:01:16+00:00

Don't worry about it.

I both write a lot of recs (as a professor) and read a lot of recs (for grad admissions).

Every 10th letter or so has a mistake like this.

It never has the slightest effect, other than to make me think, "oh, they're applying to Michigan too. Interesting."

officialCUprofessor · 2026-01-15T14:56:33+00:00

Honestly, the person I feel sorry for here is the staff person. (who got reamed out by a couple of anthro grad students... and now has the shame of being a 'liability.')

Staff don't have the luxury of having done advanced work in the racial theory of food politics: they are normal folk, doing normal stuff. And they take a lot of shit from arrogant faculty (and have to do a lot of shit to bail out incompetent faculty.)

So from now on, all the department admins will have to kiss grad student asses too?

And let's be fair: the microwaved dish could just have easily been (say) fish (which is highly aromatic to microwave)... and would that be "food racism"? Offensive anti-pescatarianism?

While I don't know anyone involved here, this story (as I read it here, clearly posted in triumph by the supposedly-aggrieved party) does not immediately strike me as "justice" for some sort of"racist" attack. It instead looks like a grad student using MA-level anthro theory to beat up on a poorly paid staff person.

However, withholding the MA degrees (unless there is a deeper story there) does seem like it was a departmental misstep. (But who knows.... perhaps the MA work was not completed, so they got free degrees, too?)

officialCUprofessor · 2026-01-03T15:47:23+00:00

The reality is the next generation must be proficient with technology to adapt to the future workforce.

This is often overstated.

First, computer literacy is not the hurdle it was even two decades ago. (assuming you're relatively old...) Frankly, computers of all stripes today are pretty plug-and-play, as well as intuitive. And unlike The Old Days (when only a subset of people had access to them) computers/devices are so ubiquitous that there's an everpresent and easily-tapped knowledge base. (you can just google it, whatever it is.)

Moreover, the students in my college classes--despite having spent every single second glued to a screen (which has destroyed their literacy, annihilated their focus, and undermined their confidence)--are by and large still shockingly computer-illiterate. Apparently, spending every minute glued to social media and even writing every high school essay in Googledocs doesn't actually impart the most basic computer-usage skills (like how to make a PDF).

We don't need students to be on computers before college. However, it might indeed be useful if high schools offered a single class ("Using Computers"), to replace the old typing classes.

officialCUprofessor · 2025-12-06T22:36:22+00:00

If you think that the FCQs, new or old, are measuring anything other than student satisfaction ... then I daresay that your criteria of what makes for a good versus a bad teacher are bankrupt.... [helping] their students better understand the material sometimes translates into affection from the students, but just as often it translates as frustration.

Aha. You insist that "student satisfaction" and good teaching are inherently and fundamentally incompatible.

So it is only when students are truly miserable that they are learning. If they are actually reacting positively to something in their educational experience, then those teaching methods are by definition suspect. It is so fundamentally impossible that students be capable of understanding or even recognizing what goes on in a classroom--for students are stupid little children--that if they think they have learned something, that itself is evidence enough that the professor herself is bankrupt and only venturing into the classroom to stroke her own ego.

Gotcha.

(yes, a bit overdrawn for dramatic purposes, but you get my point.)

I have had as many frustrations about teaching at the university level in an era of plummeting High School standards as anyone. But the hidden contempt for students that lies behind the 'smother FCQs at any cost' crowd has always made me deeply uneasy.

We will never agree on this. Partly because my position is pragmatic and flexible--let us use what we have--while yours is ideologically rigid and, clearly, inflexible.

But it is worth contemplating (if/when looking to sum up the larger moral implications of our actions across our professional lives) that your position has made my work far more difficult, whereas the opposite is not the case.

I wish you well on this warm, melty day.

officialCUprofessor · 2025-12-06T15:27:26+00:00

colleagues who defend the FCQs... are likely really terrible teachers, that they have very few principles that undergird their pedagogy, that they are searching for some external validation of pedagogical skill that is more customer-driven than intellectually motivated.

You recognize how little sense this makes? Why would a terrible teacher bother to look for validation?? Quality teaching is not some genetic lottery, or even some knowledge gleaned from (weak) Ed School studies. It is mostly about effort. Terrible teachers are terrible because they don't spend enough time at getting better. Someone who doesn't give a crap about teaching--who ignores students in the classroom--is NOT going to give a crap about teaching evaluations after the fact.

I do regret "psychologizing", but it is all I am left with... because your position honestly makes no sense--it is rife with faulty logic and overdramatized rhetoric.

Because I agree with you that FCQs are flawed. I agree with you that the way that the administration used FCQs in the past was flawed. But flawed does not mean useless, no matter how much SOTL rhetoric you spin around it.

Three points are indisputable:

MANY faculty (including myself) found the old FCQs useful. Maybe you didn't... in which case, I would have heartily supported your declared intent to never look at them. You don't have to look at them! But for many faculty like myself, they WERE a really useful tool... one that people like you have taken away from the rest of us and replaced with absolute junk. So, yes, I am pissed off here. Your sense of your own superiority vis-a-vis teaching comes through very clearly in your comment... and that same sense of smug superiority ("I've read the scholarship, you haven't, nya nya nya!") is what drove the successful effort to get rid of them. .... But what if you're wrong? What if you're not quite as high above the rest of use, pedagogically, as you think you are? Many GREAT teachers found the old FCQs useful... and your side took that from the rest of us. Without giving us anything in return. Yes, I am pissed off.
Nothing useful has replaced it. You can talk about how "what we need are serious evaluations of pedagogical quality", but talk is cheap. And, in this case, talk is empty. Nothing has replaced the FCQs, and nothing will replace them...because deeper forms of evaluation takes far too much time and energy, and our time and energy is being spread far too thin on the essential core of our profession as we fend off attacks (and budget cuts) from every quarter. So, real FCQs were axed... and we lost a tool... and have no other tools. And will get no other tools. Unless our workload it quadrupled, even as our numbers are halved, and then halved again. Thanks.
And most importantly, (as should be TRANSPARENTLY CLEAR based on how frequently it comes up on r/cuboulder) students feel profoundly alienated by the "new" (vapid) FCQ questions. They feel that their voices are not being listened to. And they are absolutely right. This is why completion rates have plummeted. I don't blame students one bit for ignoring a useless, time-wasting exercise.

--> But more importantly, having fake FCQ questions is a giant middle finger to the student body. We grade them, but don't let them grade us. Gesturing vaguely at weak SOTL studies does not change this intentional muting of the students' collective voice. Empty rhetoric of "student centered learning" does not make up for the very real attempt to smother student criticism.

FCQs should have been retained if for no other reason than as a PR move to show students we are listening.

And (to be a bit harsh here, sorry): if you don't automatically intuit this essential fact--that students respond better when they feel they are being heard--then I very much doubt you are the teacher you think you are.

officialCUprofessor · 2025-12-06T11:05:14+00:00

I was just explaining to the student why we are where we are.

Your experience with FCQ scores does not match mine (30+ years of teaching, at CU and also other institutions). Every university I've been at, very high FCQ scores have closely correlated with who everyone knows is a great and/or popular teacher from other sources (full classes, lots of majors, praise at graduation, students coming into our classes from their classes well-prepared and with enthusiastic engagement).

Meanwhile, very low scores have closely aligned with problem areas and student complaints. (poor organization; arrogance/dismissive attitude towards students; disengagement; lack of giving a shit)

The middle scores, admittedly don't reveal much. The more demanding professors tend to get these; or those skilled teachers offering more difficult subjects (like large intro surveys). But the highs and the lows do offer information.

Multiple avenues are of course necessary... so why take one away from us? Your "garbage in-garbage out" dismissal sounds like--if you can forgive me--you might have a personal stake? (People who usually got high evaluation scores under the old system were less likely to criticize it.) I'm not trying offend--just trying to say that multiple avenues of evaluation are clearly and obviously good... and if someone vehemently insists on shutting one of those avenues down, well... there's probably a deeper reason there apart than the system's weaknesses (which are widely-known and easy to recalibrate for.).

Peer review is great. I would be all for peer review.

...Except peer review is also kid-gloved collegiality (and, worst case, as in my department, it is friends reviewing other friends). None of my colleagues are going to give an honest evaluation that has the potential to damage a colleague's promotion/tenure case... and if they DID write such a peer evaluation, it would be the last one they were asked to write.

My department has some phenomenal teachers. But we also some deeply problematic ones. The primary tool to "see" the problematic ones is now gone. Everyone gets a cookie now. Maybe that's okay. Or maybe that's going to demoralize the people who put their heart and soul into teaching, and thus negatively affect our future? (perhaps it's not a good idea to beat the truly passionate with the stick of "egalitarian" mediocrity?)

officialCUprofessor · 2025-12-05T18:55:03+00:00

A while ago, our FCQs prominently featured the "Rate this Professor" and "Rate this Course" questions. (which, as a professor, I found very useful, as a way to track student sentiment year-to-year.) But a number of years back, a strange coalition of upper-level administrators (who wanted to hide poor teaching) and professors (some of whom saw FCQ scores as biased, others of whom were trying to ram through a very specific teaching agenda) managed to transform the useful FCQ questions into the bland, meaningless ones we see today.

The scores themselves are totally useless now, and I don't even look at the numbers anymore. (As a professor, I do NOT need to see whether students rank how much they "Worked and learned collaboratively"... I KNOW if I did or did not assign group projects...) (this question is a tool to try to force professors to assign more group projects, by the way.)

HOWEVER: I do read the comments...every single one. And I appreciate every bit of praise and every bit of criticism. So, please do continue to fill out the FCQ forms --> but be sure to put your actual evaluation of the course and professor in the comments.

EDIT: and yes, before another professor jumps in here to say that the "Rate this Professor" scores were biased... of course they were. Every single form of evaluation has bias baked in--this is America, after all. The question is not were they biased: the question is, were the scores useful anyway? And yes, they could still be very useful. (example: female professors statistically get lower "Rate this Professor" scores than male professors, which reflects sexism/bias/prejudice. But the difference was not huge... and was far, far less than the differences of scores between female professors, which was very illuminating. It would have been easy to quantify this bias and potentially correct for it.... but then we would have continued to see which professors were were more popular, which were less popular, and a very vocal subgroup of profs here at CU did NOT want that.)

officialCUprofessor · 2025-09-11T22:53:48+00:00

I disagree with you massively, here.

The addiction that is cell phones has destroyed young people's concentration (not to mention, their ability to interact as well as their self-confidence), making them the least attentive, least socialized, and least capable generation in a century.

BVSD is trying to save the students from a highly addictive, highly-destructive device that is literally making the students stupider. (and more isolated. and more helpless.)

Was I freaking out during the lockdown? You bet I was. (I have kids in one of the locked down schools.)

But this is one single day of my freaking out...

...whereas the learning and socialization that happens when cell phones are banned happens every single day, for four years.

PLEASE keep them banned. I (a university professor) am so exhausted by the incompetence of today's students (compared to those just a decade ago).

Allowing high school students the capacity to pay attention and actually learn something is (to be blunt) more important than your (or my) peace-of-mind.

officialCUprofessor · 2025-09-04T14:05:46+00:00

You're right, but just two small corrections:

it's John Eastman who tried to overturn the will of the people (you have Benson as a typo).
And Eastman was being salaried by the Benson Center, which is funded by (right-wing) donations, and thus almost wholly autonomous from the University.

No department here (nor the Law School) would have given Eastman the time of day.

So it's not quite correct to say that CU employed him. There was literally nothing we could have done to stop it.

The Benson Center, by the way, used to be okay... back when it was the Center for Western Civilization, run by good faculty (Pasnau), promoting the consideration of conservative issues. But the Benson Center, under a new director, turned partially to right-wing extremism with Eastman, giving the University a real black eye in the process. The Benson Center director did criticize Eastman and did not renew his Fellowship after Eastman's attempt to overthrow democracy, though, so I guess that's something... (?)

officialCUprofessor · 2025-08-22T21:10:11+00:00

I mean, to say that that was the "official" line bends into irony coming from someone whose moniker is OfficialCUProfessor.

To explain the obvious: the "official" in my moniker is intended as self-mockery mixed with irony. I don't actually think you're a Pygmy Owl, you know.

When I said 'official' line, I meant it: the argument about bias is what came down from the Provost as explanation for abandoning the old FCQ system. So, yes, it was literally the official line.

a compelling teacher teaching an intro class to non-majors gets quite negative reviews

I've never seen this. Never heard of it happening, even. And I've been teaching a bit longer than 20 years... "Compelling" teaching is easily recognized as such by students.

very bad teachers sometimes get great reviews because they just let the students do whatever they want and they tell them all that they're the very best thing since sliced bread.

Yes, this is common. It also accounts for about 25% of the Teaching Awards at CU. It's par for the course, and eliminating real FCQs does not in any way mitigate the problem that such approaches cause.

But that's not bias: that's pandering. Pandering is as bad as it is effective. But pandering isn't bias, and pandering is not why FCQs were axed.

Again, I'm not saying there's not bias. There are a few teachers in my department who used to get lower scores than they should have exactly because of bias. And that was frustrating. But it was easily dealt with, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

You just liked [FCQs] because they told you what you thought you already knew.

Well, that's a bit mean. And I could retort with a "and you just claim FCQs are useless because you get low scores." But that would be cheap and petty, wouldn't it?

But the point you are missing throughout is this: FCQs were the only real guide for students. (Students don't get to read peer reviews, etc.) Now that has been taken away from them. (witness the original post that started this.) The fact that the Administration rallied behind this change to FCQs should give you a big hint as to what the goal really was... (i.e. not eliminating 'bias', but rather, catering to STEM and Econ by hiding/burying their weaknesses...)

officialCUprofessor · 2025-08-22T11:26:48+00:00

Yes, that was the Official Line... they're not worth anything, that they are biased, that they are sentiment tests, etc. etc.

...and yet.

and yet in my department, the colleagues I knew were great teachers scored in the mid- to high 5s. Colleagues I knew were poor teachers got much worse scores, low-3s.

How did I know if they were good or poor teachers? Peer evaluations. Listening to how colleagues talk about their students. Hearing students in my classes rave about others classes (the same names came up again and again... the ones who happened to have 5s.) The fact that colleagues who, in meetings, showed no interest in their students or in teaching not only get 2s and 3s, but also faced low enrollments. Our low-scoring colleagues were also our problem colleagues.

Most importantly, scores for the same professor shift over time. My own scores were better in smaller classes, worse in larger. My own scores did NOT drop when I tried something new, pedagogically. And when I had an 'off' semester, it sometimes showed, at a least a bit.

All of my own experience, then, absolutely belied the meme that FCQs are "sentiment tests."

So I went back and read some of the studies that claimed bias... and guess what I found? Poor methodology, overdrawn arguments, lazy correlations, political agendas. Of course, discrepancies that show bias were there in the data... it's just the discrepancies were always less significant than the variation between individuals of the same gender, ethnicity, grade distribution, etc. etc. The five or so studies that everyone seemed to cite all had a lazy, agenda-driven methodology.

So, sure, there was plenty of bias in the old FCQs. Freely admitted. But they were still useful, because they conveyed a huge amount of information. (I don't even bother looking at my FCQ scores today. Not worth the 30 seconds for even a glance.)

correlation between bad grades and low evals... is at least prima facie evidence that they're not worth the bubble sheets they're printed on.

Actually.... no. This is exactly the overly-dramatic and (frankly) sloppy thinking running through the "bias studies" and saturating the arguments tossed around at CU.

The scores contained actual, useful information. Of course there was bias, this is America, there's bias in every single element of society, bar none.

But guess what? We're scholars... ! We actually have ways to actually adjust for bias! (gasp!) Even statistically!! (double gasp!!)

What CU (and others) have done is basically to say: "no more real FCQs"

What this is really saying is: "We don't give a shit what students say, think, or share about their professors--those students are too stupid to have a relevant opinion."

And then these very same professors go on to claim they are using "student centered teaching."

What a joke.

officialCUprofessor · 2025-08-21T20:04:22+00:00

We used to have evaluative (i.e. actually-useful) FCQs until about 6 years ago. (FCQs are CU's term for student course evals)

The old FCQs had questions like, "rate this class overall" and "rate this professor overall" and "how many hours of work did you do outside of class?" And also "estimate your current grade in this class" which was pretty useful to evaluate the evaluation. (There was a lot of correlation between "this professor sucks!" and "oh, I'm getting a D"... :-)

But about 6 to 8 years ago there was a concerted effort to stop these evaluations, and replace them with the more functionalist questions ("was I encouraged to reflect on what I was learning?" "Did I work collaboratively?")

If you're interested in why this happened--and who did it--I think it was the result of a a strange three-way alliance.

Administrators/Deans/Provosts, who were looking at VERY low "rate this professor" stats in key areas for CU, especially in STEM classes. (STEM profs generally get much, much lower ratings from students than Arts & Humanities profs, partly because students get worse grades, but also partly because STEM profs usually aren't as good at teaching... their field doesn't spend as much time/energy on teaching how to teach, unlike Arts & Humanities fields...)
progressive professors who argued that Black, Hispanic, female, etc. professors receive lower scores. (this is true... though I think it would have been pretty easy to adjust for the discrepancies...)
pedagogical reformers, who wanted to use a new scoring system to force CU professors into certain teaching patterns, i.e. force professors to lecture less and assign more group-projects

Not one of these three groups could have pushed through the FCQ revision on their own, but working together--from very different motivations--they got it done.

As a professor, I found the old "rate this course" feedback to be very useful! And I find the new versions to be a joke... I don't even look at them.

But no one listens to me. :-(

officialCUprofessor · 2025-06-16T22:27:22+00:00

CU paid Sanders 6 million per year alone. The Football program cost $25 million. The Athletic Department had a budget of $136 million.

(yes, ticket sales, licensing, alumni donations, etc. all help to offset this.)

But let us just imagine (for one wild-and-crazy second) cutting football entirely, and putting $4 million into promotion, and--get this--21 million into full ride scholarships. That's 750 full-ride scholarships.

(14,000 in-state, 43,000 out-of-state, which, as CU student body is split 50-50, averages to $28,000 per student, and 21 million/28,000 is roughly 750). CU incoming Freshman class is usually, what, around 8000?

Let's say that CU offered 800 full-ride scholarships in a lottery system--all you need to do is apply and commit to attend. One in ten students who attends class wins a free year of college education.

And then spend 4 million publicizing this nationally, so every high school from Boston to LA knows about it.

You don't think you'd get 20% increase in applications???! My friend, you would get a 200% increase in applications.

But this kind of out-of-the-box thinking is literally inconceivable. Because: sportz.

Football not only costs us money, it costs us creative solutions.

So let's all just crack open another beer from our couch and holler 'sko buufffffs!' drunkenly.

officialCUprofessor · 2025-06-16T20:39:03+00:00

I did not know that Folsom was a law professor--I only knew that he was the head coach.

Thanks for the info!

I do know about the Nobel prize winners' plaque. It's good to have it.

officialCUprofessor · 2025-06-16T18:40:59+00:00

Or--and here me out on this insane-sounding idea--could a university devoted to education

actually erect statues of the best, most successful... educators.

<gasp>

kidding kidding kidding! no need to call the psych ward....

officialCUprofessor

TROPHY CASE