I had been informed once that high schools were (are?) evaluated for their "success rate," i.e., the percentage of their students that graduate. This seemed reasonable enough until someone noticed that many schools were padding these numbers by allowing actual illiterates to receive diplomas. Still, the apparent advantage of using this ploy seems to be enticing college and university administrations, while they pay no heed to the concomitant drawbacks.
I'm told that at a certain major state university, the administration wants to increase the retention rate, and has dictated that professors should put in more effort into their teaching. Is it being presumed that if we put more effort into teaching, the students will do better in the courses? I'd like to explore this notion.
First, the easiest way to increase retention is to lower standards. That much is clear. One would have to be careful not to lower them too much, of course, for it could lead to loss of accreditation. However, it does sound as though the intention is to reduce attrition without lowering standards. (After all, aren't standards low enough already?)
In that case, we are trying to ensure that students do better in their courses. It would seem easy enough to do that by giving easier exams. However, if we make the questions easier, not only would we be lowering standards, but the students would soon realize that we are expecting less of them. I think it is well-known that they would actually end up performing at a lower level.
So we would likely elect to keep our exams at the same level, but prepare the students better for them: you know, avoid the temptation to do "irrelevant theory" (basic conceptual material) in class, and make sure that the class time is spent on doing problems that are virtually the same as the ones the students will be doing in the homework and on the exams. I must aver that I have called that programming (something better done to computers), and even referred to it as "teaching high school" (as that is how mathematics is often taught in order to achieve the goals of high school). Though it alters the presumptions on what constitutes a fair exam, this might well result in increasing exam scores. On the other hand, the level of comprehension of the subject would almost certainly go down.
Let's examine the idea of keeping the exams at the same level of difficulty, and with the same level of secrecy as to what the problems will look like, and doing what the administration wants us to do in our teaching. I actually began doing something like that in my Calculus II lecture course (for physical science and engineering students) a few years ago. I spent time both the evening before and the hour before my 10 o'clock lecture, thinking of how I could best explain the material. And if I felt that something was not adequately explained in lecture, I would write up supplementary handouts in TEX.
Naturally, I expected the class to put in their share of the work too, and as a result learn better. (Then, they'd be in a better position to understand and apply the methods of calculus in their science and engineering courses.) On the whole, they did, but there was a large part of the class that was unhappy with my energetic effort. They would have preferred instead that I thinned down the course, spending the class time on less material (an option that was dismissed in the preceding discussion). Thus, I doubt this approach will salvage the students who are dropping out, and we are back to square one.
It may help put things in perspective to take into account not only the thought I put into the lectures that semester, but also the fact that the ten or so handouts mentioned above, involved an estimated two hours of my time per page. On top of that, the chasing after students who did badly on exams and the general dissipation of energy caused by the whole process added up to an enormous drain of time (something reported also by one of my colleagues). This time might get spent more productively working on research mathematics.
In sum, the administration seems to be expecting us to either lower our expectations, or divert our time onto something with no guaranteed return. Indeed, the only way to resolve the problem of increasing attrition, without distorting the terms of our employment, is to remind the students that it is their responsibility to make sure they graduate. If some students are unwilling to accept this, it could well be wiser in the long run to let them withdraw, and to hope that they will return later when they are more mature.
Otherwise, it is we who do the work, and they who get the degree.
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Steven Zucker