I cannot express my deepest, most heartfelt astonishment at the administrative lackwits who pulled this stunt and removed the professor from teaching biology:
The biology professor at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge gives brief quizzes at the beginning of every class, to assure attendance and to make sure students are doing the reading. On her tests, she doesn't use a curve, as she believes that students must achieve mastery of the subject matter, not just achieve more mastery than the worst students in the course. For multiple choice questions, she gives 10 possible answers, not the expected 4, as she doesn't want students to get very far with guessing.
Students in introductory biology don't need to worry about meeting her standards anymore. LSU removed her from teaching, mid-semester, and raised the grades of students in the class. In so doing, the university's administration has set off a debate about grade inflation, due process and a professor's right to set standards in her own course.
Oh NOES! The professor wants us to take HARD TESTS! This is outrageous! Who can possibly live up to these high expectations in a biology class? Birds have feathers, and as a law student, that's all I need to know! (10 possible answers!?!?!?!?! How do I CHOOSE?)
A hard test question, to me, is one like this: You will be inserting a plasmid into a bacterial culture of E. Coli. The gene you are activating will cause the organism to express a prodynorphin peptide as a byproduct of the cell's own metabolism. Your task after successful plasmid insertion, will be to measure the amount of expressed peptide after a week of cell growth, and calculate the necessary requirements for quality control and scaling the operation to produce the peptide in industrially useful amounts. You have one hour. Begin.
Since that's really hard, I'm sure the curriculum has been devolved into a more digestible form, that's much easier and gentler on the stomach of today's youth:
Hello students! This is a snail! Can you say snail? Very good! Snails are important animals in biology, which is the class you are taking today. And we will learn a lot about snails. Ready? Go! Snails are soft, buglike animals that leave slime wherever they go. They also carry their house, called a shell, wherever they go, too. Inside the shell is more slime, which the snails like because slime is good for them! Because they carry their house with them and have all this slime, snails are also very slow. Can you saw slow? I know you can, because everybody calls you slow, right? You and snails are very much alike! Now we will take a test about snails. Circle the answer to the question that makes the most sense: A snail is: Did you circle the best answer? That's great! Since any answer is just as good as any other answer, you get an A! Don't you feel better now? Class time is over, and remember what you learned about slugs today! -- Maybe if college really is this simple these days, I really ought to go back and grab a doctorate or two. 