Inside Higher Ed has a report on a new frontier in administrative idiocy:
After passing a new online test on ethics required of all state employees, [a] tenured professor in the English department at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale received a notice from his university ethics officer and from the state inspector general that he was not in compliance with state ethics regulations, a failure that state officials said could result in punishment that included dismissal. The reason? He had completed the test too quickly.
Yes, that's right. Professors were asked to read a bunch of material on ethics training, and then take an online test. If they completed the multiple-choice test in less than ten minutes, they were presumed to have cheated, and held to be in violation of the regulation.
Truly, the mind boggles.
The professors talked about in the article have retained lawyers, and are threatening to sue the state and the university for being a bunch of utter morons. Well, ok, something more legal-sounding than that, but that's the basic idea.
(This was discussed recently on some blog or another, but I can't for the life of me remember where. My first reaction was "Oh, that can't be true-- there must be something else going on," but the Inside Higher Ed piece describes exactly the same idiotic procedure mentioned in the blog post. I'm sorry I doubted you, whoever you were.)
Comments
# 1 | Jamie Bowden | January 23, 2007 8:04 AM
What, you thought just because you became a college professor the idiots of the world were going to stop tormenting you for being smarter than them?
# 2 | Ambitwistor | January 23, 2007 8:11 AM
I think that was discussed by Clifford Johnson of Asymptotia and some other faculty in the comments. Not sure if it was an ethics test or diversity training or what, but I seem to recall that in theirs, the computer simply didn't accept the test if it was completed to quickly -- and if you just walked away and let it sit idle to eat up time, it would reset itself and you'd have to start over.
# 3 | Rev. Scott | January 23, 2007 8:15 AM
*rolls eyes* Let the leveling process begin.
I also have to take an online ethics course to serve on a hospital's Institutional Review Board, and it wouldn't have occurred to me that I should make it look like I actually have to think about the answers. You see, we're not required to be ignorant, just to act as if we are.
# 4 | jim | January 23, 2007 11:03 AM
To tear through it so quickly was taken as disrespect for the test. Disrespect for the test was internalized by the test makers as disrespect for them and their métier.
# 5 | anon | January 23, 2007 1:30 PM
As I said on another blog, the more I see, the more convinced I become that govenments are run by morons. In my job I am required to take an online test about computer security. It is a very pretty but ultimately stupid course that takes one and a half hours to complete. Full completion is required to take the test. You cannot take the test at your own pace because it is animated and you must allow the animation to run to get credit for that section. If you flunk the test, you must retake the entire course. You are never told which questions you miss. This rant leaves aside the issue of the stupidity of the content itself, about which I fear to speak lest I become mad.
# 6 | Uncle Al | January 23, 2007 1:52 PM
Uncle Al cannot imagine the basis for your outrage. You erected a massive thread demanding the Gifted be destroyed by neglect if not outright assassination. Your desired future has arrived gift-wrapped and you complain.
Are you crying of hunger with a loaf of bread under each arm because you cannot get either to your mouth without dropping the other? Demand a government subsidy so you can be Liberally fed after throwing away both.
The professors' lawsuit will fail. No government manager knows anything about ethics or they would not have been hired. Therefore, any statement they make is unbiased, true, and 100% sustainable in a witness box.
# 7 | Elia Diodati | January 23, 2007 5:05 PM
The irony is that this happens in Illinois, a state not known for the integrity of its top officials.
It also happened to someone in my lab. You get a nasty-sounding letter about the importance of ethics training and an exposition of the logic that completing the test too fast is "cheating", and a thick sheaf of "training materials" and a form you have to sign declaring solemnly that you did indeed the training materials *this* time.
I just watched some game on ESPN and clicked next between commercial breaks.