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http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2010/04/11/teacher-assistant-graders-outsourced-to-bangalore/
<div ="post">
<h3 ="storytitle" id="post-24114"><a href="http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2010/04/11/teacher-assistant-graders-outsourced-to-bangalore/" target="_blank">Teacher Assistant Graders Outsourced To
Bangalore</a></h3>
<div =""> [Rob Sanchez] @ 12:12 am [Email author][Email this article]
[Print this article]
</div>
<div ="story">
When I first saw an article in the Chronicle of Higher
Education I thought it was some kind of April Fool's joke. Upon
further investigation it became clear that the article is not a
prankâ€"our colleges are outsourcing the grading of writing assignments to
India.
The following quotes from the article seem like a prank but they are
for real: <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Outsourced-Grading-With/64954/" target="_blank">Some
Papers Are Uploaded to Bangalore to Be Graded</a>, by Audrey
Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2010.
<blockquote>
Lori Whisenant knows that one way to improve the writing
skills of undergraduates is to make them write more. "¦. Her seven
teaching assistants, some of whom did not have much experience, couldn't
deliver. Their workload was staggering: About 1,000 juniors and seniors
enroll in the course each year. "Our graders were great,"Â she says,
"but they were not experts in providing feedback."Â
That shortcoming led Ms. Whisenant, director of business law and
ethics studies at Houston, to a novel solution last fall. She outsourced
assignment grading to a company whose employees are mostly in Asia.</blockquote>
So, <a href="http://www.bauer.uh.edu/Directory/profile.asp?firstname=Lori&lastname=Whisenant" target="_blank">Lori
Whisenant</a>, who teaches business law and ethics at
the University of Houston, is offshoring the job of grading the
assignments from her students to India. Outsourcing teaching assistant (TA) jobs to
Asia might seem like a lack of the ethics she is supposedly
teachingâ€"until her corporate background is reviewed. She worked at
international corporations and Wall Street investment firms such as
Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, and PricewaterhouseCoopers,
which might help to explain where she honed her globalist ideologies.
Seven TAs seems like an adequate number of graders for one professor.
Since she teaches management, is it not reasonable to expect her to
manage the work load of her TAs? These types of jobs are very valuable
for students who need a steady paycheck and work experience. Outsourcing
these jobs will only serve to hurt students and to further the
deterioration of our university system. It makes far more sense to hire a
few more TAs than to send the money offshore.
<blockquote>
Virtual-TA, a service of a company called EduMetry Inc.,
took over. The goal of the service is to relieve professors and teaching
assistants of a traditional and sometimes tiresome taskâ€"and even, the
company says, to do it better than TA's can.</blockquote>
Professor Whisenant has been relieved of the tedious task of teaching
by hiring virtual teacher assistants (TA) from an Indian based company
called Virtual-TA. Their
website is amusing because so many of the pictures they post depict
Anglo/Caucasian, Asian, and Hispanic students â€" the prototypical
Americans. The truth about Virtual-TA is exposed with a quick browse of
their management team page where you will see names like Chandru Rajam,
Tara Sherman, Ravindra Singh Bangari, Jeanne Grunert, and <a href="http://www.virtual-ta.com/management-team.php#shankar" target="_blank">Ravi
Shankar</a>. (Not the sitar player.)
Quite conspicuously the only address they list is for an office in
Virginia â€" and there is no clue that <a href="http://vdare.com/guzzardi/taxes_linked.htm" target="_blank">all the work is done
offshore. </a>Their Virginia company is listed as EduMetry, which is
part of the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Avdare.com+Steve+Forbes&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=" target="_blank">Forbes
</a>conglomerate and is listed on the <a href="http://www.forbes.co.in/Files/20090305110419Results31122008.pdf" target="_blank">Bombay
Stock Exchange</a>.
<blockquote>
The graders working for EduMetry, based in a Virginia
suburb of Washington, are concentrated in India, Singapore, and
Malaysia, along with some in the United States and elsewhere. They do
their work online and communicate with professors via e-mail.</blockquote>
OK, now for the reality check: Outsourcing the grading of student
papers is a preposterous idea. Even if the work was outsourced to a
different location within the U.S. it would be a disaster â€" but these
tasks are being done in foreign countries by people who have unknown
qualifications and who have no understanding of our culture and
linguistic idioms. They probably don't even speak English!
Everyone reading this is educated to one degree or another so it's
probably not necessary to spend much time explaining why offshoring TA
jobs is an absurd idea. The most obvious problem with the entire concept
is that the graders won't even know what was taught in the classroom or
what context the students were writing in. The Virtual-TA website
claims that they use "<a href="http://www.virtual-ta.com/about-us.php" target="_blank">Learning
Outcomes Management</a>", whatever that means.
<blockquote>
The company argues that professors freed from grading
papers can spend more time teaching and doing research.</blockquote>
Weren't college professors hired to be educators? Apparently nowadays
they are just too busy doing "research"Â to bother with the tedium of
the classroom.
<blockquote>
Whether Virtual-TA is that better way remains to be seen.
Company officials would not say how many colleges use the service, but
Mr. Rajam acknowledges that the concept of anonymous and offshore
grading is often difficult for colleges to swallow.</blockquote>
While they might hesitate to tell reporters which U.S. schools are
outsourcing their TA jobs overseas, a Virtual-TA "success story"Â web
page makes no bones about some of their clients; like for instance:
West Hills College Online and U21Global: The Online Graduate Business
School. They seem to be in the same league as the University of Houston!
<blockquote>
Virtual-TA's tag line is "Your expert teaching
assistants."Â These graders, also called assessors, have at least
master's degrees, the company says, and must pass a writing test, since
conveying their thoughts on assignments is an integral part of the job.
The company declined to provide The Chronicle with names or degrees of
assessors. Mr. Rajam says that the company's focus is on "the process,
not the individual,"Â and that professors and institutions have ample
opportunity to test the assessors' performance during a trial period,
"because the proof is in the pudding."Â</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Mr. Bangari, who is based in Bangalore, India, oversees a
group of assessors who work from their homes. He says his job is to see
that the graders, many of them women with children who are eager to do
part-time work, provide results that meet each client's standards and
help students improve.</blockquote>
In a previous quote Mr. Rajam said that the concept of anonymous
graders might bother skeptics. Could that be because some people might
question the qualifications of part-time women and children in third
world countries, who operate out of shanty towns and sweat shops, to
decide what grades American college students earn for their academic
papers?
I was curious to see what Whisenant's students think about the
outsourcing of TAs so I went to<a href="http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=226729&page=1" target="_blank">
ratemyprofessors.com</a> to read the gossip on her. Of course these
online ratings might not be representative of all of her students but
some of their opinions seem to make sense considering the poor quality
of the TAs. Not surprisingly none of the students have a clue who is
actually grading their papers, but they know shoddy and substandard when
they see it!
Here is a sampling of some of the recent comments from students.
<blockquote>
All student "help"Â is thru a TA & graders that arent
much help.Grading of papers is subjective and contradictory;one time
they say not developed enough & then say its too wordy after adding
30 words.</blockquote>
Virtual-TA argued that offshoring the grading allows professors to
spend more time teaching. If that was true it would seem that complaints
like this would be less prevalent.
<blockquote>
Devastatingly bad prof. In class she reads her own slides
and that's it. Asking for help = cheating, totally laughable. Since she
doesn't teach you, and no one else can help you, it ends up being an
utter and obscene waste of $1k. Writing intensive means professional
critique? Course not. An undergrad TA (non-English major) grades you.
Awful awful</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Graders are extremely subjective. Difficulty in getting
help</blockquote>
Not all of the ratings are negative however â€" the last one is by a
student who likes the classes because they are so easy.
<blockquote>
I still haven't figured out why so many people complain
about this class"¦one of my easier courses this semester.</blockquote>
It's fair to assume that this one was written by a male student:
<blockquote>
Wow this is an awesome class. THe teacher was really hot
too. I am glad i took this class, it was interesting and it was easy.</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div ="post">
<h3 ="storytitle" id="post-24114"><a href="http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2010/04/11/teacher-assistant-graders-outsourced-to-bangalore/" target="_blank">Teacher Assistant Graders Outsourced To
Bangalore</a></h3>
<div =""> [Rob Sanchez] @ 12:12 am [Email author][Email this article]
[Print this article]</div>
<div ="story">
When I first saw an article in the Chronicle of Higher
Education I thought it was some kind of April Fool's joke. Upon
further investigation it became clear that the article is not a
prankâ€"our colleges are outsourcing the grading of writing assignments to
India.
The following quotes from the article seem like a prank but they are
for real: <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Outsourced-Grading-With/64954/" target="_blank">Some
Papers Are Uploaded to Bangalore to Be Graded</a>, by Audrey
Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2010.
<blockquote>
Lori Whisenant knows that one way to improve the writing
skills of undergraduates is to make them write more. "¦. Her seven
teaching assistants, some of whom did not have much experience, couldn't
deliver. Their workload was staggering: About 1,000 juniors and seniors
enroll in the course each year. "Our graders were great,"Â she says,
"but they were not experts in providing feedback."Â
That shortcoming led Ms. Whisenant, director of business law and
ethics studies at Houston, to a novel solution last fall. She outsourced
assignment grading to a company whose employees are mostly in Asia.</blockquote>
So, <a href="http://www.bauer.uh.edu/Directory/profile.asp?firstname=Lori&lastname=Whisenant" target="_blank">Lori
Whisenant</a>, who teaches business law and ethics at
the University of Houston, is offshoring the job of grading the
assignments from her students to India. Outsourcing teaching assistant (TA) jobs to
Asia might seem like a lack of the ethics she is supposedly
teachingâ€"until her corporate background is reviewed. She worked at
international corporations and Wall Street investment firms such as
Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, and PricewaterhouseCoopers,
which might help to explain where she honed her globalist ideologies.
Seven TAs seems like an adequate number of graders for one professor.
Since she teaches management, is it not reasonable to expect her to
manage the work load of her TAs? These types of jobs are very valuable
for students who need a steady paycheck and work experience. Outsourcing
these jobs will only serve to hurt students and to further the
deterioration of our university system. It makes far more sense to hire a
few more TAs than to send the money offshore.
<blockquote>
Virtual-TA, a service of a company called EduMetry Inc.,
took over. The goal of the service is to relieve professors and teaching
assistants of a traditional and sometimes tiresome taskâ€"and even, the
company says, to do it better than TA's can.</blockquote>
Professor Whisenant has been relieved of the tedious task of teaching
by hiring virtual teacher assistants (TA) from an Indian based company
called Virtual-TA. Their
website is amusing because so many of the pictures they post depict
Anglo/Caucasian, Asian, and Hispanic students â€" the prototypical
Americans. The truth about Virtual-TA is exposed with a quick browse of
their management team page where you will see names like Chandru Rajam,
Tara Sherman, Ravindra Singh Bangari, Jeanne Grunert, and <a href="http://www.virtual-ta.com/management-team.php#shankar" target="_blank">Ravi
Shankar</a>. (Not the sitar player.)
Quite conspicuously the only address they list is for an office in
Virginia â€" and there is no clue that <a href="http://vdare.com/guzzardi/taxes_linked.htm" target="_blank">all the work is done
offshore. </a>Their Virginia company is listed as EduMetry, which is
part of the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Avdare.com+Steve+Forbes&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=" target="_blank">Forbes
</a>conglomerate and is listed on the <a href="http://www.forbes.co.in/Files/20090305110419Results31122008.pdf" target="_blank">Bombay
Stock Exchange</a>.
<blockquote>
The graders working for EduMetry, based in a Virginia
suburb of Washington, are concentrated in India, Singapore, and
Malaysia, along with some in the United States and elsewhere. They do
their work online and communicate with professors via e-mail.</blockquote>
OK, now for the reality check: Outsourcing the grading of student
papers is a preposterous idea. Even if the work was outsourced to a
different location within the U.S. it would be a disaster â€" but these
tasks are being done in foreign countries by people who have unknown
qualifications and who have no understanding of our culture and
linguistic idioms. They probably don't even speak English!
Everyone reading this is educated to one degree or another so it's
probably not necessary to spend much time explaining why offshoring TA
jobs is an absurd idea. The most obvious problem with the entire concept
is that the graders won't even know what was taught in the classroom or
what context the students were writing in. The Virtual-TA website
claims that they use "<a href="http://www.virtual-ta.com/about-us.php" target="_blank">Learning
Outcomes Management</a>", whatever that means.
<blockquote>
The company argues that professors freed from grading
papers can spend more time teaching and doing research.</blockquote>
Weren't college professors hired to be educators? Apparently nowadays
they are just too busy doing "research"Â to bother with the tedium of
the classroom.
<blockquote>
Whether Virtual-TA is that better way remains to be seen.
Company officials would not say how many colleges use the service, but
Mr. Rajam acknowledges that the concept of anonymous and offshore
grading is often difficult for colleges to swallow.</blockquote>
While they might hesitate to tell reporters which U.S. schools are
outsourcing their TA jobs overseas, a Virtual-TA "success story"Â web
page makes no bones about some of their clients; like for instance:
West Hills College Online and U21Global: The Online Graduate Business
School. They seem to be in the same league as the University of Houston!
<blockquote>
Virtual-TA's tag line is "Your expert teaching
assistants."Â These graders, also called assessors, have at least
master's degrees, the company says, and must pass a writing test, since
conveying their thoughts on assignments is an integral part of the job.
The company declined to provide The Chronicle with names or degrees of
assessors. Mr. Rajam says that the company's focus is on "the process,
not the individual,"Â and that professors and institutions have ample
opportunity to test the assessors' performance during a trial period,
"because the proof is in the pudding."Â</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Mr. Bangari, who is based in Bangalore, India, oversees a
group of assessors who work from their homes. He says his job is to see
that the graders, many of them women with children who are eager to do
part-time work, provide results that meet each client's standards and
help students improve.</blockquote>
In a previous quote Mr. Rajam said that the concept of anonymous
graders might bother skeptics. Could that be because some people might
question the qualifications of part-time women and children in third
world countries, who operate out of shanty towns and sweat shops, to
decide what grades American college students earn for their academic
papers?
I was curious to see what Whisenant's students think about the
outsourcing of TAs so I went to<a href="http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=226729&page=1" target="_blank">
ratemyprofessors.com</a> to read the gossip on her. Of course these
online ratings might not be representative of all of her students but
some of their opinions seem to make sense considering the poor quality
of the TAs. Not surprisingly none of the students have a clue who is
actually grading their papers, but they know shoddy and substandard when
they see it!
Here is a sampling of some of the recent comments from students.
<blockquote>
All student "help"Â is thru a TA & graders that arent
much help.Grading of papers is subjective and contradictory;one time
they say not developed enough & then say its too wordy after adding
30 words.</blockquote>
Virtual-TA argued that offshoring the grading allows professors to
spend more time teaching. If that was true it would seem that complaints
like this would be less prevalent.
<blockquote>
Devastatingly bad prof. In class she reads her own slides
and that's it. Asking for help = cheating, totally laughable. Since she
doesn't teach you, and no one else can help you, it ends up being an
utter and obscene waste of $1k. Writing intensive means professional
critique? Course not. An undergrad TA (non-English major) grades you.
Awful awful</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Graders are extremely subjective. Difficulty in getting
help</blockquote>
Not all of the ratings are negative however â€" the last one is by a
student who likes the classes because they are so easy.
<blockquote>
I still haven't figured out why so many people complain
about this class"¦one of my easier courses this semester.</blockquote>
It's fair to assume that this one was written by a male student:
<blockquote>
Wow this is an awesome class. THe teacher was really hot
too. I am glad i took this class, it was interesting and it was easy.</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
