Professor Says Arizona State Forced Him to Fail Students. The University Says That’s ‘Unequivocally Wrong.’
By Lily Jackson
April 19, 2019
At 10:48 a.m. on Thursday, an Arizona State University professor hit “send” on an email that has since gone viral, detailing what he alleges is the corrupt assessment of students in the university’s economics department.
Brian Goegan, a clinical assistant professor of economics in the business school, sent the message to his students saying that the university required students to use MindTap, a program by Cengage that charges students money to turn in homework and gain access to course materials. That arrangement, Goegan said, was made to persuade Cengage to give the university a “large monetary grant.” He said this was a “pet project” of Mark Searle, ASU’s provost. To ensure its success, Goegan said, professors teaching three courses were required to fail 30 percent of their students to make the provost’s program look good.
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At 10:48 a.m. on Thursday, an Arizona State University professor hit “send” on an email that has since gone viral, detailing what he alleges is the corrupt assessment of students in the university’s economics department.
Brian Goegan, a clinical assistant professor of economics in the business school, sent the message to his students saying that the university required students to use MindTap, a program by Cengage that charges students money to turn in homework and gain access to course materials. That arrangement, Goegan said, was made to persuade Cengage to give the university a “large monetary grant.” He said this was a “pet project” of Mark Searle, ASU’s provost. To ensure its success, Goegan said, professors teaching three courses were required to fail 30 percent of their students to make the provost’s program look good.
Goegan wrote that he was fired after raising concerns with Amy Hillman, dean of economics, about the “highly unethical” practices of fail quotas and unnecessary charges for students. Hillman did not respond to a request for comment.
Goegan did not immediately respond to The Chronicle’s requests for comment but did tell numerous outlets that he had written the email to students and that he had been fired.
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damn ASU is really gonna do its students like that, AND fire some of the best professors when they speak out against it? pic.twitter.com/Mx6VwibCPE
The university is disputing Goegan’s account. In an email, Searle said students have the option to take alternative courses that do not use MindTap, and that the fee paid by students also pays for a digital textbook used in the course. He added that the university has received no grants from Cengage.
In a statement to The Chronicle, Cengage also said it had never given a grant to the university. “Cengage has never provided a grant to ASU as part of this partnership,” said Lindsay Stanley, vice president for media relations at Cengage, in an email to The Chronicle. “We remain focused on working to support the institution in their efforts to help students succeed in this course, as we have done for nearly a hundred years and with thousands of institutions.”
Searle also said that the university never used fail quotas. “The accusation that the university would establish quotas in any course requiring to fail a certain percentage of students is unequivocally false,” Searle wrote in the email.
Searle did not confirm Goegan’s termination but did say that the faculty could face nonrenewal for “many reasons,” including “when a faculty member resists course-correction of multiple shortcomings despite supervisory intervention.”
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In a message posted online on Friday, Goegan responded to Searle’s statement. Among other things, Goegan said that he and others were told about a grant from Cengage; he posted text of a message he said was written by his assistant department chair asking him to increase the percentage of a course’s grade associated with MindTap quizzes; and that the assistant chair told him that grades for the relevant courses needed to follow the following distribution: 10 percent Ds, 10 percent Es, and 10 percent withdrawals. (Ds are passing grades, according to Arizona State University’s online grading policy.)
Goegan also wrote that he did resist “course correction,” as an ethical decision.
Some students have rallied behind Goegan. One told a local news outlet that she was upset by the action taken against him and that in his email to students, he had implored them to send messages to Hillman and Michael Crow, university president.
@michaelcrow Brian Goegan is THE BEST professor I’ve had at ASU and the two classes I took with him are two of the most beneficial classes I’ve taken that can ACTUALLY be utilized in my day to day life. He warned us that this would happen pic.twitter.com/eqWbt7SK7M