Forum Post
Many faculty members have significant concerns about UCORE and the UCORE Committee itself.
First, in an era of enrollment-based budgeting, why is one course in one department allowed to be required of all students? Presumably most departments believe they have a course that should be required of all students. How is the Department of History allowed to have a monopoly on History 105/305 as a UCORE requirement?
Second, the UCORE Committee operates in a manner that is not at all transparent. This goes against basic academic principles. If a UCORE course proposal is rejected or allowed a revision, all the applicant receives is one paragraph of rather vague, generic sentences about needing to better meet the UCORE objectives.
If someone on the committee has reviewed the proposal in detail and found it lacking, there should be a report that goes on for presumably at least one full page specifying in what ways the proposal is lacking, and the applicant should be allowed to respond point by point, in much the same way as an academic paper author would respond to a referee report from a journal. As it stands, the process leaves faculty making proposals wondering what the UCORE Committee is thinking and how to meet its demands based on deciphering a few vague sentences.
The unfair monopoly of History 105/305 and the lack of transparency in decision making are hurting the credibility and effectiveness of UCORE. Reform is needed.
Response
The Faculty Senate Executive Officers have been notified of this forum post and will respond back once more information becomes available.
Comments
Please let the Senate know details regarding if you have already communicated with the Provost’s office as well as the UCORE Committee chair and committee members so that we can effectively followup on this concern. We would be interested in any responses you can share.
https://ucore.wsu.edu/governance/committees/
As she or he makes clear at the outset, the poster’s issue with UCORE is at root an issue of the incentives that EBB encourages. My colleague and I posted separately about the possible effects of these incentives on grade inflation, but the mechanism here is related. All departments would love a class that is a “monopoly” because it locks in a healthy EBB revenue stream. The UCORE committee therefore becomes a very important arbiter of who gets “access” to the “marketplace” of required courses, and the poster feels unfairly locked out without justification. UCORE courses then compete on many dimensions (including expected grades) to get students to enroll and to get the dollars that follow them.
I’m not advocating against EBB; it may be the best budget allocation model. But we should be clear-eyed about the incentives it produces and ensure that they don’t cause us to stray too far from the academic mission we would set ourselves *IF* money wasn’t driving the bus.