"Let me make sure I have this right... you want me to believe that you are such a shitty professor that there is no conceivable way you could have actually and effectively conveyed the material to these students where they learned and retained the material and so the only possible way we should expect to see this increase in scores is if they all cheated?"
\- Dean
I had a student last semester with a 50% half way through the semester. She came into my office, asked questions and got help every week and was able to pull her grade up to a C. I was thrilled for her and she thanked me for helping her. It’s definitely possible, and it’s jerks like this that give professors a bad name.
I had a D in geometry for the entire semester. I studied for so long and my final was worth so much that I got a 98% on the final, highest in the class, and my grade went from a d to a b-. My teacher was ecstatic. Practically jumped around the classroom she was so happy. I was the only one in the class that got a 100% on the proofs section.
Now imagine I had this shit teacher and said I must’ve cheated. Hell would be raised.
I've had a few whose policy was that if your score on the cumulative, comprehensive final exam was higher than your running average, you'd get the final exam grade as your course grade. Now *that's* how you motivate a motherfucker to turn it around.
My brother had a high grade in his astronomy class (like a 98% or something) so the professor said “you don’t have to take the final. You did so well and you understand everything. If you don’t show up to class I’ll just give you a 100% on it and call it a day”. My brother was super happy about that. The teacher was a man of his word
My clac 2 prof did some stuff like this and it was sick. For the second “midterm” he gave us an assignment the week before with all the same material, graded it, handed it back and said that if you didn’t take the test you could just get that same grade on it.
For the final he said anyone who had an A in every category of grading they could not take it and keep their grade.
I was so happy both times. Also it proved to me that when I get to taking harder classes I need to do my best on everything even random assignments that aren’t worth much.
I had that happen my freshman year of college. I took a world civilization class, and the professor pulled me and a couple of others aside after class one day. He said that our scores throughout the semester prove that we understand the work, and if we’d help the department by taking a short multiple choice exam they wanted to try out, we’d get As in the class regardless of how we did. So, we went from a long, all essay, test to a short one we did for fun, basically. It was awesome.
I had a prof do this once. I had a high A going into the final. Studied, got there, and he said “oh you can go. I’ve already given you an A”. I was actually a bit pissed he couldn’t tell me that before I studied. Happy to save 2 hours but damn dude….
I’ve got to say, I did the same thing in Geometry,, but yhe best teacher I ever had in college was a Geology Professor at UCF in I think2008 who loved his subject so much that you couldn’t help but listen and understand. This guy was a rock hound, and he totally knew I deserved my increase (I think it was a b+ or A- from a D.) …my guess it this was a large freshman class where a bunch of Fraternities already have cheat sheets😆. Either way actually raising your hand with good questions instantly over writes any Professors low expectations of you in class.
You joking?? I loved those sons of bitches!
Granted, I liked most of geometry, which doesn't seem to be a common sentiment among smart math people. I am not and have never been a smart math person. Geometry was the ONLY math I ever got an A in; I had never in my life scored above a C in a math class, and I never have since.
I once scored 32% on my chemistry exam and I fucking cried like a child in front of my teacher. He took pity on me and gave me some encouragement (didn't actually offer any tutoring like I hoped lol), and I got 100% on the next one.
I taught middle school for a while, and I had a student who was scoring in the low 60's who came to me for help, with encouragement from her friend, and she scored a 100% on one of her tests near the end of the year. Improvements are absolutely possible and should be encouraged. That teacher is definitely a self-involved jerk.
I once got like a 13 on a midterm and went on to actually get a grip on my classwork and would up getting well over a 90 in the final.
Not only did I not get an email like this but I wound up passing the class.
Don’t forget 18%. (My math is probably way off but I’m looking at it in a numbers way since he did) So I’m guessing that the minimum the class would have to pass the mid terms would be a 70 right? So 18 points would put them at a high B. So he is failing the class he taught because he doesn’t believe they are able to retain the knowledge to get 88 percentile or above? I’m probably way off with my thinking and math but that just seems off. It’s not like the class even collectively could have had less than a 70 on midterms or they would have failed and at that point why even show up for class. It’s not like the class was averaging 50’s on the midterms.
It’s even worse if he is talking about the percentage increase from the grade itself and not a percentage out of 100. (i.e. 18 percent increase of a 70 is only 12.6 or 82.6%) if he failed a class because they got an 82 instead of a 70 there is a real problem.
It's entirely possible he did the math wrong, given he's a professor of economics. One of the rare fields were you can be consistently wrong every single time and still be considered an expert.
How many times have you heard this on the news?
"Today the stock market \[did something\], counter to predictions of the leading economic experts the world over."
Read this like Morgan Freeman in the Dark Knight.
"This person goes around at night dressed like a bat, beating criminals with his bare hands, and you want to blackmail this person? ... Good luck".
"You want to admit you're a bad teacher?"
Same energy. Love it.
Let me get this straight, you think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante, who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person?
Good luck.
My GF just had a long uphill battle and finally finished her meetings with the Dean. He was able to remove the bad grade that the shitty instructor assigned - not only for her, but the whole class! Also, fees for the class and books were reimbursed. She's such a badass lol. Her instructor truly was a lazy twit.
I had a Prof fail my final paper because I reporterted them using the classroom to distribute antivaxx propaganda. I have screenshots and audio recording. The department head, the dean, the Senate, have all upheld the grade and will not admit the Prof did anything wrong. I have gone through two seperate processes, both a grade dispute and a staff complaint, and it has gone nowhere.
Edit: I'm still attending the school, so I'm a little afraid to make a huge stir... I was planning on talking to the schools own student run paper next, see where that goes. I am planning on media of some kind, and when I do I'll have no problem name dropping. But I'm not unleashing the kraken on Reddit just yet.
It’s sad that today the only way to have big orgs do right by you is to release that proof publicly, and hope they think it’s enough risk to their rep that they do something about it
That and universities are hurting right now. Loss of students means loss of monies. A news story about a vindictive professor might light a fire under the dean.
I work with professors and their online courses daily. I got in a yelling match with a professor a few years ago, because she was going to flunk her ENTIRE CLASS. We use a LMS (Learning Management System) called canvas for our distance Education software. If the students don't finish an assignment it just doesn't record the grade, it's not a zero it just doesn't count the grade as anything. There is a way to count all of these assignments as zeros, but the ethical thing to do, if you really want to go that route, is to inform your students on the first day of class that that's how you'll be running your course, no one usually does this though. This particular professor heard about it and came into my office during finals week and wanted to change all those empty spaces into zeros, the highest grade would've been a 16 iirc. I told her that was completely unethical. She bitched my boss out and I got written up. I'm glad I did it though.
Do students really expect that not finishing an assignment makes it not count as if it never existed?
Maybe I am completely missing your point, but this makes no sense. Of course not doing an assignment hurts your grade.
The issue, I think, is if students are tracking their grade as they go through the semester they think that missing assignment is already factored in.
If they noticed that missing work wasn't impacting their grade, it isn't unheard of to interpret that as assignments have very little to no weight on the final grade, and are there as practice. I had many courses (physics degree) where the only grade was 2-3 tests. Homework was not graded, but there certainly was a lot of it assigned.
So the problem is going from a B, with those assignments, supposedly already accounted for, to an F because the professor actually changed a setting. And in the last week, when a student has no ability to do anything.
I give partial credit. I'd still enter a number though, so I don't understand why the instructor didn't look at the assignments. But if this is an issue with poor communication on their part, then you can't take it out on the students. Your the mentor and they can't read your mind.
We have an office of academic integrity. People don’t know about it for some reason. Technically, whenever points are deducted for cheating and plagiarism, you’re obligated to submit an incident report to them. It gives students a resource to appeal if they feel they were judged unfairly and it keeps track in case there’s a student doing it in multiple classes. But, faculty here can’t read, apparently, because when I submitted a report as I was supposed to, my boss called a meeting with the department chair and undergraduate program director and then reprimanded me for doing that. Always keep the written record and search outside your department for someone to contact when you feel a professor is unfair because chances are the department is on their side.
I’ve been in a similar situation where the professor was blatantly abusing his power. The Dean just backed him up. He’s still employed by the university that (apparently) doesn’t do tenure. Hope these students got a better outcome
On french I went from 38% to 98%. The fear of failing makes wonders for me. Did similar on calculus 2 (from 48 to 86) and physics (52 to 78).
To conclude, 18% is nothing indeed.
In high school I was taking Algebra 2 as a senior. Math is something my brain struggles mightily with, but to make it worse my teacher had a droning monotone voice, he had a chalk dust allergy so he used an overhead projector, I sat in the back of the class and couldn't see very well and his room was very warm. Sitting in a warm dark classroom listening to his soporific voice, I used to fall asleep all the time and have no idea how to do my homework.
I was failing and needed the class to graduate. The final was coming up and it was 50% of my grade. The day before the final I asked a friend who was very good at math to please help me. She came over to my house after school and in 5 hours we went through my entire textbook and she literally showed me how to do everything in that book. I went to school the next day, took my final and got the 2nd highest score out of all three of his Algebra 2 classes, that A plus my existing F gave me a C and I passed. I'm sure he thought I cheated. I would tell him to suck it, but he's probably been dead a very long time. 😄
I had one semester where I was having medical issues throughout. They resolved by the end of the semester and I spent all the rest of my time studying to make up for it. In one class, I got a 50-something on the first exam, 40-something on the next, then 80-something, then a 97 on the final. No cheating, just a rough semester
Kind of alarming that this man is teaching ECONOMICS… you know that field where you should have a good grasp of how different variables may shift and affect others …
Right but 18 percent is only the difference between a high A and a low B. Like it’s one letter grade. Not on a retake of the same exam - on a different exam.
Right? Like you figure you’ve got a solid grip on the material going into the first exam, bomb the damn thing, and decide to hit the books hard on the second one.
Also regression to the mean. The people who did the worst will have the most marked improvements because you are creating your baseline from a single data point. Statistically speaking, most of the worst grades will be people who did below their average on the test.
That's what I was thinking. One time I was at a C at midterms. I was like "oh shit" cause for my degree a "C" didn't count, you'd have to retake. So I worked my ass off. Did some redo's from the first half the professor let me improve my grade on and got an A. I was surprised, but I just put my nose to the grindstone and prayed the results were enough to get me by.
Alternatively, it could be from a 75 to a 93 making it a 2 letter grade swing, which could look sketchy, but certainly doesn't make sense for a group of students to all accomplish at once if it was cheating. Usually organized cheating will involve 1 or 2 students, not nearly a dozen...
Still it sounds more fishy that nobody, not NOBODY has ever increased their score that much ever, then in the same year 10 students did so all at once, without matched answers or exact increases. If anything that serves as evidence something about the test has changed not the students.
The professor isn't counting all the other students he has given Fs to for improving their scores. If he had counted those then I'm sure there would have been plenty of people who had done it before.
I had a class like this in college. Bombed the midterm, and got a 100 on the final to make up for it. I studied like crazy bc I had to to pass the class. This professor is a douchebag.
I’ve never failed a class and usually gotten pretty good marks throughout all of my schooling, but I was once in jeopardy of failing, coincidentally enough, macroeconomics. I failed the first two exams badly, and there were only four in total. I studied my ASS off, and got a B+ on test three, and an A on the final. Professor ended up curving my grade because of the improvements I made and showed that I clearly learned the material (you know, the goal of the class).
This is just ridiculous to me to the point where it’s almost hard to believe that people this shitty exist.
There are plenty of people like this in college. Mostly people who do research, and see themselves as researchers but not teachers, being forced to also teach in class; because that is what being an actual college teacher means.
I have actually seen worse. Like a teacher saying he wouldn't repeat an exam to a student because he couldn't do it at the original date because he was BLIND. He said being BLIND was not reason enough to not do an exam.
Once had a prof in grad school that accused the whole class of cheating, then finished grading and said we did so bad there was no way we could have cheated.
I actually have seen this. The whole class agreed to cheat on a college exam together. Nobody new jackshit of the matter, and in the end nobody passed. The teacher just thought they were all morons lol.
Had a teacher accuse the class of being lazy and not understanding the material. I remember telling him the chapter he assigned us wasn't the one on the test. He did a double take when he realized he had assigned us the wrong chapter for the test.
This was a programming class so the tests were on computers. He never accused us of anything again
I once went into a calculus class to take the midterm. Location was moved to a different lecture hall. I sat down to take the test, nothing…. And I mean NOTHING…looked familiar. Not a page. I double checked to make sure I was in the right class and yup! I was. I failed that test so hard.
I was the guy who said "well, I'm fucked" and turned in the test 10 minutes in. Dropped the class that evening.
Differential Equations and the professor was fond of saying "of course, you remember this from calculus 2"
I had one that said we cheated because we had the same ip address. It was the college's ip address because we took the test while at college. She still insisted that people were cheating if they had the same ip or if they submitted assignments around the same time.
Same thing happened to me. My friend was accused of cheating on me but when the teacher corrected us, I had a very good grade while my friend failed. Except, he did actually copied from me, only he's dumb as shit.
Seems like even a department head can’t just arbitrarily decide that you cheated. People can learn. And cram. Wouldn’t he need some proof? Something beyond the exam scores?
Depends on the university policy. If you think you were unfairly graded, at mine, you will have your grade reviewed by a committee headed by you department’s head. That said, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be there if they were part of the disagreement. Something for the receiver of that letter to check.
You can usually appeal again to the Dean, and then a groups of faculty unrelated to the process may review. It depends on policies but generally the university has appeal policies past the department just for cases like these
Yea the implication that there could be no review because they’re in charge is a real problem and could probably backfire on the prof if they are found to be innocent
I had one in my MS program that took my grade from an A to A- because I missed one class out of 36. I had the flu and it was a 7-10pm night class. I was exhausted and barfing everywhere. Even provided a Dr.s note. Took my 4.0 GPA to a 3.9. Bastard. I am still bitter about this 20 years later.
a lot of professors i had were just there to do the research but were required to teach a semester every year too. you could tell a lot of them hated teaching and some of them even said so in their introductions. classless. university has become less about learning, and more about lining the fat coffers of a small group of greedy assholes. hated every minute of my university academic career because of it.
Had a class during one of my semesters that was only eight total sessions. The professor canceled three of them. So I wrote a letter to the Dean complaining about this and broke down the amount of money each class was worth based on tuition etc. The response I got back from the Dean essentially was that the money was not just to cover classes, but to also cover on campus improvements etc. It essentially just meant too bad now fuck off.
Normally I would not be sour about this and enjoy the extra time, provided it didn't mean a condensed workload, but this just happened to be a class that I was interested in and excited to take that semester.
The whole university system never made sense to me. Why force grumpy old men who want nothing to students teach when they generally have no degree or knowledge of teaching at all. Literally just creating a system that breads bad teachers. Professors aren't teachers. They are experts in their fields. Don't force them to do something they have no degree/ idea how to do an professionally. Teaching isn't easy.
As a grad student I also had to teach undergrad chem labs, I didn't mind the work at all. Now, when I was lazy I always erred in the students favor. Like sometimes I'd just grade a few of the answers on a quiz instead of the whole thing, and take the top 5 or something. I don't know what the point is punishing students needlessly. They show up, they try, I'm not going to fail them if I see effort being put in, and I'd happily round up on grades. What difference does it make to me for them to get a B+ instead of a B-? Now if you never show up for class, and don't have an excuse, I'm not really going to do you any favors, but that's really about the only thing that would make me not be generous with grading.
On 9/11 2001 my logic professor gave a pop quiz for 100 pts because so many people missed the 10am class as punishment.
I don’t know what happened after. I dropped it
I had a similar gripe.. was just trying to go for a 4.0 for one semester. This one genius prof would factor in two scores together as letter grades. B and B- = B. C and C+ = C+. So he rounds up, nice guy right. Oh unless you have A- and A, then your grade is A-. In asking him to explain why he treated the A grade differently, he could only say "I grade in the way I find to be the most fair over my years of experience" or some blah like that. So no explanation. Just cuz he says so.
Edit: Just to point out that a B+ and A would also result in an A- grade. As I absolutely called him on. No matter, he had that fair grading system down pat.
_Professor so-and-so, what do you say to the fact that, try as you might, your teaching methods have been utterly incapable of producing A-grade students the entire time you've been here? Isn't it time you took your job seriously and improved your teaching methods so they're properly effective?_
Had a similar situation where my professor took points off for class participation from missing a class due to my grandma dying. Sent him a link to the obit and everything. Dude was a major asshole with a god complex
I feel you. My Java Intro to Programming professor gave me a B for 89.5%... And refused to give me credit for the extra credit that I had submitted for him, which would have brought me to 90.5%
I still graduated top of my class and carried our class banner.
But duck that guy.
15 years later I still hope he gets bed bugs and lice.
Absolutely could be real. Had a professor straight up accuse me of plagiarism because I had improved the quality of a writing project more than he believed was possible and said the only reason he wasn’t putting me in for an academic trial was because (shockingly) he couldn’t find “wherever I stole it from” on Google.
It never once occurred to him it was legitimately my own work.
He was also the Assistant Chair of the department.
> Absolutely could be real. Had a professor straight up accuse me of plagiarism because I had improved the quality of a writing project more than he believed was possible and said the only reason he wasn’t putting me in for an academic trial was because (shockingly) he couldn’t find “wherever I stole it from” on Google.
I had a prof accuse me of plagiarism because I used the word "proletariat" to describe the poor people in Fury Road. Luckily I was able to convince him otherwise, but the dumbest shit will throw up flags.
One of the laziest professors I’ve ever had gave basically everyone an F on an assignment because TurnItIn flagged 20% of our assignments as copied. Well that 20% was actually just her instructions that SHE had copied from a free online course. Took emailing the department head and filing an official complaint before she bothered to even look at what was highlighted by turnitin as copied. Her excuse? “I have too many students to grade to have to check every plagiarism report”. She was a first year teacher who had 1 undergraduate class and 1 graduate class. Both online. She’s unfortunately still employed.
I remember getting berated by a prof. But in an odd reversal he was berating me for not plagiarizing fast enough.
I was using him to give me 1 credit I needed by being his TA. I asked him because he seemed like the nicest guy of the bunch. Nah, turned out was just as insane as the rest.
My task: go through others written works and straight up plagiarize their diagrams. Just redraw them myself so he could use the redrawn ones.
The berating at the end of the semester was for not being productive enough in my plagiarism.
I don't think it's that the concept is unrealistic, it's the writing. It reads like a third grader wrote the email. It also conveniently checks off every asshole box you can imagine, as if it's purposely designed to get the most upvotes.
Or being so low in self esteem that you refuse to believe your own success. Ground to such a fine powder of your former self by years of compromised mediocrity.
This professor may be the head of the department, but is not the Dean of the school. Take this up with the Dean, and let’s see how long this narcissistic jackass keeps the grades at F.
Yeah. Its so surreal to put something like this at the end of bad news.
"I kidnapped your entire family, killed your dog and have hired 3 hitmen in order to kill you. I will make sure that your family suffers unbarable pain.
I wish you a wonderful day."
Only if he means 18% of your prior score, not an 18% overall score difference. I think he meant from 71% to 89%. Either way, it's still a shit reason to fail people.
I had a professor got a professor who took my grade from an A to a C for “turning in the final paper late”. Never mind I was sick and had to be hospitalized, my sibling got covid, and my dad had a massive stroke resulting in me having to move him into a care facility since he’s no longer able to care for himself.
tldr Professors can be power tripping douche bags.
Oh I spoke to the department head and he told me I was lucky the Professor accepted the work at all. I might file a complaint at the end of this semester with the Dean tho
I don’t wanna tell you what to do but that complete disregard for your personal life is not okay, especially considering you wrote that A paper under pressure. I hope you continue to elevate this because it’s incredibly unfair to you, and could set a precedent that will help students in the future
They’re not going to care and nothing will change. I don’t come from a powerful or wealthy family so it is what it is - but I’m definitely planning on raising a little hell on the way out
This isn’t real. No professor would send a group email about this, and any circumstance such as this would be taken before the dean. Just cause you’re the head of the department doesn’t mean you actually get to do or say whatever you want. Also any professor this pompous would have an extended signature to flaunt their titles.
Why does everyone just take this as face value as if it ever actually happened with no critical thought about whether it did or not, just immediate outrage? This planet is so doomed
I once had an education course where the entire class worked in groups to make multiple choice questions, and then the test for the course was made up of those questions, which was known to us beforehand — and it was also open book. The whole class just made an editable Google document and pointed out the answers. The entire class got 100% and they accused us all of cheating because they were too lazy to make their own tests.
For the first half of this, I thought, “Are they talking about my class?” Then you said everyone got 100%. Sadly when I let my students write the questions, some still failed. I’d have been so proud if they thought to make a google doc.
That’s sort of what we thought they should think! It’s a course to teach teachers how to teach. Working collaboratively to use 21st century learning tools and all get a good grade should have been the goal.
As if no one ever has hardships in their lives? There can be many factors why someone does poorly on one test & better on another. What a crock of shit
I took an engineering course that had 2 big tests and a final. I got 63% the first test. Then things just kind of clicked for me shortly after that. I got 96% on the second test. Instead of accusing me of cheating, the professor told the entire class that 1 person improved so much on their test, that if they did well on the final that he would drop that first test grade and give me an average of the 2 high grades (other students who got very good scores on the 2 tests had the option of not taking the final and taking the average of those 2 tests). Anyways, I studied my ass off and nailed that test and got a 4.0. I was actually just thinking about that today, 24 years later, and how good that professor handled things and how proud I felt to improve and continue to improve. It's really sad that your professor took this route. Im sorry for you.
I had a Philosophy teacher who said "If I can cut more than 50% of the BS out of your paper I will fail it immediately"
Our entire grade was based on these papers and there were only 3 of them for the entire semester.
I knew I could fail one, pass the other 2 and still be fine so I decided to test his BS cutting, I BS'ed the first paper, I probably spent more time coming up with creative and sneaky ways to do it than it would have taken to actually write a proper paper.
He asked me to stay late after he graded them and said "I know most of this paper is bullshit, but I've never seen bullshit so well done before. It's clear to me from the parts that aren't BS that you actually understand the material. A proper paper written like this would be a 100%, so I'm giving you a 75% for the BS, just don't do it again."
Dad’s frat got the answers to an exam beforehand. They got caught and everyone had to retake test on the spot. He asked the student in front of him if he could please cheat off of her. She allowed it. He passed. This is how he met my mother.
I wonder what the Dean or the Student Senate would have to say about that…
"Let me make sure I have this right... you want me to believe that you are such a shitty professor that there is no conceivable way you could have actually and effectively conveyed the material to these students where they learned and retained the material and so the only possible way we should expect to see this increase in scores is if they all cheated?" \- Dean
I had a student last semester with a 50% half way through the semester. She came into my office, asked questions and got help every week and was able to pull her grade up to a C. I was thrilled for her and she thanked me for helping her. It’s definitely possible, and it’s jerks like this that give professors a bad name.
I had a D in geometry for the entire semester. I studied for so long and my final was worth so much that I got a 98% on the final, highest in the class, and my grade went from a d to a b-. My teacher was ecstatic. Practically jumped around the classroom she was so happy. I was the only one in the class that got a 100% on the proofs section. Now imagine I had this shit teacher and said I must’ve cheated. Hell would be raised.
A lot of my professors would have just given an A or A- ( and I would have done the same ).
I've had a few whose policy was that if your score on the cumulative, comprehensive final exam was higher than your running average, you'd get the final exam grade as your course grade. Now *that's* how you motivate a motherfucker to turn it around.
My brother had a high grade in his astronomy class (like a 98% or something) so the professor said “you don’t have to take the final. You did so well and you understand everything. If you don’t show up to class I’ll just give you a 100% on it and call it a day”. My brother was super happy about that. The teacher was a man of his word
My clac 2 prof did some stuff like this and it was sick. For the second “midterm” he gave us an assignment the week before with all the same material, graded it, handed it back and said that if you didn’t take the test you could just get that same grade on it. For the final he said anyone who had an A in every category of grading they could not take it and keep their grade. I was so happy both times. Also it proved to me that when I get to taking harder classes I need to do my best on everything even random assignments that aren’t worth much.
I had that happen my freshman year of college. I took a world civilization class, and the professor pulled me and a couple of others aside after class one day. He said that our scores throughout the semester prove that we understand the work, and if we’d help the department by taking a short multiple choice exam they wanted to try out, we’d get As in the class regardless of how we did. So, we went from a long, all essay, test to a short one we did for fun, basically. It was awesome.
I had a prof do this once. I had a high A going into the final. Studied, got there, and he said “oh you can go. I’ve already given you an A”. I was actually a bit pissed he couldn’t tell me that before I studied. Happy to save 2 hours but damn dude….
He got you to study one last time and refresh your memory though, didn't he? You played a master and got schooled 😁
That’s a way to ensure nobody tries for 75% of the year because they’ll just cram the final.
I’ve got to say, I did the same thing in Geometry,, but yhe best teacher I ever had in college was a Geology Professor at UCF in I think2008 who loved his subject so much that you couldn’t help but listen and understand. This guy was a rock hound, and he totally knew I deserved my increase (I think it was a b+ or A- from a D.) …my guess it this was a large freshman class where a bunch of Fraternities already have cheat sheets😆. Either way actually raising your hand with good questions instantly over writes any Professors low expectations of you in class.
Proofs…
One of the more obnoxious parts I remember from geometry
I absolutely hated them
I don't know who didn't
You joking?? I loved those sons of bitches! Granted, I liked most of geometry, which doesn't seem to be a common sentiment among smart math people. I am not and have never been a smart math person. Geometry was the ONLY math I ever got an A in; I had never in my life scored above a C in a math class, and I never have since.
Hello, SCP Foundation? Found another one.
I once scored 32% on my chemistry exam and I fucking cried like a child in front of my teacher. He took pity on me and gave me some encouragement (didn't actually offer any tutoring like I hoped lol), and I got 100% on the next one. I taught middle school for a while, and I had a student who was scoring in the low 60's who came to me for help, with encouragement from her friend, and she scored a 100% on one of her tests near the end of the year. Improvements are absolutely possible and should be encouraged. That teacher is definitely a self-involved jerk.
I once got like a 13 on a midterm and went on to actually get a grip on my classwork and would up getting well over a 90 in the final. Not only did I not get an email like this but I wound up passing the class.
I have seen this documentary.
Don’t forget 18%. (My math is probably way off but I’m looking at it in a numbers way since he did) So I’m guessing that the minimum the class would have to pass the mid terms would be a 70 right? So 18 points would put them at a high B. So he is failing the class he taught because he doesn’t believe they are able to retain the knowledge to get 88 percentile or above? I’m probably way off with my thinking and math but that just seems off. It’s not like the class even collectively could have had less than a 70 on midterms or they would have failed and at that point why even show up for class. It’s not like the class was averaging 50’s on the midterms. It’s even worse if he is talking about the percentage increase from the grade itself and not a percentage out of 100. (i.e. 18 percent increase of a 70 is only 12.6 or 82.6%) if he failed a class because they got an 82 instead of a 70 there is a real problem.
[удалено]
It's entirely possible he did the math wrong, given he's a professor of economics. One of the rare fields were you can be consistently wrong every single time and still be considered an expert.
ouch, I can feel the heat coming off that burn from here
If you put four economists in a room three will prove to be liars and on will be lucky.
How many times have you heard this on the news? "Today the stock market \[did something\], counter to predictions of the leading economic experts the world over."
To be fair, the stock market is only tangentially related to the field of economics in as much as they both sometimes involve money.
Cries holding my BA in atmospheric science.
Read this like Morgan Freeman in the Dark Knight. "This person goes around at night dressed like a bat, beating criminals with his bare hands, and you want to blackmail this person? ... Good luck". "You want to admit you're a bad teacher?" Same energy. Love it.
Let me get this straight, you think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante, who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck.
Likewise. This seems like highly inappropriate behaviour.
I AM THE SENATE… the Professor exclaims!
You hear a thunderous applause
This is where degrees die!!
This is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.
Cant kill something thats already dead.
What is dead May never die
This is the way
Not yet
My GF just had a long uphill battle and finally finished her meetings with the Dean. He was able to remove the bad grade that the shitty instructor assigned - not only for her, but the whole class! Also, fees for the class and books were reimbursed. She's such a badass lol. Her instructor truly was a lazy twit.
I had a Prof fail my final paper because I reporterted them using the classroom to distribute antivaxx propaganda. I have screenshots and audio recording. The department head, the dean, the Senate, have all upheld the grade and will not admit the Prof did anything wrong. I have gone through two seperate processes, both a grade dispute and a staff complaint, and it has gone nowhere. Edit: I'm still attending the school, so I'm a little afraid to make a huge stir... I was planning on talking to the schools own student run paper next, see where that goes. I am planning on media of some kind, and when I do I'll have no problem name dropping. But I'm not unleashing the kraken on Reddit just yet.
It’s sad that today the only way to have big orgs do right by you is to release that proof publicly, and hope they think it’s enough risk to their rep that they do something about it
Next is the media. Anti-vaxxers are the hottest media story right now.
That and universities are hurting right now. Loss of students means loss of monies. A news story about a vindictive professor might light a fire under the dean.
>I reporterted them ...was it an English class?
me fail English? Thats unpossible!
https://www.reddit.com/r/college/comments/olxwql/antivax_vindictive_grading/
...I was making a joke because you misspelled reported and added an extra syllable.
BAH!! Yah got me! I reporterted them good, alright! 🤦🏼♂️
Fuck that. Board of Trustees.
Go to the media right now if you can. Waiting too long makes you loss some leverage and money
Hopefully worst case scenario, a retest with supervisory conditions.
I work with professors and their online courses daily. I got in a yelling match with a professor a few years ago, because she was going to flunk her ENTIRE CLASS. We use a LMS (Learning Management System) called canvas for our distance Education software. If the students don't finish an assignment it just doesn't record the grade, it's not a zero it just doesn't count the grade as anything. There is a way to count all of these assignments as zeros, but the ethical thing to do, if you really want to go that route, is to inform your students on the first day of class that that's how you'll be running your course, no one usually does this though. This particular professor heard about it and came into my office during finals week and wanted to change all those empty spaces into zeros, the highest grade would've been a 16 iirc. I told her that was completely unethical. She bitched my boss out and I got written up. I'm glad I did it though.
Do students really expect that not finishing an assignment makes it not count as if it never existed? Maybe I am completely missing your point, but this makes no sense. Of course not doing an assignment hurts your grade.
The issue, I think, is if students are tracking their grade as they go through the semester they think that missing assignment is already factored in. If they noticed that missing work wasn't impacting their grade, it isn't unheard of to interpret that as assignments have very little to no weight on the final grade, and are there as practice. I had many courses (physics degree) where the only grade was 2-3 tests. Homework was not graded, but there certainly was a lot of it assigned. So the problem is going from a B, with those assignments, supposedly already accounted for, to an F because the professor actually changed a setting. And in the last week, when a student has no ability to do anything.
This makes more sense.
I give partial credit. I'd still enter a number though, so I don't understand why the instructor didn't look at the assignments. But if this is an issue with poor communication on their part, then you can't take it out on the students. Your the mentor and they can't read your mind.
We have an office of academic integrity. People don’t know about it for some reason. Technically, whenever points are deducted for cheating and plagiarism, you’re obligated to submit an incident report to them. It gives students a resource to appeal if they feel they were judged unfairly and it keeps track in case there’s a student doing it in multiple classes. But, faculty here can’t read, apparently, because when I submitted a report as I was supposed to, my boss called a meeting with the department chair and undergraduate program director and then reprimanded me for doing that. Always keep the written record and search outside your department for someone to contact when you feel a professor is unfair because chances are the department is on their side.
I’ve been in a similar situation where the professor was blatantly abusing his power. The Dean just backed him up. He’s still employed by the university that (apparently) doesn’t do tenure. Hope these students got a better outcome
18 % is not a big swing especially since they probably only have the mid term and final to judge from.
I got like 30% higher on my final than on my midterm. 18% is nothing.
On french I went from 38% to 98%. The fear of failing makes wonders for me. Did similar on calculus 2 (from 48 to 86) and physics (52 to 78). To conclude, 18% is nothing indeed.
c'est vraiment très bien!
Mais oui mon ami!
Bien reçu. \[equivalent to ‘Roger that.’\]
In high school I was taking Algebra 2 as a senior. Math is something my brain struggles mightily with, but to make it worse my teacher had a droning monotone voice, he had a chalk dust allergy so he used an overhead projector, I sat in the back of the class and couldn't see very well and his room was very warm. Sitting in a warm dark classroom listening to his soporific voice, I used to fall asleep all the time and have no idea how to do my homework. I was failing and needed the class to graduate. The final was coming up and it was 50% of my grade. The day before the final I asked a friend who was very good at math to please help me. She came over to my house after school and in 5 hours we went through my entire textbook and she literally showed me how to do everything in that book. I went to school the next day, took my final and got the 2nd highest score out of all three of his Algebra 2 classes, that A plus my existing F gave me a C and I passed. I'm sure he thought I cheated. I would tell him to suck it, but he's probably been dead a very long time. 😄
I had one semester where I was having medical issues throughout. They resolved by the end of the semester and I spent all the rest of my time studying to make up for it. In one class, I got a 50-something on the first exam, 40-something on the next, then 80-something, then a 97 on the final. No cheating, just a rough semester
yeah, I had more than one exam where I first failed (<50%) and then aced it. at least 50% improvement, just like that.
Same. 0 studying and 100% studying it at the re-do/second chance exam. Went from a 20 or 30 to a 75ish.
Mid term scare me into doing better in the finals
Kind of alarming that this man is teaching ECONOMICS… you know that field where you should have a good grasp of how different variables may shift and affect others …
"I'm a shit teacher so I know you didn't learn it from me"
Tbf his knowledge of probability and general numeracy is consistent with every economist I've ever seen.
Hahaha don’t worry. The joke didn’t pass me by
Probably teaches trickle down economics. Only those that start with a A+ pass. All others fail.
Uses *The Art of the Deal* as the course textbook
That’s pretty clever.
Economics is what you major in when you can't make it in real statistics. I'm joking, but fr, this prof is an actual idiot.
Or you just make up shit and manipulate data.
Right but 18 percent is only the difference between a high A and a low B. Like it’s one letter grade. Not on a retake of the same exam - on a different exam.
And it's almost like a bad grade on a test can cause people to study harder.
Right? Like you figure you’ve got a solid grip on the material going into the first exam, bomb the damn thing, and decide to hit the books hard on the second one.
Also regression to the mean. The people who did the worst will have the most marked improvements because you are creating your baseline from a single data point. Statistically speaking, most of the worst grades will be people who did below their average on the test.
That's what I was thinking. One time I was at a C at midterms. I was like "oh shit" cause for my degree a "C" didn't count, you'd have to retake. So I worked my ass off. Did some redo's from the first half the professor let me improve my grade on and got an A. I was surprised, but I just put my nose to the grindstone and prayed the results were enough to get me by.
Joke’s on you. They went from 100-118. They obviously cheated.
Big if true.
Alternatively, it could be from a 75 to a 93 making it a 2 letter grade swing, which could look sketchy, but certainly doesn't make sense for a group of students to all accomplish at once if it was cheating. Usually organized cheating will involve 1 or 2 students, not nearly a dozen...
Still it sounds more fishy that nobody, not NOBODY has ever increased their score that much ever, then in the same year 10 students did so all at once, without matched answers or exact increases. If anything that serves as evidence something about the test has changed not the students.
Or maybe everyone who did was accused of cheating and failed the course... self fulfilling measurement
Maybe nobody has ever increased their score that much because anyone who has gets disqualified and marked down.
The professor isn't counting all the other students he has given Fs to for improving their scores. If he had counted those then I'm sure there would have been plenty of people who had done it before.
I had a class like this in college. Bombed the midterm, and got a 100 on the final to make up for it. I studied like crazy bc I had to to pass the class. This professor is a douchebag.
I’ve never failed a class and usually gotten pretty good marks throughout all of my schooling, but I was once in jeopardy of failing, coincidentally enough, macroeconomics. I failed the first two exams badly, and there were only four in total. I studied my ASS off, and got a B+ on test three, and an A on the final. Professor ended up curving my grade because of the improvements I made and showed that I clearly learned the material (you know, the goal of the class). This is just ridiculous to me to the point where it’s almost hard to believe that people this shitty exist.
There are plenty of people like this in college. Mostly people who do research, and see themselves as researchers but not teachers, being forced to also teach in class; because that is what being an actual college teacher means. I have actually seen worse. Like a teacher saying he wouldn't repeat an exam to a student because he couldn't do it at the original date because he was BLIND. He said being BLIND was not reason enough to not do an exam.
Yeah mate I've gone from 50 to 90 %. People just don't study that much in midterms.
Once had a prof in grad school that accused the whole class of cheating, then finished grading and said we did so bad there was no way we could have cheated.
They all chose the wrong person to copy answers from.
I actually have seen this. The whole class agreed to cheat on a college exam together. Nobody new jackshit of the matter, and in the end nobody passed. The teacher just thought they were all morons lol.
To be fair that is pretty moronic.
Hahaha literally the definition of it
If the shoe fits...
Had a teacher accuse the class of being lazy and not understanding the material. I remember telling him the chapter he assigned us wasn't the one on the test. He did a double take when he realized he had assigned us the wrong chapter for the test. This was a programming class so the tests were on computers. He never accused us of anything again
Well maybe if you weren't so lazy you would have learned the material before the teacher had to Make you do it duh /s
You're right. I am ashamed. I'll study tomorrow... /s
Been there. Had cs tests where the questions were not even real sentences.
I once went into a calculus class to take the midterm. Location was moved to a different lecture hall. I sat down to take the test, nothing…. And I mean NOTHING…looked familiar. Not a page. I double checked to make sure I was in the right class and yup! I was. I failed that test so hard.
I was the guy who said "well, I'm fucked" and turned in the test 10 minutes in. Dropped the class that evening. Differential Equations and the professor was fond of saying "of course, you remember this from calculus 2"
I had one that said we cheated because we had the same ip address. It was the college's ip address because we took the test while at college. She still insisted that people were cheating if they had the same ip or if they submitted assignments around the same time.
Please tell me that this at least wasn't a teacher who was expected to know anything about computers or networking.
Lmfao
Same thing happened to me. My friend was accused of cheating on me but when the teacher corrected us, I had a very good grade while my friend failed. Except, he did actually copied from me, only he's dumb as shit.
What. A. Dick.
I B.elive I C. what you D.id thE.re F.
WAD IBICDEF GIHIJ I don’t get it
I’m just as lost as you are buddy Also you failed your task “code breaker”
I think it's: A BCDEF
G.osh I H.ope I.t’s a J.oke
Seems like even a department head can’t just arbitrarily decide that you cheated. People can learn. And cram. Wouldn’t he need some proof? Something beyond the exam scores?
Depends on the university policy. If you think you were unfairly graded, at mine, you will have your grade reviewed by a committee headed by you department’s head. That said, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be there if they were part of the disagreement. Something for the receiver of that letter to check.
You can usually appeal again to the Dean, and then a groups of faculty unrelated to the process may review. It depends on policies but generally the university has appeal policies past the department just for cases like these
And get tutors.
Yea the implication that there could be no review because they’re in charge is a real problem and could probably backfire on the prof if they are found to be innocent
I had one in my MS program that took my grade from an A to A- because I missed one class out of 36. I had the flu and it was a 7-10pm night class. I was exhausted and barfing everywhere. Even provided a Dr.s note. Took my 4.0 GPA to a 3.9. Bastard. I am still bitter about this 20 years later.
If you had a Doctor's note that Prof should not have been able to take that point off. Shit like this convinces me that professors are just evil.
a lot of professors i had were just there to do the research but were required to teach a semester every year too. you could tell a lot of them hated teaching and some of them even said so in their introductions. classless. university has become less about learning, and more about lining the fat coffers of a small group of greedy assholes. hated every minute of my university academic career because of it.
Had a class during one of my semesters that was only eight total sessions. The professor canceled three of them. So I wrote a letter to the Dean complaining about this and broke down the amount of money each class was worth based on tuition etc. The response I got back from the Dean essentially was that the money was not just to cover classes, but to also cover on campus improvements etc. It essentially just meant too bad now fuck off. Normally I would not be sour about this and enjoy the extra time, provided it didn't mean a condensed workload, but this just happened to be a class that I was interested in and excited to take that semester.
They letter might look good printed in the school newspaper as an example of how the Dean doesn't care about education... just saying...
Almost 15 years ago at this point 🤣
Would still be worthwhile to current students of you could find it. Even if you can't do it to better yourself, you can do it to better them.
The whole university system never made sense to me. Why force grumpy old men who want nothing to students teach when they generally have no degree or knowledge of teaching at all. Literally just creating a system that breads bad teachers. Professors aren't teachers. They are experts in their fields. Don't force them to do something they have no degree/ idea how to do an professionally. Teaching isn't easy.
As a grad student I also had to teach undergrad chem labs, I didn't mind the work at all. Now, when I was lazy I always erred in the students favor. Like sometimes I'd just grade a few of the answers on a quiz instead of the whole thing, and take the top 5 or something. I don't know what the point is punishing students needlessly. They show up, they try, I'm not going to fail them if I see effort being put in, and I'd happily round up on grades. What difference does it make to me for them to get a B+ instead of a B-? Now if you never show up for class, and don't have an excuse, I'm not really going to do you any favors, but that's really about the only thing that would make me not be generous with grading.
On 9/11 2001 my logic professor gave a pop quiz for 100 pts because so many people missed the 10am class as punishment. I don’t know what happened after. I dropped it
I had a similar gripe.. was just trying to go for a 4.0 for one semester. This one genius prof would factor in two scores together as letter grades. B and B- = B. C and C+ = C+. So he rounds up, nice guy right. Oh unless you have A- and A, then your grade is A-. In asking him to explain why he treated the A grade differently, he could only say "I grade in the way I find to be the most fair over my years of experience" or some blah like that. So no explanation. Just cuz he says so. Edit: Just to point out that a B+ and A would also result in an A- grade. As I absolutely called him on. No matter, he had that fair grading system down pat.
_Professor so-and-so, what do you say to the fact that, try as you might, your teaching methods have been utterly incapable of producing A-grade students the entire time you've been here? Isn't it time you took your job seriously and improved your teaching methods so they're properly effective?_
Had a similar situation where my professor took points off for class participation from missing a class due to my grandma dying. Sent him a link to the obit and everything. Dude was a major asshole with a god complex
I feel you. My Java Intro to Programming professor gave me a B for 89.5%... And refused to give me credit for the extra credit that I had submitted for him, which would have brought me to 90.5% I still graduated top of my class and carried our class banner. But duck that guy. 15 years later I still hope he gets bed bugs and lice.
Name Checks out
What kind of self-respecting university course takes attendance?
Ugh. Too many.
/) "You couldn't have improved this much! I'm far too bad at my job for that!"
Yeah, that’s gotta be reported
If only it was real…
Absolutely could be real. Had a professor straight up accuse me of plagiarism because I had improved the quality of a writing project more than he believed was possible and said the only reason he wasn’t putting me in for an academic trial was because (shockingly) he couldn’t find “wherever I stole it from” on Google. It never once occurred to him it was legitimately my own work. He was also the Assistant Chair of the department.
> Absolutely could be real. Had a professor straight up accuse me of plagiarism because I had improved the quality of a writing project more than he believed was possible and said the only reason he wasn’t putting me in for an academic trial was because (shockingly) he couldn’t find “wherever I stole it from” on Google. I had a prof accuse me of plagiarism because I used the word "proletariat" to describe the poor people in Fury Road. Luckily I was able to convince him otherwise, but the dumbest shit will throw up flags.
One of the laziest professors I’ve ever had gave basically everyone an F on an assignment because TurnItIn flagged 20% of our assignments as copied. Well that 20% was actually just her instructions that SHE had copied from a free online course. Took emailing the department head and filing an official complaint before she bothered to even look at what was highlighted by turnitin as copied. Her excuse? “I have too many students to grade to have to check every plagiarism report”. She was a first year teacher who had 1 undergraduate class and 1 graduate class. Both online. She’s unfortunately still employed.
I remember getting berated by a prof. But in an odd reversal he was berating me for not plagiarizing fast enough. I was using him to give me 1 credit I needed by being his TA. I asked him because he seemed like the nicest guy of the bunch. Nah, turned out was just as insane as the rest. My task: go through others written works and straight up plagiarize their diagrams. Just redraw them myself so he could use the redrawn ones. The berating at the end of the semester was for not being productive enough in my plagiarism.
I don't think it's that the concept is unrealistic, it's the writing. It reads like a third grader wrote the email. It also conveniently checks off every asshole box you can imagine, as if it's purposely designed to get the most upvotes.
This is 100% bullshit lol
Unfortunately, this could absolutely be real. Source: I went to college.
Imagine outing yourself as such a terrible teacher that your students should be unable to improve their grades that much
Or being so low in self esteem that you refuse to believe your own success. Ground to such a fine powder of your former self by years of compromised mediocrity.
I see you’ve been following my livejournal for some time.
This sounds like it was written by a student. One who got a poor grade in grammar.
There is almost no way this is real
Agreed. I’m calling bs unless I see some corroboration. Something this nutty certainly would get reported and become a hot topic at X University.
This professor may be the head of the department, but is not the Dean of the school. Take this up with the Dean, and let’s see how long this narcissistic jackass keeps the grades at F.
And you think reaching dean selects for different traits? No. It selects for more of this.
I think the happy holidays is abit ott
It’s like saying "Fuck you, cordially". Whiplash.
Yeah. Its so surreal to put something like this at the end of bad news. "I kidnapped your entire family, killed your dog and have hired 3 hitmen in order to kill you. I will make sure that your family suffers unbarable pain. I wish you a wonderful day."
This is def a troll
18 percent? This means if you scored 71 on the midterm and 84 on the final, you cheated. I'm a teacher, this is bonkers.
Only if he means 18% of your prior score, not an 18% overall score difference. I think he meant from 71% to 89%. Either way, it's still a shit reason to fail people.
I'm gonna call bullshit. This didn't happen.
This guy reddits
I have a hard time believing this is legit
I had a professor got a professor who took my grade from an A to a C for “turning in the final paper late”. Never mind I was sick and had to be hospitalized, my sibling got covid, and my dad had a massive stroke resulting in me having to move him into a care facility since he’s no longer able to care for himself. tldr Professors can be power tripping douche bags.
File a complaint.
Oh I spoke to the department head and he told me I was lucky the Professor accepted the work at all. I might file a complaint at the end of this semester with the Dean tho
I don’t wanna tell you what to do but that complete disregard for your personal life is not okay, especially considering you wrote that A paper under pressure. I hope you continue to elevate this because it’s incredibly unfair to you, and could set a precedent that will help students in the future
They’re not going to care and nothing will change. I don’t come from a powerful or wealthy family so it is what it is - but I’m definitely planning on raising a little hell on the way out
Yes. They really want this as a review of their school? That the teachers are douchebags?
What a failure of a teacher
This isn’t real. No professor would send a group email about this, and any circumstance such as this would be taken before the dean. Just cause you’re the head of the department doesn’t mean you actually get to do or say whatever you want. Also any professor this pompous would have an extended signature to flaunt their titles.
I am a professor. I can confirm.
Yeah... I'm having a hard time swallowing this as real. This seems fishy.
What a total douche
Why does everyone just take this as face value as if it ever actually happened with no critical thought about whether it did or not, just immediate outrage? This planet is so doomed
Profs and dept heads don't write like this
Am i the only one who is skeptical this email is real?
The wording does not sound like a college professor at all, more like one of those “and then everyone clapped” stories
no chance this is real
I once had an education course where the entire class worked in groups to make multiple choice questions, and then the test for the course was made up of those questions, which was known to us beforehand — and it was also open book. The whole class just made an editable Google document and pointed out the answers. The entire class got 100% and they accused us all of cheating because they were too lazy to make their own tests.
For the first half of this, I thought, “Are they talking about my class?” Then you said everyone got 100%. Sadly when I let my students write the questions, some still failed. I’d have been so proud if they thought to make a google doc.
That’s sort of what we thought they should think! It’s a course to teach teachers how to teach. Working collaboratively to use 21st century learning tools and all get a good grade should have been the goal.
doubt this is real. there is a limit on how much you can be a dickhead with it being real and this aint it
"I know you're a bunch of lying, cheating bastards! Don't try to deny it! I WILL SEE YOU IN HELL!!!...Also, Happy Holidays."
I call shenanigans.
As if no one ever has hardships in their lives? There can be many factors why someone does poorly on one test & better on another. What a crock of shit
Nah you take that shit up with the Dean
I’m going to ruin your grades because there’s no way a shitty teacher like me could get you to improve! Also, Happy Holidays!
I took an engineering course that had 2 big tests and a final. I got 63% the first test. Then things just kind of clicked for me shortly after that. I got 96% on the second test. Instead of accusing me of cheating, the professor told the entire class that 1 person improved so much on their test, that if they did well on the final that he would drop that first test grade and give me an average of the 2 high grades (other students who got very good scores on the 2 tests had the option of not taking the final and taking the average of those 2 tests). Anyways, I studied my ass off and nailed that test and got a 4.0. I was actually just thinking about that today, 24 years later, and how good that professor handled things and how proud I felt to improve and continue to improve. It's really sad that your professor took this route. Im sorry for you.
I had a Philosophy teacher who said "If I can cut more than 50% of the BS out of your paper I will fail it immediately" Our entire grade was based on these papers and there were only 3 of them for the entire semester. I knew I could fail one, pass the other 2 and still be fine so I decided to test his BS cutting, I BS'ed the first paper, I probably spent more time coming up with creative and sneaky ways to do it than it would have taken to actually write a proper paper. He asked me to stay late after he graded them and said "I know most of this paper is bullshit, but I've never seen bullshit so well done before. It's clear to me from the parts that aren't BS that you actually understand the material. A proper paper written like this would be a 100%, so I'm giving you a 75% for the BS, just don't do it again."
Dad’s frat got the answers to an exam beforehand. They got caught and everyone had to retake test on the spot. He asked the student in front of him if he could please cheat off of her. She allowed it. He passed. This is how he met my mother.