Is it ethical to give a final exam after the professor has quit before teaching the remaining chapters of the course?

Question

I am enrolled in a lpn nursing program, and the professor teaching the pharmacology course announced to the class last week that he wont be here the following week, due to a "conference in California", and that another teacher would come and teach us the remaining chapters for the final exam.

Today no one showed up to teach the class, and the director is now claiming she had no idea he wasn't going to be here to finish the course. The director told us to read the rest of the chapters on our own before Wednesday (basically teach ourselves 6 chapters worth of pharmacology)... oh and there is also a HESI examination that they are saying we still have to take on Wednesday even though we haven't covered all of the material. I feel like the school is setting everyone up to fail at this point so we have to pay 3,000 to take the course again. I really need to know if this is ethical??

Answer 1

Remember Hanlon’s Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I doubt that any of the staff at the university are deliberately trying to make you fail so that they can make more money by forcing you to redo the course; it’s much more likely that someone just put things off, failed to read their emails, or something similar because they were busy with other things.

Complain to the student ombudsman at your university if you feel like a failure by the staff to properly follow procedures has disadvantaged you.

Answer 2

Consider the alternative, not letting you take that exam.

Would that really be better? I am sure many students think that would be worse. They just want their exam papers and start working as soon as possible.

So, try to prepare for the exam on your own and take it. Having to read one chapter on your own is not a big disadvantage.

Then, as nick012000 suggested, complain. The university messed up and should fix things.

A reasonable fix would be for the university to give you another chance if you fail, free of charge. Another possibility is for the grades to be adjusted.

Answer 3

First, I suggest checking the course syllabus. At higher levels of education it becomes increasingly likely that the student will ultimately be held responsible for acquiring the requisite information for tests like HESI, graduate school qualifying examinations, etc. I've had mathematics graduate courses, the subject matter of which would be covered by mandatory qualifying examinations, specify in their syllabus that the course may not cover everything that may appear on the qualifying examinations, and that it is left to the student to study such material. Practical realities may simply not leave enough time to cover everything, and as you advance up the educational and professional ladders the more it is expected that you will have the intelligence, drive, and time management skills necessary to acquire broad swathes of information and skill sets on your own. Classes become increasingly less about telling you exactly what to do, and covering everything you need to know, and more about providing you the basic direction and fundamental skills necessary for you to figure out what you need to do and know on your own.

As such, "6 chapters in one week" may be more like "6 chapters you knew you would have to know since the beginning, but were explicitly told we may not have the time to cover during lectures, and you have to figure out how to deal with that on your own." In which case your burden is noticeably less than you think it is. Not that "lecturer disappearing" is normally accounted for in class structures, so there's still a problem here, but you may already have been expected to deal with several of these chapters entirely on your own.

Following Nick's suggestion to complain to the ombudsman is a good follow-up step. This is definitely a situation that should never happen. An instructor who will be absent for lecture days is responsible for securing a replacement instructor for those days, and for clearing his absence and replacement with the department head (or whoever else serves as a supervisor). This situation appears to be a multi-tier failure where either the usual instructor or replacement instructor failed to execute their part of the arrangement, and also the department head/supervisor failed to properly monitor the situation and make sure the students experienced minimal disruptions. At least one of them is probably getting disciplined behind the scenes and being made to feel very uncomfortable thanks to this failure.

If this provides an unsatisfactory resolution, you might even go so far as to pass this story on to local news agencies. While this doesn't sound like a state-wide or greater interest story, it may be worth it for local news channels, newspapers, school newspapers and newsletters, etc. to report on it. An unfavorable report, or even an interview request to discuss the matter, would elevate the pressure on the school to make PR-friendly amends and accommodations to affected students. No school wants to start developing a public reputation for condoning disappearing instructors and lax administration.

Answer 4

Faculty Responsibilities

I take first the potentially wrong assumption that "quit" is not meant literally.

To the question of (ethics) violations by the instructor ...

A faculty member may have to file written forms before he/she goes away from teaching duties for a situation known in advance. The forms should document what is to be done in the course(s) that will be missed. They should be signed off by the department and perhaps all the way up through the college level before the trip is taken.

--> Ask your SGA representative and/or the Student Affairs Office to establish what protocols are required of faculty who will be absent from teaching duties. When forms are to have been filed, the director's claim of ignorance means either that he/she is lying or that the faculty member failed to follow protocols. One or the other deserves an administrative rebuke. Otherwise, when no official policy is in place for this case, your student organization needs to fight to establish one.

--> The next step is to file a strongly worded statement with your representative student organization and/or through your student evaluations. Regardless of whether an official form was or was not to have been filed before the trip, the instructor of record bears full responsibility in this case to assure that his/her teaching duties are properly handled in his/her absence, especially when the absence was planned in advance. The department chair, the college dean, and the university provost should hear in writing from the entire class about his/her negligence to fulfill this responsibility.

You may instead mean "quit" literally, as in "The instructor pretended to be going to a conference but actually was resigning without telling us the truth".

--> This case is entirely out of your hands. The administration above, starting the the director and finishing at the provost, have to handle the violations.

Preparation for Exams

The director is telling you to do something different than what you expected would happen. The best you can do is do as requested. I cannot attest to whether the requirement is or is not excessive. To address this, you could determine whether it would have been any different had your instructor been present. Ask students from last year's or last semester's class for insights. I will add however, the director has the responsibility to not leave your class just hanging to learn it on your own. Your class can/should petition for a make up session to cover the material when it is to be required on an exam (the final exam) for the course.

By comparison, your class cannot rightfully petition to have a make up session to cover content on (national and professional preparation) exams that are not part of the course syllabus. You can only request to have a preparation session for such exams at the graces of the department.

Being Set Up for Failure

Is the university (purposely) setting up your class to fail? ... Most assuredly not (on purpose). At worst, the university has set itself up to fail because it does not have a way to assure a responsibility of its faculty to their core mission. This is a longer discussion for a different thread.

Unfortunately what has happened instead is, the instructor of record has set up your class to fail. While Hanlon's razor is invoked, I do not see stupidity at play in his/her case. When the instructor is truly only gone on a conference trip and was to have followed a formal protocol to file forms before the trip, this is a most glaring case of official negligence of duties. Even absent that he/she had official requirements to file forms, the instructor has neglected his/her contractual obligations by not handling the responsibilities for his/her teaching duties completely and with all due attention.

When the instructor just quit and had kept that plan hidden (from everyone), he/she bears the full brunt of the blame--the university is just a bystander to the destruction. Even as a bystander though, they have a responsibility to clean up the mess fairly and equitably.

Answer 5

Where I did my undergrad (in the 1990s), it was was not uncommon for the final exam to be about the chapters of the book that were not covered in class. It generally went like this:

1. We students arrive on the last day of class, awaiting information about the contents of the final exam
2. The professor looks at the syllabus, and says "hmmm, we only seem to have made it to chapter 8 in the lectures. But the course requires that we cover through to chapter 12. So let's make the final exam about chapters 9 through 12."
3. The professor then spends the class paging through the textbook, saying "this section is important, learn this" or "ignore this part".
4. We students studied like crazy to learn the material, cursing the instructor for having some 20% or 40% of our grade based on material that we didn't learn through our homework. Stress allowed us to learn very quickly.
5. We students took the exam.

That's it. So, your question is: "Is this ethical?"

My answer is "Yes, it is ethical".

Here is why I think it is ok. In high school, it is the job of the teacher to ensure that each and every student learns the material. In a University setting, this is not the case - it is the job of the student to learn the material, with guidance from the instructor. This is especially true for graduate school.

Here is a counter-question. Did you read the text prior to class, in preparation for the lectures? Did you arrive with questions about content that was unclear? Is it ethical to arrive to class unprepared? This is your job as a student. While it is nice to receive this information in a palatable, spoon-fed format, it is not required.

Perhaps your entire post-secondary education was a mere extension of high school, where the responsibility of learning was cast upon the instructor. That is lucky! Good for you. I suggest working to learn how to learn independently.

Addendum:

Does your University have a required number of hours of instruction per course? Did the cancellation of classes brings the number of instruction hours below this limit? If so, the University has breeched its contract. This is most certainly un-ethical.