My biggest problem with the SPOT reviews is that they are only available for students who completed the course… which means those who drop the course for good reason never get the chance to say why. It introduces what could be a textbook example of survivor bias.

Say for example you have an interdisciplinary course meant to teach data analytics to statistics and CS majors, and the professor makes it so math heavy it is inaccessible to the CS folks who all drop out, then all the reviews will be almost exclusively from the stat majors, who will probably give it positive marks. The department will never know the difference, or why all the CS students keep dropping out.

The same could be said if the course has a weird schedule that conflicts with people from a certain college (the vet school is always out of sync with the rest of us), or in a much more nefarious case, if the professor created a hostile environment for a certain subset of students. Imagine if the professor makes sexist remarks, not enough to warrant a Title IX investigation but enough to drive away certain students – the only ones giving that professor a review will be the ones who were not offended and stayed in the class.

It seems to me that asking students why they dropped is even more valuable than asking for passing students to evaluate the course. Do they even keep track of the total number of students which drop a course?
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Survivor Bias: –> http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/path-of-a-hero

Tech seems to be doing a good job in this area, though I am disappointed by their lack of any well known MOOCs (like on Coursera). The masters of IT is very well regarded and I have had people from other parts of the country ask me about it.

VT seems to have not yet invested significantly in undergraduate online programs. They offer a few “online” courses to our existing students, but you can’t get an online BS yet. Perhaps this is a mistake as the predatory for-profit schools have clearly shown that there is a huge market for it. Instead of letting these vile companies scam people, well respected schools like Virginia Tech could offer similar programs, possibly with in-state tuition too. The only real problem is how to deal with laboratory courses, as all the science and engineering fields at VT had several courses with attached labs.

In the end, we may be shooting ourselves in the foot by not moving more quickly. I have a feeling that whichever program gets established first will have an advantage in online education for decades. It seems like George Mason University is making significant progress towards online-only programs – VT should not let them corner the Virginian market.

Well said. Obviously the women who need to physically recuperate after childbirth have a greater need for maternity leave, but men should not be left out entirely. The men face another issue. Aside from the fact that many institutions not offering maternity leave or stopped clock programs, the ones that do often do not expect men to take advantage of these programs. It would probably be embarrassing for some men to even ask for this benefit, and they would likely be shamed by some of their co-workers.

This seems to be a significant issue in most other careers too. In virtually all fields, your performance in your mid-20s to mid-30s will define your [first] career (assuming you don’t start over or late, like me). But this is also the most common age for having children. Virtually everyone is faced with this tough decision, kids or career, so you would expect our society to be more accommodating – yet here we are, still fighting the same battle from decades ago…