Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 6

Education - Essay Example Therefore, it is imperative that clear standards and tenure be articulated and publicized (Dalager, 2011). Furthermore, the academic leaders who come up through faculty ranks sometimes develop close relationships with peers and often start viewing themselves as their advocates rather than their administrators. This creates biasness and nepotism, making employees not to believe on the process of evaluation, also affecting on the validity of data collection. Consequently, peer to peer evaluation is not considered as valid when it comes to students. There is no denying the fact that students play an integral role in the academic life of the university through their participation in the evaluation of the faculty by the Faculty Course Evaluation process, but in this case there is a fear of ‘grade inflation’. Students may also get biased in their decision. Other general problems in student evaluation of the faculty could be over interpretation about the instructor which only r eflects one aspect of teaching in the statistics. Students are sometimes unable to judge in an unbiased way or some unique aspects of teaching, therefore, the process concerns for reliability and validity (Diamond, 2011). While doing evaluation from faculty member, it is imperative that they should be all aware of terms and policies of the process. Lacking clear guidelines about the process and some specific legal situations causes ambiguity among faculty member and administrator. All such issues must be discussed with faculty and changes should be informed immediately to the staff. Coming towards tenure and promotion process, it has been noticed that for a successful institution, it is imperative that the policies described in tenure and promotion process should match the mission of an institution. If the priorities of an institution are not supported by the faculty reward system, it can create problems (Kelly, 2010). In general, the process usually involves an assembly of candidat es, in consultation with head of department. On this evaluation basis, high rank faculty department decides whether they should proceed with promotion or not. Other high rank officials do external evaluation. With all combine evaluations and recommendations, the decision is being made. If it is in favor of candidate’s promotion, then the head of department writes to dean of institution forwarding decision along with faculty votes. Further action is taken by dean who forwards the dossier to president of institute and which is then discussed in committee. Hence, the decision gets finalized after the board of trustees issues it. Difficulties with tenure process are not just an individual faculty concern that can be solved by minor adjustments; they are major institutional dilemma. Universities and colleges all over are working hard to find their place in rich mosaic of American higher education institution (Nebrasca, 2004). However, it is not impossible to improve the assessment process. It should be made satisfactory by involving more and more faculty members. Faculty should be examined by faculty administrators, legislators and senior faculty members not only through proper conversations but also through questionnaire filling and gathering statistical data. New faculty member are seen to be caught between the times. They are unable to show performance in accordance to the assessment