When the St. Cloud State Faculty Association first learned that their students' transcripts were getting changed, they asked the administration why the professors hadn't been notified of the transcript changes:
The other piece of it is that it’s difficult to do some things like helping with student success, some things like doing accurate assessment if people disappear from our records and we don’t have that information in our records anymore or if we learn for example that, and this is kind of an odd example I suppose, you don’t know that a student has taken a course three times because there is no record of it and the student is in there for the fourth time and you’re trying to figure out a way to help that student be successful and yet you’re blindsided by this lack of information.
There's no excuse for letting students take a class four times. They've obviously done poorly in the class their prior three times. It's apparent that these students didn't experience mitigating circumstances like dealing with difficult health issues or a death in the family.
The professors didn't approve of these students getting additional attempts at passing the class. In this instance, the administration had to erase this student's transcripts multiple times. What's the administration's justification for repeatedly deleting grades from the student's transcripts?
At a later Meet and Confer meeting, the faculty again asked about the transcript changes. Here's that exchange:
FA: I have a clarifying question. I heard you say this is a preliminary investigation at looking so once you do your preliminary then am I hearing you say then you will decide what your next step is going to be in terms of your going after other data collection for the past four years before this?
Admin: Sure so then we have as to what kind of data is relevant and we go there and we can collect the information so that it makes sense for you. The other thing is I won’t call it an investigation I would call analysis. So it’s a data analysis to understand if there is a spike and then understand whether it is due to factors outside our control or if it is factors of the band of discretion becoming wider.
Why wouldn't the administration think that they should "call it an investigation"? Students taking classes as many as three previous have transcripts that indicate that they've never taken the class before. times but their transcripts don't reflect that.
The student's participation in the class getting whitewashed should be justification for an investigation. The professors being kept in the dark while their students' transcripts were dramatically changed is justification for an investigation.
The fact that this administration thinks this just requires a minor administrative adjustment is disturbing.
This administration's changing of students' transcripts without the professors' approval is disturbing. Why didn't this administration put a higher priority on student accountability?
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