Outsourcing grading
from David Ruccio
Every time I think I’ve seen it all in the new corporate university, they come up with another one. The latest is the outsourcing of grading.
I heard the story the other day on the radio (you hear a lot of news over the course of a 15-hour drive!) and then found it in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Apparently, Virtual-TA, a subsidiary of a company called EduMetry Inc., offers the service of grading exams and papers (the figure I heard was $12 a paper). The selling points are that “assessors” provide extensive comments and return the graded assignments in a timely manner.
What’s the alternative? To use the money to hire more classroom instructors and teaching assistants. But it seems that’s not part of the mission of the new corporate university.
Leave a comment
—– look inside —– $5.94 / $20.00
—– look inside —– $4.90 / $8.00
—– look inside —– $15.99
—– look inside —– $5.99 / 12.99
—– look inside —– $5.93 / $12.99
—– look inside —– $4.97 / $9.90
—— Ugarteche, Puyana and Madi ——
Gerson Lima / Maria Alejandra Madi
Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
————— Michael Hudson ————–
Maria Alejandra Madi / Jack Reardon
————- Edward Fullbrook ————-
—————— Steve Keen —————–
————— Richard Smith —————
————– Gustavo Marques————
– Victor Beker and Beniamino Moro –
————– Lars Pålsson Syll ————-
—————– Stuart Birks —————-
Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
———— Armando Ochangco ———-
Shimshon Bichler / Jonathan Nitzan
————— Mauro Gallegati ————–
————— Herman Daly —————-
————— Asad Zaman —————
—————– C. T. Kurien —————
————— Robert Locke —————-
Real-World Economics Review Blog 
Is a corporate university mean a private university, or are governmentally owned universities included, and would a non-profit organization qualify? Does it mean that corporations provide grants or funding? Evidently the meaning in this piece differs from that in wikipedia:
“a corporate university typically limits scope to providing job-specific, indeed company-specific, training for the managerial personnel of the parent corporation…. Perhaps the best known corporate university is the Hamburger University operated by McDonald’s Corporation in Chicago.
The way I’m using the term, corporate university refers to any college or university, public or private, that has so been transformed that it operates more like a corporation than a university. The new corporate university is thus based on the commodification of research and teaching, and governance based on administrators instead of the faculty.
When I was a TA I could grade 5-10 papers/tests per hour, depending on the mix of questions. At $12/paper that’s $60 to $120 per hour for TAs. Even taking into account inflation no TA then or now is paid anywhere near this level. And TAs don’t have a choice about being timely in completing scoring. So tell me again why is this kind of over-priced outsourcing attactive? Or to be a lot more cynical who’s getting the kick-backs and how much are policy-makers being paid to adopt this “more competitive option?”
They could have paid me $12 a paper to grade years ago but the new coprate unis were too ctingy. What does “grade a paper pty ltd” have that I dont? Im a better marker. They wont be employing my quality.
Fine – go that way. Corporate unis already are a joke.