YOU CAN'T PIN THESE ON THE STUDENTS. Two posts at Rate Your Students illustrate that the real problem is with the universities. Here's one anonymous whinge about the hassles of disciplinary hearings.

I'd learned that retention, especially of students who helped with recruiting and / or retention, trumped integrity every time. So I just failed you for my course.

That's a policy decision. Identify the enablers in your university. (It is no accident that one of the four ingredients of a diploma mill figures in the complaint.)

Another anonymous whinge describes faculty required to assist with special pleading.

My college requires that students who seek exemptions from the ordinary plan of courses must appeal directly to the dean's office for a syllabus waiver. This didn't sound too painful to implement until I received the unwritten instructions to decode "direct."

Direct means "you must write a letter to the dean that is edited by the department's undergraduate advisor/ 2nd year assistant professor who really has nothing better to do with her time."

What could possibly be the reason for having the undergraduate advisor ghost write student's syllabus appeal letters you ask? Well, I was told that "too many illegible letters of appeal end up in the dean's hands,” so I am to "ensure that our student’s appeals are coherent and justified."

May I ask the students to rewrite their letters themselves? "No, the dean strongly prefers well written appeals that he can process quickly."

Yessir, sure thing. You own my future since you sign off on all personnel matters. I'll be happy to do that. Let me get right to that.

So, on this cold Sunday evening, I'm ignoring my own work to edit appeals from Sue B, Wingo, and Fred who all could not bear to be in the new "fills the requirements" class with the new professor in our department "because we herd [sic] he grades really really hard," "because the course time crashes into abnormal psych, which is my favorite class," and "because I can't make it to a 9:30 class, it's just too early."

Incidentally, I'm also thinking of editing my resignation letter. I really hope the dean won't mind a faculty resignation letter penned in the same incomprehensible style as all of the letters I edit for him.

That last paragraph is the only sensible statement in the post. I have trouble respecting any faculty member who places such a high value on tenure at such a crappy job (that's the scientific term) that he or she accedes to so ridiculous a request (from a chairman? a dean?) Such an institution is not deserving of loyalty from anyone with integrity: either exit, or use your voice to start an insurrection on the curriculum committee. Ambitious students are starving the seat-selling institutions of enrollments. It takes ambitious faculty to starve them of staffing.