By Arun Malik
A course that has been taught at Columbia for many years which few in the university community know about is E4020: Safeguarding Intellectual and Business Property. As the name suggests, this course deals with protection of know-how, contracts, employer-employee rights, copyrights, trademarks, and other business-related legal issues. I got two things out of the course: a good knowledge of safeguarding intellectual and business property and a terrible grade.
Before concentrating on my grade, let us be fair and talk about the course a little bit. The course is taught by an experienced patent attorney and is scheduled to meet once a week for two and a half hours per session. It is taught only in the fall term. There is no homework. There is no midterm. The entire grade for the course is based on one final examination.
When I signed-up for the course, I thought I was going to learn a hell of a lot in class. I was right. I still remember some of the cases we studied in the class as well as the history behind these important cases. I also still remember some of the rules regarding what gets legal protection and what does not. Moreover, the professor is very knowledgeable and has a certain enthusiasm for teaching the course.
Despite the fact I learned so much, I deeply regret taking the course. Now that I look back on the course, I think I should have taken it pass/fail. The problem with this option, however, is that pass/fail classes do not count toward the 128-credit graduation requirement. Those of us who need the extra credits are very much compelled to take classes of interest at our own risk.
The reason why I did so poorly in this class is because I did poorly on the final exam. Despite the fact that I studied my butt off, I did poorly. Despite the fact that I knew all the material, I did poorly. One may think that I am making this up. After all, it's only logical that a person who studies the notes and knows all the material would do well on an exam. Right? I would argue that the exam given was unfair.
Let us go to the Fall of 1993 when I took the course. I recall the professor talking about the type of final exam to expect during the second day of class. What puzzled me back then, but makes perfect sense to me now, was when he spoke of the 'victims' of the course. The professor told the class early on that every single year a significant portion of the class would call him at his home complaining about the final grade. For some reason, the people who called were upset because they studied hard for the exam and claimed to know all the material. The final grade attained was well below their expectations because they claimed the final exam was unfair. Fortunately, the professor did not receive any death threats.
After having gone through the experience, I begin to wonder about certain things pertaining to the exam. Does the professor give the same unfair exam every single year? Or does the professor somehow manage to compose an unfair exam every single year? I find it hard to believe that one can consistently make-up an unfair exam. This leads me to believe that the same exam is given every year. In this case, it can be very easy for a student to track down people who took the unfair exam in previous years and get the exam questions and format.
When I took the exam, there were three parts to it. Part I required the student to fill out a grid. Parts II and III were short-answer and essay-type questions. The format (filling out a grid) was nothing like I had seen in my entire academic career. Never have I been asked to fill out a grid on an exam in my life. The only grids I've had to fill out were in tic-tac-toe. This made me feel uncomfortable. What was worse was the phrasing of the questions. It was extremely easy to confuse what the question was asking. Usually when a question is phrased properly, it inherently hints at the correct answers assuming the person taking the exam studied the material. With part I of the exam, the questions were phrased ambiguously. Moreover, when students asked the professor during the exam what the hell the question meant, all he did was repeat the question without paraphrasing it so as to make it more comprehensible. What was worse was that if a student wrote down the correct answer but did not put it on a precise spot on the grid, points were taken off! Parts II and III did not count as much as part I did, if I recall correctly. The essay and short answer questions were also graded rather harshly. I thought he took off points if we neglected to write down points that were too obvious rather than ones which were significant in answering the question. Let's say one writes the following answer to a question: " The person may not be allowed to take up employment with a new company if during the course of his/her employment he/she is bound to give away trade secrets of a company for which this person has already worked." Though this answer may be a thorough one to many people, according to the professor it is not. To get full credit for that part of the question one must have written the following in addition to writing the above answer: "The person may be allowed to take up employment with a new company if during the course of his/her employment he/she is not bound to give away trade secrets of a company for which this person has already worked." Should the professor have taken off points? I'll let you be the judge.
Even though there were many people who complained about the exam, there were a handful of students who actually did well. I suspect that the students who did well either must have known about the nature of his exam or must have a strong command of the English language. Only one who has a strong command of the English language can read, write, and comprehend language that seems vague and ambiguous. Had the questions been more direct, I am sure fewer people would have complained about the exam. I also would not be surprised if students who are not as experienced with reading and writing nearly failed the course because they did not understand the questions on the exam. Since engineers spend much more time doing problem sets rather than read books with much vocabulary, many of us engineers fit into this category. When looking at course evaluations for E4020, one may not notice any real complaints against the course. There is a reason for this. The course evaluations are filled out on the same day as the final exam. These evaluations are filled out before receiving a final grade for the course. Questions regarding feedback from the instructor on students' progress have no meaning since there is no midterm and no homework. As stated earlier, the entire grade for the course is based on an unfair examination. Therefore, I would argue that the course evaluation does not reflect the true sentiments of a significant portion of those taking the course. Students do not have the opportunity to reflect their true feelings on the course evaluations since the professor makes up the grades halfway through Winter Break.
What is the whole purpose of a grade? A grade is given by an instructor to reflect how much a student knows about a certain subject. In the case of E4020, the grade reflects how well the student can comprehend the unfair final exam. Students have complained for many years about this exam, yet he does not feel the need to make up a fair, comprehensible exam which brings out what the student knows about the course material. The instructor does not realize that the students are the ones who will bear the consequences of getting a bad grade because of taking an unfair examination. Though he may be a good patent attorney with a thriving private practice, being a good patent attorney does not necessarily make him a fair professor. It is quite upsetting how lightly he takes the entire grading situation. I called him at home to discuss my final exam just like so many others in the class did. Towards the end of our conversation, he did acknowledge to me that my grade did not really reflect how well I knew the material. Yet, like so many other students' grades, my grade was the result of a misunderstanding. Even after saying this, he refused to change my grade stating that the situation was "unfortunate." I too, like so many other students who had taken his class, had been dubbed a 'victim' of the class rather than a veteran of it.
Does the professor derive pleasure from these unfair grading practices? I am inclined to believe so. He is quick to dub former students as 'victims' because he knows the final grades attained by many of them is well below what the students deserved. The final grade in an exorbitant number of cases does not reflect what the student truly knows about the course. He even has the audacity to tell the class in the very beginning that many students complain about the final grade. He has no shame in telling this to the class either. He says it with a smile, perhaps even with a sense of pride. So many have complained about his practices that he now refers to them categorically as 'victims.'
My advice is to take the course, yet take it pass/fail if possible. One learns a lot, yet gets extremely frustrated (and in many cases insulted) when receiving the final grade. A course like this will most likely not get discontinued despite the unfair grading practices of the professor. On paper, he has course evaluations which make the course look good. The professor also has a Columbia scholarship named after him which makes it even more difficult to "pull the plug" on his course. Finally, his pleasant personality makes it hard to believe that he is capable of such unfair grading practices. Something needs to be done about this.