A University of Akron professor inadvertently devised a creative new way to insult female students this week, all in the name of boosting gender equality.
Liping Liu sent an email to his Systems Analysis & Design class outlining the “categories of students” who may see their “grades raised one level or two.” One of those categories was listed as “female students,” indicating Liu intended to artificially increase women’s grades based on their gender. In the email, which was first posted to Reddit on Monday, Liu said the move was part of a “national movement to encourage female students to go [in]to information sciences.”
In a comment to The College Fix, Liu elaborated on his reasoning: “Liu’s own classes have ‘one or two female students’ on average in a class of 20 to 30, and they are ‘not doing well,’ he told The Fix in an email. These women will probably have to ‘repeat the courses or leave the program’ without a grade boost.”
The university was not impressed. “While the professor’s stated intention of encouraging female students to go into the information sciences field may be laudable, his approach as described in his email was clearly unacceptable,” provost Rex Ramsier told The College Fix.
Ramsier is right. Liu’s intentions seem to be well-placed — watching the few female students in a male-dominated field of study struggle must be frustrating. And while I doubt equal numbers of men and women will ever pursue careers in information technology, thinking about how to better address the needs of girls interested in the field is a worthwhile effort.
But artificially boosting girls’ grades is a cheap shortcut to that end, and one that manages to be both unfair, insulting, and harmful to the women themselves. When a student seems to be failing, you don’t do her any favors by luring her further along an unsuitable (and very expensive) course of studies, instead of giving her the chance to pick something that works better for her.
That Liu ever thought such a blatantly degrading effort — handing women grades they didn’t earn because they happen to be female— was ever an appropriate recourse is baffling. Thankfully, his employer seems to agree.
