OT MSU/UM Professor on leave after forcing students to buy a subscription to her website
In the category of WTF. MSU/UM professor Amy Wisner forced her Marketing students to buy a $100 / yr subscription to her website "Patriarchy Rebellion Community". The school has placed her on leave while they investigate. All stories online reference her as being at MSU where this was reported out, but wonder if UM has a similar problem.
She has to make sure we know it wasn't that no one wanted to be with her. By choice.
Exactly.
Chose by choice is code for I suck the air out the room so much and have a complete disregard for self awareness that nobody can stand being my partner.
I've become such a cynic about higher education. Her bio seems remarkably generic for 2023. I'll tell you who to hate. Follow me and don't you dare question my authority - that's what the wrong kinds of people do.
It's no wonder the kids are using Chat GPT and anything else they can find out there. My wife is a college professor and the stories she tells - it's like the kids are in junior high and they want to be told what to think. Any attempt to get them to learn or add to the discussion just makes them angry or confused.
She’s extremely full of herself.
It is hard not to be when you are the only person in the world trying to make it a better place. I am hoping that this is just very elaborate performance art about the state of higher education.
I had a history professor who routinely referred to himself as “noted historian so and so” during lectures. He made us buy his book.
To be fair, I'm not sure how this is different than making students buy a textbook
If her website was about fundamentals of marketing I would agree
It's about marketing the smashing of oppressive systems by creating your personal brand! The ouroboros where business jargon consumes lefty cant.
Textbooks aren't usually linked to some oddball organization (and their authors don't make that much in profit).
Textbooks are usually linked to corporations who do make that much in profit despite contributing nothing to the content.
Stick to the good objections.
I mean, what's super unfair about this is that profits actually get to the author and don't just aggregate in the upper levels of corporate shareholders. Did we lose a war?
Wonder if she makes out of state students pay 200?
So it looks like the $99 is just the bare-bones pricing. If you REALLY want the full Amy experience, you have the opportunity to pay $499! LINK.
Her reviews on ratemyprofessors.com are a treat to read.
LINK.
+1
... and holy cow:
She does not use the school online system to post the content. You pick your grade after you subscribe to her website.
She has a -7% Net Promoter Score, which is really bad. And it is especially given the discipline she teaches and the fact that she herself seems to be a shameless promoter.
And for those of you who aren't familar with Net Promoter Scores, they are a quick calculation comparing the number of people who high recommend you versus your detractors.
She does that on purpose.
The more she's in the red the more she thinks that's feedback she's ReBelLinG aG@iN$T tH3 PaTrIaRcHy
LOL, and considering half the 5* reviews talk about getting a 4.0 in the class. Either they're all written by the same person or the kids these days have a new moronic lingo calling a single A a 4.0.
Her website sounds really cool 🙄🙄
Honestly, in my opinion her website is actually pretty good for an anti bullying on social media site. Quantitative and qualitative sources, all seems on the up and up and accurate. From what I saw, I couldn't really find the "patriarchy rebellion" as the site was all about bullying.
Having students pay for it might be a bit much, and I suppose that was the concern in conjunction with the rebellion title. Hence the investigation. But I repeat, it is about bullying and online harassment.
We have to do something to regulate facebook and protect people, especially children, that seems to be her primary subject.
Interestingly, some of the prof reviews said that she would bully any students that expressed any difference of opinion with her.
My Psych 101 prof made everyone buy his book and then said none of it would be on the exam. That was 30 years ago. (Holy shit, that was 30 years ago? fml)
I took a science course (for non-majors, Contemporary Issues in Science or something like that) and people got extra credit if they volunteered for one of the Ann Arbor alderman candidates, who was a democrat. I was pretty apolitical in college but I thought it was unfair to give extra credit only to people who would volunteer for one of the political parties and not the other(s).
I am sure that only happened that one time.
For those saying "what's the diff from buying a textbook?" and so forth.
The class is marketing/business communications. What is being subscribed to can most charitably be ascribed to a gender studies course (that students did not sign up for).
Bait and switch, even if you factor in students needing to purchase some course materials anyway.
For those saying "what's the diff from buying a textbook?" and so forth.
IDK, but when I was an undergrad, that's what I thought coursepacks were for.
IIRC the University at the time thought it was a conflict of interest to have students (captive audience) be compelled to buy the prof's stuff (textbook).
I guess things have changed.
It's not incredibly common (most instructors are not also textbook authors), but there is no stigma to this so far as I am aware. A lot of instructors, speaking about course packs and such, might even offer their materials for free to the extent that they can by providing a hard copy on the first day of classes or by posting an electronic copy on the learning management system.
Most instructors I know are conscientious about making their course materials more affordable/accessible, which is exactly the opposite of what this instructor is doing here. Also, many places have put the kibosh on buying books, where students now pay a lot less to simply rent them. It was not uncommon for me to drop $500-600 per quarter on books when I was in college back in the dark, not-so-student-centric ages.
I have never known the University of Michigan to be opposed to teachers using their own textbooks. I know that it was absolutely the standard for long time for many law school faculty.
I also haven’t heard that coursepacks were used to get around this. Coursepack were, as I understood them, designed to use the copyright exceptions for educational use to allow instructors to use portions of copyrighted works in their teaching.
I had her for BCOM a few years back at Ross. She was a bit kooky then but nothing like this - I don't think we had any required coursepack let alone her subscription service. Sad to see that she went far off the deep end in the past 5+ years.
Several of my professors had books they wrote on the required reading list. This included some novels that weren’t very good, and I always thought it was a shady way to boost book sales. This doesn’t seem that different except it would be a lot harder to justify the website subscription.
I bet she gives a great lecture.
I had a professor that made us buy a briefcase for class, and we had to learn how to pass it back-and-forth in class between students. Then we found out that the next level was to learn how to pass two briefcases so we had to buy a second briefcase from him. The briefcases were $100 each. He also called one of my classmates a Midwestern floozy
I noticed some inconsistency in her use of ABD after Ph.D. so I thought I'd check it out. She does have it (dissertation submitted in 2022). But, it has to be the most underwhelming dissertation ever... check it out if you have 5 minutes (really, that's all you'll need). https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/50510/datastream/OBJ/view
Holy cow if you take out the appendices it is 30 pages. I chose the wrong field.
Holy cow if you take out the appendices it is 30 pages.
Not to mention the appendices are straight copypasta of text already in the chapters.
It’s standard practice to include the surveys themselves as appendices to studies like this, so I don’t think that’s copypasta . It’s still not much of a dissertation.
I'm not debating the validity of the appendices.
I'm pointing out her document is heavily padded.
1. thank you for this and...
2. while I'm not a PhD and I have no desire to get a PhD, what the fuck did I just look at? My MS thesis had more academic rigor and original work than that -- and that's for a PhD?
(and people say we shouldn't dunk on sparty academics)
Yeah, I'm not too familiar with this area but from my understanding it was basically a lit review plus administering/interpreting an online survey = get PhD. Good work if you can get it!
The only good dissertation is a finished dissertation, but, um, huh.
College was a scam when I went and I think it’s an even bigger one today. So many professors back then put in minimum effort while soaking the students for self-authored text books, coming out with new editions which changed very little but eliminated the used book market. I’m sure the same occurs now, along with this kind of thing. And that’s just the small stuff. Tuition is the real scam.
The extent to which academia has adopted private sector techniques to build revenue and equity is the extent to which it resembles a scam.
Honestly shocked that someone with a "Patriarchy Rebellion Community" website might be unethical
College is scary
It's a total scam, all that stuff is available for free over at www.cnn.com.
Prolly time to nuke this thread.
Its obviously gross but is this really that different than when professors make their own textbook required for a class?
All I can say is I'm glad I'm not in school anymore.