Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Ecomonic Downturn Results in Commoditized Exams

A high school calculus teacher, confronted with a downward revised printing budget insufficient to cover the cost of printing his class' quizzes and exams for the school year, has resorted to selling ads in the margins of the quizzes and exams.

This is an example of out of the box thinking in the face of reduced circumstances; whether edifying or regrettable I can't say. The teacher plans for the ads to be temporary; until the government, in his view, steps up and pays for education like it is supposed to. Meantime, we have only to hope this novel example does not metastasize into theme based ads matched to test subject matter; a development likely to divide folks along ideological grounds (e.g. imagine what could show up on sex ed. exams, if there are such things as sex ed. exams).

Meantime too, maybe Dickinson can use the idea to relieve tuition a bit. Of course, only folks who haven't been to law school, and so don't know about the time pressures of a law exam and the related single mindedness of the tested, might be induced to pay for such ads.

5 comments:

Jeffrey H. Kahn said...

Instead of ads on the margins, I am thinking product placement in my exam hypos.

Kelly Joy said...

That's funny, it reminds me of an Alias episode where Jennifer Garner's Sydney exclaimed, "Let's take the Ford F-150!" Product placement in the exams might not achieve the same effect, though. One of our Antitrust fact patterns included Waterford and Lenox monopolizing the market for high-end tableware . . . With Christmas seven days away, I am not so sure I can look at my china in quite the same way this year!

David Hutchinson said...

My Antitrust exam last year featured a fact pattern based on ice cream producers. In the midst of trying to get the doctrine right and formulating my answer,I kept thinking (and could not stop from thinking), "Holy cow professor knows alot about making ice cream."

Kelly Joy said...

Just ask him about raisins!

Marie T. Reilly said...

Ask him about anything.