Budget Nomad: If U Cn Rd This U Can Gt A Gd Jb

Monday, April 12, 2010

If U Cn Rd This U Can Gt A Gd Jb

About a hundred years ago, when I was a kid, there was a sign that populated every bus, bus bench, or anyone standing still for too long. Either the advertising company was brilliant or just following instructions, I think it was the latter. All of the signs had something to the effect of "If U Cn Rd Ths U Can Gt A Gd Jb". If you are suffering with a mental impairment or English is not your native language, it means "If you can read this, you can get a good job." This was supposed to be a new shorthand to replace the ubiquitous Gregg method, but actually, I think it was closer to the Pittman method, which did not use vowels until the end.

So where am I going with this? Um...oh, yea. If you can read that you too could get a good job as a Teaching Assistant for the University of Houston. Well, maybe not for them specifically, but for the company they are outsourcing their students' essays to for grading.

Ron gets the credit for first finding this article, forwarded to me. I did not ask if he was hinting that I could get another job with EduMetry, Inc. as a Virtual - TA or if I should look into costs so I can send off my students' work.

Apparently, the U of H TAs did not make the grade, so they had to ship their work off to Asia. When students ask where their paper is, the professor can truly say, it has not returned from Bangalore yet. The article is in the Chronicle of Higher Education, one of the supreme masters of upper educational newspapers. If you want to read the full article, click here. I am not sure how Lori Whisenant could allow them to publish her picture, let alone take it. Honey, that hair needed combing badly. Where you too busy uploading your students' essays to bother?

Truth be told, this has been a fantasy of mine at various times in a semester. I remember calculating the number of pages I had read/edited, graded during one semester. When the number totaled over 1,629, I quit calculating. That was before I was a thesis adviser and those were just regular semester essay pages. Some semesters, I did have a TA, but never trusted them with essays. They did photocopying or graded multiple choice tests with the key I provided.

This seems to have bothered others too. Here is a reaction article to the Chronicle's article There's More to Offshore, and It's Not IT. At least I know if I want to leave Hungary, I am well qualified for a job in Bangalore.