An interesting proposition, among many:
In the Internet age, a student’s work is just as easily available to a professor on either coast. Why then would a professor be grading his or her own students? It is an invitation to dishonesty. A student who has learned nothing will not receive an F because the professor doesn’t want to admit that his teaching hasn’t been compelling and/or effective. Having the professor be simultaneously teacher, coach, and executioner sets up a bad dynamic in which students are afraid to admit weakness and ask for help.
It would cost nothing extra to have teachers at University of Kansas grade University of Massachusetts students and vice versa. The teacher at U. Kansas supplies the U. Mass teacher with the course syllabus and standards and the U. Mass teacher applies the standards without the bias of “these are the students who just sat through some lectures by the world’s greatest genius, i.e., me.”
via The Browser.