MiddleEighth
Since: Jan, 2001
Nov 16th 2021 at 5:12:37 PM
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When I was doing my first master' degree (in creative and professional writing), this absolutely happened in my Novel Workshop class. Everyone knew the instructor was schtupping one of the students—hell, we were meeting in her apartment, not a classroom—and despite her doing almost nothing class-related, he always gave her A's.
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NubianSatyress
Since: Mar, 2016
Nov 16th 2021 at 5:17:54 PM
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Trope Discussion pages are for discussing improvements to the description or examples — not for meta discussions. You'd want the forums for that, but even then, I don't think there'd be many willing to have real life discussions about a topic this sensitive.
The magazine example from the New Yorker is not about sex for grades, and the logic isn't unusual in the slightest. It belongs under teacher/student romance. Throughout most of the 20th Century, a high-end girl's college like Vassar was more of a place for well bred, wealthy young women to find a suitable husband and marry him, than it was a place to get a degree. In fact, this was known for decades as "getting an MRS degree." That's Mrs. in front of her name rather than any academic degree.
Read it this way to understand what the writer meant by the joke:
A girl from a wealthy family who will never need to work, and is running out of time to find a husband before she graduates Is practicing a domestic skill in class rather than studying the material To impress her professor, with her ability to perform basic home economics, who she is attracted to in the hopes he will see her as a wife and marry her And if he does, it would be a nice side benefit if she passed this class she has not been paying attention to in order to attract his attention and got the degree from Vassar despite not studying, which would be nice to hang on the wall of their cozy home, but she will accept that that's not necessary for her to be happy as long as he marries her.