Grade Inflation in Higher Education 1077
ProfBooty writes "A recent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post on grade inflation by a Professor at Duke. Obviously this guy doesn't teach engineering courses. Quite honestly, I can't understand why science and engineering majors are held to one standard for grades and academics versus humanities majors even in the same school. Perhaps it is because people's lives hang in the balance when they interact with the products and structures designed by science/engineering students. Perhaps it is because they aren't worried about hurting students self esteem? It really is too bad the media doesn't report enough on education from the technical side."
Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
Engineers don't.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:3, Funny)
If you had said "you can't argueu the num ber 10 into the number 25", I would have assumed Hillary Rosen was one of your students.
The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that's a problem with the administration though. It's unrealistic to think that everyone in a class can be above average. That's what a C is supposed to mean right? Perhaps the people that think everyone should get A's and B's needs to go back to school themselves and take some math classes so they know what average means.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, if everyone correctly answers that 2+2=4, everyone deserves an "A" for that problem. Trying to force that into a curve could mean that you end up getting scored on penmanship, or personal hygiene.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Interesting)
This talk of distribution curves reminds me of an experience when I was a T.A. for a graduate level course.
The professor gave a problem on a test that was pretty damn hard (in fact, years earlier the solution to the exam problem had been an entire journal article!).
Needless to say, the poor students didn't make too much progress on the problem.
We had to do a "rescaling" of what "A", "B", etc. meant since the typical score was between 11 and 20 percent on the test.
I suffered a couple of tests like that myself, where the problems were ridiculously difficult for an exam lasting only a couple of hours.
All in all, I think it's reasonable to give students good grades as the level of education increases. After high school, most of the less intelligent students have been weeded out. Having the median grade be 3.2 is not unreasonable.
Likewise in graduate school, as even more of the less able students call it quits (although some very good ones also decide they've just had enough).
If you try to reverse the grade inflation abruptly by centering a Gaussian on 2.00, you're going to hurt a lot of students that are being evaluated by people that are unaware of the new curve baseline.
Of course now at the workplace it's a similar quandry. Much is made of the policy that we hire only the best and the brightest - the top ten percent. Well, then how come is it that we only get paid within a few percent of the industry average salary, eh?
"Ah, that's because those other companies are hiring the top 10 percent, too!"
Right....
It might be more illuminating if university transcripts for courses also showed a distribution curve and where the student sits on it.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Then how do you interpret a transcript that shows many of the students getting low scores in a class? Does it mean the students were stupid, the professor was a poor teacher, the professor was a hard grader, the material covered was more advanced than other similarly named classes, or that there was a disjoint between class content and exam content?
The simple fact is that you don't know any of those things, and no set of numbers can effectively evaluate those things for you. There are too many pinheads out there who think intelligence, knowledge, and prediction of job performance can be linearized onto a number line. In reality, none of these things can be collapsed into anything close to a straight line.
Therefore any grading system or ranking that tries to evaluate people and put them in order is intrinsically broken and missing most of the information one would want to know.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:4, Insightful)
A major issue with the whole transcript system is that it is an average. If your class is graded on two papers discussing Kant and your first one bombs out because you didn't understand him at all, but your second one is the result of weeks of studying and as such is simply phenomenal, you might simply come out with a C...C+/B- if the teacher is feeling generous. Averages can't chart growth, can't chart experimentation with study habits, can't chart weaknesses, and can't chart strengths. I may be pretty good at speaking Japanese, but I absolutely suck when it comes to exams, and I don't know why. The result? C. And I put more work into that class than anyone else.
Grades in higher institutions seem redundant to me. They're useful in high school when attendance is mandatory, but if you're going to college then you must be self-motivated. If you're truly self-motivated to learn, then grades mean nothing to you. Let's just do away with them.
Re:Theres a way to get an A and a way to get a C (Score:5, Insightful)
But the better standard (arguably better) is "above and beyond" is required for an A. I have had classes (few and far between) where knowing grading standards and managing to grab every single point guarantees... a B+. You have to come up with your OWN extensions, and do a good job of it, before the teacher considers it worthy of an A.
But papers are RARELY, if ever perfect. Math homework, most engineering homework, and so on can be graded objectively... and anyone who can claim to grade an English paper objectively is lying. The absolute most consistency with which I've ever seen non-technical papers graded still has about a 10% spread - and that's from Advanced placement people who've been grading English papers for 15 years. With enough work, anyone can pump out a "B" paper... it takes talent and a little bit of luck to eek out an "A" when the teacher doesn't inflate grades.
I've also had another professor who had a different take on study habits in general. His claim is that there are two types of people: those who cram the night before the final, and those who work all quarter, do all the homeworks and readings and attend class, then don't need to study. Because they've learned everything. I don't have much sympathy for the crammer, because he didn't really learn the material - he just went through the motions. But the student who worked all quarter is probably the A student - and it takes a very good professor to bring out that difference in actual grades. Which brings everything right back to the old "there aren't enough good teachers" argument :).
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Interesting)
The joke among those of us majoring in Math was, "But you could be an honors student in education now," whenever someone got nailed by one of the "ball buster" senior level math exams. A degree from a college or university should mean the same regardless of discipline as far as the standards the student is held to. Based on the people I ran across majoring in education, this most assuredly wasn't the case.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:4, Informative)
Things were, however, very different in Computer Science department. In most classes, As usually only represent less than 15% of the students, Bs and Cs dominates, while Ds and Fs are not that rare either.
By the way, anybody looking to hire a software engineer?
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt if the CE profs mentioned this little fact either.
A few times? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
BTW, when I pressed the second algebra teach on his no calculator policy, he said it was because I should be able to do it in case I'm in a situation where I need to do a complex problem without a calculator. My response didn't go over well, "you mean if I'm stuck on a desert island and need to simplify a complex AC circuit?" That's when I learned college professors don't like sarcasm.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as calculators simplify arithmetic, there are devices that simplify circuits for you.
Yes, if you've had a DC and an AC circuits analysis class, you can do this with pencil, paper and calculator. But just as simultaneous linear equations lend themselves to systematic solution by a computer, so does a lot of circuit analysis.
Now the idea that you might be out of reach of your laptop or palmtop with its handy-dandy cirtuit analysis software might be credible, the idea that you might be out of reach of a pocket calculator is silly.
Drifting slightly, I was always amazed at how out of touch academics are with what the actual job working conditions will be. Unlike closed book tests, and the need to be able to work without calculators, in the actual job in the field, you will have (and maybe even be provided by the employer with) not only basic tools, but perhaps sophisticated ones -- if they genuinely make you productive. You employer doesn't WANT you not using a calculator. Similarly, they WANT you to make use of reference books rather than scratching your head to memorize. They WANT you to use circuit analysis software, or Mathematica (or something). In typical corporate stupidity, the employers seem to be completely out of touch with how the higher education people teach you to do less using less tools.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people might be able to do complex arithmetic in their heads...I'm not one of them. Does that mean I am incompetent to, say, graduate this spring with my BS in aerospace engineering?
Show me a practicing engineer that does all their work in their heads. Hell, show me one that never uses anything but a slide rule. I'm not talking about back-of-the-envelope guesstimates: I'm talking about real "will this wing break or not?" calculations.
I'll show you an engineer that is not using the best tools for the job.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
No, I don't do that on anything that really matters.
It does remind me of a particular incident back when I was still in college. I was having a particularly bad week, so I had a large amount of vodka. (vodka and coke). My walking path was decidedly non-linear. Someone said "hey, you're drunk enough you can't do math anymore!"
"Oh yeah? Give me a problem."
"What's the integral of the tangent of X?"
(5 second pause) "Negitive natural log of the cosine of X... errr, plus a constant"
(pause) "I _am_ going to look that up tomorrow"
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
25 = 10 for extremely low values of 25.
QED
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
Negotiating better grades (Score:5, Interesting)
- "I need a good grade to graduate this semester"
- "I have to pass this coures because it's a prereq for other courses I need"
- "I have to pass or I'll lose athletic eligibility"
- "I tried real[sic] hard, but [insert excuse why they did not have time to learn the material]"
Apparently, students believe these are often effective. Perhaps they are.Re:Negotiating better grades (Score:5, Funny)
"Well cutie, why don't you try studying?"
Professors sometimes spared lives. (Score:5, Informative)
During the draft, college was the only thing keeping some young men from getting sent to Southeast Asia and, as such, they could appeal to professors on a very personal level: If I fail your class, I'm going to war.
As such, professors (ESPECIALLY in the liberal arts
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is techno-smart the only kind of smart there is (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please.
As if English classes assign "interpretive poetry" or History allows you to just make up whatever you want.
There is *sometimes* more BS room in subjects that are not attempting to teach specific problem-solving skills, but let's not generalize too grossly eh?
The issue is that Liberal Arts programs are struggling for enrolment, and are frightened to scare off students from taking their classes. Fields like Engineering are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to lead directly to well-paying jobs, and hence have greater demand. It is not that there is anything inherently "fluffy" about the Liberal Arts. Don't be chauvenistic about fields which may not interest you personally.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer Science Major gets an A for creating a program that, while not what was assigned, impressed the prof.
English Major gets an F for not referencing in his thesis.
well, that was easy
Just because you don't understand something does not make it easy or 'fluff'.
The stuff they do in upper year english/lit courses is as hard as anything I do, its just a different type of difficult.
BTW, I am a CS major.
They done learned them good! (Score:5, Funny)
It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:4, Insightful)
If an English major answers a test question on an interpretation of some poem, it's going to get a high grade because it's based on opinion and ther eis no "right" or "wrong" answer.
If an engineering major gets a formula wrong, it is wrong and that's that... no gray area.
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:5, Insightful)
If an English major answers a test question on an interpretation of some poem, it's going to get a high grade because it's based on opinion and ther eis no "right" or "wrong" answer.
No, that's not right (speaking as someone who has taught college level English). An interpretation must be 1. based upon a close reading of the work in question and 2. follow some established, or at least comprehensible, mechanism of interpretation. Opinions are not good answers in a humanities exam, any more than they would be in a CS exam. There's more room for ambiguity in the humnaities, true, but that ambiguity is always within what Eco has right called (in his book of this title) "the limits of interpretation." The job of the humanist is to invent within those limits, as is the job of the engineer.
For example, if a civil engineering student tells me that he's designed a brilliant new concept for a highway bridge using nothing but cheese doodles, I'm going to ask "do you realize that cheese doodles won't be able to hold much more than their own weight?" Bzzzt! Wrong answer! If a humanist says, "well I think The Tempest is about the search for the telluric currents in 16th century Italy," I'm going to ask "and what makes you think that Shakespeare KNEW anything about the so-called telluric currents, or anything about Italian alchemists? And what in your reading of The Tempest suggests telluric currents as a subtext to the play?" Bzzzt! Just as wrong as the engineering student.
Maybe CS is different because programming languages are just that languages and so many of the same issues are present as in the humanities, just with a technical bent but I doubt it.
Unfortunately, natural languages have almost nothing in common with computer languages. Computer languages are for the most part 1:1 codes - the same command means the same thing in whatever context it appears in a particular language. Natural languages are not codes; an idiom means different things in different contexts. That's part of the problem comparing the two.
At any rate, there is plenty of grade inflation in the sciences in the US: it should be noted that the author of the piece, Stuart Rojstaczer [duke.edu] is Professor of Geology, Environment and Engineering at Duke. And he says:
The last time I gave a C was more than two years ago. That was about the time I came to realize that my grading had become anachronistic. The C, once commonly accepted, is now the equivalent of the mark of Cain on a college transcript. I have forsworn C's ever since.
So Prof. Booty's comments in the posting are unjustified by the evidence presented (see also the data linked from the article; Stanford, a darling of the technical education world, shows a good deal of grade inflation, too); and they are probably unjustified, period. I suspect that if you were to track grade inflation on both sides of Snow's Two Culture rift, you'd see the same steep slope.
Just because you don't understand the humanities doesn't mean it's not academically rigorous. I know plenty of humanists who would stupidly assume that programming doesn't require any brains; after all, "it's just writing down instructions for machines. What's so hard about that.")
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:5, Interesting)
You may see similar slopes but the absolute levels are wildly different. I certainly earned straight A's in humanities classes (literature and a lot of Asian history and language) with a fraction of the effort required to maintain a B average as a molecular biology major. (Yale, if that matters.) That's one anecdotal datum, of course.
If a humanist says, "well I think The Tempest is about the search for the telluric currents in 16th century Italy," I'm going to ask "and what makes you think that Shakespeare KNEW anything about the so-called telluric currents, or anything about Italian alchemists? And what in your reading of The Tempest suggests telluric currents as a subtext to the play?"
Sure, and you're shooting a fish in a barrel by explaining that to the guy who thinks that in an literature class all answers are valid. Realistically, though, students have learned that they only need to spit back some boilerplate about how The Tempest represents dead white male colonialism and racism in the technocratic magician's domination of the person of color, Caliban. (The Tempest is that one, right? Not that it would be any more difficult to do the same thing for any other play.) "But, Professor?" asks the molecular biology major in the back. "Wasn't Shakespeare long before the 19th century British imperialism you're talking about?" Now, now, we can't have any facts interfering with color-by-numbers ideology.
In fact, grading was so lenient, I could disagree once or twice a month and still ususally earn my way back to an A!
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't say it, but this choice is made constantly. Many people I know who make a living in the "hard" sciences have no aptitude whatsoever for English language, or literature, etc. and would simply not be able to make any meaningful contributions in those fields.
It's two very different talents and mind-sets, I wouldn't call one 'easier' than the other.
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:5, Insightful)
Damned unlikely, I'll grant, but theoretically it is possible.
On the other hand, there are a lot of liberal arts exams where it is actually *impossible* to get a full 100%. Why? Because the graders "don't give grades that high." I've actually seen this happen where a student got their paper praised as the best the prof had ever seen. The student got an 85.. when she asked why she only received an 85 if this was the best ever seen, the response was, "Oh you don't understand. That's an excellent mark. I never give marks above 80."
That's an extreme example, but a lot of professors hold the attitude that a 100% mark will never be given out, because that would imply your paper is absolutely perfect -- and since there's always more to add, no paper is perfect.
Um, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, don't forget the social sciences, which are clearly more objective. I've had tough philosophy courses that I'm sure rival some higher engineering courses.
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahh yes, but in engineering/science there is something called "partial credit" and that introduces gray areas. I may get the formula wrong, but if I apply the wrong formula in a consistent way, I can still receive credit...at least that's how it worked when I was an undergrad.
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:3, Interesting)
I got 2 degrees from Lehigh: Mechanical Engineering and Philosophy. I was a grader for an intro to logic course, taught by the Phiul. Dept. One day I gave a couple of homework papers a 0 (grade of 0, 1, 2), and was reamed out by the students - "It's Philosophy, there ARE no wrong answers" - and the teacher - "They handed it in, so they can't get a 0."
Problem is, it was a logic class - there ARE wrong answers. If it was taught by the math department, these students would have been laughed at. Since it was a Philosophy course, "opinion" mattered.
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:4, Insightful)
That means it could just as well get a low answer for a non-objective reason. There are certainly skills involved in humanities subjects, even if the perception of them varies somewhat by the views of the observer.
Drama programs are subjective as well, but you don't claim that everyone is a good actor becasue s/he gets up and mouths a few lines? There is a certain more-or-less shared standard involved, just as in writing.
I've certainly had humanities profs who were mor than willing to say that they thought my essay was BS, or badly argued. If you haven't, you haven't been challenged enough, or you have robbed yourself through lack of interest, which is really a pity.
Lea
Grade Inflation in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
(Of course, in Soviet Russia, grades would have inflated YOU! - sorry, couldn't resist)
Depressing :( (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the single most depressing thing I've read for years. If a student deserves a C or (God forbid even a D!) then they should get them. So what if they don't like it? Not everyone is cut out to be a nuclear physicist or a genius reporter! Everyone is most definitely not created equal, at least in an academic sense. This is reducing higher education to the level of "Buy your degree online!" websites and devaluing the degrees of everyone who actually had to work for theirs.
Do grades really matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do grades really matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
More a Pass/Didn't-turn-up system. I certainly have no problem with universities increasing the use of interviews/essays as entrance criteria, maybe I wouldn't have had so many people on my course who didn't know what BASIC stood for and wouldn't know an algorithm if it came up and slapped them in the face.
Re:Do grades really matter? (Score:4, Funny)
--------
Interested in wallpapers coverings and interior decorating design and decor in australia [wallpaperscoverings.com]?
There's a long term and a short term.... (Score:4, Interesting)
If a company hires someone from your school who had a high GPA, and they turn out to be worthless, they'll think twice about hiring someone from your school again. Since what students *REALLY* pay for is the ability to get a job when they graduate, in the long term, schools have an interest in accurately informing potential employers how good their students are. Don't think for a second that the folks doing the hiring don't know that a C at MIT is worth an A from Devry.
Of course, in the short term, you're at the school you're at, and you want the highest grades possible.
Gotta hate comments liek this, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of 'cos there's no right or wrong answers, humanities must be easy' crap is just illiterate carping.
Liberal arts degrees are rated for scholarship and insight. Yes, grade inflation's a problem, but don't blame the subject matter.
Engineering Gets Hit Too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Engineering Gets Hit Too (Score:5, Insightful)
Our published 4 year graduation rate is 69 percent, which seems generous. Maybe it's easier outside the CS department. There are definitely a wide range of C's, D's, and F's given all the way up through third year classes in the CS department.
I've TA'd for the intro class, and we definitely fit the bell curve on high C. I've struggled to get C's in some of my 3000 level classes, not because I'm an idiot, but because the classes were actually curved around middle C's (or slightly less, in two cases).
And I end up having to defend my 3.6 GPA because other ridiculous schools won't even give out C's? That's so dishonest it should be criminal. I've just applied to grad school and I've already had people concerned about my GPA. I think every application needs to be stamped with the average GPA and standard deviation from your school, so that you can actually tell what those grades mean. My GPA gives me highest honors at graduation here, but might not be worth any honors at a joke school like Yale with a 99% four year graduation rate where you couldn't buy a failing grade.
Notice to all Duke Students! (Score:5, Funny)
The poster must not be an engineer... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The poster must not be an engineer... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just thought it was odd when I was in school a couple years back that the liberal arts kids were heald to a lower standard than the science/engineering students in terms of work load and grading.
He doesn't teach humanities... (Score:5, Informative)
Name: Stuart Rojstaczer, Ph.D.
Affiliation: faculty
Title: Associate Professor
Department: NSOE & Earth Sci - Earth & Ocean Sciences
Department: Civil & Enviro Engineering
Just some food for thought...
F in Engineering curves to an A (Score:5, Interesting)
Grading schemes are crazy. Half the time the prof who didn't speak much English, would put things on the test which no one even heard of...I can't tell you how many times we all wanted to blow up the Engineering building after exams!
Re:F in Engineering curves to an A (Score:5, Insightful)
In an abstract algebra class I got a D- on an exam. It was the third-highest grade in the class. That's exactly three of us who didn't flunk. If Berkeley didn't get so pissed when profs flunk then entire class, I know a few who would be happy to.
However, schools vary as well as professors. I find it most informative to determine the average grade, since most classes are curved either up or down (as to whether that's an ethical practice, that's a different conversation). Berkeley EECS curved to about a B-/C+. That used to be a C. Other schools are worse.
It's kindofa pity, and somewhat counteracted by having people who know the reputation of the school. Grad school admissions, for example, weight a B+ from Berkeley differently from one from Stanford, one from MIT, or one from Harvey Mudd. I think it's the industry people who are involved in the hiring process that are putting a skew into the pressures, as well as parents -- have to get something for that investment, after all!
Lea
Re:F in Engineering curves to an A (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:F in Engineering curves to an A (Score:4, Informative)
And, hey, some things are just hard and 40% is a good success rate. Taking batting a baseball, for example!
Re:F in Engineering curves to an A (Score:5, Interesting)
First, my high school had two physics teachers. Each of them designed tests separately for their individual classes. When their tests were given out to the students, they also gave a test to the other teacher. The tests were curved so that the teacher who took the test got a 100% (ie, if he got an 87%, a 13 point curve was given). Kinda fair standard, we all though, until we realized that both teachers had doctorates and should probably be acing entry level physics tests...
My favorite tests, though, had to be while I was taking Digital Design during my sophmore computer engineering curriculum (Virginia Tech, btw). We had a professor who failed, overall, 52% of his students the semester I was in his class. I got a 15% on one test and it was "only" a D (I passed the class with a B, btw).
I don't get this grade inflation thing that humanities students have going for them. Engineers fail out constantly, and not because they aren't smart or don't work, it just happens. People in humanities should be reminded what grading curves were used for...you had to be average to above average to pass. If teacher's graded on a 'true' bell curve, I think it's something like 25% of the class gets a D or below. Now, I never had teachers that were that cruel, but did, if they curved at all, curve up to a bell (ie, the median grade received was a 75%/C). It was fair, and grade distribution seemed pretty good each semester (until we got to 4th year classes, people routinely failed).
--trb
Re:You're missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. The goal of a test is not just to rank students, it's to measure whether they've learned what they're supposed to have learned. There shouldn't be a problem with giving every student in the class an A, provided that they've all demonstrated a good enough grasp of the material. Of course it should also be OK to give every student an F if they've failed to learn anything. (A smart professor will adjust what he's teaching according to the quality of his students; if they're consistently getting everything he should consider expanding the course to cover more material.) Grades should go something like:
A) Student has completely mastered (i.e. displays thorough proficiency at) everything in the course.
B) Student understands all of the material in the course, but has not mastered it all.
C) Student understands the essential material for the course and has mastered some of it.
D) Student understands most of the essential material, but has mastered little of it.
F) Student has failed to understand even essential material.
With a grading system like that, you can look at the grade and grasp whether the student really gets what they were supposed to get. If you curve everything, a grade reflects as much about the rest of the class as it does about the student.
Let's not forget about 4.0 vs. 4.0 (Score:3, Interesting)
Sad story... (Score:5, Interesting)
My father teaches middle school and had one student who was good and got an honest to goodness B in her class (History I believe). Needless to say when the report card showed up the parents went nuts. Had a meeting with my father and demanded the child get an A (their excuse, top colleges were already looking at her and this would mess up her chances at going to them... RIIIIIGHT). My father politely declined, stating that the grading was fair, the girl deserved a B and that the B wasn't anything to be ashamed of.
Not good enough. Parents went to the vice principal with the same story. The vice principal had looked at my dad's books, found them fair, sided with my dad.
Not good enough. Parents went to the pricipal with the same story. Principal buckled (without even looking at any of the girls work) and told my dad to curve EVERYONE's grade in his class so that the girl got an A.
I'm sure there are pressures from parents, students and school boards to keep the aformentioned happy (and thus paying tuition), but there's a point where you ruin your reputation as a well respected learning institution.
that shit happens all the time (Score:5, Funny)
But nothing topped the reaction of one of the students I had given a D to. First he came and pleaded with me. Then, he came and basically threatened me. When I still refused to change his grade, his parents got involved and contacted the head of the department. He refused to overrule me since my grading formula was very objective.
After that, they went to the dean of the school and tried to have me brought before the faculty senate on charges of bias against members of the football team. When that didn't go anywhere, they tried to wear the department down by calling a few times a week to complain. The mother's phone calls became a running joke around the department.
Things finally came to an end when a work-study in the department answered one of her calls and told her "I know your son. He never studies and totally deserved that grade". She was so embarassed that she never called back again!
grades (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks for the rant (Score:3, Insightful)
As a philosophy major and a computer engineering major (yes, I'm strange), I can assure you that your rant isn't quite justified. Just because humanities courses don't have discrete answers to many problems does not mean make them any easier.
It varies from teacher to teacher, in any course, whether engineering or otherwise. I've had professors in philosophy classes who had no qualms giving out C's and D's on papers. I've had EE profs that curved grades so that the majority of the class easily broke 85%.
Sure, there are weed-out courses. Sure some classes are tough. However, I would agree that, on a general level, grade inflation is a problem. Maybe it's to make up for the complete lack in teaching skill that we students (who are paying big bucks for our education), are finally starting to complain about.
Self Esteem? (Score:5, Interesting)
My son is currently in fourth, going to fifth grade next year. (School change.. lower to middle) and he has "learned" that he doesnt really need to take in his homework, complete his assignments on time, etc, simply because the way this lower school runs, it is next to impossibe to fail. (well, except for the inanely subjective questions they keep asking in written assignments.. like "Why do you think the hippo in the picture is sad" and they answer they want is "because he is brown, not gray" and the answer you give is "because his land is being taken by slash and burn agriculture" and it gets marked wrong.. "). But his teachers let him finish (or totally re-do) his work in class. THey even go so far as to totally not-count homework in the total grade.
But next year, he will be in a school with no such qualms about failing people. They have pretty much taught him to slack because "someone else" will do it. (Either in his in-class study group, or his parents, after I or my ex-wife get the threatening letter sent home by the school, aimed at us, not him).
He's screwed next year, right? Wrong. In this school, kids cant be in "special" (remedial, rather than short-bus special) education for just not studying.. they have to be in the class with all the other kids. Now, my son is not stupid.. he just hates doing homework. But he is going to be stuck in a class with a bunch of kids equally intelligent, but who do their work and shouldnt be held back due to people like my kid.
This extrapolates itself to the real world.. the guy at work who doesnt do his work, because he knows someone will pick up the slack. The kid in college who is there on a grant or scholarship, but sleeps through classes and passes anyway.. etc.
Grade inflation exists because no-one is willing to tell Johnny to get off his ass and actually WORK because he is dragging everyone else down with him. And when you have parents shelling out 100 grand for an education, they certainly dont want to hear that Johnny doesnt want to do his work either.. its pervasive, and it sucks, but until schools get straightened out so that the kids actual education is the important part, rather than placement test scores, SAT percentages per school, or sports teams.. its going to continue.
Maeryk
Whoa hold on a Minute! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll grant you the school should also be giving him and automatic F if the homework isn't done when its supposed to be.
In his own defense if he does well in the class without doing homework, maybe he doesn't need too...but then again perhaps he isn't challenged and belongs in a higher level class...I've always firmly believed any student that gets C's all the time might be because they don't care and are bored, make things harder, but by the same token stright A's mean the same thing...schools should aim for C's, NOT A's. C's mean the Kid is in the proper difficulty environment, if you can make it harder and they still get C's then you have done the right thing. A's mean its too damn easy...
Re:Self Esteem? (Score:5, Funny)
Chalmers: [dryly] Hello, Seymour.
Skinner: So, what's the word down at One School Board Plaza?
Chalmers: We're dropping the geography requirement. The children weren't testing well. It's proving to be an embarrassment.
Skinner: Very good. Back to the three R's.
Chalmers: Two R's, come October.
I'm sure I'll get hate mail for this one... (Score:3, Informative)
The thing that amazes me is that in almost every class I had that was a science field, at some point in time we had to explain the scientific method and how to write a research paper. How do you get into college and pass ANYTHING if you don't know those concepts?
old news (Score:3, Informative)
40% of students too much in university (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes the capacity to teach university skills is disappearing fast and it has indeed tremendous effects.
Higher Cost (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to use other means to get them to learn: I have to cajole, to gently persuade.
How sad that professors have to con kids into doing work. If you don't want to do it, fine- just don't expect to get rewarded.
My observations (Score:4, Informative)
1) Hard science courses are definitely more strictly graded than more subjective courses, such as English, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology (insert next humanity here). This is mostly due to the fact that if you take an objective test in Math, Physics, or Mechanical Engineering you have little room for subjective interpretation. If you got it right, it's right, if not, it's wrong. In English, though, teachers can be afraid of giving out a C, and can consequently say "While that paper is probably C work, I can justifiably give a B with no one noticing"
2) Schools that grade on the A,B,C,D,F scale seem more prone to grade inflation than the system that the University of Washington and a few other schools have. In our system, your grade is exactly mirrored based on a numerical system of distribution. For example, if I got a low A in my Chemisty course, I will get a 3.5 on my transcript, not an A. This prevents everything from being categorized to four or five letter grades. This reflects everything inbetween. There are many times that I wish I had the letter grading system, because my low A's or B's would not be a 2.6 and 3.5, but instead an B and a A, which would be equivalent to a 3.0 and a 4.0 respectively.
Anyhow, those are my two bits.
my experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps it is because people's lives hang in the balance when they interact with the products and structures designed by science/engineering students.
Well, I don't know about that. It's always dangerous to make comparisons between graded work at university and actual work in the real world ... after all, when you design a bridge, they give you more than three hours to do it, and they let you talk to other engineers, unlike in an exam.
It's a lot easier to justify a D in engineering than it is to justify it in the humanities, because in engineering we can always fall back on the fact that the answer is wrong -- not much room for interpretation. The flip side of this is that it's a lot easier to get 100% on an engineering exam than on a history paper. I've found that the mark spread in my engineering courses is quite broad, with people scoring anywhere in the range from below 50% all the way up to the keeners at 100%. Humanities marks may be inflated, but they all seem to fall in a narrow range from C+ to A-.
Furthermore, since engineering is a professional degree program (meaning it's usually the student's final degree, and not a springboard to other programs, like law or medicine), there is less temptation for students to whine for marks, although it still happens to some extent.
As a teaching assistant I have had to mark my share of brutal engineering exams (which, incidentally, are no more fun to mark than they are to write). The philosophy seems to be that an easy exam results in a class where most people score very well, since the correct answers can be easily obtained, which doesn't give a good indication of knowledge. A hard exam will sort out the good students from the bad students, and if too many fail it can always be belled up later. Sort of a "kill-em-all" attitude.
My experience as an instructor (Score:3, Informative)
Recent undergrad course I taught at Duke had this breakdown:
A: 11%
B: 57%
C: 20%
D: 11%
I do not think, but haven't checked, that my previous section of this course was much different. This is a normal course, about middle of a student's career at Duke.
The real stumbling block for most students is a so-called "C-wall" course. If you don't get a C or better, you can't move forward in your curriculum, so a C is effectively an F in that course. It seems to me that the basic tension is between a standard like that and a grading system that is consistent across all courses and curricula.
The really surprising thing to me was a grad course I recently taught. The undergrad students were amazing compared to some of the graduate students. The undergrads are clearly some of the best students I've ever seen while the grad students are potentially from other schools for which the environment wasn't nearly so exacting. If all I ever saw was those kids, the ones that had plowed through Duke's undergrad curriculum and were taking grad courses until they graduated, I'd probably be accused of grade inflation too. (Many of them did A-grade work.)
GPA ranges (Score:3, Informative)
Also, the school offered a database of each professor and course that listed corresponding grades. So a student could see which professors gave higher grades before they took a class. You could also see the average GPA of students who took the class in previous semesters.
I think the problem of grade inflation might be worse at ivy league/private schools not large state colleges.
It even happens in some IT Majors (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently taught two semesters at my local college and you would have thought that I suggested bayonetting baby girls the way the students bitched when I promised I would fail anyone who did not submit a final project.
I was later taken aside by the departmental chair and told that my role was to help the students succeed, and his vision was of a department where every student got at least a B in every class, because recruiters don't want to come to a school with a 2.5 average GPA.
I tried to explain to him that programming is not basket weaving, that not everyone could get it, and that I didn't know if I could respect any IT/IS program that wasn't flunking at least a certain percentage of their students in some of the core classes. (I mean really, even if everyone there is really bright, then you should raise the bar so that you can GASP! _challenge_ the students.) Needless to say, although I received the highest teacher evaluation of any in the department that year, I no longer teach there.
there will be 2 types of replies (Score:3, Funny)
then there are people who think this is natural evolution that is needed for the students to be successful in the market place. We'll label those the "I just started college, and please God, let them inflate my grade" group.
Dispelling the common myth... (Score:3, Insightful)
The "hard" sciences are hard only in the fact that they are deterministic. The same math problem will always have the same solution. Proofs can vary, true, but there is generally a "best" proof (whichever is the most parsimonious). Computers are deterministic as well.
In social sciences, well, things aren't so certain. And in liberal arts in general things are even more up in the air: interpretations of music and art vary dramatically, etc. etc. etc...
So which is more difficult?
The correct answer is *neither*. Some people may find one easier then the other: judging by the general slant of this site, I'd say most people who end up reading this comment are individually more talented with the "hard" sciences. There are people who are better at the other sciences as well.
Sure, specific schools may suffer from grade inflation more in one department than another, and yes engineers have a helluva course load, but engineering is by no means inherently more difficult then studying music or psychology. It's just different.
never happened at these schools... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most humanities programs are a waste of time. My advice is that if you want to be an astute student of human nature, and indeed a wiser man, you should make every effort to pursue what the greatest minds have written. Learn from Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Pascal, Darwin, Newton, Einstein, and Watson 'n Crick etc. yourself or better yet, with others who similarly share your dedication to taking the liberal arts seriously.
A prospective from Duke (Score:3, Interesting)
Barring the fact that there have been a slew of articles both at duke and about it published in various newspapers, its still easy to see why any such claim is wrong. In this day and age it is getting harder and harder to get into the "good" colleges. Duke is ranked as the number 4 national university in the country. So, the people applying and gettiing into Duke are very bright, very qualified, motivated students. These students go into classes and EARN high grades. They are getting a B+ at Duke when they could easily goto a top teir national public university and earn an A.
The people who would be earning the lesser grades aren't even attending Duke anymore. The travesty is that some people who work hard, do great work and have earned a high grade are sometimes forced to fail a class because their teacher has been accused of grade inflation and must now enact some arbitrary grading system.
I will not deny that some professors inflate their grades and some departments inflate their grades. Other professors deflate grades, make arbitrary curves, or assign nonsensical course material to get a curve more to their liking.
Here at Duke, I am an Econ/Physics double major, working my ass off. Some jaded professor not even working at Duke currently writes an article for the washington post and we're all supposed to take note? He doesn't teach at Duke, doesnt know whats going on there. We have more important issues, like rising tuition, an administration out to destroy social life on campus, and a certain department having a terrorist come and speak on campus. We don't need to worry about the fact that really smart people are working hard and getting good grades.
Re:A prospective from Duke (Score:5, Insightful)
here it is, folks: these private-school elitist types think they're smarter than us lowlifes that only went to state schools.
i'd be offended by this comment if i hadn't met so many morons that had paid ten times as much as i did for my degree, and yet hadn't really gotten anything for the expense except for membership into a bunch of secret handshake clubs. you're not any smarter, and you might have been struggling for that same B+ no matter where you took intro to calculus.
finally, this was just confusing:
and then later:
well, which is it?
Re:A prospective from Duke (Score:4, Informative)
I am a senior at Duke...double major Chemistry and Math, what most people would say are not the easiest majors in the world. I guarantee that the author of the Wash Post article is correct...there is grade inflation at Duke.
In many of my classes (yes, sorry to say predominantely humanities) grades have been absurd. It takes an EFFORT to get a grade lower than a B in the vast majority of classes at Duke. This holds even in the hard sciences. To say that first year calculus is the most failed course on campus may be true...but the failure rate is still exceedingly small...i would estimate below 2%.
The people I do know that have done poorly in classes (Cs, Ds, Fs) openly admit they never went to or did any work for the class. I know people who have intentionally missed finals and still gotten Bs!!!!
After my four years here, I have never once felt like a teacher is grading unfairly to counteract grade inflation, in the humanities or otherwise. I am not saying Duke is a joke; it requires a significant amount of work to get an A in many classes. However, it is almost impossible to do worse than a B-.
As an interesting sidenote, Professor Rojstaczer, while at Duke, was a professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment. It is well known on campus that the Nicholas School is very easy (not to the level of sociology, but close).
Grade inflation in engineering (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife teaches biology at a local community college, and she said that many of her students wouldn't put up with the system I had to have in college. The problem is, for many people today getting anything less than A is unsatisfactory because high grades are so important (rather than actually mastering the material).
There are "A" students who cram before tests, get old tests and memorize them, and hound the professor for higher grades, and there are "A" students that know the material so well, they could actually teach the class. In a perfect world, the former would get a B or C, and the latter would get the A.
Well, I'm in the 'humanities'. (Score:5, Informative)
1. We're allowed to drop classes up until almost mid-semester. Guess what? A lot of people will stay in, fail the first two tests, then drop. They don't get a failing grade because they aren't there, in the end, to *get* an overall grade.
2. I see plenty of people getting C's. Maybe not necessarily plenty with D's and F's--see the above, most of the ones who can't do it end up dropping--but C's are common, at least from where I'm standing.
3. Our instructors, anyway, always set the grading scale in the syllabus. It's usually pretty normal. Sometimes a little skewed to give people a little more room to pass with a C, but some of them require a full 95% or better to get a full A. If people do 'too well', it's the material that's the problem, not the grading itself.
4. People who are C or lesser students do not necessarily stay in college, period, much less in one class. They also generally are not going to Duke. (We're excepting sports players, here, as a general thing. I won't even go into that.) You see a lot of them in the low-level classes, but if you're looking at an Honors English Composition class like I had last semester, no, it's *not* going to be a proper curve by a long shot. The people who are there are there because they're good.
It's a matter of money. When you're paying for school, no, you're *not* going to be happy to get a D or an F. The solution among my classmates is to either not *take* the courses they don't think they can manage well in... or to drop so that, if they still have to pay, at least they aren't destroying their GPA over it, which can lead to getting kicked out of their program entirely.
At a place like Duke, does it even occur to this guy that he's not *getting* the students who really are complete academic failures? That he doesn't *see* the ones who are completely incapable of writing a comprehensible paper, the ones who can't find a standard deviation in statistics even when handed a calculator that does it for them?
I suspect if he saw some of the work *I've* seen from the classmates who later drop, he'd start understanding it more. Maybe they're lackluster in terms of attendance and participation, but I suspect *his* students are, overall, intelligent and competant.
As far as tech vs. everyone else? I don't know why things would be different. It may have more to do with job-market competition than anything else. If you start looking at humanities majors who're looking to go to the doctoral level and want to get into good grad schools, you start to see the same level of perfectionism, I bet.
insights from the inside (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh my aching head (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm afraid that the net effect of grade inflation will be to further stratify higher education -- leading to a situation in which one can no longer prove oneself and move up.
Thanks, Ben Marsh! (Score:5, Interesting)
Grading should be earned, not given out (Score:4, Interesting)
I've tried different approaches to grading. First there is the numerical scale where you say "94-100 is an A. 93.434 will be a B (or A- or whatever), PERIOD." Tough luck if you're on the border. I do not use this method of grading.
There is the Curve which I think which is being abused a lot with the grade inflation. With the Curve I create a histogram and draw lines in between the "peaks" if they exist at all. This is a very squishy form of grading. Usually I end up assigning students B's who have grades greater than, say, 78% with this method... kind of like 90/80/70/60 only shifted over a bit to the left. That's the way it typically pans out in my classes.
I was extremely pleased with my Intro Meteorology students last semester. It was a class full of students who participated in class and were interested. They showd up for class almost every lecture - even at the end of the semester when classes usually dwindle in size, I was getting 90% attendance. Nobody scored below a B- in that class and that was deserved . I was proud to give those grades out.
I think to be fair, you have to take the attitude that grades are earned, not given out. When a teacher uses this attitude I think fairer grading occurs. And unless you use the strict numerical scale, grading is subjective (and of course partial credit ends up making this method subjective).
Leigh Orf
Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Asheville, NC
soon to be teaching at Central Michigan Univeristy
Sometimes there are good reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
In my undergraduate institution (Valparaiso University), there were a good number of C's and lower given out, especially in the lower level science classes. Yes, there were often more A's and B's given out, but those were because the distribution tended to be skewed to a majority doing well. (Bimodal distributions were common, so the top group got A's and B's while the other got lower grades.) And yes, in some of the higher level classes, not a single C or lower was given out, even in math classes.
Grading systems SHOULD be subjective in nature. It's an argument of a professor trying to say how good a student is in that particular subject.
I consider all the grades I've gotten to be fair. I've considered the grades that friends of mine have gotten in the same class to be fair. Yes, even in the classes without a single C, those were fair. In those cases, the class often worked together... we were all about the same in our understanding and comprehension of the subject matter. There were some that were a little better and some that were a little worse, but many times it was tough to say that one of us was truly better than the others. So, it only made sense that we all got about the same grades; I think the final distribution was 1 A-, 2 B+, 3 B, 1 B-.
One thing that people forget is that in many majors in many schools, the students tend to be similar in their aptitude. It's due to the admissions tendencies of the school and the interests of the students. By the time you get to the higher-level classes, the only students taking them are the ones who tend to be good at the subject anyway. Is it really fair to give an F to that one B- student who answered most of the questions in class with a good understanding of the material, just a little less than the rest of us, just because the "lowest" student should be given an F?
So, it only makes sense that sometimes (and frequently in higher-level classes) a classroom will be filled with students who all understand the material and show potential. A professor just can't toss out an F or D if people all seemingly understand the material and have obviously learned it. How did they fail?
Then, you get to graduate schools like the one I'm in (Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University). It is understood that a C is almost never given out in a class here. Why?
First, the graduate school has this policy that any graduate student must hold a 3.0 GPA at all times. Since our department pays for the students' tuitions, we represent an investment for them. So, unless there is a reason to give out a C (like an obviously sub-par student), it is foolish to give out those low grades since it ends up being a waste of money for the department. They've put money into each of us, so why should they disqualify us by holding the "average student = C" mantra over us? It makes no sense because of that silly graduate school 3.0 GPA policy.
That doesn't mean that C's aren't given out. But they're all about sending messages to the student... "Are you sure you should be doing this kind of work?" Since the department pays for the students to take classes (and our advisors pay us off their research grants to do research also), they expect us to pass those classes. B's are now the "pass" grade, while A's are the "good" grade. C's (and D's) are the "message" grades. It's just shifting everything up to make sure that any money spent on students isn't wasted.
This whole "story" smells of nothing but a reporter trying to make a story out of a subject that looks simple, but is SO much more complex than it looks. In other words, this reporter needs to do more research into the real reasons WHY grades seem inflated. Frequently, in a case-by-case basis, there are good reasons for every grade that is given out. People need to remember that the "average student = C" idea isn't bad, but that "average" is a subjective idea.
-Jellisky
As an 'interdisciplinarian' -- (Score:5, Interesting)
I had about 30 credits of CS when I graduated, and all of it was with the same professor (fortunately for me). So I learned early on what he looked for, and it seemed quite fair. A lot of people have been saying 'in Engineering/math/physics it's RIGHT or WRONG and there is NO ROOM FOR ARGUMENT beyond a regular curve/standard deviation.' In a perfect class, this is true. Another CS professor who taught the same class that mine did (CS 100, Java Until You Can't Java Anymore) had a lot of in-class tests where you had to write out your java code by hand. My professor had those as well (required by the dept.) but he weighted them much less, and weighted our homework and projects much more, because he could tell from those things how much effort you were putting in and what you were getting out. So you could take these two identical courses -- same syllabus, books, assignments -- and perform precisely the same way, and get a higher grade in my class than you would have with the other professor's. Is this grade inflation? I don't think so. It's simply a different means of measuring a student's success.
In all of my English courses, it came down to (surprise) paper writing. Some English courses like to take a history class approach and just see how many facts you memorized from each book/play/scroll you read that semester. I personally don't do well with the regurgitation method and lucked out because none of the courses I took had that, although several others did. It has already been pointed out by other posters that grading an English paper is subjective, but it's certainly not just opinion; it is often as easy to tell when someone has cobbled together an unsupported, juvenile argument as it is to tell when they've declared that 2+2=5. But like the CS grader, it's the weight that counts. I've had professors who would fail your paper if it had certain 'grade school' grammar and mechanical errors because he didn't feel that was appropriate for an ivy league institution. Others dismiss those unless they are really debilitating and give 99% of the weight to your arguments. Still others don't care about your arguments unless your conclusion is well done. Consequently, you will find English majors hanging out before grades are released who have absolutely no idea what they're going to get, while the Engineers are already either partying or packing their bags.
Lastly, my acting courses are the best example of a 'huh?' approach. Talent-based classes such as acting (and singing and playing instruments, to a lesser degree) simply do not fit into the academic model of 72% versus 86%, et cetera. For my first three years, the theatre department had what I thought was a good method for evaluating your performance -- to progress into the next course, you had to audition, regardless of the grade you got. So your actual grade for the class was dependent on things like whether or not you studied the material (a lot of reading, and it was easy to tell who could talk about the technique and who couldn't), whether or not you'd spent appropriate time rehearsing outside of class, and your general preparedness for your final scenes. It's a fine line, though, but it's not terribly difficult to tell the difference between an actor who is completely unprepared and hasn't put in any work and an actor who simply may not be an excellet performer. The department's view was that you can't help how talented you are, but you can help how much you improve.
During my last year, though, the theatre department came under fire for handing out a lot of As, because their system was working. People who didn't cut it or didn't care enough didn't make the audition into the high level workshops and classes. So in those higher level courses, you had small classes of people who really cared and were going to put in the work, so you had a lot of As. And having ninety-five percent of your class get an A apparently sets of alarms there, because my school was sensitive to the grade inflation that Harvard was doing (something like 80% of their graduates graduated with honors, as opposed to 10-20% of ours).
I don't agree with professors who are afraid to give out Cs because it's 'not expected' any more than I agree with professors who fail their entire class. That's a sure sign of very poor course design and I am always glad when those professors go. I remember that I got a D on an English paper once, though, and it was one hell of a wake up call. I wouldn't want to have the writing technique that went into that reinforced with any mark of approval...
Back to the Future (Score:4, Interesting)
So is life after the fall of objective grades a horror? The writer of this op-ed bit says that he is not sure he or his peers are up to the task of educating without tests and grades. I wonder what that really means? Does it mean that he is not ready to talk to students in small groups and engage them intellectually? That he is not ready to challenge each mind individually in a setting of peers? That he is not able to evaluate a student's progress just by knowing them as a person and their work as a whole?
The factory method of teaching (which is what he is lamenting as it passes) had serious flaws. Students never really did buy the notion that periodic test scores and grades meant squat (and rampant cheating didn't help.) The factory method might have had its place in recent centuries when we needed so very many "learned" workers to support our exploding industrial revolution. But does that still hold? Does any of this matter now?
If grades are dead then let them be buried. If students need a motivation to achieve, let the marketplace provide it as once it did, when a person of letters stood out on their talents and not their papers. The future belongs to the smart ones, and we can all tell who they are just by talking to them. And the rest? Back to the fields.
So how does a good student distinguish himself? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the plus side, it wasn't easy to go from a B to an A, but on the other side, it wasn't too hard to get a B. And many poor students were getting A's anyhow, somehow.
Now that I've been out in the industry for 6 years, and my work history can speak for me, it doesn't bother me so much, but when I first got out of college, I was very frustrated that an employer couldn't distinguish my A's from someone else's.
Inflating grades is bad for students and employers. It's bad for the students who ARE smart and willing to work, and it's bad for employers, because they can't use grades as a way to evaluate people they interview.
Building Stuff That Matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Riiiiiight. So all those polsci and sociology and psychology and health policy people who go on to devise the social and political systems that deploy the resources in the institutions that care for you when you're sick, or regulate toxins in your environment, or create a legal and punishment system, or induce or alleviate recessions and monetary policy (and so on) are just pissing in the wind? I mean, what's the construction and regulation of the byzantine complexity of social economies compared with building a bridge or a new Linux kernel?
Not to offend anyone (Score:4, Insightful)
An engineer will tell you what the answer is, how accurate it is, and what assumptions were made in getting that answer. In the end, something gets built, and either works or not, entirely based on how closely the engineer understands the problem, and how effective he is at reaching a solution. For the problems that you work on in college, there is very little wiggle room on the correct answers.
In few other professions will someone without many years of proven experience be given the kind of responsibilities that many engineers have to deal with. They would rather flunk you out than let you go forward without the skills you need, and the ability to apply those skills.
Many people leave engineering in the first few years of their careers, and decide to follow another career path. This happens because they can't deal with the pressures of trying to solve the problem, within budget, on time, and working properly.
Why engineering grades differ (Score:4, Interesting)
When a student is asked to solve a differential equation or calculate the force being applied to an object, the student cannot fudge their way through the answer. They are either right or wrong. And a student who is wrong but told they are right will build bridges that fall down or airplanes that don't fly.
And the objectivity goes both ways. If a grader arbitrarily gives a student an A because, say, the student is particularly attractive and flirtatious (I'm an academic and yes, this happens all the time), an outside reviewer can evaluate that student's answers and determine whether the grader was acting with integrity when they awarded the grade.
In the social sciences, however, grades are much more subjective. The incentives are for the professor to award high grades and there is really no practical way for outside reviewers to challenge the grading policy with regards to, say, English papers.
And when ill-equiped liberal arts students go out into the world, they typically become business types with equally amorphous and subjective performance measures. Rarely can someone objectively say that the company would have earned $1M more in profit because some suit didn't understand the Willa Cather's oblique phallic references.
I have two BAs: One in a liberal arts field and one in a hard science. So I can say from experience that the amount of effort and intelligence required to successfully complete a liberal arts degree is far below that required to complete a technical degree.
So although the liberal arts professors have little incentive to give bad grades and engineering students are probably bummed to compare their grades to their liberal arts brethren, when involved in a hiring process, I would give much more credit to an engineering student with As and Bs than a liberal arts graduate with straight As simply because the engineering grades are a credible signal of ability and determination.
Agreed (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope this isn't more widespread than I think it is, otherwise it devalues the hard work I put in. My lower grades will be seen as even more worthless against people who put in as much effort but got higher grades.
This guy should grow a spine and just give out some lower grades. I thought Duke was supposed to be a respectable school? This guy fears giving lower grades and making his school look bad, but he writes a public article like this? Why the conflict?
If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have gone to college. It seems more and more like a useless endeavor. I'm still unemployed. I don't feel I am qualified for much. I have a huge amount of debt that I have no way of paying back, nor any future prospects to help pay back. No one cares that I have a degree. It looks like retirement and regular benefits are non-existant in this industry. What a load of shit.
Re:Maybe at Duke. Not at Virginia Tech (Score:5, Interesting)
An example: After my frosh year, 145 students selected, and had the GPA needed, for Aerospace Engineering. The folks who couldn't hack engineering had already dropped into the school of business. Nonetheless, By then time the spring semester of my Junior year, we were down to 91 on the roster. We're not talking about folks not getting all As and Bs, most of these guys fell from a 3.0 (minimum) to below a 2.0 FOR MORE THAN A SEMESTER. I don't remember how many graduated, but I believe it was below 80. That's just harsh.
Of course, if you want to see real world grade inflation, just go look at eBay feedback. There's just no way that so many folks can have that many A++++++++'s and still be on any kind of curve.
Oh, yeah...Go Hokies!
Re:Engineering is real (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense. English majors are expected to understand the basics of rhetoric and how to present an argument well (a skill which is in short supply among many of the engineers with whom I have worked). Economics majors had better understand how to derive supply and demand curves. Physics majors need to understand why engineers can get away with chopping off all the terms in an expansion except the first. Nearly every academic discipline has a set of objective criteria that can be used to differentiate between those who have mastered the discipline and those who have not.
Personally, I do not really care about grade inflation. Undergraduates at the junior/senior level are more like junior graduate students. They are there because they like what they are studying and thus ought to be getting As and Bs as a matter of course. If they are not, a kindly prof should pull them aside and suggest they look for something else to do.
Re:make the standards for Humanities and libarts (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading the frelling article. The author is a Geologist, not a liberal arts prof. And he's complaining about grade inflation in HIS field.
Oh, I forgot. Reading comprehension is a libarts skill.