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Grade Inflation in Higher Education
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."
since...
since...
this one
Liberal arts majors have the social skills to negotiate higher grades.
;-)
Engineers don't.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Whatever you do, be sure to take ANY class taught by "Stuart Rojstaczer"! You'll get an "A"!
because a real engineer like me gets A for engineering courses but B for humanities. ;)
I want to go to one of those schools. I'm tired of working for my Bs.
XNEW=10.0*SQRT(XOLD)
where XOLD is the OLD mark and XNEW the new mark. So if you originally got 0 or 100 you still got the same old mark but a losing 49 turned into a 70!
If the liberal arts majors are smart they'll keep their comments to themselves. Otherwise they can do their own damned math homework.
Skinner: Superintendent Chalmers, welcome!
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.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
"If all I ever saw was those kids,"
I'm guessing you're not an English professor. The was should be a were because you're trying to say that the condition has already been determined to be false. Using were, you make it clear that those students are not the only ones you've seen.
D+ for effort, and don't let me catch your parents trying to argue your way to an A.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
When I was in grad school at Columbia, I taught one of the undergrad Microeconomics courses for a few semesters. All of the students griped about the fact that I graded against a B average instead of the B+/A- average that was common in the economics department.
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!
I pulled a straight 0.0 for 3 semesters before they kicked me out.
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Obviously you haven't found the ones that have been hiding under my couch or you would realize that they are every bit as strong as, yet lighter than, concrete!
Also keep in mind that Civil Engineers build targets; Aerospace Engineers build ways to remove targets.
I doubt if the CE profs mentioned this little fact either.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Man, I don't understand why, out of all other aspects of life, some profs get the idea that 100% on something in the context of class should mean "utter perfection".
What if it worked everywhere like that?
"Hey, I was supposed to make $18/hr, but I got my paycheck and only got $15/hr."
"Well, only God is perfect and deserves 100%."
"Hey, waiter, you took my dinner away, but I didn't even finish it!"
"Well, only God deserves 100%."
And I don't care if the prof said that in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. I remember one prof I had who said she almost never gave 18/20 on our weekly essays, and maybe one 19 every few years, never a twenty. "That's just my quirk! I just can't give perfect grades." *wink* Yes yes, very entertaining, I'm glad you get to indulge in your eccetricities... just please don't do it to *me*.
If you want to have your own grade scale because you have this unique outlook on the world and you want to express your views through your grade scale then that's fine. But then, when you turn in the grades, please translate them to something that will mean something to the other people who will have to interpret them without your explanation.
Otherwise, please tell me why grades are officially recorded by the institutions and not only given out privately to each student to gauge his or her own progress.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Have you ever met a group of science/engineering majors? Penmenship and personal hygene sure as hell couldn't hurt.
In lieu of recent reports of grade inflation, I propose the following new grading primer:
E - Eager!
N - Nice!
R - Reasonable!
O - On Time!
N - Not Bad!
Along with goading students into a psychologically comforted state, this almost instinctively refutes all attempts for inflated grading.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams