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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."
Arts majors are more subjective, while engineering degrees are objective.
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.
Can we moderate the post as 'Flamebait'?
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.
If you are judging people's intelligence solely on how comfortable they are with technology, it is pretty clear to me that it is not the Liberal Arts majors who aren't "smart".
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.
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.
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.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
How many geeks are borderline illiterate? BSEE, BSCS, MSCS, MSEE, MCSE, H1B-just-off-the-boat, it seems to make little difference.
I'm sure the liberal arts majors have just as many derrogatory comments about the science/engineering majors.
So long as administrators judge the quality of faculty teaching only on the basis of student surveys, faculty will have no choice to put inflate grades.
This is a much larger problem in high schools than in college, for two reasons:
1. Many high schools have already gone to a 5.0 system, giving extra credit to students in Honors or AP classes (that B in honors is worth as much as an A in a normal class)
2. Colleges actually care about high school grades and use GPA in their admission process... how many times applying for a job have you been actually asked what your GPA was? (Excepting academic positions, grad school and such)
Employers tend to just not care about the level of academic achievement, only its existence (as proof that you could follow through enough to get the diploma).
> I regularly got a 40% which turned out to be the highest grade in the class and received an A after the curve.
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
I concur wholeheartedly with this assesment. Gotta love thermodynamics midterms where 11/50 gets you a B+
--Kevin
Tell that to the writers, journalists, lawyers, and movie directors who shape our culture and affect everyone on the planet.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I went to The University of Texas at Austin, and in the electrical engineering program there was little room for the grade inflation the author talks about. I think every single course was graded on a curve. To get an A, your grade had to be the class average plus the standard deviation. To get a B, your grade had to be the class average plus half the standard deviation. And so on. This made it a lot harder to grades to be inflated.
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.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
...you know how your kid is behaving, and you let him get away with it...your the problem not the school...its your job as a parent to make sure your kid has all his homework done everyday...not the school's...if you let your kid get away with that behavior your just setting him up for the big fall later on...good study habits need to start early.
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...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I'm a faculty member in the social sciences. The dirty secret behind grade inflation is that it is a direct result of the emphasis placed on student evaluations of teaching by a department. One of the easiest ways to get high evaluations is by loosening grading standards. In a department which places a significant weight on student evaluations, individual faculty members will often achieve high evaluations by passing out high grades. The reason for high evaluations is rarely investigated in such departments, those who receive strong student evaluations are simply praised as effective teachers. My experience suggests that natural sciences and engineering departments rarely place a high weight on student evaluations (they're far more interested in research grant success of individual faculty, i. e. outside $$$$$). As a result, faculty in such disciplines don't "buy" high student evals with high grades. They don't need to. I know this sounds a bit cynical, but I think this is how this stuff works.
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.
Well sure, "At Duke, Pomona, Harvard and elsewhere, D's and F's combined now represent about 2 percent of all grades given.", but everyone seems to forget that in College, if you get those grades a few times, they kick you out.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Well, maybe at your school, but not at Georgia Tech. It really pains me to read about students at other schools getting this treatment, because it's ridiculously easy to fail out here. Heck about half my friends have.
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.
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?
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
How many geeks are borderline illiterate? BSEE, BSCS, MSCS, MSEE, MCSE, H1B-just-off-the-boat, it seems to make little difference.
Maybe I'm missing the joke, but that last bit is Xenophoic and rude. H1B's have skills (or they wouldn't be here). Not knowing English that well doesn't make one illiterate - it makes them non-speakers of English. My Spanish sucks, but it would be a mistake to call me illiterate.
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.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The purpose of grades is to provide feedback to students on their level of performance. Instead, it has become coopted for purposes such as starting salaries. Remove the inappropriate economic component, and grade inflation won't be a problem. Otherwise, we should not be surprised that grades are subject to market pressures.
If Berkeley didn't get so pissed when profs flunk then entire class, I know a few who would be happy to.
As Berkeley well should. If a handful of students can't master the material well enough to get a passing grade, that's the students' fault. They're either not making an effort, or don't belong in the class to begin with.
But if EVERY student in a class receives a failing grade... it's the instructors' fault. Berkeley (and every school, really) pays them to teach. If they're not capable of teaching effectively, they need to be held accountable for their failures.
I teach Computer Science at one of the top US colleges. Here's my breakdown of student grades over the past year in a C++ course:
A - 30
B - 67
C - 109
D - 41
F - 21
My grading style is considered strict compared to most other professors here. I am a younger (33) than most of my colleagues.
I get a lot of complaints from students who don't understand the value of working to get a good grade. Most people just view this as a stepping stone to making big corporate bucks and don't want any stray marks on their record. I'd estimate that almost half the students I have are not really that interested in the Computer Science field for any reason other than to make money and have a comfortable living - which is the absolute wrong reason.
The bottom line is that I refuse to reward people who don't put in the effort because ultimately it is not helping them with their future. My hats off to those students who do try hard and who do push themselves to excel in their field of study - I for one will not mock or belittle your efforts.
Let's face it, the majority of the reporters and editors out there started out with an education in an arts field. Given that people write about what they know it should be no surprise this kinda slant happens. The fact is some educational pursuits require more of a student than others. I have two degrees. A B.S. and a B.A. and I can state for certain that it was far simpler to obtain the B.A. The general difference, in engineering courses there are definate right and a wrong answers. In english and writing courses there exists only a measure of how well you express yourself.
We are a product of our experiences and so a journalist is likely to find grade inflation where a scientist may not.
-2 cents
Compare the number of those peeps that actually are successful to the number of college grads with those degrees. If you had majored in one of those degrees, I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't comprehend what the ratio means.
There are far more engineering majors that have a direct impact on everyday life, you just don't see them. Every screw in your office chair, every bolt in your automobile, every mold that shaped your garbage can was designed by some engineer.
If you asked me, though, that's how I'd like it to be. I don't want liberal arts people having such a direct impact on my everyday life. I don't want to worry about my car being able to start every day. I know that I would if the engineering degrees were as simple and subjective as the liberal arts degrees. We all prefer to have the stupids right out in the open, where we can make sure that they aren't affecting our lives too much, yet letting them feel important.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
When I was in college, I found myself in classes with many other students that just did not understand the material well. Sure, plenty of them did--some naturally, some through hard study (a combination of both for me). But many of those students who were poor performers, either because they were lazy or their brains just weren't up to the task, were getting relatively high grades.
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.
We cannot afford to take this attitude in engineering. A C in a class tells the recruiter that the graduating engineer has the minimum amount of competency in the subject material to be functional as a practicing engineer. The effect of graduating an engineer with inflated grades and who can't perform after being hired by a company is that the school ends up looking bad. In todays tough, competitive environment, this may result in the company deciding to no longer recruit at that school.
...and a good engineer isn't always a good student.
I tried this one on a few hiring managers to up my entry level salary.
I graduated with a 2.3 out of CU-Boulder in ECE. Most of my friends had much better grades, and most of them are also unemployed. Some argued with profs to get better grades on tests but can't hide the fact they are slow, get frustrated and have a big mouth. [I almost got in a fight with a kid because I made fun of him for not understanding P=IIR = IV in circuits 3 (3000 level,)]
I have increased my earnings/wages because my managers found that I can do much more than my grades told them. If my grades were spectacular and I sucked at my job they would have noticed this too (unless I was a manager.) All grades do is get your foot in the door.
It is up to the student to learn and if they don't they will fall rather than fly.
First, kudos to your father and the VP for standing their ground -- at least, for as long as they could.
I'm long past middle school, but perhaps these parents should meet my parents. My folks are the type where I could bring home a 98% and their response would be "What happened to the other 2 percent? Stop reading storybooks and study more!"
If I so much as hinted that a teacher was unfair, I'd be smacked for it. "Stop blaming the teacher. Blame yourself. Study more! Work harder! You're going to go to a good university." (Not that I thought my teachers were marking unfairly. Some of them marked brutally hard, but they marked everyone hard.)
As far as my folks were concerned when it came to school marks, the only thing not good enough was me.
While I ultimately think that my parents' no-nonsense attitude was (in the end) good for me (or at least my work-ethic), whenever I hear stories like this about parents like this, I can't help but think "Must be nice."
I can spell. I just can't type.
Certainly, if you consider an absolute scale, I don't think that "skewed" grade distributions are statistical anomolies. Given 10 semesters (and hence 10 grade distributions), you should expect that some of them are going to be top heavy, and some are going to be bottom heavy.
It would be unfair to grade relative to the others in a particular class. Especially when you consider situations like the following. At MIT, most sophomores take 18.03 (Diff eq) in the fall semester. Those who take it in the spring tend to do so because they either failed it in the fall, or struggled with prereqs. There are also some very bright freshmen who take it in the spring. Thus, the ability distribution in the fall and spring classes could be quite different. Why should they be graded only relative to the others in the class that semester?
Unfortunately, grading on an absolute scale tends to lead to grade inflation.
Perhaps it is because people's lives hang in the balance when they interact with the products and structures designed by science/engineering students.
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?
Da Blog
In engineering, if you screw up, at the very least it costs someone a (normally) substantial amount of money to fix the problem, or to pay the lawyers. At the other end of the spectrum, lots of people die (the bridge collapses, the airplane blows up, the submarine sinks). I think that professors in engineering schools take that into account when they assign grades.
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.
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 :).
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
As a young professor, I wonder if grade inflation isn't correlated with the increased use of student course reviews. After all, if your job is on the line, giving higher grades is probably the easiest way to boost your reviews.
"But if you're going to college then you must be self-motivated..."
I was a TA for an undergraduate class for the last three semesters, and I am shocked and appalled at your comment. You may be self-motivated, but I VEHEMENTLY disagree that being in college means an individual is self-motivated. Far from it.
When I was a engineering grad student at Stanford, you needed a 3.2 to graduate.
Think about it. Everyone that graduates in that program is within a range of 0.8. Suddenly a 3.5 seems kinda low.
Just for the record. I'm smart, worked my butt off, and just barely cleared the minimum grade. And I can't remember most of it (despite working in my degree field). Our concept of "education" is rather broken.