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."

Comments

It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_

[syntap]

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.

Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_

[Kwil]

An aside to this is that it seems to be entirely possible to get 100% on an engineering exam.

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.

Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_

[stand]

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_

[kalidasa]

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 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.")

Gotta hate comments liek this, but...

[aziraphale]

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.

Um, no.

[Gareman]

Although essays and criticism may be subjective in the liberal arts, the "correct" subjective interpretation is that of the professor, not the student. Most traditional liberal arts professors could care less what a student thinks, as long as they use the same methods of criticism taught by the professor. This tends to lead to lots of regurgitation in liberal arts courses, spewing back what the professor says is relevant about a subject.

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:F in Engineering curves to an A

[chialea]

> 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

Whoa hold on a Minute!

[haplo21112]

...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...

insights from the inside

[freddyfred89]

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.

The guy is forgetting one important thing

[User 956]

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.

Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing

[calethix]

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.
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

[Lemmy Caution]

That is based on the faulty reasoning that all grades are on a curve, and are inherently competitive. I think it's more valid to use grades to indicate mastery of the material, not your relative position versus other classmates.

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

[zCyl]

It might be more illuminating if university transcripts for courses also showed a distribution curve and where the student sits on it.

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

[jonny-mt]

Hear, hear. I go to University of Chicago, one of the hardest-grading institutions around (when you apply to grad schools, they multiply your GPA by a coefficient to make up for grading differences. Chicago and Cornell are the only institutions where that coefficient is greater than 1), so I've felt the bite of bad grades along with the triumph of good grades.

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:Engineering Gets Hit Too

[Hays]

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.

Re:A prospective from Duke

[waxmop]

here it is, folks: these private-school elitist types think they're smarter than us lowlifes that only went to state schools.

They are getting a B+ at Duke when they could easily goto a top teir national public university and earn an A.

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:

I am currently a freshman at Duke and can attest to the fact that there is not grade inflation of any type.

and then later:

I will not deny that some professors inflate their grades and some departments inflate their grades.

well, which is it?

Re:You're missing the point...

[rgmoore]

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.

Re:Theres a way to get an A and a way to get a C

[kscguru]

I admit that what you describe is exactly what I see around me. People who take the time to do all their work usually get A's, people who don't take the time usually drop off from there.

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 :).