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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."
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.
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.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
> 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
...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.
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
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.
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