Posted on 12/03/2023 7:55:35 PM PST by SeekAndFind
We recently discussed the runaway grade inflation at Harvard where roughly 80 percent of grades were As. Now the Yale Daily News is reporting the same percentage of As. Indeed, the percentage is virtually identical. Harvard is handing out 79 percent agrees where Yale is apparently more rigorous at 78.9.The report is apparently an embarrassment to the university since the dean of Yale College said that professors are not adhering to guidelines for grading.Yet, this could hardly be a surprise to the dean since these grades are reported and issued by the records office.
Indeed, this average is reportedly down from the prior year where 81.97 percent of students were given As. So not getting an A at Yale meant that you were in the bottom 20 percent of the class.
That means that for virtually all of the students at Yale there was a three-grade system that runs from A+, A, and A-.
The percentage was higher in the African American Studies department at 82.21 percent. However, it was the Gender Students department that showed that 92.6 percent of grades were in the A range. So only 7 % of students did not receive an A in gender studies.
For employers and other universities, it renders the grades from Yale meaningless in judging the capabilities and record of students.
They are not apparently alone.
At Spellman College, economics professor Kendrick Morales was fired after objecting to the school raising his grades without his consent, even after massively increasing the grades.
Morales worked for two years at Spellman and taught two upper-level courses. In one class, he added a 28-point grade bump for one test at the request of his department chair.
When students overall bombed the final, Morales “pre-emptively” raised them 36 points so that a student receiving a 57 would receive an A. Yet, even with that increase, 44 percent of that class would still fail. Indeed, they had failed, but Morales says that Undergraduate Studies Dean Desiree Pedescleaux bumped up the students’ grades again without his approval.
He was later fired.
The allegations not only raise questions over the academic standards at Spellman, but the violation of academic freedom.
Grade inflation is only the latest sign of how school administrators have lost control of universities and colleges. It also reflects a growing expectation of students in terms of higher GPAs.
It is easy to say that this is the byproduct of the “trophy generation,” but this is not their fault. Years ago, I had an interesting conversation with one of my classes over this negative image and one student said that they never wanted participation trophies. She noted it was my generation that wanted them to have them, not the kids. Another student said that she would routinely throw away trophies as meaningless and insulting.
The same could well prove true for grades that they will become worthless and discarded if this trend continues. That will undermine a critical role of universities in evaluating the performance of students. That role not only helps future employers. It is even more important in offering students a true appraisal of their work. Often students will pursue degrees for the wrong reasons and not consider other fields that may be better suited to their talents and interests. If you are getting nothing but As in your economics or gender studies course, there is little reason to consider alternatives.
When John F. Kennedy was given an honorary degree at Yale, he quipped “it might be said now that I have the best of both worlds. A Harvard education and a Yale degree.” It turns out that both now come with the same 80 percent likelihood of receiving an A. The question is not the degree but the education at either school with such grade inflation.
Does this mean that a degree from Yale and Harvard is now meaningless as an indication of actual knowledge gained?
Hate to say it, but the degree from Yale or Harvard was never about knowledge gained.
Ivy’s are hard to get in and easy to get out.
Baby Deep State Wobegon.
RE: Does this mean that a degree from Yale and Harvard is now meaningless as an indication of actual knowledge gained?
I already know their explanation and it will be this — It’s because 80% of the students they have accepted are the best and the brightest.
No. The key role of elite colleges is identifying and branding the top bootlicking with sufficient brainpower and stick-to-it talent in each new class of college students.
Employers are looking for that more than the nonsense that most colleges teach being sufficiently poured into students’ heads.
When did Connecticut rename Lake Whitney Lake Woebegon?
Pretty tough and demanding going to Yale. Lots of free “extra credit” for being a protestor on call azho though.
Anyone who knows anything about “Ivy League” schools knows you do not get in unless (a) you are a member of a “protected class,” (b) Mommy and Daddy have lots — and give lots — of money, or (c) you are a “legacy.” In all three cases, all you have to do to get an “A” is show up. And a lot of these brats cannot even do that...
Federal funding, student loans, - all about the $
The Ivy League wanted to increase diversity, so they let in a bunch of minorities who were not qualified to be there. Of course, they would be forced to inflate grades! Otherwise, they would have all failed!
Everybody is special....
It would be good for a random sample of Harvard and Yale students to take standardized tests on the way out, along with others at a variety of other colleges. This way we could see the comparison.
Standardized tests for admission to Law School and graduate school aren’t random as they compare those seeking the next level among the graduates of bachelors programs. But, these scores are readily available and they are administered to motivated test-takers.
The schools with the highest average LSAT scores for their students are:
Harvard–173
Yale–173
Columbia–171
Stanford–171
UChicago–170
Duke–169
NYU–169
UPenn–169
Virginia–169
Northwestern–168
WashUStL–168
These are very impressive scores. Near perfect at the top. Harvard and Yale students seeking law school do much better than students at “average” schools seeking law school.
The same schools are well-represented among the top scorers on the GRE (used for PhD programs in the arts & sciences, and also for med schools), except ... some engineering schools like MIT are included.
BOTTOM LINE: whatever these top schools are doing, they’re doing well. I will now refer to the recent Supreme Court decision on reverse discrimination. The Court was o.k. with using race as one among a variety of considerations in admissions BUT NOT WITH race-based quotas.
We who seek to restore academic freedom and equal treatment under the law (the so-called conservative position), want these things for the elite schools because they are so good. If they weren’t as good as they are, we’d be indifferent.
For the kind of money it costs to go to Yale, you have a right to straight A’s. /sarc
As a contrast, I graduated in 1968 from the University of Minnesota Mechanical Engineering department which at the time was rated third in the US, behind only MIT and Stanford. I had 3.2 GPA. That means that I had more Bs than As. My diploma reads “With Honors”, which meant I was somewhere in the top 10 percent of the graduating class. The university gave me a gold shoulder tassel to wear at the graduation ceremony to signify this. I have no idea what Harvard or Yale were doing at the time, but I’ll bet it wasn’t a lot different. This demonstrates how bad grade inflation has been since then.
I BET this wouldn’t be happening if all the students were white males. I can almost guarantee this is a ‘social justice’ policy.
Even in the 90’s I saw university work/assignments completed by females graded as an ‘A’ when the work was CLEARLY not ‘A’ material. I know a ‘woman of color’ with a MASTERS in Electrical Engineering that seems to have no technical insight, now holding a Director level role only requiring customer relations.
It makes no sense, I believe we have an army of ‘boosted’ degrees out there.
The media made a big deal about GWB's GPA at Yale (how his transcript got leaked was never explained)--B's and C's--but that was before grade inflation. And Kerry's and Gore's GPAs were not much different from Bush's.
I think the University of Virginia law school is the one Sheila Jackson Lee (the Einstein of the House of Representatives) attended.
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