[Bon of Babble]

This is exactly why tests like the ACT and SAT are so important in the college admissions process - something lefties sought to get rid of - and colleges are slowly and quietly reinstating b/c they are an extremely valuable tool to assess a student’s actual readiness for college - level work.

Of course, lefties call any/all testing of skills/merit “racist.”

[Leaning Right]

> Princeton put a cap on the number of A’s that could be earned in each class. <

I’m a retired public high school teacher. And perhaps in the last 10 years of my career we were pressured to inflate grades. Oh, the stories I could tell you about that! Higher grades made the administrators look better. Actual student achievement was not a priority.

Nevertheless, I am bothered by what Princeton did there. An “A” means the student has mastered the material. In a good class, it’s quite possible that many students have achieved that goal. So why not many A’s?

The trick of course is defining “mastered the material”.

[Roadrunner383]

All students are now above average.

[econjack]

My university required you to take the GRE in your major field, even if you were not going to grad school. I was an econ major, so think of the US pool of econ majors as the size of a manhole cover. Of that pool, maybe a tea cup size number of students took the GRE in econ. Of that small pool, you had to score in the top 70% to graduate with a degree in your major. Otherwise, you got an "attendance" diploma. The year I took the exam, we had 23 majors and the worst score was the 90th percentile. 18 of us went on to grad school.

I think a similar program in other schools might help.

[Vision]

Solving the Fed/Powell/Yellen Caused Inflation Problem.

[nopardons]

BTTT

[Carry_Okie]

The real question re grade inflation is whether a grade is meant to indicate relative mastery of a topic or whether it is to indicate relative standing among the class.

I had a professor of linear algebra at a local JC who was an outstanding teacher (Jeff Mock, I remember you fondly). He taught seven classes and they were full. He graded every homework paper. If a student blew an exam, he offered "extra credit" assignments that allowed his students to raise their grade. His goal was that everybody EARNED an A. I promise you: upon completing those extra credit assignments one would understand the material well enough to have earned an A on that exam.

That was not grade inflation; it was student elevation, which ought to be the goal of every college and university. Thanks to Jeff Mock, and his like, I transferred successfully to Harvey Mudd College, a science and engineering school that was no joke.

To repeat: What is the goal here? It is a question about which the author seems to have offered no consideration.