Posted on 06/01/2012 8:10:58 PM PDT by chessplayer
Congratulations, young America, you’ve reached the threshold of academic perfection. Recent studies have shown that an “A” is now the MOST COMMON GRADE for college students in the United States. It’s nice to know that my generation is so well educated. Or perhaps not. Based upon a mountain of contradictory evidence and the environment I see all around me as an American college student, I hesitate to declare victory too soon. When you dig deeper the facts show that grade inflation is what really fuels our college students’ higher GPAs, and A today might be equivalent to a C forty years ago.
Despite the outward appearances of academic perfection, today’s students are not on an upward trajectory toward academic success. Last year, a USA Today report showed that college students make little academic progress in their first two years of college. In fact, 45 percent of students showed no significant gains, a figure which contradicts academia’s goal of educating students. College Students are more likely to focus on their social lives rather than their academic record. Professors caught up with their own research are less likely to pay attention to such habits. Additionally, students spend 50 percent less time studying now than they have in past decades.
That's because you've used them in an above-average way, by understanding them in an excellent way, in order to follow brilliant ideas without being sabotaged by below-average people.
I’d have to agree. I teach Core Humanities at the local community college. Mostly Sophomores who cannot write to save their lives. My courses are history intensive and writing intensive. I tell the students on Day 1 that while an “A” might be the most common grade on college campuses, unfortunately for them, they are in Professor Crapgame’s class and an “A” is the LEAST common grade I give out. I usually have at least as many if not more “F”s...
I’ve read enough of your posts to know that you have WAY anove average common sense, which is far from common. Or average.
Geez, I still have my slide-rule from the 60’s.
Um, grad...
How cruel! What chance for success will these poor kids have if you don’t give them good grades? /s
“I have heard of courses where the professor “Skewed to the Left”- This is where more students failed than got A’s, and more D’s than B’s.”
I was in one of those. To add insult to injury, the professor could not speak English, had illegible writing, and did not use a textbook.
“Discrete Mathematical Structures”. They used it to weed out first year graduate students. We called the professor “Hitler”, though he was Taiwanese. He clicked his heals and saluted at each QED.
You’d think it would be simpler to give a test to the candidates, so obvious louses would get filtered out (and the rest would know that their competency was being honored). I cannot grok a graduate not being able to use BOOK FORMULAS, and as for not being able to follow the evaluation logic of nested parentheses — even with calculators which can reproduce this with open and close paren keys — good grief.
As for remedials — when I entered engineering school I had the opposite situation. I was able to test out of English rhetoric altogether. I had mastered that in high school. And I did just fine in college papers. They did have me go through calculus again, no test-out being possible, but that was pretty much an easy coast as, once more, I had mastered a year’s worth of it in high school.
The policy for grading was pretty much bell curve, though the policy often was that if there were one or two stellar students well above the grouping they would not be counted in the curve, but just awarded the A. I was often one of those stellar students. It did ease relations with my classmates who didn’t feel so antagonistic towards the “curve raiser.” I didn’t really care a lot about there being no A+, the normal A being enough to open just about any door during that era.
I am a teacher. We are ranked on a 1-5 scale. So, 50 percent of my eval was 2.76, 35 percent was 2.0, and 15 percent was 4.0.While my response may have been perhaps a bit over the top, I call 'em like I see 'em:So what is my rank on 1-5 scale? Help! Very stumped!
You're a teacher and you can't do a simple weighted average??? I certainly hope that you're not a math teacher.And people wonder why the kids aren't learning much?Multiply each score times its weight and sum them:
(0.5 * 2.76) + (0.35 * 2.0) + (0.15 * 4.0) = 1.38 + 0.7 + 0.6 = 2.68
And, yes, that question was for real:
Someone was pulling your leg!
It makes a difference whether you always force a bell curve that way, or whether you have a fixed set of standards in which any student, in principle, could excel without hurting the others.
For real, my pulled leg. Look at the data; doesn’t that appear rather artificial and contrived?
Not sure that there is a test you could give to “filter” those out - because a degree in Engineering is to a great extent a demonstration that “I have learned to learn”.
For example, my High School was exceptionally poor at most technical classes. Our “Math” teachers were hired based upon their ability to coach sports. Often, the students would have to teach the teacher in subjects like Algebra - forget Calculus. Our bone-headed high school teachers couldn’t master basic Algebra, Geometry or Trig.
Naturally, I paid dearly for their incompetence; but they apparently were really good at coaching basketball - you know, the important stuff.
Me, I’m happy to learn - and I’m a quick study. Being able to grasp complex subjects quickly and move on has served me well. I do wish I understood the higher level maths better - but I put my head down, passed the course and haven’t used the course material in my 25 yrs as an engineer.
What matters is the aptitude, the attitude and the ability to break a complex problem down into a hierarchy of simple challenges. Everything else can be learned, as needed.
There are engineering certification tests (for example Professional Engineer) and so it’s not impossible; and anyhow being unable to use book formulas properly should be a sure disqualifier. It won’t eliminate all the dunces but at least the duller ones will not be able to ruin it for the rest.
I believe you, without reservation or condition.
I’m dumbfounded at what many “Educators” consider to be “competency”. I would fully expect an Art, English or Spanish teacher to have mastered this level of math, but I’m often accused of under-estimating High School level “Educators”.
Frankly, I have very little respect for them as a profession. And every bit of disdain has been earned.
I went back to school for some courses in a new area, and half the students were, er, “entitled”. They clearly were in way over their heads, but it was a city subsidized university. They had to be there, and they had to pass. I asked the professor how he handled the grading curve. He said that with a curve this bimodal, he simply separated the to ‘bells’, and super-imposed them. The grade for the average from the top bell was a B-, and the grade for the average from the low bell curve was a B-. He said that the, er, “entitled” students always dropped out anyway, so inflating their grades did no harm. And this way he didn’t get a knife in his ribs in the parking lot.
I lived that also--except for my engineering school, only one in four made it to graduation.
I made it, and then I found that my real education occurred after college.
I’m aware of the EIT, I took it and passed it the first time through without having to study. I worked full time while going to college (boy, that sucked more than I care to think about). My grades were “average”, I’m sure that they would have been much, much higher if I was afforded the time to study and do my homework. But, alas I’m just a poor farm boy from the middle of no-where.
We were required to take the EIT prior to graduation, so I grabbed my CRC book, and went in prepared to bomb it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I passed it with an overall score of 84%. I think my Professors were more shocked than I was.
I thought you were referring to a battery of tests for the Freshman/Sophmore years of engineering; to assertain competency.
That's certainly possible - I misread the name as being one that someone claiming to be a teacher has been posting under for several months. This was done by a 'drive-by' poster with a similar name.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.