You can’t charge 40K in tuition and give little Timmy a ‘C’. The parents will bitch. People are buying their kids a diploma.
One of my favorite movies is “The Paper Chase”. I loved the part where they holed up in the hotel room so they could write their paper without being bothered. That movie is about 40 years old.
I teach a lot of industrial technical classes. I can tell you that A may be the most common grade but the abilities I see don’t merit such.
1. I had an entire table of 6 engineers who could not even plug numbers into a formula and get the right answers. They didn’t know how to work within the parentheses first then add or do the other operations. WTF?
2. When the get the wrong answer their immediate conclusion is that I got the wrong answer. Never mind that I’ve taught this stuff and done this stuff for more decades than they have been alive.
3. Teaching test has left them vacant of reasoning ability. They want to know the answer to pass the test. Give them a problem and they melt.
I’m not encouraged for the future in more ways than one.
In my engineering classes, the professor included in his course syllibus the equations he used to normalize grades to a Bell curve. The average grade in that class was a “C”, mathematically derived from the scores of every test, quiz and homework assignment.
There were equal numbers of “D” grades as “B” grades, and the number of “F” grades equaled the number of “A” grades.
We had to bust our butts to get a “C”.
Some study showed that 80% of people think they are above average. It didn’t matter what was being measured. 80% of people think they are smarter than average, 80% of people think they are taller than average, 80% of people thing they are better looking than average, etc.
First day of Introduction to Management, York College of Pennsylvania, 1978:
Prof: Would you agree that the grade of “C” means average?
Class: Yes.
Prof: Would you agree that most of you are average?
Class: Yes.
Prof: Therefore, most of you will receive “C” ‘s.
Twenty years ago, I got an “A” in a course. That translates to a 4.0 getting averaged into the rest of my grades. That’s the highest grade you could get. I had gotten a 98% in the course, so I figured I should have gotten an “A++” and told the professor so. He had my grade changed to an “A++” in my transcript. It still only counted as a 4.0 though. I think he gave B+ to anyone who showed up.
When I went to Ohio State for electrical engineering, they told us in orientation to look to your left and your right, and that only one of you three would make it through the program. They weren’t kidding. Talked to a recent gard - it’s still that way (although they do allow a bit more remdial math up front that does NOT count toward your major).
Old joke there: lim EE (GPA ->0) = business
Except now the business school rocks.
So there are still some REAL colleges...
Student debt is @a trillion dollars... Who with their ‘A’s, ‘B’s, and ‘C’s can repay their student loans?
Americans were far better off in one-room “Little House on the Prairie” schools than they are in $30 million high-tech public schools today. They knew far more about history, languages, mathematics, and even science than the kids do today.
Sorry but this is misinformed. Today’s Ivy students, particularly, STEM majors, are striving in an extremely competitive academic environment. TAs are rewarded for giving few A grades. The most common grade us, in fact, a C.
I don't know if the article touches on this subject, but this is one of the reasons why the unemployment rate among recent grads is so much higher than for their older counterparts. A recent college graduate basically has no credentials whatsoever, even if he/she graduated with top honors from a "reputable" university.
Not only that but students do half the work they did decades ago. It used to be that a college degree signified that a student was accomplished academically. They still do mean a lot from some schools but some state schools will allow kids who cannot write on a ninth grade level and who do nothing but drink to graduate. That cheapens the value of a degree for everyone. Its why a college degree is the new high school degree. I think a large part of it is that minority students tend to be less prepared and colleges do not want to seem racist by flunking a lot of minority students.
The grade inflation starts in the high schools. When my oldest daughter took Algebra I, in ninth grade, 40% was a passing grade. When I asked the teacher during the back to school parent/teacher meeting, how she could consider that the class had mastered the concepts and was ready to move forward in a subject like Algebra that builds on previous lessons, the teacher told me that all the bright students had taken algebra in 8th grade, so this was the best that she could hope for from the average students and that she had to follow the curriculum and keep up to date.