Grade Inflation in Higher Education 1077
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."
I give this article an A PLUS! (Score:2, Funny)
since...
since...
this one [slashdot.org]
Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
Engineers don't.
They done learned them good! (Score:5, Funny)
Notice to all Duke Students! (Score:5, Funny)
The poster must not be an engineer... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
grades (Score:4, Funny)
there will be 2 types of replies (Score:3, Funny)
then there are people who think this is natural evolution that is needed for the students to be successful in the market place. We'll label those the "I just started college, and please God, let them inflate my grade" group.
Shift formula (Score:2, Funny)
XNEW=10.0*SQRT(XOLD)
where XOLD is the OLD mark and XNEW the new mark. So if you originally got 0 or 100 you still got the same old mark but a losing 49 turned into a 70!
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:3, Funny)
If you had said "you can't argueu the num ber 10 into the number 25", I would have assumed Hillary Rosen was one of your students.
Re:Is techno-smart the only kind of smart there is (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Self Esteem? (Score:5, Funny)
Chalmers: [dryly] Hello, Seymour.
Skinner: So, what's the word down at One School Board Plaza?
Chalmers: We're dropping the geography requirement. The children weren't testing well. It's proving to be an embarrassment.
Skinner: Very good. Back to the three R's.
Chalmers: Two R's, come October.
Re:Not just liberal arts (Score:2, Funny)
Frankly, if grade inflation must exist, I'd rather see it in the Liberal Arts courses then the scientific ones. I mean, lets face it, if someone doesn't learn the Engineering courses properly and yet gets the degree due to grade inflation, people can die as a result. If grade inflation occurs in the Liberal Arts... what happens? Someone conjugates a verb incorrectly.
Kierthos
(Yes, I have a dim view of Liberal Arts majors.)
Re:My experience as an instructor (Score:3, Funny)
I'm guessing you're not an English professor. The was should be a were because you're trying to say that the condition has already been determined to be false. Using were, you make it clear that those students are not the only ones you've seen.
D+ for effort, and don't let me catch your parents trying to argue your way to an A.
Re:Negotiating better grades (Score:5, Funny)
"Well cutie, why don't you try studying?"
that shit happens all the time (Score:5, Funny)
But nothing topped the reaction of one of the students I had given a D to. First he came and pleaded with me. Then, he came and basically threatened me. When I still refused to change his grade, his parents got involved and contacted the head of the department. He refused to overrule me since my grading formula was very objective.
After that, they went to the dean of the school and tried to have me brought before the faculty senate on charges of bias against members of the football team. When that didn't go anywhere, they tried to wear the department down by calling a few times a week to complain. The mother's phone calls became a running joke around the department.
Things finally came to an end when a work-study in the department answered one of her calls and told her "I know your son. He never studies and totally deserved that grade". She was so embarassed that she never called back again!
Re:Do grades really matter? (Score:4, Funny)
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A few times? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously you haven't found the ones that have been hiding under my couch or you would realize that they are every bit as strong as, yet lighter than, concrete!
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
25 = 10 for extremely low values of 25.
QED
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
BTW, when I pressed the second algebra teach on his no calculator policy, he said it was because I should be able to do it in case I'm in a situation where I need to do a complex problem without a calculator. My response didn't go over well, "you mean if I'm stuck on a desert island and need to simplify a complex AC circuit?" That's when I learned college professors don't like sarcasm.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt if the CE profs mentioned this little fact either.
Re:Not just humanities exams (Score:3, Funny)
What if it worked everywhere like that?
"Hey, I was supposed to make $18/hr, but I got my paycheck and only got $15/hr."
"Well, only God is perfect and deserves 100%."
"Hey, waiter, you took my dinner away, but I didn't even finish it!"
"Well, only God deserves 100%."
And I don't care if the prof said that in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. I remember one prof I had who said she almost never gave 18/20 on our weekly essays, and maybe one 19 every few years, never a twenty. "That's just my quirk! I just can't give perfect grades." *wink* Yes yes, very entertaining, I'm glad you get to indulge in your eccetricities... just please don't do it to *me*.
If you want to have your own grade scale because you have this unique outlook on the world and you want to express your views through your grade scale then that's fine. But then, when you turn in the grades, please translate them to something that will mean something to the other people who will have to interpret them without your explanation.
Otherwise, please tell me why grades are officially recorded by the institutions and not only given out privately to each student to gauge his or her own progress.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:2, Funny)
You mean aside from enlightening the ignorant masses on
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Funny)
No, I don't do that on anything that really matters.
It does remind me of a particular incident back when I was still in college. I was having a particularly bad week, so I had a large amount of vodka. (vodka and coke). My walking path was decidedly non-linear. Someone said "hey, you're drunk enough you can't do math anymore!"
"Oh yeah? Give me a problem."
"What's the integral of the tangent of X?"
(5 second pause) "Negitive natural log of the cosine of X... errr, plus a constant"
(pause) "I _am_ going to look that up tomorrow"
Proposal... (Score:2, Funny)
E - Eager!
N - Nice!
R - Reasonable!
O - On Time!
N - Not Bad!
Along with goading students into a psychologically comforted state, this almost instinctively refutes all attempts for inflated grading.