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."
It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:4, Insightful)
If an English major answers a test question on an interpretation of some poem, it's going to get a high grade because it's based on opinion and ther eis no "right" or "wrong" answer.
If an engineering major gets a formula wrong, it is wrong and that's that... no gray area.
Depressing :( (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the single most depressing thing I've read for years. If a student deserves a C or (God forbid even a D!) then they should get them. So what if they don't like it? Not everyone is cut out to be a nuclear physicist or a genius reporter! Everyone is most definitely not created equal, at least in an academic sense. This is reducing higher education to the level of "Buy your degree online!" websites and devaluing the degrees of everyone who actually had to work for theirs.
Gotta hate comments liek this, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of 'cos there's no right or wrong answers, humanities must be easy' crap is just illiterate carping.
Liberal arts degrees are rated for scholarship and insight. Yes, grade inflation's a problem, but don't blame the subject matter.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:5, Insightful)
Damned unlikely, I'll grant, but theoretically it is possible.
On the other hand, there are a lot of liberal arts exams where it is actually *impossible* to get a full 100%. Why? Because the graders "don't give grades that high." I've actually seen this happen where a student got their paper praised as the best the prof had ever seen. The student got an 85.. when she asked why she only received an 85 if this was the best ever seen, the response was, "Oh you don't understand. That's an excellent mark. I never give marks above 80."
That's an extreme example, but a lot of professors hold the attitude that a 100% mark will never be given out, because that would imply your paper is absolutely perfect -- and since there's always more to add, no paper is perfect.
Thanks for the rant (Score:3, Insightful)
As a philosophy major and a computer engineering major (yes, I'm strange), I can assure you that your rant isn't quite justified. Just because humanities courses don't have discrete answers to many problems does not mean make them any easier.
It varies from teacher to teacher, in any course, whether engineering or otherwise. I've had professors in philosophy classes who had no qualms giving out C's and D's on papers. I've had EE profs that curved grades so that the majority of the class easily broke 85%.
Sure, there are weed-out courses. Sure some classes are tough. However, I would agree that, on a general level, grade inflation is a problem. Maybe it's to make up for the complete lack in teaching skill that we students (who are paying big bucks for our education), are finally starting to complain about.
Um, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, don't forget the social sciences, which are clearly more objective. I've had tough philosophy courses that I'm sure rival some higher engineering courses.
Do grades really matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahh yes, but in engineering/science there is something called "partial credit" and that introduces gray areas. I may get the formula wrong, but if I apply the wrong formula in a consistent way, I can still receive credit...at least that's how it worked when I was an undergrad.
my experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps it is because people's lives hang in the balance when they interact with the products and structures designed by science/engineering students.
Well, I don't know about that. It's always dangerous to make comparisons between graded work at university and actual work in the real world ... after all, when you design a bridge, they give you more than three hours to do it, and they let you talk to other engineers, unlike in an exam.
It's a lot easier to justify a D in engineering than it is to justify it in the humanities, because in engineering we can always fall back on the fact that the answer is wrong -- not much room for interpretation. The flip side of this is that it's a lot easier to get 100% on an engineering exam than on a history paper. I've found that the mark spread in my engineering courses is quite broad, with people scoring anywhere in the range from below 50% all the way up to the keeners at 100%. Humanities marks may be inflated, but they all seem to fall in a narrow range from C+ to A-.
Furthermore, since engineering is a professional degree program (meaning it's usually the student's final degree, and not a springboard to other programs, like law or medicine), there is less temptation for students to whine for marks, although it still happens to some extent.
As a teaching assistant I have had to mark my share of brutal engineering exams (which, incidentally, are no more fun to mark than they are to write). The philosophy seems to be that an easy exam results in a class where most people score very well, since the correct answers can be easily obtained, which doesn't give a good indication of knowledge. A hard exam will sort out the good students from the bad students, and if too many fail it can always be belled up later. Sort of a "kill-em-all" attitude.
Is techno-smart the only kind of smart there is? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm sure the liberal arts majors have just as many derrogatory comments about the science/engineering majors.
Simple Reason for Grade Inflation (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Do grades really matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
More a Pass/Didn't-turn-up system. I certainly have no problem with universities increasing the use of interviews/essays as entrance criteria, maybe I wouldn't have had so many people on my course who didn't know what BASIC stood for and wouldn't know an algorithm if it came up and slapped them in the face.
Re:Let's not forget about 5.0 vs. 4.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Many high schools have already gone to a 5.0 system, giving extra credit to students in Honors or AP classes (that B in honors is worth as much as an A in a normal class)
2. Colleges actually care about high school grades and use GPA in their admission process... how many times applying for a job have you been actually asked what your GPA was? (Excepting academic positions, grad school and such)
Employers tend to just not care about the level of academic achievement, only its existence (as proof that you could follow through enough to get the diploma).
Dispelling the common myth... (Score:3, Insightful)
The "hard" sciences are hard only in the fact that they are deterministic. The same math problem will always have the same solution. Proofs can vary, true, but there is generally a "best" proof (whichever is the most parsimonious). Computers are deterministic as well.
In social sciences, well, things aren't so certain. And in liberal arts in general things are even more up in the air: interpretations of music and art vary dramatically, etc. etc. etc...
So which is more difficult?
The correct answer is *neither*. Some people may find one easier then the other: judging by the general slant of this site, I'd say most people who end up reading this comment are individually more talented with the "hard" sciences. There are people who are better at the other sciences as well.
Sure, specific schools may suffer from grade inflation more in one department than another, and yes engineers have a helluva course load, but engineering is by no means inherently more difficult then studying music or psychology. It's just different.
Re:F in Engineering curves to an A (Score:5, Insightful)
In an abstract algebra class I got a D- on an exam. It was the third-highest grade in the class. That's exactly three of us who didn't flunk. If Berkeley didn't get so pissed when profs flunk then entire class, I know a few who would be happy to.
However, schools vary as well as professors. I find it most informative to determine the average grade, since most classes are curved either up or down (as to whether that's an ethical practice, that's a different conversation). Berkeley EECS curved to about a B-/C+. That used to be a C. Other schools are worse.
It's kindofa pity, and somewhat counteracted by having people who know the reputation of the school. Grad school admissions, for example, weight a B+ from Berkeley differently from one from Stanford, one from MIT, or one from Harvey Mudd. I think it's the industry people who are involved in the hiring process that are putting a skew into the pressures, as well as parents -- have to get something for that investment, after all!
Lea
never happened at these schools... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most humanities programs are a waste of time. My advice is that if you want to be an astute student of human nature, and indeed a wiser man, you should make every effort to pursue what the greatest minds have written. Learn from Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Pascal, Darwin, Newton, Einstein, and Watson 'n Crick etc. yourself or better yet, with others who similarly share your dedication to taking the liberal arts seriously.
Re:F in Engineering curves to an A (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:3, Insightful)
Grade inflation in engineering (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife teaches biology at a local community college, and she said that many of her students wouldn't put up with the system I had to have in college. The problem is, for many people today getting anything less than A is unsatisfactory because high grades are so important (rather than actually mastering the material).
There are "A" students who cram before tests, get old tests and memorize them, and hound the professor for higher grades, and there are "A" students that know the material so well, they could actually teach the class. In a perfect world, the former would get a B or C, and the latter would get the A.
Not just liberal arts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know about physical engineering, but software design is often subjective. One of my Pascal programs back in college got marked down a little because there were "too many subroutines" in it. It never said why this made it "bad".
Being a non-OO believer, after many debates it is fairly clear that software engineering is a black art, or at least a dark grey one. About the best an exam can do is say something like, "According to Dr. X's methodology, what is the best way to....."
Whoa hold on a Minute! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll grant you the school should also be giving him and automatic F if the homework isn't done when its supposed to be.
In his own defense if he does well in the class without doing homework, maybe he doesn't need too...but then again perhaps he isn't challenged and belongs in a higher level class...I've always firmly believed any student that gets C's all the time might be because they don't care and are bored, make things harder, but by the same token stright A's mean the same thing...schools should aim for C's, NOT A's. C's mean the Kid is in the proper difficulty environment, if you can make it harder and they still get C's then you have done the right thing. A's mean its too damn easy...
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:4, Insightful)
That means it could just as well get a low answer for a non-objective reason. There are certainly skills involved in humanities subjects, even if the perception of them varies somewhat by the views of the observer.
Drama programs are subjective as well, but you don't claim that everyone is a good actor becasue s/he gets up and mouths a few lines? There is a certain more-or-less shared standard involved, just as in writing.
I've certainly had humanities profs who were mor than willing to say that they thought my essay was BS, or badly argued. If you haven't, you haven't been challenged enough, or you have robbed yourself through lack of interest, which is really a pity.
Lea
insights from the inside (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Liberal arts majors need references, not marks (Score:2, Insightful)
Are marks really useful in employment? Hadn't noticed them being checked, let alone used.
If you want to do something where intellect matters and they aren't checking academic references, chances are they're using a test of some kind (LSAT, MCAT, etc.).
Re:It's Because Technical Programs Have _Answers_ (Score:5, Insightful)
If an English major answers a test question on an interpretation of some poem, it's going to get a high grade because it's based on opinion and ther eis no "right" or "wrong" answer.
No, that's not right (speaking as someone who has taught college level English). An interpretation must be 1. based upon a close reading of the work in question and 2. follow some established, or at least comprehensible, mechanism of interpretation. Opinions are not good answers in a humanities exam, any more than they would be in a CS exam. There's more room for ambiguity in the humnaities, true, but that ambiguity is always within what Eco has right called (in his book of this title) "the limits of interpretation." The job of the humanist is to invent within those limits, as is the job of the engineer.
For example, if a civil engineering student tells me that he's designed a brilliant new concept for a highway bridge using nothing but cheese doodles, I'm going to ask "do you realize that cheese doodles won't be able to hold much more than their own weight?" Bzzzt! Wrong answer! If a humanist says, "well I think The Tempest is about the search for the telluric currents in 16th century Italy," I'm going to ask "and what makes you think that Shakespeare KNEW anything about the so-called telluric currents, or anything about Italian alchemists? And what in your reading of The Tempest suggests telluric currents as a subtext to the play?" Bzzzt! Just as wrong as the engineering student.
Maybe CS is different because programming languages are just that languages and so many of the same issues are present as in the humanities, just with a technical bent but I doubt it.
Unfortunately, natural languages have almost nothing in common with computer languages. Computer languages are for the most part 1:1 codes - the same command means the same thing in whatever context it appears in a particular language. Natural languages are not codes; an idiom means different things in different contexts. That's part of the problem comparing the two.
At any rate, there is plenty of grade inflation in the sciences in the US: it should be noted that the author of the piece, Stuart Rojstaczer [duke.edu] is Professor of Geology, Environment and Engineering at Duke. And he says:
The last time I gave a C was more than two years ago. That was about the time I came to realize that my grading had become anachronistic. The C, once commonly accepted, is now the equivalent of the mark of Cain on a college transcript. I have forsworn C's ever since.
So Prof. Booty's comments in the posting are unjustified by the evidence presented (see also the data linked from the article; Stanford, a darling of the technical education world, shows a good deal of grade inflation, too); and they are probably unjustified, period. I suspect that if you were to track grade inflation on both sides of Snow's Two Culture rift, you'd see the same steep slope.
Just because you don't understand the humanities doesn't mean it's not academically rigorous. I know plenty of humanists who would stupidly assume that programming doesn't require any brains; after all, "it's just writing down instructions for machines. What's so hard about that.")
Re:make the standards for Humanities and libarts (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading the frelling article. The author is a Geologist, not a liberal arts prof. And he's complaining about grade inflation in HIS field.
Oh, I forgot. Reading comprehension is a libarts skill.
The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Engineering Gets Hit Too (Score:5, Insightful)
Our published 4 year graduation rate is 69 percent, which seems generous. Maybe it's easier outside the CS department. There are definitely a wide range of C's, D's, and F's given all the way up through third year classes in the CS department.
I've TA'd for the intro class, and we definitely fit the bell curve on high C. I've struggled to get C's in some of my 3000 level classes, not because I'm an idiot, but because the classes were actually curved around middle C's (or slightly less, in two cases).
And I end up having to defend my 3.6 GPA because other ridiculous schools won't even give out C's? That's so dishonest it should be criminal. I've just applied to grad school and I've already had people concerned about my GPA. I think every application needs to be stamped with the average GPA and standard deviation from your school, so that you can actually tell what those grades mean. My GPA gives me highest honors at graduation here, but might not be worth any honors at a joke school like Yale with a 99% four year graduation rate where you couldn't buy a failing grade.
One way to Leave No Child Behind (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I think another important reason for this inflation is the outrageous emphasis on formulatic evaluation of students. Whether it is the standardized tests that are being pushed by the Bush administration, or the GPAs that are plugged into formulas by universities and graduate schools, our society has committed itself to false notion that students (and everyone else, really) can be accurately evaluated by a single number.
Under this system, grade inflation is almost inevitable--at least at any school that wants to see its students succeed. Test score inflation has already started, as we have seen in Texas, where Gov. Bush famously raised test scores state-wide--by making the test easier and requiring that instructors teach to it. The easiest way to Leave No Child Behind is to give them all straight As and 1400 on their SATs, and say that we educated them well.
Re:A prospective from Duke (Score:5, Insightful)
here it is, folks: these private-school elitist types think they're smarter than us lowlifes that only went to state schools.
i'd be offended by this comment if i hadn't met so many morons that had paid ten times as much as i did for my degree, and yet hadn't really gotten anything for the expense except for membership into a bunch of secret handshake clubs. you're not any smarter, and you might have been struggling for that same B+ no matter where you took intro to calculus.
finally, this was just confusing:
and then later:
well, which is it?
Re:Is techno-smart the only kind of smart there is (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe I'm missing the joke, but that last bit is Xenophoic and rude. H1B's have skills (or they wouldn't be here). Not knowing English that well doesn't make one illiterate - it makes them non-speakers of English. My Spanish sucks, but it would be a mistake to call me illiterate.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets have some examples shall we:
English major gets A because, while he didn't use proper grammer and spelling, but he said that the poem is about his inner child and the grief that he felt, and as such, was written from the view point of a little boy.
Engineering project gets an F-, due to the fact that even though his bridge looks nice on paper, what with all those flying buttresses and high arches, he forgot to draw any supports
Dance Major gets a B for interpretive dance called "Gorrillas in Autumn", which involved thumping chest, growling, and lots of walking while dragging knuckles. Teacher said that "even though it didn't use a thing taught in this clas, it brought out the primitive feelings in her, and made her think about the where she came from and where mankind is going."
Electronics major gets another F, because while he was able to fit the entire circute into a small lace covered box. He had half the wires crossed and it exploded after being turned on.
In general, liberal arts are gradded on fluff, while technical classes are graded on ability.
Re:You're missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. The goal of a test is not just to rank students, it's to measure whether they've learned what they're supposed to have learned. There shouldn't be a problem with giving every student in the class an A, provided that they've all demonstrated a good enough grasp of the material. Of course it should also be OK to give every student an F if they've failed to learn anything. (A smart professor will adjust what he's teaching according to the quality of his students; if they're consistently getting everything he should consider expanding the course to cover more material.) Grades should go something like:
A) Student has completely mastered (i.e. displays thorough proficiency at) everything in the course.
B) Student understands all of the material in the course, but has not mastered it all.
C) Student understands the essential material for the course and has mastered some of it.
D) Student understands most of the essential material, but has mastered little of it.
F) Student has failed to understand even essential material.
With a grading system like that, you can look at the grade and grasp whether the student really gets what they were supposed to get. If you curve everything, a grade reflects as much about the rest of the class as it does about the student.
Re:Agreed (Score:3, Insightful)
something tells me that the guy's facing pressure from his higher ups. the easier he grades, the more people take his course. if he keeps his course in demand, he keeps his job. this article is his protest against getting stuck in this situation.
or he could just be a spineless bitch.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that's a problem with the administration though. It's unrealistic to think that everyone in a class can be above average. That's what a C is supposed to mean right? Perhaps the people that think everyone should get A's and B's needs to go back to school themselves and take some math classes so they know what average means.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please.
As if English classes assign "interpretive poetry" or History allows you to just make up whatever you want.
There is *sometimes* more BS room in subjects that are not attempting to teach specific problem-solving skills, but let's not generalize too grossly eh?
The issue is that Liberal Arts programs are struggling for enrolment, and are frightened to scare off students from taking their classes. Fields like Engineering are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to lead directly to well-paying jobs, and hence have greater demand. It is not that there is anything inherently "fluffy" about the Liberal Arts. Don't be chauvenistic about fields which may not interest you personally.
Grades misused (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:3, Insightful)
And another thing. Maybe universities should do the curving for the professors. Just adjust all grades at the end to make a 3.00 average. Therefore, if everybody gets an 'A', they get out with a 3.0
Then you'd see students crying for fair grading.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer Science Major gets an A for creating a program that, while not what was assigned, impressed the prof.
English Major gets an F for not referencing in his thesis.
well, that was easy
Just because you don't understand something does not make it easy or 'fluff'.
The stuff they do in upper year english/lit courses is as hard as anything I do, its just a different type of difficult.
BTW, I am a CS major.
Re:F in Engineering curves to an A (Score:3, Insightful)
As Berkeley well should. If a handful of students can't master the material well enough to get a passing grade, that's the students' fault. They're either not making an effort, or don't belong in the class to begin with.
But if EVERY student in a class receives a failing grade... it's the instructors' fault. Berkeley (and every school, really) pays them to teach. If they're not capable of teaching effectively, they need to be held accountable for their failures.
another teachers comment (Score:1, Insightful)
A - 30
B - 67
C - 109
D - 41
F - 21
My grading style is considered strict compared to most other professors here. I am a younger (33) than most of my colleagues.
I get a lot of complaints from students who don't understand the value of working to get a good grade. Most people just view this as a stepping stone to making big corporate bucks and don't want any stray marks on their record. I'd estimate that almost half the students I have are not really that interested in the Computer Science field for any reason other than to make money and have a comfortable living - which is the absolute wrong reason.
The bottom line is that I refuse to reward people who don't put in the effort because ultimately it is not helping them with their future. My hats off to those students who do try hard and who do push themselves to excel in their field of study - I for one will not mock or belittle your efforts.
A grain of truth.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pure engineering work (as opposed to engineers going into management) is generally looked-down upon by the general public. People very rarely look up to engineers. You doubt me? Then why is the standard movie line from a father talking to a wayward son always: "You could have been "doctor or a lawyer", never "You could have been an engineer"?
Engineers doing pure engineering work are generally not paid as well as other people in their own field of expertise. Sure, some got exorbitant salaries during the dot.com boom. But... compare the pay scales of engineers to other Master degree level professionals in the same company at each level of experience.
In general, soicial skills are valued higher by society than engineering, or professional skills. Even in most IT companies, every tech is expected to develop social skills (not a bad thing in itself), but managers and sales staff get away with knowing bugger all about the technical stuff they are supposed to be managing or selling.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, if everyone correctly answers that 2+2=4, everyone deserves an "A" for that problem. Trying to force that into a curve could mean that you end up getting scored on penmanship, or personal hygiene.
Liberal Media = Liberal Education Coverage (Score:1, Insightful)
We are a product of our experiences and so a journalist is likely to find grade inflation where a scientist may not.
-2 cents
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:2, Insightful)
Compare the number of those peeps that actually are successful to the number of college grads with those degrees. If you had majored in one of those degrees, I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't comprehend what the ratio means.
There are far more engineering majors that have a direct impact on everyday life, you just don't see them. Every screw in your office chair, every bolt in your automobile, every mold that shaped your garbage can was designed by some engineer.
If you asked me, though, that's how I'd like it to be. I don't want liberal arts people having such a direct impact on my everyday life. I don't want to worry about my car being able to start every day. I know that I would if the engineering degrees were as simple and subjective as the liberal arts degrees. We all prefer to have the stupids right out in the open, where we can make sure that they aren't affecting our lives too much, yet letting them feel important.
So how does a good student distinguish himself? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the plus side, it wasn't easy to go from a B to an A, but on the other side, it wasn't too hard to get a B. And many poor students were getting A's anyhow, somehow.
Now that I've been out in the industry for 6 years, and my work history can speak for me, it doesn't bother me so much, but when I first got out of college, I was very frustrated that an employer couldn't distinguish my A's from someone else's.
Inflating grades is bad for students and employers. It's bad for the students who ARE smart and willing to work, and it's bad for employers, because they can't use grades as a way to evaluate people they interview.
Grade Inflation in Higher Education (Score:1, Insightful)
A Good Student Isn't Always A Good Engineer ... (Score:1, Insightful)
I tried this one on a few hiring managers to up my entry level salary.
I graduated with a 2.3 out of CU-Boulder in ECE. Most of my friends had much better grades, and most of them are also unemployed. Some argued with profs to get better grades on tests but can't hide the fact they are slow, get frustrated and have a big mouth. [I almost got in a fight with a kid because I made fun of him for not understanding P=IIR = IV in circuits 3 (3000 level,)]
I have increased my earnings/wages because my managers found that I can do much more than my grades told them. If my grades were spectacular and I sucked at my job they would have noticed this too (unless I was a manager.) All grades do is get your foot in the door.
It is up to the student to learn and if they don't they will fall rather than fly.
Can I trade parents? (Score:3, Insightful)
First, kudos to your father and the VP for standing their ground -- at least, for as long as they could.
I'm long past middle school, but perhaps these parents should meet my parents. My folks are the type where I could bring home a 98% and their response would be "What happened to the other 2 percent? Stop reading storybooks and study more!"
If I so much as hinted that a teacher was unfair, I'd be smacked for it. "Stop blaming the teacher. Blame yourself. Study more! Work harder! You're going to go to a good university." (Not that I thought my teachers were marking unfairly. Some of them marked brutally hard, but they marked everyone hard.)
As far as my folks were concerned when it came to school marks, the only thing not good enough was me.
While I ultimately think that my parents' no-nonsense attitude was (in the end) good for me (or at least my work-ethic), whenever I hear stories like this about parents like this, I can't help but think "Must be nice."
It depends on your interpretation of a grade (Score:2, Insightful)
Certainly, if you consider an absolute scale, I don't think that "skewed" grade distributions are statistical anomolies. Given 10 semesters (and hence 10 grade distributions), you should expect that some of them are going to be top heavy, and some are going to be bottom heavy.
It would be unfair to grade relative to the others in a particular class. Especially when you consider situations like the following. At MIT, most sophomores take 18.03 (Diff eq) in the fall semester. Those who take it in the spring tend to do so because they either failed it in the fall, or struggled with prereqs. There are also some very bright freshmen who take it in the spring. Thus, the ability distribution in the fall and spring classes could be quite different. Why should they be graded only relative to the others in the class that semester?
Unfortunately, grading on an absolute scale tends to lead to grade inflation.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Then how do you interpret a transcript that shows many of the students getting low scores in a class? Does it mean the students were stupid, the professor was a poor teacher, the professor was a hard grader, the material covered was more advanced than other similarly named classes, or that there was a disjoint between class content and exam content?
The simple fact is that you don't know any of those things, and no set of numbers can effectively evaluate those things for you. There are too many pinheads out there who think intelligence, knowledge, and prediction of job performance can be linearized onto a number line. In reality, none of these things can be collapsed into anything close to a straight line.
Therefore any grading system or ranking that tries to evaluate people and put them in order is intrinsically broken and missing most of the information one would want to know.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people might be able to do complex arithmetic in their heads...I'm not one of them. Does that mean I am incompetent to, say, graduate this spring with my BS in aerospace engineering?
Show me a practicing engineer that does all their work in their heads. Hell, show me one that never uses anything but a slide rule. I'm not talking about back-of-the-envelope guesstimates: I'm talking about real "will this wing break or not?" calculations.
I'll show you an engineer that is not using the best tools for the job.
Building Stuff That Matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Riiiiiight. So all those polsci and sociology and psychology and health policy people who go on to devise the social and political systems that deploy the resources in the institutions that care for you when you're sick, or regulate toxins in your environment, or create a legal and punishment system, or induce or alleviate recessions and monetary policy (and so on) are just pissing in the wind? I mean, what's the construction and regulation of the byzantine complexity of social economies compared with building a bridge or a new Linux kernel?
Not to offend anyone (Score:4, Insightful)
An engineer will tell you what the answer is, how accurate it is, and what assumptions were made in getting that answer. In the end, something gets built, and either works or not, entirely based on how closely the engineer understands the problem, and how effective he is at reaching a solution. For the problems that you work on in college, there is very little wiggle room on the correct answers.
In few other professions will someone without many years of proven experience be given the kind of responsibilities that many engineers have to deal with. They would rather flunk you out than let you go forward without the skills you need, and the ability to apply those skills.
Many people leave engineering in the first few years of their careers, and decide to follow another career path. This happens because they can't deal with the pressures of trying to solve the problem, within budget, on time, and working properly.
Re:What they do to us in my Computer Science class (Score:2, Insightful)
Every week issues come up that I vaguely remember dealing with in college but need to go home and look up in one of my old textbooks. Coding is great, but you have to know what to code. Its a lot easier to be able to see a problem and say, "ok, this is a classic case of concept x and the standard method of attack is y than to have to figure out a solution from first principles everytime you come across a solved problem. This way you can put more of your time into coming up with solutions to the problems you come accross that aren't well known and studied.
Without the higher level math experience, you won't know how to formulate problems to solve them trivially and will have to write a lot of tedious and slow code to come up with the same solution.
Currently, I'm struggling through refreshing myself on all the eigenvector/eigenvalue stuff I slept through in Linear Algebra. All of a sudden Its relevant to what we're doing here and I have only a hazy notion of what an eigenvector even represents.
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as calculators simplify arithmetic, there are devices that simplify circuits for you.
Yes, if you've had a DC and an AC circuits analysis class, you can do this with pencil, paper and calculator. But just as simultaneous linear equations lend themselves to systematic solution by a computer, so does a lot of circuit analysis.
Now the idea that you might be out of reach of your laptop or palmtop with its handy-dandy cirtuit analysis software might be credible, the idea that you might be out of reach of a pocket calculator is silly.
Drifting slightly, I was always amazed at how out of touch academics are with what the actual job working conditions will be. Unlike closed book tests, and the need to be able to work without calculators, in the actual job in the field, you will have (and maybe even be provided by the employer with) not only basic tools, but perhaps sophisticated ones -- if they genuinely make you productive. You employer doesn't WANT you not using a calculator. Similarly, they WANT you to make use of reference books rather than scratching your head to memorize. They WANT you to use circuit analysis software, or Mathematica (or something). In typical corporate stupidity, the employers seem to be completely out of touch with how the higher education people teach you to do less using less tools.
Re:Theres a way to get an A and a way to get a C (Score:5, Insightful)
But the better standard (arguably better) is "above and beyond" is required for an A. I have had classes (few and far between) where knowing grading standards and managing to grab every single point guarantees... a B+. You have to come up with your OWN extensions, and do a good job of it, before the teacher considers it worthy of an A.
But papers are RARELY, if ever perfect. Math homework, most engineering homework, and so on can be graded objectively... and anyone who can claim to grade an English paper objectively is lying. The absolute most consistency with which I've ever seen non-technical papers graded still has about a 10% spread - and that's from Advanced placement people who've been grading English papers for 15 years. With enough work, anyone can pump out a "B" paper... it takes talent and a little bit of luck to eek out an "A" when the teacher doesn't inflate grades.
I've also had another professor who had a different take on study habits in general. His claim is that there are two types of people: those who cram the night before the final, and those who work all quarter, do all the homeworks and readings and attend class, then don't need to study. Because they've learned everything. I don't have much sympathy for the crammer, because he didn't really learn the material - he just went through the motions. But the student who worked all quarter is probably the A student - and it takes a very good professor to bring out that difference in actual grades. Which brings everything right back to the old "there aren't enough good teachers" argument :).
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:1, Insightful)
That's where rank and distribution come in: it shows where the individual rated against other (presumably similar) individuals in the same situation. It measures relative ability, instead of giving you a fixed and even less meaningful number.
Just a distribution isn't enough, sure, but it is extra information, and the more information the better, in just about all cases.
In reality, none of these things can be collapsed into anything close to a straight line.
Gee, and here I thought that adding context data was trying to eliminate the linear projection by adding another dimension. Silly me.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, there is the nature of the institution to consider. A mindless beaurocratic machine with a student body in the tens of thousands is a different beast from some smaller school where you would never see a class of 30, nevermind 300.
Professor evaluations and grade inflation (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:4, Insightful)
A major issue with the whole transcript system is that it is an average. If your class is graded on two papers discussing Kant and your first one bombs out because you didn't understand him at all, but your second one is the result of weeks of studying and as such is simply phenomenal, you might simply come out with a C...C+/B- if the teacher is feeling generous. Averages can't chart growth, can't chart experimentation with study habits, can't chart weaknesses, and can't chart strengths. I may be pretty good at speaking Japanese, but I absolutely suck when it comes to exams, and I don't know why. The result? C. And I put more work into that class than anyone else.
Grades in higher institutions seem redundant to me. They're useful in high school when attendance is mandatory, but if you're going to college then you must be self-motivated. If you're truly self-motivated to learn, then grades mean nothing to you. Let's just do away with them.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:3, Insightful)
There are generally two forms of testing, norm and criterion. Norm is basing your score based on performance of others (like the SAT). Criterion is basing your score against the material you are expected to learn in the class.
What most college classes employ is Criterion-based testing. There's supposed to be a level of "mastery" of the content, at ~80%, and that's should earn you a "B" (barring 7 point scales). Above that is setting a mark beyond mastery and into excellence, the "A", and below that, varying levels of accomplishment like C, D, & F.
So, if a student does what is expected of him or her, and no more, a "B" is earned.
When people earn a "B", they should get a "B", without being penalized if everyone else in the class got it, too. Now, if you want to argue that the standard for what constitutes mastery of the material is often too low, that can be a different debate altogether.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:3, Insightful)
a "less focused" mind? (Score:3, Insightful)
And there is one, very important, very relevant, and totally misunderstood by non-techs reason for that: math.
I usually say math is not a true science, it's just a human convention that has been consistently and precisely followed to the ultimate limit. It's the ultimate "unfocused" knowledge, it can be applied everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Some things, like differential equations for instance, can be used in exactly the same way everywhere, from rocket science to history. On the other hand, there are some ramifications from mathematics that absolutely defy any application at all.
As an interesting note, I remember one time years ago when I had an online discussion with a philosophy professor about the infinite. He was adamant on his concept that the infinite is something absolute, so if I say something is infinite that thing is larger than anything else. Much as I tried, I could never convince him that it has been mathematically proved that there are many (infinitely many!) different classes of infinities. For instance, aleph-zero, the infinite quantity of integer numbers, is infinitely smaller than aleph-one, the infinite quantity of real numbers.
The ability to organize things is one of the first steps in the acquisition of knowledge. By using methodically that ability, people who know math are (yes!) infinitely more capable of reasoning than those who don't know math. And, before you dismiss all my arguments as the short-sighted point of view of techies, let me mention that my interests go much beyond technological things. I'm currently building a simulation of history using partial differential equations. I'm currently at the stage where I set a pastoral/nomad society in a simulated country and see it evolving into cities, using the same differential equations physicists use to describe diffusion.
Insert guffaw here. (Score:1, Insightful)
I was a TA for an undergraduate class for the last three semesters, and I am shocked and appalled at your comment. You may be self-motivated, but I VEHEMENTLY disagree that being in college means an individual is self-motivated. Far from it.
Think of it as grade scale compression (Score:1, Insightful)
Think about it. Everyone that graduates in that program is within a range of 0.8. Suddenly a 3.5 seems kinda low.
Just for the record. I'm smart, worked my butt off, and just barely cleared the minimum grade. And I can't remember most of it (despite working in my degree field). Our concept of "education" is rather broken.
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thing (Score:3, Insightful)
-Carter
Re:Liberal arts majors... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm, well a hell of lot of people died because a failed art student wrote a book pinning the causes of the problems of Weimar Republic on Jews, Communists, homosexuals, and believe it or not, Esperanto speakers. Bad thinking in the liberal arts is, if anything, more dangerous than in science and engineering.