Grade Inflation

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Is it really such a bad thing?

― Prof. Pushover, Monday, 25 October 2004 02:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes.

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:18 (twenty-one years ago)

O yah.

― Jimmy Mod always makes friends with women before bedding them down (ModJ), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:19 (twenty-one years ago)

But why?

― Prof. Pushover, Monday, 25 October 2004 02:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Because it's no different than social promotion

― Jimmy Mod always makes friends with women before bedding them down (ModJ), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Because parents what pay for their children's educations instead of yelling at the kids for failing yell at the schools.

You have to basically not take the midterm and final at an Ivy League school to fail a class here. I had one class that I ostensibly failed, I failed the midterm comnpletely and didn't do better on the final (though I never saw the grade--I completely skipped one 20 point section though so if I did PERFECT on the rest of it, it was still only an 80%).

I got a C in that class, anyway.

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Let's say you got to every class, do all the assignments decently, do well on your midterms--wouldn't you be pissed at your instructor for at least not giving you a B?

― Prof. Pushover, Monday, 25 October 2004 02:25 (twenty-one years ago)

(This is from the perspective of the instructor, by the way, not the whining student.)

― Prof. Pushover, Monday, 25 October 2004 02:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't think that's restricted to Ivies. I wrote one essay in a lit course and didn't show up for the rest of the essays, final, etc., and got a C (the essay was an A+ though)

xpost - no, I'd be pissed at myself for not dropping the class when it was revealed that I wasn't succeeding and/or be happy that I passed the class at all

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait, I don'[t get it--if you go to every class, do the assignments correctly, and do well on your midterms, why WOULDN'T you get a B? Did I miss a step here?

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:36 (twenty-one years ago)

You missed the grade-quota step. Concern over grade inflation sometimes tips the scales the other way so that deserving students have to end up with less than Bs. I would hate me--the instructor--in that case. That's why I LIKE grade inflation. I don't want to deal with a classroom full of young, hateful faces!

― Prof. Pushover, Monday, 25 October 2004 02:40 (twenty-one years ago)

That doesn't make sense--I mean unless there is something subjective that you can grade students down on, like essays or what have you that you can claim are only C quality when they are really B quality, how can you grade a student down? It strikes me that they could then report you to the department and enact a protest of grade very easily otherwise.

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Then become a private tutor or some shit.

― Jimmy Mod always makes friends with women before bedding them down (ModJ), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:46 (twenty-one years ago)

i could've used some of this "grade inflation" business when i was in school.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:50 (twenty-one years ago)

It's not as simple as I'm making it out to be. Let's say that there's 30 students in a class, and that no more than 50% can get a B or higher. It's not grading down to give the 15 students who aren't as good as the other half C+s and less; it's the ABCDF system at work. But those four or five that might get Bs in a more flexible system cause heartache.

xpost to Jimmy Mod
Academic nirvana for (caring) instructors is places like Evergreen State where there are no grades, only term-end written evaluations of student progress. That's how it should be everywhere, dammit.

― Prof. Pushover, Monday, 25 October 2004 02:51 (twenty-one years ago)

then again, there was always "the curve" -- which meant that unless you were (a) comatose AND (b) filled yer bluebook w/ direct threats upon the professor's life AND (c) promises to perform disgusting sex acts w/ his/her parent/spouse/sibling/pet AND (d) bad attempts at abstract art (a/k/a doodling), you'd at least get a "C." leave out any of the four, you could get a B-!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Academic nirvana for (caring) instructors is places like Evergreen State where there are no grades, only term-end written evaluations of student progress. That's how it should be everywhere, dammit.

till you try to get a job, and have to explain to yer potential employer why you didn't list a GPA on yer resume.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:54 (twenty-one years ago)

then again, the professors have to get a grip too. i've taken economics exams where even john maynard keynes or milton friedman would've run from the room screaming, and law school exams where bill rehnquist or oliver wendell holmes would've left the blue book empty!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:57 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't think the "you get what you pay for" thing is true. As far as I've ever seen it's easier to get good grades at schools which have lower price and lower prestige. If it's easy to get good grades at Ivy League schools, it's even easier to get good grades in the population of schools at large.
Unless maybe the Ivy League schools pay close enough attention that they can give good grades to the rich and their offspring (the people that donate, right) and not inflate as much for other students? Is that possible?

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Monday, 25 October 2004 02:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Someday I'll get the which/that thing straight.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:00 (twenty-one years ago)

a most interesting quandary you present, professor pushover. sadly, i am deficient in tweed, pipe, and easy-chair and will be unable to join you in pondering this perplexing predicament. i wish you the best of luck, and am fully confident in your ability to rightfully resolve this most troubling matter.

cordially,

juniper johnny

― John (jdahlem), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:04 (twenty-one years ago)

i once read how thorstein veblen -- an early 20th century economist/sociologist -- used to give ALL of his students "Cs" no matter how well or how poorly they did on his exams.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:06 (twenty-one years ago)

In my experience, it is impossible to get an A in an introductory level class at the Ivies*. Some of the teachers tell the students point blank, none of you will get better than a B+ in this class**, if you're lucky. Stuff that would've been above and beyond A material any other school I attended was B+ in all the introductory level classes I've taken.

HOWEVER, when you get past that stage, you basically have to die in order to not pass a class with flying colors. Upper level (by upper level I mean second year) language classes at Columbia, for example, have no tests, barely any homework--you turn in a couple of one page essays. As long as you don't miss more than 4 classes, you basically GRADE YOURSELF at the end of the semester--you turn in a portfolio, holding all the things you did, all like 5 of them, over the semester, with a written statement "examining how you evolved as a student of (language here)". This portfolio, which you cannot get less than an A on, is about 60% of your grade.

* Unless it is an introductory level class like symbolic logic or maths or something that is just quantifiable facts written on a piece of paper and does not require term papers and essays, obviously.

** YES B+/A- ARE ACTUAL GRADES AT COLUMBIA, WITH GPAS.

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:06 (twenty-one years ago)

that sounds like the way that my shitty undergrad school worked, too. (IVY LEAGUE TARTS YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN US PUBLIC SCHOOL LOSERS!!!!! :-))

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh I forgot to state what the purpose was of my opening paragraph, it was to show that the grade-downing thing is, in my experience, because they are trying to prove that they "are more difficult than other schools" and don't want too many people to have perfect/near perfect GPAs. OTOH no one gets less than a C- either, because they don't want to hear it from rich-ohhs.

My post gets only a B+ for leaving this out :(

xpost then you're at a shitty public school because the public schools I went to WEREN'T like that and I actually felt like I was going to do real work and not deal with the arbitrariness of some kind of jacked up bureaucracy!

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:09 (twenty-one years ago)

then what they told me was REALLY TRUE -- rutgers really IS "just like an ivy league school"!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:11 (twenty-one years ago)

it's kinda like living in the pre-gorbachev USSR, innit?

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Rutgers is kind of a more prestigious public school though, it wasn't like you were sitting around at Hunter College or some shit.

xpost no, it's a lot more boring, though I'm pretty sure I've had professors who gave lectures that felt like the Secret Speech.

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I taught one college class at a state university a few years ago, as an adjunct. It was an interesting experience. I tried to be as honest and transparent in my grading as possible, which was tricky since it was a writing class with daily assignments and no matter how specific I tried to be about what would cause points to be docked, there was inevitably some subjectivity in the assessment. Determined to avoid some artificial curve, I ended up with three D's, one B-plus, and everyone else in between. Some kids thought it wasn't fair not to give any A's, but I pointed out that I didn't give any F's either (one woman deserved one, but she was a disabled returning adult student with a brain injury, and I was honestly a little afraid she'd file an ADA complaint if I flunked her).

But the whole experience showed me how hard it is to stick to grading rules and standards in the face of desperately pleading students. I don't know if students in other countries do the same thing -- my semester as a student in England suggested that maybe they don't -- but American students definitely have a sense of entitlement about their grades, which is often unconnected to their ability or effort.

To answer the original question -- is it such a bad thing? -- I present the obvious response: George W. Bush.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:14 (twenty-one years ago)

I feel no sense of entitlement, quite honestly, I was shocked and, while relieved (it was a required class to graduate), kind of appalled I got a C in that one class. It really kind of explained to me how half or more of the people I deal with in these classes get this far at school.

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Dan, if you care, in your sentence about lower price and prestige, "which" is fine because the sentence is complete without "lower price and lower prestige." Some would argue otherwise though and maintain that "which" cannot be the subject of a verb--"have." It's dicey. Generally the more crucial the phrase following the "that" or the "which," the likelier it is that you should use "that." If the phrase is nothing but an addendum, completely unnecessary for the sentence to function syntactically, go with "which." All in all it really doesn't matter though.

juniper johnny--I wish I could afford tweed, tobacco, and an easy-chair!

Thanks for everyone's indulgence.

― Prof. Pushover, Monday, 25 October 2004 03:21 (twenty-one years ago)

if my mandatory freshman writing class is at all typical, then writing classes are kinda odd ducks in all of this. NO-ONE really wanted to be there -- not the instructors (grad students doing it as part of the deal to do grad studies there, and who'd rather be doing the sexy stuff like deconstructing philip k dick or transgressive readings of the faerie queene or something instead of grading freshman writing papers), not the students who COULD write well (and for whom the class was a waste of time), not the students who COULDN'T write well (who were all science majors and/or foreigners), not the students in between those two extremes (who'd rather be sleeping or doing beer funnels or getting laid). i was told by my instructor that my writing deserved an A+, but they never went above an A for the class -- even though i sorta tutored some of the worst cases in the writing class (and yes, their writing was REALLY bad -- like reading ayn rand novels, only worse).

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Columbia's system is great for the mandatory freshman writing class--transfer students also have to take it.

EVEN IF THEY'VE TAKEN ENG 101 AND PERHAPS FURTHER AT OTHER INSTITUTIONS, EVEN IF THEY WERE PREVIOUSLY ENGLISH MAJORS.

Which makes the situation even worse in regards to people wanting to be there. Transfer students and returning students are all stuck in the same class together, freshman writing is the only course in which the two schools at columbia (Columbia College and GS ie the transfer/returning ed school) are not allowed to intermingle so it was about 40x worse for the poor grad student teaching the course, because it was basically a bunch of people who were actively hating it for a very good reason: none of us were very happy to pay $5000 to retake a class most of us had gotten well beyond in our studies, taught by a 21 year old (the median age in the class was probably 26 or 27, at 23 I was the youngest besides the INSTRUCTOR).

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh god, the worst class I ever took was one of those required writing things, except it was for juniors, not freshmen, an every single junior had to take it to graduate. It was awful, just what you're describing. After a couple of weeks, I went to see the instructor -- one of those beleaguered grad students you're talking about -- to complain how totally, utterly worthless the class was and how I couldn't believe as a junior I was having to go through the whole ethos/pathos/rhetoric crap all over again. She almost started crying and told me she knew the class was terrible, it wasn't her fault, all the grad students hated it, she was sorry, but all she could tell me was to turn in the assignments and take the easy A.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:33 (twenty-one years ago)

"and every single junior"

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I mean, freshman writing is bad enough, for way too many students it's just a rehash of what you learned already, for free, in four years of high school, but for fuck's sake to refuse to transfer it because your freshman writing class is special? Why? Because you force us to purchase works by Said, Thurman, Brinkley (ie Columbia professors--nice system, fuckwads)?

OMG that class so got my goat. THE WORST PART IS THEY ABOLISHED IT THIS YEAR AND REPLACED IT WITH SOMETHING ELSE, SUPPOSEDLY ALLOWING THE TRANSFER CREDITS NOW WTF.

This has nothing to do with grade inflation. More like price inflation, I guess.

xpost yeah, I ended up feeling bad for the instructor. Or, I would have, had she not decided she inexplicably hated me because I "encouraged" the bad students in the class somehow (I haven't figured out how yet, I honestly haven't said a peep in class since I was about 15 years old unless directly addressed by the instructor).

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:35 (twenty-one years ago)

the ONLY good thing about my freshman writing class was the instructor -- b/c i thought that she was CUTE. late 80s, she was british and kinda gothy (though blond) -- but sadly TOTALLY married (i woulda ... never mind). she bought us ice cream at a local ice cream joint when the semester ended!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:39 (twenty-one years ago)

the CLASS was in the late 80s -- the instructor was in her mid-20s. to clarify, i ain't into grannies!!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:40 (twenty-one years ago)

OMG FOR A SECOND I TOTALLY THOUGHT YR CLASS WAS TAUGHT BY JUDI DENCH!

What I like/hate about the upper level classes is that the grade structure has caused an awful lot of students to just skate by without even basic grasps of what is going on in their subjects--it's extremely interesting to be in classes like "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union" and "East Central European Intellectuals and Communism" with students who are under the impression that Marx and Engels were Russians, amongst the least egregious of misunderstandings going on.

Basically I guess the problem with grade inflation/deflation is that no one gives a shit about actually doing work or understanding their courses, because why bother if you're going to get the same grade either way? That's basically the reason I have a 3.1 GPA instead of much higher, I spent way too long at this school not actually bothering to read the assignments or even doing them at some point before the last second, because it didn't seem to make any damn difference either way. Now I'm trying to pull my GPA up to 3.5 when I graduate, so I'm making a little more of a concerted effort, but the class discussions are wholly intolerable because of people still doing what I was doing.

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:44 (twenty-one years ago)

the choice of reading materials for freshman writing was also really screwy (though it wasn't tied into any professors hawking books). either right-wing dickwads (we had to read podhoretz's "my negro problem [and ours]" [i.e., little normie got beaten up by the schvartzers when he was growing up on the lower east side and consequently he doesn't like 'em or trust 'em and therefore presumes that other whites don't like blacks either -- it's on the intellectual level of a REALLY BAD howard stern monologue) or left-wing dickwads (something by wendell berry, about how we should just leave the suburbs and become hippies). i don't think that we read a single SENSIBLE thing -- from the left, the right, or the center -- in that class.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Once I was waiting outside a professor's office to talk to him about something or other, and heard him talking to another student. The student was indignant that he was getting a low C in a 100-level class, when (he said) he was getting A's in his 400-level classes (in his major, presumably), and everybody knew 100-level classes were supposed to be easy. The professor actually kind of got in the guy's face about how 100-level classes were actually as hard as anything else and were partly supposed to weed people out. The student wasn't having any of it. It was just so weird, the student wasn't arguing that, like, his work was better than C level, or asking how he might get a better grasp on the material -- he was just basically saying, this is supposed to be an easy class, so give me a higher grade because it's hurting my GPA.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 25 October 2004 03:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm horrible at 1k-level classes but have good grades in my 3k-4k classes (which are art/photo classes in my major). All the 1k-classes I've taken require regular attendance and busy work, so it's not the difficulty of the material that screws me up, it's being a lazy sod who'd rather play Madden than sit through another fucking slide-lecture on Byzantine architecture.

But I'd never have the balls to complain to my professor.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Monday, 25 October 2004 04:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, I've never had the nerve to complain to a professor yet about anything. That's, like, confrontation. And stuff.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Monday, 25 October 2004 04:02 (twenty-one years ago)

those who discover at the onset the basic truth that 100-level classes = weed-outs and are therefore MORE DIFFICULT than any 300/400 level class = THE ONLY TRUE GENIUSES AT THE DAMN PLACE.

(i wasn't one of those geniuses, sorry.)

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 04:03 (twenty-one years ago)

yer plenty confrontational here, though ...

― istillhateralphnaderbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 04:03 (twenty-one years ago)

though i WILL say that those 300/400 level economics classes were RIDICULOUS in how difficult they could be ... shit, i took something called "econometrics," i dropped out 1/2-way through and i STILL haven't figured out just what the fuck that bitch was supposed to be all about!

(that's also why i switched my major from poli. sci/accounting* to poli sci/english [* accounting majors had to take upper-level economics classes -- like econometrics -- at my school].)

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 25 October 2004 04:05 (twenty-one years ago)

They are weed outs except that if you can't get worse than a C or better than a B I think the effect is basically the same.

― Allyzay Science Explosion (allyzay), Monday, 25 October 2004 04:44 (twenty-one years ago)

five years pass...

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/retroactive-grade-inflation/

― iatee, Friday, 2 April 2010 18:46 (fifteen years ago)

Smells like an April Fool's joke, except it's in the NYT. WTF, Loyola.

― my full government name (WmC), Friday, 2 April 2010 18:55 (fifteen years ago)

great, another catholic whitewashing of past failings

― velko, Friday, 2 April 2010 18:59 (fifteen years ago)

two months pass...

again - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/business/22law.html

― iatee, Tuesday, 22 June 2010 16:48 (fifteen years ago)

I think from an institutional stand-point grade inflation is a basically logical decision - getting so much press for it, maybe not a good idea.

― iatee, Tuesday, 22 June 2010 16:51 (fifteen years ago)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/06/22/business/22Law1/22Law1-articleLarge.jpg

dude's excited

― iatee, Tuesday, 22 June 2010 16:53 (fifteen years ago)

gonna get a high-paying job, buy a shit-ton of vests

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 22 June 2010 16:54 (fifteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.