Everyone claims that colleges are making things easier for their students because the average GPA of colleges nation wide has been consistently rising for the last 30 years. However, at the same time, the selectivity and amount of people applying to college has also risen. Perhaps, the people going to college are more adequately prepared and are working harder and the classes are no easier. Just as in professional sports, people train harder and are now much more able to succeed in a sport because of advances in how he/she is raised. Perhaps, grades are no easier to come by, but the students are just smarter?
<p>Grade inflation seems to be a different issue than whether students are better or less prepared now than in the past. It used to be that a "C" was an average grade and that people got C's because that is what the word average means. An "A" was a top grade that very few people got. That isn't true now and I don't think it has anything to do with whether students are working harder or not, or whether students are smarter or not. Grade inflation has occurred independently of the work being done or the amount learned. Of course, it is hard to go back to the way things used to be when a single "C" in freshman year could be enough to knock somebody out of ever attending an extremely selective college.</p>
<p>Regardless of whether people are smarter or not now, the grading system should be subjective to the students of today..that is to say, sure an A student 50 years ago may not be the same as an A student today, but A should always reflect the highest <insert whatever="" percentage="">. It's a way to compare students to each other, not to their parents or grandparents. The way things are progressing now, there will have to be A++ and A++++, etc. There is less range of grades and so students are indistinguishable from one another. </insert></p>
<p>This is different from sports and say, swimming records because measures of time are not subjective and thus is a rubrick. But grades, imo, are not standardized to mean the same thing, so they should change with the population. </p>
<p>I hope at least some of that made sense.</p>
<p>"Perhaps, grades are no easier to come by, but the students are just smarter?"</p>
<p>I think quite the opposite might be true. The average high school graduate today is less "educated" than his/her counterpart in our parents era. I think grades today are a lot easier to come by. At least in America.</p>
<p>What I am proposing is that standards remained the same and did not become more rigid as students became more competitive in school. I am not saying it is a good thing but rather then the schools purposely making it easier to get A's, its just they haven't made it harder to fit what should be a bell curve as the ability to achieve an A became less difficult because of peopel working harder.</p>
<p>But the standards are that C=average, B=good, and A=excellent. If C were really average, then somebody would get one. There hasn't been any absolute scale maintained by the public high schools for the last 30 years, but even if there was one, letter grades are assigned relative to the group receiving them.</p>
<p>A person sounds really critical if they say that "half of all people are below average", but that is what average means by definition.</p>
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Everyone claims that colleges are making things easier for their students because the average GPA of colleges nation wide has been consistently rising for the last 30 years. However, at the same time, the selectivity and amount of people applying to college has also risen. Perhaps, the people going to college are more adequately prepared and are working harder and the classes are no easier. Just as in professional sports, people train harder and are now much more able to succeed in a sport because of advances in how he/she is raised. Perhaps, grades are no easier to come by, but the students are just smarter?
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<p>I think the real problem is not grade inflation itself, but rather that certain schools inflate more than others, and certain subjects inflate more than others, and even with certain subjects, different courses in those subjects are graded differently from others. Hence, there is no fair way to judge the grades of people who went to different schools, or even went to the same school, but majored in different subjects, or even majored in the same subject, but took different courses. </p>
<p>For example, one might argue that the students at HYPS today are better than the HYPS students of 40 years ago, and so today's students deserve to get higher grades (on average). But why is it, then, that the grading at MIT and Caltech are significantly more difficult than at HYPS? Why? After all, I would argue that the students at MIT and Caltech are just as good as the students at HYPS. So why should the HYPS students be getting higher average grades than the MIT and Caltech students? </p>
<p>By the same token, I've also wondered why is it that Harvard classes in physics or computer science should be graded harder than Harvard classes in the liberal arts. Why is that? Is it because Harvard physics or CS students are just dumber and deserve to get lower grades? This same sort of thing was discovered at Princeton. Princeton recently announced a policy to limit the percentage of high grades being given out, and it was found that the physical sciences and engineering departments would not have to change their grading policies because they always gave out only a limited percentage of high grades. It was the other Princeton departments, most notably many of the humanities departments, which had to make changes to give out a lower percentage of high grades than they used to do. But, again, the question is, why was there ever such a grade discrepancy? Is it because the Princeton engineers and physical science students were just stupid and so they deserved to get lower grades?</p>
<p>I doubt students are any smarter today. They are more focused and into building a resume for college. When I took the SAT they did not even have prep classes and nobody studied for it--you just got up early on Saturday and took the thing. Grade inflation is a fact.</p>
<p>Well, students have to work harder now because more people are applying to colleges, and schools want their students to get into those colleges so they give them better grades</p>
<p>It is definitely harder to get into the extremely selective colleges now. More people are going to college, and there is more focus now on the top tier of colleges. People write about alumni who couldn't get into their prestigious colleges if they had to do it now.</p>
<p>I don't think that students now are smarter or dumber. There is a wider range. The bottom now would have unimaginable in the 1970's, but the top is stronger. </p>
<p>SAT scores dropped steadily from the 1970's to the 1990's, and they were recentered in 1996 because the average had dropped from 1000 to around 900. That is better explained as being a result of more people taking the SAT, especially the ones at the bottom. On the other hand, the emphasis in the 1970's was on grades and not the SAT. Practically everyone in the 1970's took the SAT only one time without any preparation.</p>
<p>courses in engineering and hard sciences are more clear cut. If you tell an engineering class that each one of them has to design a bridge, you can easily go through and see which bridges are the designed the best.</p>
<p>if you tell a class of government majors to determine what a policy should be, there are different views that can all be backed up equally well, and there are intangibles that can't be measured.</p>
<p>also interestingly, no one with out an Engineering degree is going to claim they know how to design a bridge. But lots of people without degrees in Economics claim they know how they government should handle money.</p>
<p>Just because you have an econ degree doesn't mean you know how the government should handle money...
and just bc you have an engineering degree doesn't mean you can actully build a bridge either. But you kind of lost me on the relevance of that statement anyway</p>
<p>I would say that questions in the hard sciences and engineering have definite answers, while questions in economics and the humanities do not. When you solve a problem in science/engineering, you get an answer. It is either right or wrong, but in most fields, there are different points of view and nobody can be proven right or wrong. I agree that I don't see the relevance to the rest of the thread. Engineering and science courses are only graded harder during freshman year and maybe sophomore year. They are trying to weed out the less motivated students. By the time you get to junior year, it is all A's and B's.</p>
<p>I don't see what is meant about people meddling outside of their field of expertise. Congress and polititicians are telling engineers what to do all the time. You have a right to be involved in things that affect you. You don't have to have a political science degree to vote. God knows that most people don't know enough about the issues to vote, self included.</p>
<p>Yup, me too. I voted for the first time last year and I just clicked down one column because I hadn't even heard of those people. >.<</p>
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I would say that questions in the hard sciences and engineering have definite answers, while questions in economics and the humanities do not. When you solve a problem in science/engineering, you get an answer. It is either right or wrong, but in most fields, there are different points of view and nobody can be proven right or wrong.
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<p>I've heard this theory before, and it doesn't hold water for me, because just because engineering/science may have more clearcut answers does not mean that the grading has to be more difficult. </p>
<p>Let me explain. The scenario seems to be that an Film Studies prof gets a bunch of Film Studies papers, and since the papers are subjective and there are different points of view, the prof has to give the "benefit of the doubt" by giving everybody A's and B's except those people who demonstrated a conspicuous lack of understanding, and these people get C's or worse. But the assumption there is that the students ought to get the benefit of the doubt. Why? Why not give them the "anti-benefit of the doubt"? For example, why not say that because you can't tell a lot of the papers apart, let's just give everybody C's and D's, except those few papers that really stand out, and only those papers get A's? </p>
<p>Now, some of you might say that that's really harsh grading. But hey, like I said, the engineers get graded harshly on their weeder courses, and nobody's crying for them. If the engineering students can put up with harsh grading, the Film Studies students should be able to put up with it too.</p>
<p>I'll give you another example. Think about how humanities PhD dissertations are graded. You might say that there are no true right-and-wrong answers in the humanities, and that there are all these different points of view. But the humanities doctoral committees don't use that as an excuse to approve every single doctoral dissertation that is submitted. Not at all. These committees will not grant you the PhD until your dissertation surpasses a very high level of quality, and they make their students undergo a grueling process of writing, rewriting and editing before it is accepted. They don't say "Well, we can't really tell if this dissertation is good or not, so let's just approve it and grant the student the doctoral degree". No. In fact, the exact opposite happens. They say "Well, we can't tell if this dissertaion is good or not, so let's NOT approve it and have the student edit it until we are sure that it is good". This is an example of "anti-benefit of the doubt". </p>
<p>The point there is that you can have such a thing as "anti-benefit of the doubt" in the humanities. In fact, most humanities departments use it for their doctoral students. So why is it so impossible to use it for their undergraduate students too? </p>
<p>Personally, if I was the department chair of a humanities department that was well-known among the undergrads for being easy, I would be deeply offended and would institute reforms to increase course rigor so that my department would no longer be dumped on as the 'jock major' or the 'drunk frat-boy major'. But as it stands, a lot of department heads don't seem to care about that. </p>
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Engineering and science courses are only graded harder during freshman year and maybe sophomore year. They are trying to weed out the less motivated students. By the time you get to junior year, it is all A's and B's.
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<p>I would argue that engineering and science is graded hard in all 4 years, although I agree perhaps not as hard in junior and senior year, although still significantly harder than junior and senior classes in gut majors. </p>
<p>But even if you're right, and the harsh grading is used in the first 2 years to eliminate less motivated students, then the question is, why don't all majors do this? Shouldn't ALL the majors want to eliminate less motivated students? I would think so. So why is it that only certain majors (i.e. the engineering majors) take it upon themselves to actually try to weed those students out, and other majors don't bother?</p>
<p>I have never really thought about whether grading was harder in science/engineering or the humanities. People don't normally care to compare gpa's across fields.</p>
<p>As to the other question about why they shouldn't weed out humanities majors during freshman year...... Weeding out engineering students during freshman year is just something that is done. The first week at my college, there was the assembly and the president of the college made his little speech about "look to your right, now look to your left, one of the three of you isn't going to be here at the end of the year". They weed out medical students. They weed out first year law students. The hardest type of school to get into in the country is veterinarian college. I don't know how to say this without being a little derogatory, but they don't weed out English majors during freshman year. Maybe there just isn't a tradition of it. They do grade a lot easier in science and engineering during junior/senior year. During freshman year, there are a lot of C's, D's, and even F's. Engineers typically take a core curriculum during freshman year regardless of specialty (electrical, mech, chem, civil). It contains calculus, physics, chemistry, computers and some bio all at the same time. During junior/senior year, you have made it and there are no C's.</p>
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I have never really thought about whether grading was harder in science/engineering or the humanities. People don't normally care to compare gpa's across fields.
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<p>Yet the fact is that they do get compared against each other. For example, when med-school adcoms admit a humanities student over an engineering student because the humanities student has better grades, not realizing (or maybe choosing not to realize) that engineering is graded harder than the humanities are. Or when the GPA cutoffs to determine who graduates with honors and who doesn't are applied to all students, again, not realizing that the engineering students were graded harder than the other students. Or when eligibility/support for certain scholarships (i.e. whether your school will support your candidacy for the Rhodes Scholarship or Marshall Scholarship) require a certain minimum GPA, without regard to the fact that certain majors are graded easier than others. That's when engineering GPA's get compared to other GPA's, and that's when the engineers get shafted. </p>
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They weed out medical students. They weed out first year law students.
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<p>I have never heard of medical students getting weeded out, at least, not in the same way that engineering students get weeded out. Premed students, yes. But medical students? Once you've gotten into medical school, then you know as long as you do the work you're going to make it. Granted, it's a lot of work, and if you don't do well you won't get the residency you want, but you're still going to graduate. Heck, many med-schools, including most of the top ones, grade students on a honors/pass/notpass basis, and you have to choose not to do the work to get a 'notpass'. This is a completely different story from engineering weeders where you can do all the work and still get an F. </p>
<p>The only law schools that I am aware that weed in the engineering sense are the low-ranked law schools. The top law schools do not weed. Again, that's not to say that 1L isn't tough and that the competition isn't fierce. It is. But there's a big difference between competing for grades so that you can get law review or get top clerkships, and competing for grades to just even be able to stay in the program at all. The ABA/LSAC Official Guide to Law Schools contains the attrition rates of all law schools, and basically it says that if you enter a top law school, you are effectively guaranteed to get that law degree. Maybe you'll graduate at the bottom of your class. But you'll still graduate with that law degree. Not so in engineering, where plenty of incoming students will not get an engineering degree (and some won't get any degree at all). </p>
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During junior/senior year, you have made it and there are no C's.
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<p>Oh, I don't know about that. I agree that junior/senior grading is easier, but to the point of no C's? I can't go with you there. I don't know where you go to school, but believe me, I am aware of top engineering schools where junior/senior classes still hand out plenty of C's or worse. Again, not as many as during fresh/soph year, but they're still there.</p>
<p>sakky</p>
<p>I agree with all of your post 15.</p>
<p>zantedeschia</p>
<p>I'm sorry you can't follow my points. I was comparing fields with definite correct and wrong answers to fields without clear cut answers. Then, I was explaining that because "people think humanities are easier" that they know all about them. I'll try another example. People who aren't surgeons are not going to claim they know how to do surgery. But, people who don't study the economy for a living are happy to voice their views on what the government should do about the economy.</p>
<p>I'm sorry you can't take a few minutes to see what the people running for office stand for, and vote for the one you would rather have.</p>
<p>We seem to have two threads in one and there is some irony in the topics. The first thread is that engineering classes are graded way too hard, and the second thread is that people shouldn't think that studying humanities is easier.</p>
<p>Actually I think that people do voice medical opinions all the time. "My aunt Gladys had that same thing and she had an operation. You should see another doctor." or "Why don't you try these pills I got for the hives last years. You've got the same thing I had." It is just that with science and engineering, people don't know enough terminology to even start talking about it and it doesn't directly affect directly them anyway. Are they going to say "They should have used the new counterlever technique when they installed the overhead section on the free standing arch suspension. It's a lot cheaper."?</p>
<p>One thing to consider is that high school students today are taking courses that used to be for much older students; for example, Geometry at my high school is intended for freshmen (unless you're in the honors program), but when my parents were in high school (they were class of 1980) my dad took geometry in 11th grade and my mom in 12th. </p>
<p>I just thought this example might go to support the claim that students today entering college are...I don't want to say smarter, but have taken high-level classes.</p>