"By not adjusting their grading policies, STEM programs ultimately hurt..the economy"

[cosmicfish]

<p>

You would have still had a degree. Plenty of employers just want a degree, without regard for what type of degree or what grades you obtained. Granted, those employers don’t offer great jobs, but hey, in this economy, at least it’s a job.

Wait - haven’t you been arguing that without a 3.0 engineers cannot even GET a job? Oh, I see - we need to inflate grades so that 1.9 GPA engineers can get some mythical job that (a) requires a degree, (b) will take someone at the absolute bottom of the academic barrel, and (c) still provides better employment then can be had without any degree at all. What jobs are these exactly?</p>

<p>

And that is in itself highly arbitrary. American Studies could decide today to vastly increase the difficulty of the major by simply deciding that a few smaller percentage of its students will actually graduate. After all, that is what American Studies PhD programs presumably do: only a tiny few people in the world are qualified for that PhD.

Actually, I am pretty sure that this is NOT what those PhD programs do - they admit as many students as they can fund with RA and TA spots (i.e., a few) along with as many others as are qualified, managable, and willing to pay their own way (i.e. not many at all), presuming the university allows it (since many will not).</p>

<p>For that matter, ANY program could make itself harder just by increasing the amount of material covered or by placing harder constraints on it - but there should be a valid reason for doing so. If the school, program, and accrediting bodies feel that a certain degree represents an “adequate” level of understanding, I see no reason to make it either easier OR harder, especially not to just fulfill someone else’s idea of “fairness”.</p>

<p>

But that doesn’t speak to the issue that just because an activity is subjective doesn’t mean that we can’t judge it. For you to say that good and bad movies exist is to concede that there is such a concept in movie-making as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and that we can actually ascertain between the two.

Not what I am saying at all - while we CAN and do judge artistic products all the time, opinions vary considerably and there are many different measures of success. For example, I think Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers” is absolute garbage, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t make a ton of money. So no, “we” cannot ascertain between the two, because while YOU might like the African Queen, I think it is the only truly terrible movie that Hepburn or Bogie ever made.</p>

<p>In many ways, this is my point about grading subjective courses - not only is it much harder to be wholly wrong (something that an engineering student can do with a misplaced “-”), but it is harder still to justify if it if someone makes a stink.</p>

<p>

The upshot is that engineering grades, by themselves, tells you little about the absolute level of somebody’s actual engineering knowledge. Does an A mean that he knew 30% of the material on his exams, or 90%? Who knows? Grading is arbitrary.

Tell yourself that, if it helps. Grading in most engineering courses at most schools is hardly arbitrary, and employers and grad programs have a pretty good amount of confidence in what those grades mean, even if you struggle with it.</p>

<p>

And maybe that’s where the exam averages should be for other majors as well? If not, then why not? After all, if it works so well for engineering, why not others?

Going round in circles, but I have no evidence that average grades in other majors aren’t in the same ballpark - remember that the difference between engineering GPA’s and humanities GPA’s is 0.2-0.3 - don’t think that engineers are getting C’s where everyone else is getting straight A’s.</p>

<p>

I was simply talking about the notion of stores providing onsite show models.

And as I discussed, many schools are offering “freshman seminars” as “onsite show models”. Eventually, you actually have to issue grades.</p>

<p>

Now to your story, well, frankly, your customer should have had recourse. Otherwise, it seems to me that you’re simply interested in propagating injustice: just because one car customer got screwed, engineering students should be likewise screwed.

What recourse should he have had? There was no problem with the product sold to him, he damaged it because he was not able to operate it correctly. If you dropped your iPod, should Apple arbitrarily give you a new one? Likewise, in college there aren’t any secrets, and there are many opportunities to save yourself from the horrors of a poorly-chosen major or a bad grade, and eventually you just need to acknowledge that a student has waited too long and done to much damage for them to say it was the college’s fault.</p>

<p>

At least they will be able to find other jobs in other fields that simply require some college degree - the same jobs that those American Studies 2.1 GPA students find.

Again, where are these jobs, exactly? And how desirable are they, compared to those available to college drop outs?</p>

<p>

It seems to me that what you’re actually afraid of is that HR departments are not rational - that they will not raise their GPA screens and hence some ‘incompetent’ engineers will now be hired. But that would necessitate conceding that firms do not always behave rationally.

No, I am not particularly concerned about incompetent engineers being hired - I am sure that it is already happening to some small extent, and do not think that allowing a 1.9GPA engineer to graduate will change the number of people working as engineers at all. Nor do I think that firms “always” behave rationally, although I do believe that they generally behave rationally - while dropping their “arbitrary” standards may increase their pool and add a few engineers that they might otherwise have overlooked, the value of adding those engineers might be less than the costs of sorting through all the applicants without those “arbitrary” standards to reduce the pool. I recommend you ask your friendly neighborhood HR rep.</p>

<p>

But we do have cause. Obama and Romney - the putative Presidential nominees - have both publicly stated that the nation faces a challenge in producing sufficient engineers to meeting the threat from Asia. Hence, this seems to be an area of bipartisan concern.

Sorry, I should have also specified that you need cause AND an actual effective remedy. I think you have a remedy that would have no positive effects and probably a few negative ones.</p>

<p>

Do you have any alternatives?

How about these:</p>

<p>(1) Change educational standards at the k-12 levels to place a stronger emphasis on science and math. Increase the presence of “fun” engineering systems and ideas in classrooms, especially at the high school level.</p>

<p>(2) Increase scholarships and grants for those who pursue STEM degrees and go into STEM jobs - those who decide to then go to law school can pay them back, with interest. This would be in line with a number of current scholarships that dictate service in a particular area after graduation.</p>

<p>(3) Change patent law to dictate that a certain percentage of patented inventions and protected trade secrets (40%?) are permanently assigned to the actual inventors, ensuring that engineers and scientists CAN make the kind of money that makes people drool. This one is complicated, but (I think) managable, and possible the only way to dictate increased pay for engineers. </p>

<p>And the big one…</p>

<p>(4) Change culture. Right now, we have Jersey Shore and shows about Kim Kardashian, and we wonder why no one wants to do a real job with real utility for reasonable pay? I love the Big Bang Theory, but it does nothing for the image of engineers. Good luck with this one, though. Perhaps someone could do a study, tracking the careers of high school students over 20 years, comparing the “nerds” with the “jocks” and such.</p>

<p>Anyway, there are a few off the top of my head.</p>