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<p>Well, actually, I think that’s my larger point: that the two interact with each other, and perhaps in non-obvious ways. Specifically, if engineering courses, whether at Berkeley or anywhere else, exhibited the same grade inflation as the creampuff majors, then surely few engineering students would ever flunk out. Which is why I continue to return to the basic question: why is engineering (and quant majors in general) graded so much harder than are other majors? </p>
<p>The notion that engineers need to be harshly graded because they are paid higher salaries and their work is important to public safety not only seems to be an unnecessary confluence of disparate attributes (for an A grade should represent excellence in whatever course you earned it in, regardless of how lucrative and marketable that course may be), but is also inconsistent with other professions and their grading standards. Physicians are paid extremely well and are obviously crucial to public safety, yet medical schools don’t have a reputation for flunking out vast hordes of their student body. In fact, hardly anybody ever flunks out of med-school at all; the difficulty of med-school is largely concentrated around getting in, but once you’re in, you can be assured that you’re going to graduate - perhaps not with the best grades or desirable residency match, but you’re going to graduate. So apparently med-schools dispense with the problem of unworthy students by simply not admitting them in the first place. Why can’t engineering programs do the same?</p>
<p>And indeed, some have. There’s a certain school in Palo Alto whose grading standards, even in engineering, are noticeably relaxed, such that it is highly unlikely that you will flunk out there. Yet nobody disputes that they run one of the world’s most prestigious engineering schools, heck, arguably the one school that may rival MIT. Even MIT itself, as I mentioned, extends grading reprieve to students in their first semester. I find it curious that other engineering programs can’t or won’t do the same.</p>