<p>@sakky:</p>
<p>Still, it seems to me that if colleges want to admit students that will succeed academically, then people who have a documented history of not performing academically should be treated differently from people who have not. Perhaps college adcoms should ask kids who don’t apply right out of HS what they did in the mean time, for proof that they either had a job or were learning valuable skills… and were successful. Then again, self-teaching and employment are not academic.</p>
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<p>It would also seem that if colleges really cared so much about academic success, then, frankly, they should not be offering creampuff majors. For example, let’s face it, somebody who obtains a 2.1 GPA while majoring in American Studies, frankly, isn’t exactly performing well academically. He’s surely not studying very hard, nor is he being academically success by any metric. </p>
<p>But he still gets to graduate. He still gets a degree. </p>
<p>I don’t think many will argue with me that somebody earning a 1.9 GPA in engineering is probably working harder and is more talented than somebody with a 2.1 in American Studies. So why is the former student expelled and forever tagged on his permanent academic record as having flunked out, while the latter student is handed a diploma? When an employer demands that job applicants have college degrees, the latter person can check the box and say that he has one, whereas the former can do no such thing. </p>
<p>Again, that captures the essential problem with the system. Apparently, nobody seems to mind if, right after high school, you enter the workforce or engage in self-teaching, even if you are unsuccessful in doing so. Nobody cares about that. Or, nobody seems to mind if you do enter college, but choose to relax your way through a 4-year staycation by cruising through easy classes in a creampuff grade-inflated major where nobody ever flunks out. Nobody cares about that either. But if you choose to enter college and embark upon a difficult major such as engineering, and fail, all of a sudden, that’s a serious problem. Everybody cares. </p>
<p>And that’s why I continue to ask the question: why the difference in treatment? Why do engineering students (and students from other difficult majors such as the sciences) get singled out for scrutiny? Why the selective outrage? If schools truly cared about students who are not really performing academically, why not at least take on those students who are lounging around in the creampuff majors?</p>
<p>To really “fail” out of engineering, for good, you need to get say a 1.9. How do you allow yourself to get a 1.9? You must make the following mistakes:</p>
<ol>
<li>Not realize after the prerequisite courses that you don’t have a good background for this class…and keep taking more engineering classes with more difficult material</li>
<li>During the class, not understand the material and fail to get help</li>
<li>Fail to drop the class in time to not have a poor grade on your transcript</li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t go to Berkeley, but at 99% of engineering programs (at least in upper division courses) the average grade is about 3.0. If you bomb all the tests but complete the labs and homeworks, you will still probably get a 2.5 in my school. If you get below a 2.0, it usually means you just didn’t try. If you didn’t even TRY in engineering, why shouldn’t it follow you around in other academic endeavors?</p>
<p>You represent everything in engineering as much more cutthroat than it is for the vast majority of students. Maybe your complaints about the vindictiveness of engineering grading standards is only true at a couple schools and your complaint is in general about the grading policy of those schools rather than engineering as a whole.</p>
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<p>Again, point taken. But I don’t believe the engineering student with a 1.9 has any excuse whatsoever. Maybe the American studies guy got lucky by magically surpassing the 2.0 threshold, but its hardly an issue because if either of those students had half a brain they could at least get over 2.5. To put it short, I don’t have any sympathy for the student with a 1.9. </p>
<p>Maybe in Berkeley, things are different…I suppose I could believe that.</p>
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<p>See, I disagree with this. I believe a student who utterly fails in engineering at most schools will not be a successful humanities major either. Like I said earlier, failing a class involves signing up for a course you are not prepared for, not receiving help, probably not completing a fair portion of the work, and not dropping the class either when you realize you’re in over your head. A student who makes such a catastrophic mistake is probably just a bad student, period. Regardless of their field.</p>
<p>To reiterate: I do believe it is quite easy to get mediocre grades in engineering (2.5-3.0 range). But to really fail? In most cases I believe that is the result of extreme slacking that in general reflects their attitude towards academics (not just engineering).</p>
<p>In my experience, most students who drop out of engineering realize early on that they don’t have the motivation to do all that work. They dont’ literally get F’s until they are kicked out…but lets say, they take intro to circuits, don’t put their heart in it and get a 2.6, and get discouraged.</p>
<p>The difference in difficulty between e.g. Engineering and American Studies is taken into account in the job market. Quite simply, engineering grads make more money, or at least are much more likely to get higher paying (initially) jobs.</p>
<p>I think there’s something to the argument that failing out in the first place shows a lack of some kind of valuable academic ability or skill set. If you’re failing out of Berkely engineering, you have a lot of options before they kick you out. Not correcting the situation is a serious failure of an academic, not engineering-specific, nature.</p>
<p>You know, a similar argument could be made for lots of other permanent-record type things. Why can’t convicted felons vote? Why can’t convicted sex offenders not register with the authorities? These are similar situations in criminal justice.</p>
<p>Why should academic dishonesty follow you around? I’m fairly sure e.g. suspensions due to academic dishonesty are marked as such, and sometimes you can get expelled. Should people who get kicked out for academic dishonesty be given a clean slate?</p>
<p>If not, then maybe academics view failing out more as a kind of academic negligence than as a tragic case of a student who tried and failed, despite his/her best efforts. Negligence can be a crime… So why can’t it (and, arguably, it’s ultimate academic manifestation in failing out of any program) be treated as such?</p>
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<p>And there lies the flaw in your argument. Sure, <a href=“non-weeder”>i</a> upper-division* engineering courses may have average grades of 3.0. But what if you didn’t even make it to the upper-division? It is precisely in the lower-division, and a few “intro” upper-division, courses where you are likely to be weeded out, because of low weeder grades.</p>
<p>To give you a case in point, the EECS department at Berkeley specifically states that the average lower-division grade is a 2.7, with the average lower-division CS course is a 2.5. Not all lower-division courses are weeders, but the ones that are would exhibit even lower GPA’s. Hence, it is quite easy to be relegated to a GPA below a 2.0 and hence expelled. </p>
<p>[Grading</a> Guidelines for Undergraduate Courses | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml]Grading”>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml)</p>
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<p>Yet I doubt that you have much sympathy towards the American Studies student with the 2.1 either. But that doesn’t matter, because the school has sympathy. That student graduates. He is given a degree. He never has to admit on any future job application or anybody else who might inquire that he had flunked out because, technically he didn’t although he probably should have. </p>
<p>If nothing else, and if you care so much about academic irresponsibility, you should join me in equalizing the grading scales between majors. If the engineering students have to be weeded, then so should the students in other majors as well. If lower division engineering courses have to exhibit an average grade of around 2.5-2.7, then so should the lower-division courses in the other majors. If engineering courses demand high workloads, then so should courses in other majors. There should no longer be any creampuff majors. </p>
<p>Yet the fact is, not only do creampuff majors exist, but they tend to be the same group of majors across schools. I defy you to find one school where American Studies is considered by the students to be the most brutally difficult major on campus and is infamous for low grades and high workloads, yet engineering is considered to be the creampuff major where the inferior students from other majors tend to migrate towards, such that engineering is disproportionately populated with the lazier and less talented students at that school. </p>
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<p>I’m afraid that I disagree, although it hinges upon your definition of “success”. Again, let’s face it, the American Studies with the 2.1 GPA was not ‘successful’ by any reasonable standards. Let’s be perfectly honest - he’s a terrible student. He surely could be characterized as an ‘extreme slacker’, he surely had a terrible attitude towards academics.</p>
<p>But…he still graduates. He still gets a degree. </p>
<p>The core problem is that different majors implement wildly different grading schemes and levels of rigor, to the point that even an egregiously unmotivated and untalented student can nevertheless graduate from a creampuff major because of the pervasive grade inflation. He won’t get top grades, but he’ll still graduate. Those majors practically never flunk anybody out.</p>
<p>One need only talk to students in those majors to realize that many of them, frankly, aren’t really doing much of anything. They don’t know what’s going on in their courses, and frankly, they don’t really care. They can pass their courses with very little effort or understanding. </p>
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<p>Even if they don’t literally get F’s, they get C-'s or D’s, which are failing grades (as you need a 2.0 to remain in good academic standing, yet a C- is worth only a 1.7). </p>
<p>Furthermore, as stated above, Berkeley’s lower-division CS courses, by policy, implement average grades of around a 2.5. Weeder courses would exhibit even lower average grades. That’s the average. By definition, some of the students must be below average. Those are precisely the students who can very easily find themselves with GPA’s below a 2.0 (and hence on the road to expulsion). </p>
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<p>And people with college degrees - regardless of which degree - tend to make much more money than people with no degrees at all, including those who don’t have degrees because they were expelled from engineering programs. In other words, for the purposes of the job market, the type of degree you obtain is less important relative to whether you have a degree at all. </p>
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<p>And that’s why I continue to return back to the example of the guy in a creampuff major with a 2.1 GPA. Let’s be perfectly honest - that guy doesn’t exactly have valuable academic ability or skillset. That guy’s performance was terrible - he represents a serious failure of an academic nature. He was negligent with his studies. Given the large differentials in grading schemes, that guy almost certainly was even lazier and less talented than the engineering student who flunked out with a 1.9. </p>
<p>Yet he still graduates. He still gets a degree. He never has to shamefully admit that he flunked out of college, because he technically didn’t.</p>
<p>So I continue to return to the basic question: why are we as a society so concerned about punishing negligence and irresponsibility when it comes to engineering students, but so unconcerned about negligent and irresponsible students in the easy majors? Those guys get to graduate while basically enjoying a 4-year party and staycation. Why? Why are the engineers singled out? </p>
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<p>These examples are not comparable. Crimes, as an example, are activities that hurt somebody or society at large (although perhaps you could make a comparison to victimless crimes such as recreational drug use). But clearly, if you committed a sex crime, you hurt somebody. If you committed a felony, you hurt somebody. If you committed academic dishonesty, you basically hurt the other students who were behaving honestly.</p>
<p>But performing poorly in any endeavor is not a crime. It may be embarrassing, it may be a waste of time, but it’s not a crime. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. If I play sports terribly, that’s not a crime. If I try to dance terribly, that’s not a crime. </p>
<p>If performing terribly is indeed a crime, perhaps we should arrest Uwe Boll for being a terrible movie director. Let’s arrest M. Night Shyalaman for making The Last Airbender. Let’s arrest John Travolta for producing and acting in Battlefield Earth. Let’s arrest Jessica Alba for consistently terrible acting in every movie she is in.</p>
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<p>Its really quite a complicated issue.</p>
<p>On one hand, being an engineer is much harder than being an art-history major…If its obvious you aren’t going to even come CLOSE to being a real engineer, should we just let you breeze through the curriculum with lax grading standards and give you the illusion that you’re going to be successful…even though you couldn’t even understand ohm’s law in your freshman year?</p>
<p>Or if you are studying art history and you’re just going to work in a clerical job as a museum when you graduate, does it make sense to implement cutthroat grading standards in humanities majors and flunk you out? And prevent you from getting that deskjob that anyone with half a brain could do anyway?</p>
<p>But I understand, like you said, things are quite unfair in the current system. Because an engineer without a degree is LESS successful than a slacking art-history major with a degree.</p>
<p>I don’t think this is unfair at all. Shooting high is well and good, but failing to recognize your shortcomings and correct the situation - to the point of literally flunking out - demonstrates a stubbornness (if nothing else, to switch to a creampuff major) that is as unacademic as lying about research results.</p>
<p>Also, I think it’s a little disingenuous to say that students’ failing doesn’t affect other students. A student who can’t pass is likely consuming much more than he is producing, academically speaking. You know… Takes up class/professor time, class/program space, etc. Without contributing to discussion, giving the school a good reputation, etc.</p>
<p>To put it another way… If everybody had to work just as hard in college, it would be patently unfair for art history majors to make any less money than engineers.</p>
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<p>Somebody who earns a 2.1 GPA in American studies clearly has some serious shortcomings. He was clearly quite stubborn…at least stubborn about his unwillingness to correct his situation in order to actually put in time into his studies. He was clearly ‘unacademic’ in his aspirations, likely having enjoyed a 4-year staycation.</p>
<p>But, like I said, he still gets to graduate. He still gets a degree. </p>
<p>But why? Again I ask - why do we single out poorly performing engineering students, but nobody seems to care about poorly performing students in the creampuff majors? </p>
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<p>If you believe that, then surely you would agree it would be disingenuous that the guy with the 2.1 in American Studies isn’t affecting other students either. He isn’t exactly contributing heavily to discussion or burnishing the school’s reputation, and may well be consuming the resources of the school, while producing nothing. </p>
<p>But that guy still gets to graduate. Again, why? </p>
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<p>So now you’re proposing to link the earnings of a particular course of study to its level of rigor. To that, I have to ask, why should that linkage exist? Grades are supposed to be a (rough) academic indication of how hard you worked and how well you mastered the material. The earning power of the course of study should be irrelevant.</p>
<p>Otherwise, why don’t medical schools flunk out many of their students, under the premise that physicians are well paid? Yet the fact is, it is practically impossible to actually flunk out of a US-accredited medical school, and the hardest part of graduating from med-school is simply being admitted in the first place. Granted, you might not get top med-school grades or clinical recommendations, but practically nobody actually flunks out of med-school. {Some students drop out, but almost nobody actually flunks out.} </p>
<p>Or one could consider the pure science majors such as physics, or the pure math major. Such majors arguably grade just as hard - perhaps even harder - than do the engineering majors, yet those majors clearly don’t pay as well as the engineering majors do. So is the implication that the science/math majors should grade more easily? </p>
<p>The bottom line is that I find this train of logic to be highly disturbing and nihilistic. Both Barack Obama and George W. Bush (and surely other Presidents prior to them) have called for more American kids to study technology and science. On the other hand, I have yet to hear too many of our leaders saying that we need more students in the creampuff majors. One of the gravest national weaknesses is that Americans are relatively poorly trained when it comes to science/technology, relative to students in other developed nations. Many high school districts, while being able to find plenty humanities/soc-science teachers, are hard-pressed to find qualified sci/technology/math teachers, which therefore then only eroding the technical knowledge base of our youth even further. The high salaries in engineering/tech are supposed to serve as a market signal to encourage more people to major in engineering/tech. But that market signal is vitiated when students are then actively discouraged from studying engineering because of the harsh grade deflation, especially when it may entail flunking out entirely. </p>
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<p>One possible solution is to simply hand that failing engineer a degree, but just maybe not in engineering. Call it “Technology Studies” or some other moniker. But at least give him a degree so that he can have something to show to employers. After all, the guy who enjoyed a 4-year party and wound up with 2.1 GPA in a creampuff major is nevertheless given a degree. </p>
<p>But an even better solution would indeed be to simply cancel that failing engineer’s grades. The guy isn’t going to be majoring in engineering anymore anyway - who cares what his engineering grades are? If he switches to a creampuff major and ends up with a 2.1 GPA, well, he’s no less incompetent than all of those other students in those majors who also had 2.1’s yet nevertheless graduated. </p>
<p>The failed engineer has already wasted his time and his money in pursuing a degree program that he will not be able to complete. He surely underwent significant psychological torment, as surely nobody enjoys flunking out of their program. I think he’s suffered enough. Why not let him walk away with a clean slate?</p>
<p>The real problem is that the school should never have admitted him in the first place. But they did. Schools bear responsibility for helping every student that they admit (otherwise, don’t admit them). Granted, one could argue that the student made a mistake in coming, but he has suffered enough by having wasted his time and money. But the school also made a mistake in admitting him. Since the mistake was bilateral in nature, it is quite unfair for the entire onus of responsibility to fall upon the student.</p>
<p>It seems like your real argument is that it’s not fair for a person with a 2.1 to get a sheepskin and go on to a well-paid career, while someone with a 1.9 gets nothing and never gets another chance to succeed.</p>
<p>I do think that it would be beneficial in many ways to adjust the system. I feel like the monolithic “bachelor’s degree” is the root of the problem. If the system incorporated a more incremental AS/BS/MS/PhD system… I think everybody would be better off. Also, the issue you discuss would be somewhat mitigated… Failed engineering students would still have a valid AS worth more than a high-school diploma.</p>
<p>However, I don’t think you’ve done anything to address my real feeling… That it’s OK to academically punish students who demonstrate poor academic performance. I feel like the relative difference in terms of difficulty of different programs is a separate issue… And in a sense, the idea of a student in an easy program being rewarded for barely acceptable performance while a student in a hard program is punished for barely unacceptable performance… Doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Are we to also start giving everybody who flunks out of HYPS a degree equivalent to those from e.g. Arkansas State? To some extent, the degree to which you stress the distinction between hard/easy programs is a bit unsettling. Frankly, I have a lot more respect for somebody who excels at plumbing out of HS than somebody who failed out of MIT Engineering. To whom much is given, much is expected.</p>
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<p>No, actually, right there demonstrates the paradox. The guy with the 2.1 in a creampuff major also demonstrated poor academic performance. But he still graduates. Why? Like I said, I would argue that a 1.9 in engineering is far more impressive than a 2.1 in a creampuff major. So why punish the former but not the latter? </p>
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<p>Yet therein lies the key - practically nobody flunks out of HYPS - not even in engineering, precisely because those 4 schools are heavily grade inflated. While you might not get top grades at those schools, it is well assured that you’re going to graduate, even with mediocre grades. </p>
<p>As a case in point, both George W. Bush and John Kerry have freely admitted to being unmotivated students while at Yale; far more interested in extracurricular activities and enjoying life than in their studies. Heck, John Kerry even received 5 D’s while at Yale. Nevertheless, they both graduated anyway. </p>
<p>In a written response to reporters’ questions, Mr. Kerry said, “I always told my dad that D stood for distinction.” He said he had previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than on studying.</p>
<p>[Kerry</a> Grades Near Bush’s While at Yale - New York Times](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08kerry.html]Kerry”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08kerry.html) </p>
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<p>So then let’s continue your analogy. You say that to whom much is given, much is expected. Yet surely you would agree with me that somebody who is admitted to Harvard has clearly been given access to the most prestigious university in the world, something that most students can only dream of having. Yet, in terms of what is actually required to merely graduate, little is expected. Practically nobody ever actually flunks out of Harvard. It wasn’t long ago when over 90% of the entire Harvard class graduated with honors, and even nowadays, well over half still will. For Harvard to actually expel somebody for poor performance is nearly unheard of. To be sure, earning top grades at Harvard is extremely difficult. But if you’re content with merely graduating with mediocre grades, you can do so easily at Harvard. </p>
<p>In contrast, for students at schools such as MIT or (especially) Caltech, flunking out is a real danger. It’s hard to see how those students have been ‘given’ any more than have the students at Harvard. So why do we ‘expect’ more from the MIT/Caltech students? </p>
<p>We can take the analogy beyond the undergraduate level. Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School (along with Yale Law) are the most prestigious professional schools in the world. Anybody with a degree from any of these schools has access to high-paying elite jobs that most people could never dream of having. Yet the fact is, practically nobody ever actually flunks out of HMS/HBS/HLS (or even YLS). Those programs ‘expect’ relatively little from their students in order to merely graduate. </p>
<p>So I must ask once again: why do we single out the engineers? Graduates from Harvard Business School are paid exceedingly well, so why isn’t HBS flunking out boatloads of its students? </p>
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<p>But here your analogy entirely breaks down. You may say that the guy who failed out of MIT engineering obviously did not excel. But the guy who earns a 2.1 GPA in American Studies didn’t excel either. Neither person is excelling. Yet, like I said, we punish the former guy but we allow the second guy to graduate. Why the difference? </p>
<p>Nevertheless, we also seemingly differ on a purely philosophical matter. I happen to diametrically disagree with your view in life: it is far better to try something difficult and fail than to succeed at an average task, for if you tried and failed, well, at least you tried. Otherwise, you’re only discouraging people from attempting to achieve difficult goals.</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between trying and failing and trying, failing, and refusing to address the problem. Flunking out is the latter. If you find yourself in academic trouble, it’s time to look deep inside and figure out what to do. Knowing your limitations is a strength, not a weakness.</p>
<p>Grade inflation at Harvard is a shame.</p>
<p>Did a 2.1 AH major have worse academic performance than a 1.9 Eng major? In a sense, no; the AH major picked a field of study and pursued it with enough dedication to stay afloat, and the engineering student did not. Let’s not blame the AH major for choosing to swim in water and praise the Eng major for choosing to swim in syrup… Especially since, according to your logic and the way academics works, the engineering student could have switched pools when he realized he wasn’t going to make it.</p>
<p>We apparently differ a great deal in academic philosophy… And I’m not sure our last few rounds of discussion have changed that. I’m deciding to agree to disagree…</p>
<p>I think you could also ask: why am I having such a hard time finding a job when I dropped out of college just one elective-credit shy of a bachelors degree, when my friend who took that extra class and got the degree has a great career? Why do we base such a tremendous emphasis on that very last credit?</p>
<p>Or, why if I run a race at the olympics, blow past everyone, then trip right before the finish line and get last…will I not be rewarded with some kind of trophy? </p>
<p>Its not constructive to needlessly speculate about all the millions of different ways you can shoot yourself in the foot throughout your life. Ultimately, you have to be smart and make the right decisions. </p>
<p>The engineering student who plowed into the program and could not maintain above a 2.0 for two full semesters (and subsequently got dismissed)…just made a serious of very stupid decisions. The art history major will graduate with a relatively useless major that speaks very little of his/her real accomplishments and capabilities…and employers know and will adjust for that. Art history majors with 2.1 GPA’s are not in great demand, ya know. I agree that it isn’t * totally* fair but…what is?</p>
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<p>Did he? Then let’s talk about an actual example, rather than just merely relying upon hypotheticals.</p>
<p>I know an engineering student who had a terrible first semester - earning 2 F’s and 2 D’s, for an overall GPA of, literally, 0.5. Granted, the rules do instead state that you must have a cumulative GPA of below a 2.0 for 2 consecutive semesters before dismissal. However, given his state, that would have meant obtaining a whopping 3.5 GPA in his 2nd semester in order to raise his cumulative GPA to a 2.0. This he was not able to accomplish, having earned “only” a 3.0 (which is quite respectable) in his second semester for a cumulative GPA of 1.75. Hence, he was expelled because his cum GPA was below a 2.0 for 2 consecutive semesters.</p>
<p>Consider carefully what his story entails. All you basically need is one terrible first semester to find yourself stuck within a quagmire. He didn’t know what engineering was when he entered school - heck, few incoming freshmen do. Nevertheless, the first semester of engineering proved to be far too difficult for him, and hence he was thrown out of college completely despite the modest recovery during his second semester. Last I heard, he was working as a security guard at a supermarket, because that’s the best job he could get with no college degree. </p>
<p>Which raises the question: can’t a guy have a bad first semester? Let’s face it - plenty of college students adjust poorly in their first semester away from home. This is particularly true when confronted with exotic and recondite coursework such as engineering that few high school students have ever encountered before. But no, at Berkeley (and likely many other schools as well), engineering students are not allowed to have a bad first semester.</p>
<p>Yet ironically, MIT - certainly no milquetoast of a school - does allow its students to have a bad first semester. MIT - as a matter of policy - grades all courses within the freshman first semester via a P/NR policy where failing grades are not recorded on the external transcript and are not counted in terms of determining probation/expulsion. Surely I am not the only one who finds it paradoxically that MIT - arguably the most famous and rigorous engineering school in the country - grants mercy to students who suffer from a bad first semester, yet other schools refuse to do the same. </p>
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<p>So let’s continue with my example. That guy didn’t continually try and fail. He basically only tried and failed once - having had one bad semester. But one bad semester is all it took. You say that students who try and fail ought to address the problem at hand. Indeed, he did; his second semester was actually moderately successful, having earned straight B’s. But that wasn’t good enough, because he had that one bad semester, from which he couldn’t recover. </p>
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<p>Again, consider my example carefully. He made not a series of mistakes, but rather one mistake. He had one bad semester; indeed his performance in his second semester was quite respectable. But he was dismissed anyway, as one bad semester is all it took to render his situation mostly unrecoverable. </p>
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<p>Actually, no, not really. That’s why on other threads, I coined the term the ‘engineering major trap’, to delineate the system where, if you perform poorly in engineering, the other majors (which are usually located in another of the university’s constituent college such as the College of Letters & Science), won’t permit you to switch in. </p>
<p>Again, let’s take the example above. Once he had that 0.5 GPA, no other major wanted to take him, because his cum GPA were so poor. They didn’t care that that was because engineering coursework was difficult or because he happened to have suffered from a bad first semester. All they saw was that he had a low cum GPA. He was therefore ‘trapped’ in the engineering major with no escape. </p>
<p>The deep irony is that if he had performed well in engineering, he could have easily switched to another major…but obviously if he was doing well, he would have no reason to switch in the first place. It is those students who are performing poorly and therefore desperately need to switch out of engineering the most who are precisely the ones who are trapped and forced to stay. Little surprise that these students often times find themselves expelled entirely. </p>
<p>Now, granted, I agree that he probably should have switched majors during that first semester when he knew that his engineering coursework was not going well, although even that would have presented serious logistical difficulties (as he would have had to swap his entire set of courses during the middle of the semester). </p>
<p>But what can I say - he thought he could pull it out at the end. He was wrong. He made a mistake. But is that really so terrible? Like I said, can’t a guy have a bad first semester? Apparently, they can only if they go to MIT. </p>
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<p>Frankly, I’m becoming appalled at the attitude that is being expressed in this thread. It seems to me that you’re not willing to lay even a tiny iota of blame upon the school itself, but would rather place the entirety of the blame upon the student. </p>
<p>I don’t deny that the student should shoulder some of the blame. But the school chose to admit him, and so the school should assume some blame as well. Both sides are to blame for the mess. </p>
<p>And, if anything, the bulk of the blame should be directed to the school. After all, most students (usually) choose an undergraduate program only once in their life. In contrast the school admits/rejects boatloads of people every year. Hence, the school has presumably built a wealth of experience and wisdom in knowing who to admit and reject. Why should the school admit somebody who is going to perform poorly? {As to how a school would know who will perform poorly, the school can re-examine its dataset of prior students to determine which admissions attributes are correlated with poor performance, and then admit fewer applicants in the future who possess those attributes.}</p>
<p>I also think the larger and more interesting question is: why should different majors at the same school exhibit such widely varying grading policies? Specifically, why should creampuff majors exist at all? </p>
<p>Consider the words of Stuart Rojstaczer, former engineering professor at Duke:</p>
<p>*Unlike most colleges and universities, Duke’s undergraduate engineering school has a separate admissions office. Every year it has to oversubscribe its admissions because many students will leave the engineering school and transfer into arts and sciences after a year, typically majoring in the social sciences. When you ask students why they make this move, they often say it’s because of the workload and grading.</p>
<p>There is also significant attrition across college campuses when it comes to potential biology majors, typically those who initially wanted to go into medical fields. Again, the driver for this attrition is workload and grading.</p>
<p>There are those who argue that this attrition is a good thing, and I would agree to some extent. We don’t want mediocrity in the design of our bridges and machines, or in a hospital operating room. But some of this attrition is undoubtedly unnecessary.</p>
<p>I don’t want to dwell on Duke, but many of those who move out of engineering have the talent to excel. In conversations with them, I have heard a common story about seeing people in dorms partying away and wondering, “Why not me?”</p>
<p>That’s what I mean by unnecessary (and harmful) attrition. I don’t believe that the sciences and engineering should demand less of their students. Rather, the social sciences and humanities need to demand more.*</p>
<p>[Grade</a> Inflation: Your Questions Answered - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/grade-inflation-your-questions-answered/]Grade”>Grade Inflation: Your Questions Answered - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Well, I for one will concede that in the particular case you described, that’s quite unfair. Its not right to kick someone out of the university for one bad semester. </p>
<p>At my university, students whose cumulative GPA falls below 2.0 must earn a GPA of at least 2.5 in all subsequent quarters while they are on “probation”. So they are not required to get their cumulative GPA above 2.0 immediately. I think this is fairly reasonable.</p>
<p>The question is: is what you describe an engineering problem, or a Berkeley problem?</p>
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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>
<p>If engineering were easier people people would probably make less graduating with engineering majors.</p>
<p>Honestly sakky, I don’t understand why a student that got 2 F’s and 2 D’s in a semester should be allowed to stay at Berkeley. Those grades are insanely bad. Out of all my friends at Cal, I don’t even know a single person that has gotten even one D, let alone an F. It doesn’t matter if it was his first semester, I just have trouble finding sympathy for someone who got grades like that. Even the smallest bit of effort is enough to get a C…</p>
<p>EDIT: And as for your question about why Stanford and MIT can give students some leeway, well the admissions standards at those two schools do most of the necessary weeding work…most Stanford and MIT admits are quality students. The same cannot be said for the bottom half of Berkeley students, yet many of them still manage to get degrees.</p>
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<p>I believe it is a Berkeley problem, and probably common to a fair amount of state universities. It’s because the administrative staffs don’t have the resources to deal with lots of struggling students. But because they are state universities, they have an obligation to admit a certain number of in-state students (who meet certain academic standards). OTOH, universities such as MIT and Stanford are able to retain more students, because there is more administrative support for doing that.</p>
<p>FWIW, I think the argument that sakky is making that universities should not admit students who are unlikely to meet minimal standards would not be workable (at state universities) because it would be considered highly unpopular among the taxpayers, if not outright discriminatory.</p>
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<p>It would not surprise me if these reforms to engineering curricula that I hear about lately to make it more inviting to people who would otherwise major in something else bring about a drop in engineering salaries.</p>