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Sakky, no class can have over 65% A's and B's (for undergraduate courses, I think graduate courses don't apply). That's the policy- what would you prefer?
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<p>Are you sure about that policy? Check out what the Committee of Teaching discovered about undergraduate grading </p>
<p>"Rine described the shock he felt during his three years on the Committee on Teaching from roughly 1998 to 2000 when he reviewed teaching records for large undergraduate classes, with more than 100 students, in which no one got less than an A-, year after year. At the time, Rine asked Associate Registrar Walter Wong to assemble some data looking at upper division and lower division grading in the physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering, so that he could distinguish trends from anecdotal exceptions. The results were clear. "The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976," stated Rine, "while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, "</p>
<p><a href="http://ls.berkeley.edu/new/05/grades.html%5B/url%5D">http://ls.berkeley.edu/new/05/grades.html</a></p>
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Do you think learning has to be sadistic to be legitimate? Does a harsh curve mean a more difficult class? So how about I bring up your favorite department, that one you love to talk about (by not mentioning it by name), the American Studies department. Do you think that those people who are interested in it and want to study shouldn't be able to because too many of the their classes grade too easily? Let me guess, they should make their standards higher. How high is high enough?
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<p>I'm sayin that what's fair is fair. If it's fair to go about weeding the engineers, then it's fair to weed out everybody else. Otherwise, don't weed out the engineers. </p>
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Don't you want your borderline failing engineering friends to have some easy grading humanities classes so they can stay in school? Do you think that everything should grade as harshly as the hardest hard science classe?
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<p>No, what I really want is for those harsh engineering/science classes to be graded less harshly. However, as a corollary, I would not mind subjecting the creampuff students to the same harsh treatment, for I am fairly certain that if that happened, there would be a great push for reform coming from the students. The fact that weeding right now happens to only students in certain majors slows the push for reform. </p>
<p>Look at it this way. Consider the institution of slavery, a practice that shamefully lasted for a century after the founding of the country despite the nation's ideal of liberty. I believe that a big reason why it was able to last that long was simply because only a minority of the population (only 1 race) was subjected to slavery. If EVERY race in the country was subjected to slavery, and in particular, if whites were subjected to slavery, then I believe that democratic political pressure would have resulted in the abolition of slavery long before it actually happened. </p>
<p>Now don't get me wrong. I am not drawing a moral equivalence between slavery and grade weeding. Clearly they are not comparable. It's simply an example that people generally don't care about a problem unless it affects them. If you're majoring in some creampuff major, you probably don't care that the physics students are going through hell. In fact, you're probably laughing at them for being such masochists. </p>
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First, that math/science classes have right and wrong answers, so your grade is totally dependent on how hard you work and how smart you are (no matter what the curve is).
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<p>I've heard this argument countless times, and yet I dismiss it. Just because a class has definite right and wrong answers does not automatically mean that the letter grading of that class has to be punitive. For example, the translation of a score of 50% to a letter grade is completely a matter of interpretation. In certain engineering classes, getting a 50% is an A+. For example, I knew one guy who got a 30/100 on an engineering exam, and celebrated. Why? Because the mean was a 25. So his 30 was an A. Basically he didn't know much of anything, but neither did the rest of the class, so relatively speaking, he was doing great. The highest score anybody got on that exam was something in the 50's, which was clearly an A+++. However, in other engineering classes, getting a 50 is an F. For example, I know a guy who scored in the 80's on an exam. The problem? The mean was a 95, and the curve was harsh (to get the mean was to get a C+). So basically, he was getting at best a D. He proved that he knew most of the material. But it didn't matter. The point is that while I agree that the answers are clearly right or wrong, the grading is completely arbitrary. You can know very little about the materials and get a very good grade. You can know a lot about the material and get a very poor grade. </p>
<p>Secondly, I would say that a C is not that bad of a grade. Hey, at least it's passing. I know a lot of engineers who just want to pass, and don't even manage to do that. I have always questioned why is it that in humanities undergrad classes, as long as you do the work, you basically know you're going to pass (even if it's just barely passing). After all, this is not the way that humanities departments operate when it comes to their doctoral dissertations. For example, if you're getting a PhD in English at Berkeley, you can't just write up some dissertation of middling quality and expect your committee to simply pass you. They're going to demand that you constantly revise it over and over again until it is very high quality. That's why getting a PhD in English takes years and years of struggle. So the point is that if humanities departments can demand an extremely high level of work from their graduate students before they confer degrees upon them, then they can also do the same for their undergrad students.</p>
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So its extrememly disheartening when you work harder than you've ever worked and still get a C. Admittedly, the same thing happens in math and science classes, but again, I'm not saying that those classes are easy.
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<p>I agree that it may be disheartening to work hard and get a C, but you must agree that it's even MORE disheartening to work hard and get an F. </p>
<p>The point is that studies have shown, at Berkeley and elsewhere, that there seems to be a strong dichotomy between the grading schemes used in tech and non-tech classes. It has been discovered at Berkeley, it was discovered at Princeton (for example, Princeton found out that humanities departments gave out a higher percentage of A's than any other department), and other studies from the Department of Education have also discovered this as a general nationwide trend. I propose that schools like Berkeley ought to work towards grade equity. Either that, or provide information that allows people who read transcripts to understand more about how the grading policy works. For example, I believe that on your transcript, right next to the grade you get in a certain class, the median grade of that entire class ought to be printed. So if you get a B where the median grade was an A-, then the fact that you did worse than average should be clearly reflected. But if you got a B where the median grade was a C, then it should be made quite clear that you were better than average.</p>