<p>Title says it all: Talks about grade inflation in private colleges:</p>
<p>want-a-higher-gpa-go-to-a-private-college:</a> Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance</p>
<p>I know I saw this and said, oh great. How about grades are higher because there is more attention and 1 on 1 interaction between profs and students?</p>
<p>^^^^^my thoughts exactly</p>
<p>This is ridiculous. My S took a summer course at our local well-regarded State U. He earned an A+ for work he claims would yield a C at most at his private school.</p>
<p>Did not work at all for my kids! Grades seem to be low at their schools.</p>
<p>Has anyone done a study correlating this with the incoming scores of the students? I know that my experience does not equate with a neutral data base, but it might be that kids who attend private colleges have more potential going in?</p>
<p>
I believe the study mentioned in the post normalized the results based on the SAT results of the incoming students. In other words, to the extent you can use SAT results to gaage potential (which I hate but colleges and everybody else seems to love) they took this into account.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The study looked at trends. The disparity has grown since the 60s. I suppose it is possible that these private schools didn’t provide this level of attention in the 60s and now they do, but I doubt it.</p>
<p>Wasn’t the case for my D-aced science courses at local good state u last summer. At her LAC, the labs are done independently and the write-ups are intense. At the state U, she blew through the labs in half the time and indicated that the level of write-ups for state U (got A’s) would have been C’s at her LAC.</p>
<p>My son’s first two programming courses at State U had over 90 labs per course. Many of these were easy taking 15 minutes. Some were exceptionally hard (say twenty to forty hours). These two courses that he took were much more work and effort than anything that I ever took at Boston College. The physics class that he took was interesting. A few hundred students and the professors put problems on exams where you needed knowledge outside of the course to get an A in the course. You either needed more math than in the prereqs or you needed to know current events or you needed to know some of the lore that wasn’t in the readings, homeworks or exam preparation. I think that the feeling was that there was such a wide variance in skills and abilities that they wanted to make it very hard to get an A. Only about 30% survived after a year.</p>
<p>I guess that these could probably be considered weeders which are common in State U science and engineering programs.</p>
<p>At his school, the evening college courses are far easier than the day courses. The day school will not accept major courses for credit from the evening school. During the summer, many of the courses are run by the evening college and would be a lot easier than their day school counterparts. Furthermore, many students in the summer are taking courses that they failed during the regular school year which results in a weaker class (more time spent at the beginning of class on homework problems).</p>
<p>For the summer session at his school, you basically have to know the professors to know whether your student will get a real course or something that is dumbed down.</p>
<p>I think to have this kind of comparison between types of schools is silly and, I admit, I took the bait with my earlier post. The methodology for the research is poor and the comparison is a bit like asking “what is better for you-an apple or an orange?” There are too many potential intervening variables. </p>
<p>BTW-the classes my D took last summer were taught were by fulltime regular faculty (many of the students had his multiple choice tests from previous semesters and circulated them among the 80 kids in the class). Maybe she got an easy prof? Who knows? Too many variables that could explain that one.</p>
<p>
Just curious why you say this. I don’t know enough about the methodology from reading this article. I don’t know what controls they use. Do you know something about this research?
I’ll agree there are a lot of intervening variables, but generally they try to control for them.</p>
<p>And of course I’ll agree that it is sort of a ridiculous study if you want to compare any one school to another.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’d say that my son’s humanities courses are pretty easy. The science and engineering courses taught by the full-time day professors are not. It’s often a sink-or-swim environment as most professors are measured on their research over their teaching. Many are foreign-born and difficult to understand and there are large lecture halls. Of course you have to learn to adapt quickly to this environment and the ability to deal with such adversity can be useful in your career.</p>
<p>It is well-known anecdotally and statistically that private schools, the Ivies in particular, inflate grades.</p>
<p>Anecdotally: I was listening to a podcast of a Yale history course. The very distinguished professor said, “If you show up, you’ll get a B+. Do a little work, an A.” </p>
<p>Statistically: Aside from this article, which had decent methodology, [National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://gradeinflation.com/]National”>http://gradeinflation.com/)</p>
<p>I think it’s a case of perceived privilege. “We’re spending $50k on this supposedly superior education. We expect supposedly superior grades.”</p>
<p>The rationalizations I’m seeing on this thread only prove this sense of entitlement.</p>
<p>Reminds me of Lake Wobegon: “Where all the children are above average.”</p>
<p>Or Fran Lebowitz: “I never met anyone who didn’t have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?”</p>
<p>If I were an employer, the message: Hire someone at a public school who has a lower GPA, and if you want a top recruit, you know that a 3.5 GPA at a State U is worth more than at a private.</p>
<p>I also wonder which schools are being compared. Are we comparing public state flagships to 3rd and 4th tier private schools, where the students really need to retain FA grants and merit money to continue to fill seats? The state schools have constant supply of transfers waiting to start from community college, or from private schools that parents can no longer afford. This applies to the flagship and the lower tier public schools. Podunk Privat College may not have the same number of students waiting to enter as transfers. They have a vested interest in keeping their current students (both to keep up their rankings, BUT ALSO to keep that seat filled with a paying student).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At my state flagship over 20 years ago, you were required to take a special English class if you had placed out of freshman English. On the first day, our professor stated “I will give only one A this semester.” That really chapped me-everyone in the room was bright, intelligent, and probably capable of doing A quality work, but he had decided in advance that only one would be deserving of an A. In five minutes it became quite apparent who was going to get the A (think Andy Bernard from The Office).</p>
<p>I was really glad I hadn’t set my heart on graduating with a 4.0 as I would have been sorely disappointed.</p>
<p>And of course many engineering frosh at public universities heard the following at orientation-“Look to your left, look to your right. One of you three will graduate.” It about worked out too, with most changing majors after a year.</p>
<p>hahahahahahahahaha
I’m sorry. My son attends Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>Threads like this make me laugh that people actually believe this. I could tell you for certain that each of my three sons would be straight A students in most any state school. I don’t think anyone at MIT or Cornell would have a problem achieving A’s at state schools.</p>
<p>The data is after the fact correlational data (remember the old adage “correlation is not causation”. Someone just started comparing GPA’s with no filters for variables as far as I can tell. There were no controls for the SES of students, number receiving FA (and having to work), amount of intervention and support available by professors or other study labs, accounting of process of academic intervention (at many private schools, students are called in by their adviser when they do poorly at the beginning of a course–interventions like this require no grade manipulation and aren’t making easier in an academic sense but do help the student find what he/she needs in order to do well). </p>
<p>As another poster pointed out, what tier of colleges are we comparing? What was the academic background of the entering students, retention rate of school, average entering SAT score?</p>
<p>Just this past fall, our local newspaper had an article on the grade inflation at UNC-Chapel Hill. I don’t have the data handy but as I recall, the average GPA there is now a 3.1, increasing from an average of 2.8 in the late 80’s. Seems like this public U falls in line with the privates in the article.</p>
<p>Unfortunately,to me, this seems to be sensationalistic journalism, colorful, eye-catching but not saying much.</p>
<p>Perhaps they are describing GPAs of “the average” student, which would not be one attending Cornell or MIT (post 18).</p>
<p>Would the average kiddo attending Roger Williams, Hartwick, Endicott, Elizabethtown, McDaniel College, etc. have a higher GPA then a kiddo with the same SAT scores/HS grades attending SUNY Oneonta, Rowan University, University of Rhode Island, UMASS, UMBC, or Kutztown Univesity?</p>