Posted on 05/04/2015 9:14:07 AM PDT by OK Sun
Grade inflation is rampant on American campuses. According to a study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, A’s represent 43 percent of all grades awarded today—up from 15 percent in 1960. In fact, an “A” is now the most common grade awarded in college, and 73 percent of all grades are A’s and B’s. The problem is especially acute at private colleges and top public universities, particularly in the humanities and social sciences (except economics).
How then, in the face of all this blurring of lines between good, bad, and excellent, can higher education maintain a system of meaningful measures of student performance?
A couple of approaches conceived to deal with the problem of grade inflation have gained traction in the last few decades, with varying degrees of success and failure. One approach attempts to address grade inflation by adding grade distributions and class GPAs to transcripts. The other caps the percentage of “A” grades or mandates a specific grade distribution.
The first approach—adding grade distributions to transcripts—is intended to give students, faculty, administrators, and employers more information about an individual’s relative academic standing. Such grading transparency, the thinking goes, will make easy course schedules less attractive, encourage academic exploration on the part of students (rather than have them flock to degree programs traditionally regarded as easy), and give hiring managers and graduate school admission officers more insight into applicants’ true abilities. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, has plans to experiment with this approach, albeit a more beefed-up version.
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(Excerpt) Read more at popecenter.org ...
Maybe it’s not grade inflation. Maybe the kids today are just smarter! They sure as heck act like it! /sarc
I personally believe that part of the leadership crisis we have in this nation right now is related to people who get degrees but are dumb as a bucket of rocks.
They are hired or elected because they look great on paper, but have no ability to act as rational members of society.
Witness the Mayor of Baltimore and how idiotic her comments about the riots have been.
Witness the Black community members that further the idea that Blacks rioting are only doing that because they get no help from any source.
Witness the high school and college teacher/professors that advocate for the downfall of the United States, or at the very least it’s Constitutional/Capitalist form of government/society.
They may not act like it, but they sure as heck believe it.
I promise you they don't just give A's to everybody.
He made a C in one of his upper level calculus classes, and he was thrilled. It was a typical grade in the class.
Now, as for the general education electives... well, he better be getting A's in there, if only to pump up the GPA to keep scholarships.
I just talked to an engineering student who is realizing he is not really getting an education. He mentioned that the students from Brazil knew way more than he did.
There was a second ME I talked to - he had never been taught the bare basics of control loops - he is not stupid - quite willing to learn - just that the teachers in the University have never worked in the real world. The CE student did have one teacher that worked in the industry and said he was by far the best teacher.
What kids get for going to college is the illusion of and education, enough debt to buy a house and the attitude that they are too good to do real work.
Need more jail time for this fraud. We spend too much money for this to happen. We need a zero tolerance for grade fraud.
We clearly shouldn’t have grade inflation. But they better give my son an A!!!!
One of the goals of communism - dumb down each generation.
The new math equation
good grades = student loans = good pay for professors.
Explains it very neatly.
This is wholly due to the “not offending anyone” fear on campus.
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