Shall we discuss grade inflation again?

[EKS]

This NYT article notes that 80% of grades given at Yale last year were As or A minuses.  Broken down into STEM vs humanities, 65% of STEM grades were in the A range, whereas "over 80%" of grades in the humanities were in the A range.  Assuming that half the grades were STEM and half humanities, that would mean that 95% of humanities grades were in the A range.

Based on my own experience in higher ed (second string state schools) in the past 8 years, I absolutely believe it. 

For example, I was in an interdisciplinary humanities master's degree program a few years ago, where there was a woman in our cohort who could not write coherently and had no interesting ideas or even any ideas at all.  The papers she wrote, at least the ones I saw, should have gotten Fs.  Instead, she ended up graduating with honors, which meant that she had to have gotten all As save one which could have been no less than a B.

Another example comes from when I was a TA for a multivariable calculus class.  Being a TA, I was able to see the grade book for the class.  Twelve out of 18 students in the class had a final grade of 100% or more.  Yes, you read that right.  But only four of these had an average on exams of 98 or higher--meaning that only these students had an exam average that was reasonably in line with getting 100% in the class.  What inflated the final grades was 40% of the points being awarded for homework completion and discussion post submission combined with a ridiculous number of extra credit opportunities, all of which had to do with attending online study sessions or doing additional discussion posts--not actual knowledge of the material.

I get so tired of people claiming that a B is good.  It is no longer good; it is essentially failing.  In fact, at my current school, anything less than an A+ should be considered suspect.

Edited December 10, 2023 by EKS

[HomeAgain]

This isn't something I have noticed here.  Though I do think my anatomy professor started grading on a curve.  The tests were very difficult, but I would end up with an A or B, and the lowest grade in the class would be around a 50.  The first test the range was 27-88%, but the lower half continued to creep up until it was within the 'just passing' range.

Most of the time there are clear rubrics and professors going out of their way to make sure they are trying to reach the ones who are struggling.

 

Now, the pandemic has killed writing skills, and I know several kids struggling with this right now.  It will be interesting to see how it pans out in 2-3 years when the first wave hits the college years and are still trying to catch up with foundational skills.

[almondbutterandjelly]

I agree with HomeAgain.  We have not seen that at my dd's school, either.  Kids that got A's worked very hard and knew the material well.  Yes, they do grades differently now than in the olden days of my college years, where homework is graded now and counts as part of the grade.  I don't think that's bad necessarily.  It helps to ensure homework gets completed and material gets learned.  Still, there is a wide range of grades in her classes.  She was initially a Nursing major, and then a Pre-Allied Health major, if that is relevant to the discussion.  A B+ is in no way a failure.  There are literal F's in every class, generally.

[Bootsie]

I don't think it is fair to say that a B is not good--you have to know the context.  Grades are not the same type of measure as a thermometer measuring water temperature at sea level.  In many cases an "A" is meaningless.  But in some cases a C really does mean a reasonably passing grade.  The grade is a piece of information, that without context, one can draw little conclusions about.   

I have learned I have clarify when a student comes in my office to discuss grades.  Just this past week I had one who was crying about "failing"--I checked and her course exam grades for the semester average 88 going into the final exam (Plus she has some higher homework grades--so she is within shooting range of an A- in the class, but will probably make a B+).  

I do think grade inflation is a serious problem.  I think it is harder to address in some classes than others.  If there is a more calculation based class--people are going to make some mistakes and everyone will not make an A.  Even  with multiple choice type exams it is easy to say that objectively someone missed a question.  With many professors overhwelmed with huge teaching loads, making grading things like essays and papers time-consuming, and having student evaluations used in promotion and pay decisions, grading more subjective work in which the student can more easily claim that the provessor is biased as anything as an "A" is fraught with problems.   

[Scarlett]

Obtaining a degree has never been proof of actually being educated.  And being educated does not require a degree.  
 

I saw a fantastic video the other day about the declining lack of value of a degree.  I wish I could find it.  

[EKS]

48 minutes ago, almondbutterandjelly said:

There are literal F's in every class, generally.

There was a D and an F in the class I TA'd for as well.

49 minutes ago, almondbutterandjelly said:

Yes, they do grades differently now than in the olden days of my college years, where homework is graded now and counts as part of the grade.  I don't think that's bad necessarily.  It helps to ensure homework gets completed and material gets learned.

Interestingly, the higher the test score average, the less the homework pulls up the grade.  So, for example, when the homework and discussions count for 40% of the grade, as they did in the class I TA'd, a person with a 95 exam average will only get a 2 point boost from full points on homework and discussions; in other words they would get a final score of 97.  Note that you could get full points by simply handing something that looked a certain way in.  It didn't have to be right.  If that same person, who obviously learned the material somehow, got a zero for HW etc, they would receive a final grade of 57 and fail the class.  Conversely, a person with a 57 average on exams would get a 74 and pass the class.  Moving up into the D range, a person with a 67 average on exams would get and final score of 80--a B-.  And, of course, extra credit would bump the scores even higher. 

25 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

I don't think it is fair to say that a B is not good--you have to know the context.  Grades are not the same type of measure as a thermometer measuring water temperature at sea level.  In many cases an "A" is meaningless.  But in some cases a C really does mean a reasonably passing grade.  The grade is a piece of information, that without context, one can draw little conclusions about.

And that's the problem.  With grade inflation as rampant as it is, the default assumption will be that a majority got an A.

[SKL]

So does this mean that my kids will be unemployable if they aren't straight-A students in college?

One more thing to worry about ....

[SKL]

9 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

Obtaining a degree has never been proof of actually being educated.  And being educated does not require a degree.  
 

I saw a fantastic video the other day about the declining lack of value of a degree.  I wish I could find it.  

Unless your career goal / life dream literally requires a degree, of course.

[KungFuPanda]

I don't have a problem with  the number of As awarded in any class.  If there are clear, measurable expectations and most of the class meets them (as you'd expect from a group of Yale students) then that's fine.  A curve is a bit pointless and arbitrary when you're measuring a group of people anyway.  College has gotten so expensive that these kids can't afford to play around.  I'm not sure it's grade inflation if more kids are getting better grades.  I'd have to see substandard work, beyond occasional personal instances, getting better grades than A work from pervious years before I'd call it inflation.  I also don't have a problem with using a variety of assessments to measure a student's ability.  The students who scramble to make up for missing a few test questions are demonstrating perseverance and a work ethic that will serve them well in life.  It's important to measure scholarship and not just memory or test taking skills.  How many people run into timed tests at work? 

I hate when people say that a B is basically failing.  We're making these kids crazy with stuff like that.  I hate pushing early reading in Kindergarten and extended scale GPAs in high school.  We don't have enough quality mental health care in this country to intentionally stress these kids out or to spend zero academic hours on social skills. I saw a high schooler in my office last week.  She was dual enrollment, as well as carrying some college classes.  She missed a group of assignments in a class and got a B.  Her argument was that she was never informed about the assignments and they weren't posted online. She was running office to office in tears trying to get another shot at that A.  I had to tell her that we don't accept registration appeals when the student has a passing grade. 

I don't have a ton of sympathy for kids who just don't do the work and try to squeak through at the end.  However, I take no issue with those who acquire and demonstrate the same knowledge in a different way or who scramble to shore up those last few points. The 99% perspiration is important.

[Scarlett]

4 minutes ago, SKL said:

Unless your career goal / life dream literally requires a degree, of course.

Correct.  I was referring to the financial value.  

[Frances]

I would assume the Yale profs and TAs are under immense pressure from students to give out As. Even 35 years ago when I was a TA at an Ivy, I had some students who were relentless when it came to trying to get the grade they thought they deserved. I can only imagine it is much, much worse now.

Except for degrees that require passing a national standard exam to use (eg nursing), I’m not sure we can say much about whether or not learning has taken place and what any grade means because there is such significant variation from college to college and class to class. Similar to our high schools, there is no standardization. Some students graduating from college are likely not getting anything beyond or even at the level of a rigorous high school while others at a place like MIT or U of Chicago have to pass a standard core before preceding to upper level classes.

[SKL]

And let's be honest, some of those college diplomas are not going to make the students rich.  My kid aspires to be a social worker.  She needs a degree for that.  Though a hard worker, she's unlikely to be a 4.0 student unless the courses are pretty easy.  So should she not bother trying?  Don't we really need more social workers in our population?  How about teachers?

[Frances]

19 minutes ago, SKL said:

So does this mean that my kids will be unemployable if they aren't straight-A students in college?

One more thing to worry about ....

I don’t think most employers care. Setting aside a place like Yale, many of these college students are obsessing about grades because that is what they’ve been conditioned to do for many years by parents, peers, etc. Others are focused on grad or professional school where grades can matter, but usually along with test scores, experience, recommendations, diversity, etc.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Frances

[Frances]

3 minutes ago, SKL said:

And let's be honest, some of those college diplomas are not going to make the students rich.  My kid aspires to be a social worker.  She needs a degree for that.  Though a hard worker, she's unlikely to be a 4.0 student unless the courses are pretty easy.  So should she not bother trying?  Don't we really need more social workers in our population?  How about teachers?

Her grades will not matter for her to become a social worker. They might matter a bit for getting into an MSW program if that is her goal. But since they are usually self pay, they will likely take all the students they have room for and who can pay. Due to a shortage and desiring more diversity in the cohort to closer mirror clients, my state no longer even requires a college degree for state social work jobs.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Frances

[EKS]

12 minutes ago, SKL said:

So does this mean that my kids will be unemployable if they aren't straight-A students in college?

One more thing to worry about ....

It depends on what they major in and whether the employers look at transcripts.

When I worked for a pharmaceutical company back in the 90s, we looked at transcripts.  Interestingly, the only people we ever ended up firing were the two whom we hired even though their grades were bad (to be clear, by "bad" I mean that they had Cs, Ds, and Fs).  

10 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:

I hate when people say that a B is basically failing.  We're making these kids crazy with stuff like that.

Yes, well, it is the effort to make kids feel warm and fuzzy all the time that has resulted in grade inflation and it is grade inflation that turns a B into failure.  Unintended consequences.

10 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:

The 99% perspiration is important.

When it comes to A level work, it should be more than perspiration that gets you there.  

Edited December 10, 2023 by EKS

[Alice]

Some random thoughts...

Dh went to Yale (graduated in 1988) and although the stats do show grade inflation increasing, his response to this article was that everyone made A's when he was there also. The saying when he was there was "hard to get into, hard to get out of". Meaning it would take work to actually fail anything. He also usually tells people he didn't work very hard there. He worked really hard in high school, but not so much in college. 

When I was in medical school my school graded on a strict curve. Meaning only a certain percentage could get a Honors, regardless of percentage correct on a test. That meant every test, every class fostered an incredibly competitive atmosphere. You weren't just trying to do your best, you also had to beat everyone else. It's kind of the worst case opposite scenario of grade inflation and everyone getting an A. 

We have medical students come to our office and we've run into issues multiple times with students being upset with our grades. The school gives us a rubric and the way they define what they want a student to do as an Honors, maybe 1 student a year will meet (we have roughly 6-8 students a year). But we've been told that 40% of their students get honors and a pass (the grading system is Honors, High Pass, Pass, Low Pass, Fail) is considered akin to failure. We had one kid who we gave a pass, and honestly we felt like we were being generous, and we had to deal with multiple emails from the heads of the department somewhat questioning us. The message we get from the school is that we should be giving more honors and basically we've said then they need to change their rubric if they want us to honestly grade people higher. We're in kind of a unique position as we aren't employed by the school and so can kind of do what we want. If they decide to stop sending students to us it hurts them more than us, unlike a professor who is employed by the school. 

[Condessa]

When I was at BYU, professors were expected to give out a range of grades to their students, and could get in trouble for not doing so.  They might have a class or a term that skewed high or low, but if they consistently gave only mostly high grades, they were assumed to not be teaching the material at a rigorous enough level, and if they consistently gave only mostly low grades, they were assumed to not be teaching the material well enough and offering enough opportunities for additional support for students.  Is this not a thing anymore?  Was it always unique to my school?  

There was an instance where a professor told us that there was going to be a step up in the difficulty of her grading, because her department had made a decision based upon average grades she gave out, so we had fair warning and knew it wasn’t something that complaining to her would help with.  Another time a teacher of a notoriously difficult course required for my major (that students often had to take 2 or 3 times to pass) successfully argued to the department head that the level of rigor in his class was appropriate and that he did offer extensive opportunities for extra help that the great majority of students did take advantage of, it was just a really difficult subject for many students in our major.  They agreed with him, but decided to start allowing Ds to count as a passing grade for the major for his class only (all other classes required a C to pass).

[Frances]

12 minutes ago, Condessa said:

When I was at BYU, professors were expected to give out a range of grades to their students, and could get in trouble for not doing so.  They might have a class or a term that skewed high or low, but if they consistently gave only mostly high grades, they were assumed to not be teaching the material at a rigorous enough level, and if they consistently gave only mostly low grades, they were assumed to not be teaching the material well enough and offering enough opportunities for additional support for students.  Is this not a thing anymore?  Was it always unique to my school?  

There was an instance where a professor told us that there was going to be a step up in the difficulty of her grading, because her department had made a decision based upon average grades she gave out, so we had fair warning and knew it wasn’t something that complaining to her would help with.  Another time a teacher of a notoriously difficult course required for my major (that students often had to take 2 or 3 times to pass) successfully argued to the department head that the level of rigor in his class was appropriate and that he did offer extensive opportunities for extra help that the great majority of students did take advantage of, it was just a really difficult subject for many students in our major.  They agreed with him, but decided to start allowing Ds to count as a passing grade for the major for his class only (all other classes required a C to pass).

I think schools that have common sense overarching policies about grades are few and far between unfortunately.

[Xahm]

Part of this has to come as a result of grade requirements for scholarships, too. I know professors who would love to hold a tough love line and grade strictly to help students learn to hold themselves to a high standard. However, they know that if a student's GPA drops below a certain level, that student is going to become responsible for paying tens of thousands of dollars. 

I went to a magnet high school that required keeping a certain GPA and never having lower than a B in math or English class. Drop below it two semesters in a row and you were out. Some of us were escaping bad, dangerous high schools. The teachers knew it and tried to be as strict as possible while not sending us to gang-land as punishment for forgetting a homework assignment or struggling with a concept.

[EKS]

20 minutes ago, Xahm said:

Part of this has to come as a result of grade requirements for scholarships, too.

This makes me nuts.  I understand that failing grades are a problem, but a student should be able to retain their scholarship if they are getting passing grades.

[Katy]

I don’t doubt grade inflation is a problem. I’m not sure this is a good example. I doubt the kids who worked hard enough to get into Yale would suddenly be struggling with the work unless they had extenuating circumstances or new health/mental health issues. You don’t get in there without extensive honors or AP classes, which are generally more difficult than undergraduate courses. I absolutely believe STEM classes are more difficult unless the kid’s been in math competitions or using AOPS though. 

[Carrie12345]

The program used for my school lets you see how you’re doing compared to the rest of the class, statistically. Well, except for the one professor I have for 2 courses right now, who turned that feature off. Otherwise, I’ve seen a wide range of averages in most classes. Plenty of genuine Fs and Ds.

Inconsistency is one of my bigger complaints. I do believe my English scores are higher than they should be. I literally apologized for a crummy, rushed essay and got “I see what you mean. 97.” The tech professor makes good grades too easy to get. And the one I have for two courses is grading me more harshly in one than the other on elements that are in both classes so ???? It’s confusing to me.

[EKS]

52 minutes ago, Katy said:

I doubt the kids who worked hard enough to get into Yale would suddenly be struggling with the work unless they had extenuating circumstances or new health/mental health issues.

One important aspect of going to a selective school is that you finally get challenged.  When my father went to Caltech back in the late 40s, everyone there was at the top of his high school class.  According to my father, it wasn't at all trivial to pass, let alone get As (note that he also got his PhD at Caltech, so he wasn't anywhere near the bottom of the distribution).

So if Yale isn't challenging its students, it's doing them a huge disservice.

[Frances]

2 hours ago, Katy said:

I don’t doubt grade inflation is a problem. I’m not sure this is a good example. I doubt the kids who worked hard enough to get into Yale would suddenly be struggling with the work unless they had extenuating circumstances or new health/mental health issues. You don’t get in there without extensive honors or AP classes, which are generally more difficult than undergraduate courses. I absolutely believe STEM classes are more difficult unless the kid’s been in math competitions or using AOPS though. 

While this might be generally true at a place like Yale, there are definitely students there and at other Ivy level schools who do not have a background of extensive high level honors and AP classes. There are students from rural high schools that even offer such things. There are students from all sorts of high schools where they don’t offer AP or IB and except for certain classes with certain teachers, there is not much rigor at all. These colleges are trying to get a diverse student body and at least for the Ivies, also fill a large number of sport positions. Even at a place like Yale full of high achieving students, professors could differentiate between students’ performance with a wider range of grades if they desired to do so and the administration allowed it. I was a TA at an Ivy for both undergrad and grad classes for several years as was my husband at a different one, and there was definitely a wide range of abilities and preparation. During my time I had a few students who I was surprised were even at a four year college.

And for a personal example, in some of my graduate level math classes there were people like me who did not major in math as an undergrad and people with math PhDs from other countries and pretty much everything in between.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Frances

[Frances]

18 minutes ago, EKS said:

One important aspect of going to a selective school is that you finally get challenged.  When my father went to Caltech back in the late 40s, everyone there was at the top of his high school class.  According to my father, it wasn't at all trivial to pass, let alone get As (note that he also got his PhD at Caltech, so he wasn't anywhere near the bottom of the distribution).

So if Yale isn't challenging its students, it's doing them a huge disservice.

I do think places like Caltech, MIT, and maybe U of Chicago are almost in a class by themselves because they require a common core to be completed by all students and I think their admission policies reflect this.

[Not_a_Number]

6 hours ago, Katy said:

I don’t doubt grade inflation is a problem. I’m not sure this is a good example. I doubt the kids who worked hard enough to get into Yale would suddenly be struggling with the work unless they had extenuating circumstances or new health/mental health issues. You don’t get in there without extensive honors or AP classes, which are generally more difficult than undergraduate courses. I absolutely believe STEM classes are more difficult unless the kid’s been in math competitions or using AOPS though. 

I’d be extremely surprised if AP classes are generally more difficult than college classes at a good school. The level of thought required at college is much higher in my experience.

It hasn’t been my experience when teaching math that all kids at good schools are ready for the classes. All the kids do work hard. But there are plenty who don’t know how to learn or to thoroughly understand difficult concepts.

[athena1277]

I wonder if what numerical grade constitutes an A at various college and majors explains any of the changes?  I love the small private college my dd is at, but one thing that is quite annoying is that each teacher has a different standard for what is an A.  In one class a 90 is an A, in another class the lowest A is a 94.  I wonder if any of the schools mentioned have changed grading policies in the last few years? If a 93 was a B 5 years ago, but now it’s an A, that would be significant to the discussion.

[EKS]

11 hours ago, athena1277 said:

I wonder if what numerical grade constitutes an A at various college and majors explains any of the changes?  I love the small private college my dd is at, but one thing that is quite annoying is that each teacher has a different standard for what is an A.  In one class a 90 is an A, in another class the lowest A is a 94.  I wonder if any of the schools mentioned have changed grading policies in the last few years? If a 93 was a B 5 years ago, but now it’s an A, that would be significant to the discussion.

When I was at ASU (2015-2017), the number cutoffs were shifted up.  I can't remember exactly what the cutoffs were, but I think the B range started at 93 and a solid A started at around a 97.  Even though I suspect their intent was to make it look more rigorous, all it really did was give the grader fewer points to work with in the A range. 

But here's the thing about percentages and grades.  They're arbitrary.  Totally arbitrary.  For example, I could make a math test where 50% should be an A.  I could grade a math test so that the student gets an A, B, or C depending on how much I take off for silly errors.  Depending on the caliber of the students in the class, a math test where the A range starts at 90% (or whatever) will change, sometimes dramatically.

But where the percentages make absolutely no sense is in essay grading.  We used to have these rubrics at ASU where you'd get a certain number of points for each category, such as content, quality, ideas, format, etc.  There were, I think, five levels--something akin to exceeds expectations, partially exceeds expectations, meets expectations, partially meets expectations, does not meet expectations.  These would seem to correspond to the grades A, B, C, D, and F, right?  Well they didn't.  Say you had a 100 point assignment and there were five qualities that were being evaluated--so, say, content, quality, and three others.  Each quality would be worth 10 points divided up among the the expectation levels, so it might look like this:

The grader was then supposed to decide on how good each aspect of the paper was, assign a point value, add them up, and that number would determine the grade.  It's probably obvious just from looking at the above table what the problems with this scheme were.  The first, most obvious problem is that a student could "meet" expectations in all categories and still get a failing grade.  In fact, since the percentages were skewed upward (I believe the F cutoff was around 73 because they didn't give Ds), a student could partially exceed expectations in all categories and still get an F!  At the other end, a student had to be practically perfect to get an A, since the A range started at 97.  

A rubric like this does not allow for meaningful feedback at any level of achievement.  Since they didn't want to fail the majority of students, which they would have had to had they used the rubric as written, everyone's scores were jammed into the "exceeds" category.  I know this because we posted most of the assignments we did for the entire class to see and at the end of the program I was able to see other students grades for practically every assignment they ever did in the program--people who definitely shouldn't have even been meeting expectations were getting mostly As.

The problems with the above rubric are the reason why you hear about some places moving towards grading on a 50 - 100 scale.  People freak out about that idea, but it makes good sense when you're talking about grading essays.  It aligns the points in the above rubric properly with the grading system that most teachers are forced to conform to.  Here is that table again.  Add 50 to the ranges in the total row and you see that it comes out in line with a reasonable grading scheme:

 

I would argue that the vast majority of people in education, not to mention people in general, have never thought seriously about grading.  The idea that some sort of percent cutoff is at all meaningful is just one example of this.

Edited December 11, 2023 by EKS

[Katy]

13 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I’d be extremely surprised if AP classes are generally more difficult than college classes at a good school. The level of thought required at college is much higher in my experience.

It hasn’t been my experience when teaching math that all kids at good schools are ready for the classes. All the kids do work hard. But there are plenty who don’t know how to learn or to thoroughly understand difficult concepts.

I went to a highly selective university and I can confirm my AP classes were much more difficult, at least in everything except math. The material was essentially the same, but at my high school at least the grades weren’t about cramming for the test that was essentially the same as a college final because there was an extremely inflated weight on homework that was essentially busy work. IE: don’t just read these 20-40 pages a night & memorize relevant facts in whatever study method works best for you, but also do 10 pages of notes in this complex way that isn’t relevant to learning anything, but proves you can jump through a ridiculous hoop. Extra points for more pages. Homework and class participation points are more relevant to your weighted grade than scoring a 5 on the exam, so you must excel on both to get into a highly competitive school. 

Undergraduate liberal arts classes don’t have any of that level of BS. A handful of papers and a couple exams are all that mattered. I went back to school AFTER my highly selective one. The undergraduate material at any regionally accredited school is about the same as a highly competitive university. That’s why they must be regionally accredited to transfer. The difference is whether the professors are nationally known and the networking you have with people who will be very powerful in years to come. Also going to a top school gives you better chances with grad school, assuming you participated in research. 

Anyway, you don’t have to take my word for it. Most highly selective schools have at least some open courses where you can watch the lectures and evaluate the homework and exams yourself. It’s not harder, the only reason to go is the networking later. 

[EKS]

3 minutes ago, Katy said:

Undergraduate liberal arts classes don’t have any of that level of BS.

This is not necessarily true these days.  It is very common to have lots of little throwaway assignments coupled with lots of participation-type points.

[Heartstrings]

19 hours ago, EKS said:

One important aspect of going to a selective school is that you finally get challenged.  When my father went to Caltech back in the late 40s, everyone there was at the top of his high school class.  According to my father, it wasn't at all trivial to pass, let alone get As (note that he also got his PhD at Caltech, so he wasn't anywhere near the bottom of the distribution).

So if Yale isn't challenging its students, it's doing them a huge disservice.

I wonder how much that holds true now with kids taking APs and other college level classes in high school versus the classes even a Yale level student had access to in the 40s.   Was the average Yale student in 1940 expected to take Calculus in high school the way a Yale bound student would be doing today?  I’ve not studied it but I’ve heard and read things saying that something around Algebra 1 was what most high school students took for math in the 40s.  
 

Edited December 11, 2023 by Heartstrings

[Heartstrings]

I wonder how much of the grade inflation is necessary due to kids having to work through college?  More kids than ever are working 20+ hours a week to keep up with living expenses during the school year.  Most of the time you can’t work a summer job and have that cover your school expenses.  
 
Professors just cannot expect a student who is working 20-30 hours a week to spend the same amount of time on school work as they could when most kids didn’t work or worked 10-15 hours. I’ve heard stories of the “old days” of kids being told that working 15 hours a week was too much and they would struggle with school, but now kids work twice as much.  

[Heartstrings]

21 hours ago, EKS said:

This makes me nuts.  I understand that failing grades are a problem, but a student should be able to retain their scholarship if they are getting passing grades.

Most scholarships require at least a 3.0 with some requiring 3.5 or higher.  “Cs get degrees” is only for people who can afford to pay full freight.  

[Frances]

1 hour ago, Katy said:

I went to a highly selective university and I can confirm my AP classes were much more difficult, at least in everything except math. The material was essentially the same, but at my high school at least the grades weren’t about cramming for the test that was essentially the same as a college final because there was an extremely inflated weight on homework that was essentially busy work. IE: don’t just read these 20-40 pages a night & memorize relevant facts in whatever study method works best for you, but also do 10 pages of notes in this complex way that isn’t relevant to learning anything, but proves you can jump through a ridiculous hoop. Extra points for more pages. Homework and class participation points are more relevant to your weighted grade than scoring a 5 on the exam, so you must excel on both to get into a highly competitive school. 

Undergraduate liberal arts classes don’t have any of that level of BS. A handful of papers and a couple exams are all that mattered. I went back to school AFTER my highly selective one. The undergraduate material at any regionally accredited school is about the same as a highly competitive university. That’s why they must be regionally accredited to transfer. The difference is whether the professors are nationally known and the networking you have with people who will be very powerful in years to come. Also going to a top school gives you better chances with grad school, assuming you participated in research. 

Anyway, you don’t have to take my word for it. Most highly selective schools have at least some open courses where you can watch the lectures and evaluate the homework and exams yourself. It’s not harder, the only reason to go is the networking later. 

I’m going to have to pretty strongly disagree that regional accreditation means the undergraduate material is about the same based on the experience of numerous people I know, both professors and students. My son LOL when he saw what his university was awarding credit for from the college he took classes at during high school and I know numerous other people who had similar experiences. Even within highly selective schools, there can be great variation. While it would be nice if accreditation and credit transfer agreements meant there was some level of equivalency or standardization, it just doesn’t seem to be the case in my experience.

I agree about the networking opportunities you can get from elite schools (and some companies only recruit at elite schools), although I think students can get into excellent grad schools from a variety of undergrads if they do research and connect with their profs. Numerous small LACs are known as feeder schools for top academic grad programs. Having gone to an elite university for grad school, I wouldn’t actually recommend it for undergrad for most students if the goal is a PhD. But there are cases where I would, such as for someone profoundly gifted in math or someone who already completed numerous high level college classes in their field while in high school.

[Frances]

1 hour ago, Heartstrings said:

I wonder how much that holds true now with kids taking APs and other college level classes in high school versus the classes even a Yale level student had access to in the 40s.   Was the average Yale student in 1940 expected to take Calculus in high school the way a Yale bound student would be doing today?  I’ve not studied it but I’ve heard and read things saying that something around Algebra 1 was what most high school students took for math in the 40s.  
 

I’d say the students at a place like Yale or any large university likely have the option to be challenged, but some may choose an easier route due to major, course and prof selection, course load, etc. My son took graduate level classes as an undergrad and I don’t think his experience was unique based on other posts on these boards. When I was in grad school at an Ivy, I sometimes had an undergrad or two in my classes. And I do think it’s possible in at least some cases that students are being challenged by course material despite easy grading standards. But I also think the opposite is true, that students are taking a college class in name only.

[Heartstrings]

10 minutes ago, Frances said:

But I also think the opposite is true, that students are taking a college class in name only.

I wonder if this really matter for most kids though.  The general consensus seems to be that most jobs that require degrees don’t really need them.  If the degree isn’t needed in the first place does it matter if the classes are easier than classes of old?   That’s off topic of this discussion though.  
 

[Clarita]

16 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I’d be extremely surprised if AP classes are generally more difficult than college classes at a good school. The level of thought required at college is much higher in my experience.

College course content was harder and the level of thought required was harder, but my AP courses required more work. The other part of that is in high school I tried to do as many classes as I could in AP, but in college the hard classes I took were only in the subjects I cared about (those that had to do with my major). 

[EKS]

4 hours ago, Heartstrings said:

I wonder how much that holds true now with kids taking APs and other college level classes in high school versus the classes even a Yale level student had access to in the 40s.   Was the average Yale student in 1940 expected to take Calculus in high school the way a Yale bound student would be doing today?  I’ve not studied it but I’ve heard and read things saying that something around Algebra 1 was what most high school students took for math in the 40s.

They were not expected to take calculus, though apparently some of the students who had gone to fancy high schools knew quite a bit of what was taught in the first year.  My father was not one of these students.  He went to a public high school in a very rural area where physics was taught by some coach and the chemistry book showed chemical bonds as hooks.  He didn't have calculus until college.  I'm pretty sure his math topped out at trig in high school.

[Not_a_Number]

8 hours ago, Katy said:

I went to a highly selective university and I can confirm my AP classes were much more difficult, at least in everything except math. The material was essentially the same, but at my high school at least the grades weren’t about cramming for the test that was essentially the same as a college final because there was an extremely inflated weight on homework that was essentially busy work. IE: don’t just read these 20-40 pages a night & memorize relevant facts in whatever study method works best for you, but also do 10 pages of notes in this complex way that isn’t relevant to learning anything, but proves you can jump through a ridiculous hoop. Extra points for more pages. Homework and class participation points are more relevant to your weighted grade than scoring a 5 on the exam, so you must excel on both to get into a highly competitive school. 

Undergraduate liberal arts classes don’t have any of that level of BS. A handful of papers and a couple exams are all that mattered. I went back to school AFTER my highly selective one. The undergraduate material at any regionally accredited school is about the same as a highly competitive university. That’s why they must be regionally accredited to transfer. The difference is whether the professors are nationally known and the networking you have with people who will be very powerful in years to come. Also going to a top school gives you better chances with grad school, assuming you participated in research. 

Anyway, you don’t have to take my word for it. Most highly selective schools have at least some open courses where you can watch the lectures and evaluate the homework and exams yourself. It’s not harder, the only reason to go is the networking later. 

I'm not quite following. Are you saying the AP classes were harder because there was more weight on things other than tests?

I remember feeling that college classes required a higher level of thinking and dispensed with the hoops I had to jump through in high school. I think that's consistent with what you're saying, although I'm not sure. 

[Not_a_Number]

5 hours ago, Clarita said:

College course content was harder and the level of thought required was harder, but my AP courses required more work. The other part of that is in high school I tried to do as many classes as I could in AP, but in college the hard classes I took were only in the subjects I cared about (those that had to do with my major). 

That sounds like my experience as well. 

I'm Canadian, so I didn't take AP classes (although my DH did, I think.) I did go to a school with a gifted program, but that's not the same thing. But at least in my experience, the level of thinking required in college was much, much higher. 

[Reefgazer]

On 12/10/2023 at 10:58 AM, EKS said:

This NYT article notes that 80% of grades given at Yale last year were As or A minuses.  Broken down into STEM vs humanities, 65% of STEM grades were in the A range, whereas "over 80%" of grades in the humanities were in the A range.  Assuming that half the grades were STEM and half humanities, that would mean that 95% of humanities grades were in the A range.

Based on my own experience in higher ed (second string state schools) in the past 8 years, I absolutely believe it. 

For example, I was in an interdisciplinary humanities master's degree program a few years ago, where there was a woman in our cohort who could not write coherently and had no interesting ideas or even any ideas at all.  The papers she wrote, at least the ones I saw, should have gotten Fs.  Instead, she ended up graduating with honors, which meant that she had to have gotten all As save one which could have been no less than a B.

Another example comes from when I was a TA for a multivariable calculus class.  Being a TA, I was able to see the grade book for the class.  Twelve out of 18 students in the class had a final grade of 100% or more.  Yes, you read that right.  But only four of these had an average on exams of 98 or higher--meaning that only these students had an exam average that was reasonably in line with getting 100% in the class.  What inflated the final grades was 40% of the points being awarded for homework completion and discussion post submission combined with a ridiculous number of extra credit opportunities, all of which had to do with attending online study sessions or doing additional discussion posts--not actual knowledge of the material.

I get so tired of people claiming that a B is good.  It is no longer good; it is essentially failing.  In fact, at my current school, anything less than an A+ should be considered suspect.

I've noticed the same at the college where I teach, and the high school that my kids were zoned for.

[Katy]

1 hour ago, Not_a_Number said:

I'm not quite following. Are you saying the AP classes were harder because there was more weight on things other than tests?

I remember feeling that college classes required a higher level of thinking and dispensed with the hoops I had to jump through in high school. I think that's consistent with what you're saying, although I'm not sure. 

There was a lot more (pointless) work in my AP classes. I did not find undergraduate classes at the competitive school to be more complex in any way once I got used to them. High school was more difficult. It did take me until at least halfway through my first term to figure out that we weren’t really supposed to be thinking, we were supposed to be quoting superior thinkers or those who were the first to come up with an idea. 

No one cared what we thought, they cared that we could prove we’d read & understood the assignment with our writing. Our own interpretation or critical thinking was generally penalized. That was different than high school. I remember not liking my first paper so two hours before class I rewrote an awful, minimal response that contained none of my opinions and simply answered the questions comparing something about ethics from the book of Job and some Taoist book I no longer remember. I thought the half-assed attempt with zero personal opinion would have gotten me a C or maybe pity B in high school. I got a 97, the highest grade in the class. It took a while to figure out why. 

Every assignment was well explained though. So if you needed a 10 page paper analysis of anything, there was a list of what was supposed to be covered in the syllabus for that assignment. I would write a matrix of what was needed, fill out the matrix from the assigned reading, turn each section into a paragraph, add in an introduction and summary, and that was it. The only deep thinking I recall was literary analysis (catching comparisons and allusions) but I was already pretty well read for a college kid, and much of the more obscure stuff had at least one topic option that wasn’t difficult. Or maybe the answer was in the footnotes. 

I actually found the classes I took at average universities to be more interesting, thought wise. Those instructors wanted a conversation, and wanted to discuss interesting topics rather than constantly remind us we were lowly undergrads and no one cared what we thought. The assignments were way less clear and less likely to be answered with a matrix. The highly selective school was very reminiscent of that scene in Good Will Hunting where Will dresses down the guy in the bar for having completely predictable opinions, which will undoubtedly change next term. They guide you through what to think about everything.

I have heard that smaller selective liberal arts colleges are the most challenging, thought wise, but my experience there has been limited to visiting campuses to hear particular speakers, so I don’t have wide experience. 

I remember going to this party for the people in my program. We discussed the disappointment that the most interesting discussions we had were with other students, outside of class. My advisor (after a few glasses of wine) said your opinion basically doesn’t matter until you have a PhD, a job, and have published at least 5 times. And even then, it’s politically fraught. He was awesome. I don’t remember anyone else ever being so honest. 

I don’t know how things may have changed in the years since. I know after the first dot com bust so many women from highly selective schools were going back to school for nursing that Yale started their own school of nursing. If you already had an undergraduate degree in something else you could get an RN in a very short, accelerated program, and then immediately start towards a graduate degree in nursing in several fields. I haven’t kept up with it since because I was already in a different program. I’m surprised how many women I went to school with hated the business world and ended up back in school for teaching or nursing. Most went to grad school too and are now a Doctor in Nursing or a Principal of a school.  If I’m counting correctly I know more than ten. 

[SHP]

How do I get my grade inflated? I am tired of being the one who is pushing themself to the point of exhaustion in art classes with subjective grading. I have dysgraphia and want to learn how to do the art things, like drawing, with full awareness that I will be putting in more effort than anyone else and will always suck. 

I just want enough grade inflation to pass. Seriously, how do I go about this?