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Perhaps you missed my point, or I did not explain it clearly enough. Getting a good education (in many fields) is not just simple memorization, where someone can learn a list of facts, study for an hour, play 'World of Warcraft' for two hours before a test, and get all A's.... What skills does that teach a student? Having difficult tests (at least for those who are motivated) teaches students to try harder the next time. Life is not just handed to a person (where some groups think it should be). You have to earn it. If you ever did a rapid-paced high-tech startup, would realize that it takes a great deal of work and effort, and many of them fail. These difficult tests provided a means to think out of the box, take the basic information students were given in their classwork, and apply it in new ways. It's called 'creativeness, innovation and insight'. That learning experience continues to grow and strengthen long after college.
You are obsessed with "start ups". Some people work at companies other than your "start ups"....
This whole problem rests on this question: Is a grade supposed to measure how well a student knows material independent of everyone else or is a grade supposed to measure how well a student knows material in relation to everyone else? If the former is your choice, and it's mine, then grade inflation is not a big issue. If the latter's your choice, then grade inflation is cause by straying from an average of 75% in each class. I don't know what advantage there is in competitive grading though. You don't have to know the most about a subject, you just have to know about it.
You are obsessed with "start ups". Some people work at companies other than your "start ups"....
2/3ds of the companies I used to work for were Fortune 50's.... and the same opinions applied... Any other inaccurate conjectures?
The pre-filtering process tends to skew the cross section of the individuals attending a school, as of those getting a job, as of those getting less expensive car insurance, as about any other area (though it is never guaranteed, and mistakes can be made).
Forcing a distribution of results (such as a bell-curve), on a group of anything (people, students, whatever) that are initially chosen from a highly-specific set of criteria does two things: 1). performs a disservice to the students, and 2). for those commenting nf the results, being outside the process of the details on how the results were derived, run the risk of making erroneous conclusions.
It would make more sense to me if a school like Harvard abolished grades and then made every class pass/fail. Set the pass at the "A" level. Just getting a degree from Harvard is enough of an accomplishment. Grades are silly at that point, let the kids focus on learning for the pure enjoyment of learning.
It would make more sense to me if a school like Harvard abolished grades and then made every class pass/fail. Set the pass at the "A" level. Just getting a degree from Harvard is enough of an accomplishment. Grades are silly at that point, let the kids focus on learning for the pure enjoyment of learning.
Are you kidding me?
When they apply to graduate schools, how can the schools know they are good or bad?
If there is no exam (or score), how do you know the students really understand the formulas and principles?
Also it is extremely unfair for those who work hard.
There was a Duke professor who did an in depth study of this a few years ago. The consensus: Schools HAVE to inflate grades so that their students can be competitive.
They want their grads to get the best jobs, the best paying jobs so that they can become contributing Alumn. This may have less of an impact on ivys, but I suspect it still plays a role. It may be hard for a hiring manager to compare the curriculum between two different grads from different schools, but they sure can understand a 4.0 scale.
I find it particularly interesting that the students at flagship campuses receive higher than anticipated grades than their satellite campus cohorts for what we can safely assume is identical curriculum.
I graduated from FIU just before they changed, i.e. lowered, their standards so grades were equivalent to FSU and UF. They reasoning was companies looking at graduate GPAs would prefer the high scoring ones.
I was a TA and most of my students got a C. The supervisor asked me to make more As and Bs.
My experience as well.
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