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Hyper-grade-inflation
While the BLS may be searching far and wide for evidence of hedonically-adjusted "core" inflation, and not finding it anywhere (expect in assets, housing prices, food and energy, but apparently all America buys every day are LCD TVs and iPads), one place where not even the BLS can hide what is clear and present "inflation" is college grade point averages, and especially grades for humanities courses, where as the saying goes pretty much everyone is "above average." And, as JPM adds, "Soon, colleges will have to “turn the dial up to 11” or else everyone will have the maximum GPA." Well, in a society where the push is to make everyone equal, it would only be fair for everyone to get the exact same perfect grades...
Some perspective from Michael Cembalest:
In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, “the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all the children are above average”. Regarding US private and public universities, Keillor got the last part right. As shown below, the mean grade point average at US private and public schools has been increasing at a steady pace since 1970. Soon, colleges will have to “turn the dial up to 11” or else everyone will have the maximum GPA. As per the study from which the data is sourced, the 1960’s jump took place when the purpose of a GPA changed from being a motivator for students to being a measure used for external evaluation. GPA increases since 1970 are seen as a by-product of student evaluations of teachers (i.e., tough-grading teachers get bad evaluations, and eventually become extinct). Humanities courses have seen the highest grade inflation. Lower grades in science and engineering apparently discourage some students from pursuing them; do not let that affect you.
If it seems like people put too much importance on GPA, I would agree. What you learn is more important than what grades you get. However, you should also be aware of the realities of the job market. In the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ Job Outlook 2013 Survey, GPA importance hit an all-time high: 78% of employers screen candidates based on grade point averages.
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I totally nailed my lesbian-influenced honduran basket-weaving-for-the-handicapped class. Would that skew the averages?
Thought you were going to say:
"I totally nailed my lesbian-influenced honduran basket-weaving-for-the-handicapped professor."
Either way if you got an "A" I'm sure you deserved it ;-)
How long before colleges start lowering standards to advertise higher average GPA's to wanna be enrollees ?
thats been going on forever at top bschools, % recruited on-campus is everything
my gpa was a 2.4 im now an analyst for mckinsey in strategy consulting
fuck gpa's interviews seperate the boys from the men
Interviews..where the bullshitters put on a show. How about your performance separating the men from the boys? If you think being able to bullshit well separates you from the "boys" you should run for CONgress.
From 33 years of experience, I would say that the preparation of kids coming in as freshman is way down. Their willingness to bust their butts is way down. By way of example, many have noticed that in the monster courses, the kids barely take notes anymore. It's a classic, "if I know how to find the answer why do I need to know the answer?" The answer to this rhetorical question is twofold: (1) you need an operating system--a collection of knowledge--to think with, and (2) you need to emerse, which means busting your chops.
my gpa was an one point nine, im now a analyst for goalman sach in over seas develipment
forget what ever you thaught re: gpa avereges, beacase its the interview's ultamatley seperate the boys from the men
biches!!!!!
I estimate I lost a good 0.5 off my GPA because I worked 40-80 hours a week while going to school.
That's going into your permanent record.
Amen to that. Most of us ignore it, but if we were at all a fair society, GPA and SAT scores would be adjusted statistically to compensate for financial advantage and disadvantage, not for race. These numbers correlate extremely well with family wealth, but we developed a racial quota system instead. Why? Obviously, because the persons making the call were wealthy.
"Emerse"?
There are too many brainless aquatic plants barely keeping their heads above water in college as it is. Don't encourage them; let 'em drown.
You have to qualify that. There is certainly some information you need to know from memory, but there is also a significant amount of information that all you need to know is how to access it and "apply" it.
Being a computer programmer would teach you that very quickly. There were often many situations where you did not know the exact syntax or form of a particular command, but you knew that it existed and knew where it was and how to use it.
Grade inflation is just the other side of cost inflation. If they are getting it free, you can nail them to the curve. But if they are paying $50K per year, like duh, the customer expects some serious service for that sort of cash. You ever heard that old saying, "the customer is always right"???
However, all the buzz now is that GPA is no longer taken seriously by smart employers (unless outlier on the low side). As always with inflation, the inflated medium ends up worthless.
So many people I know have kids getting straight A's. How can so many students be getting straight A's? I don't even see these other people's kids studying or talking about their courses. They all play video games and get taken out to dinner several nights a week. How are they getting A's? When I went to school in the 70 's only a handful of kids in the whole school got straight A's. But now it's as common as brushing teeth.
Back then there was no internet and an A for a project needed to be 3 times longer than was required and have footnotes, so that meant combing the library. You also had to hand write it, which meant re-writing it to make it clean and legible. There were no programs to check spelling or grammer. I mean you really had to kick ass to get an A, and especially straight A's. The straight A students I knew spent 4-6 hours a day doing homework, including weekends.
Depends on the job. For hiring someone to write code, interviews are useless. For car salesmen and wait staff, interviews are important.
You should see military officer annual ratings...cookie cutter
True, but most interviews are still used to gather irrelevant information about the applicant, often illegally. For example, is she hot? Is he/she black? Would I like to have lunch with this person? Are they like me? Will they "fit in?"
Interviews result in very homogenous work "teams," and racism and sexism are still rampant.
What are we to expect?
Bastions of higher "learning" (my ass, more rote) which fiercely enable the distribution of socialist dogma are to be expected to give other than equal grades to all students, regardless of any considerations whatsoever?
Come on....
Studying is for weenies.
I will recite how my professor in freshman year of college plagiarised my work until the day i die. Wandering into a lecture down the coast only to hear my words. I have no respect for higher education in America.
And yes, I'm a drop out.
But my logic doesn't work because raysis.
At least we got more women on campus this year than last though right? 50/50s nice, but why not shoot for more?
But don't question that because then you went get laid.
Men prefer to hire women, for obvious reasons, and women prefer to hire women, for other obvious reasons, and the same logic applies in colleges. So, once women left the home, they were bound to take over, at least until, with their help, the entire thing collapses.
GPAs up, SAT scores down. makes perfect sense.
I was chided by administration for giving students who couldn't write coherent sentences C's - because it would affect their scholarships and loans.
That's why "grading on a curve" was invented, Prof. Ebworthen.
So if you are a professor at a med school and none of the class can perform a surgery correctly but some are closer than others you just grade on the curve, 4's for the ones that didn't kill the patient, 3's for the one's that the patient passed away from complications, 2's for the ones that the patient died during surgery, and 1's for the ones that passed out during the surgery.
No you are wrong. Grading on a curve was invented by lazy or cowardly professors who didn't want to define what the minimum amount of knowledge was necessary to earn a particular grade. They figured that grading on a curve would do all the work for them.
Flunk them all.
Let God sort them out.
You gave a passing grade to students who couldn't put a coherent sentence together?
What be wrong wit dat?
nuffin
"nuffin" is very funny.
With a pic like that maybe you should change your name from Thomas to Tiffany.
Guest Post: What's Real? What's Fake?
"Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/16/2013 - 16:30 We want to believe the fake unemployment rate of 7% rather than the real rate of 14+% because the officially sanctioned forgery feeds our belief that our bloated, corrupt Empire of Debt is sustainable, fair and working well. To accept that we've been bamboozled, ripped off, taken advantage of and ultimately cheated out of an authentic economy and life by swindlers is too painful."
Higher and Higher Education doing its part in supporting the Fake economy; where a C- becomes and A+ on the shifting Bell curve.
You get an "A" in foreign language. Ebonics!
So what? His school beat your school in basketball AND football.
I like the bumper stickers that say, "My terrier is smarter than your honor student."
Might soon turn out to be true.
Yeah, shameful I know, but it was the only way to keep the job.
Besides, I was the end of the line for them; they had already been passed through every grade and graduated High School so who was I to tell them they couldn't spell or write?
The fucking instructor??
There was red pen all over their paper, and I spent hours and hours trying to help them, but it just hurt their feelings.
A lot of kids and their parents don't want to know the truth.
They think the kids are getting an 'education' because their school districts spend a lot of money on buildings and sports facilities. Besides, - little Johnny or Janey gets 'good grades'.
I went to a lot of high school and college graduation ceremonies over the last couple of years. The kids I spoke with were nice, but it was obvious that they hadn't learned a damned thing in 'school'.
One college kid graduated and was interviewing with some big six bank. They knew nothing about the real nature of the bailouts, or Austrian economics, or business cycles, or that said bank they were interviewing with was caught in robo-signing mortgage fraud and money laundering for narcotics cartels. wft do they teach them in the business dept anyway ?
What is disturbing is that after 12-16 years of 'schooling' the natural curiosity and creativity of kids is squeezed out of them. They do rote memorization and mindless follow-the-numbers tasks, but no real critical thinking.
....and is thus excellent preparation for their future roles as worker drones in the crony-capitalist corporate world, or in government. Exactly as it was intended.
It's either that or get fired. I'm going to guess it was usually people who use english as a first language and people who use "street"
as a first language.
In effect, making education just another business.
duplicate post
How long before they all have enough education to realise what is going on?
I got an A++++ in my Negrostudies class just for wearing an Obama, Yes We Can shirt to class. YeeefuckingHaw!
So how come so many young people can't spell, write or communicate verbally very well?
Most of them would struggle to pass Bonehead English 101 back when I was in school.
While English is argued to be the toughest language to learn (by some), I have to ask what your thoughts are when you meet the average person?
It's easily done...here's how!
1) Open Book Exams
2) Tests are "closed book" taken online from home.
3) Curve like mad
4) Group grades are shared. Best person gives the 100 to the group. Saw it happen today.
Any questions?
FYI- I saw three people this year fail consecutive open-book exams. That comprehension shit is tough mates!
So, what had happen in US between 1956 and 1963 when these curves started to take off? Some kind of "no child left behind policy"?
In the mid-60's there was a lot of buzz about grade inflation due to the Vietnam war. Fear that young men with student draft deferrments would get sent off to the jungles of Southeast Asia if they flunked out.
Don't know about 1956-63. Maybe there was a feeling that giving poor grades promoted inequality. Possibly linked to the growing civil rights movement.
The epitome of "No Child Left Behind" is our droning of innocent brown children in the ME.
Last week I gave two different college age male cashiers Change , so I could get just dollars back.(ie. 20.35 on $12.35 bill ) They both looked at me like WTF dude you just messed up my day... I walked away both times with pocketful of change
Whenever I do that, I tell them the solution in advance, so they don't have to try and think.
Because they are taking classes like this (below) in English instead of actually studying the English language...The listing below is from the Winter 2014 catalogue at Union College (heard about it from a student who was unhappy that it was a required course for English majors at that College)
Cls 037036
EGL-305-01 Jr Seminar: Beatles/Dylan Y WLDC 028+ MW 03:05PM-04:45PM Jenkins, H. WAC 13 15http://www.union.edu/applications/course-schedules/14.WI.EGL.html
Private high school grading scale where I attended 96-100 A 90-95 B 85-89 C 80-84 D below 79 don't matter. High school public school,,,, grading curve,,,, yipppeeee you are all extra special,, deserve it all, no work, no reading no math,, no matter. World stage, USA in math and science, D equals dismal,,, we graduated fewer engineers in all fields last year than we did in 1950 and our population is probably twice as large. Exceptional indeed. We have great talent in text messaging and not communicating with our neighbors or people we come in contact with every day. God help us.
Same scale that we had at private HS, grade and middle school as well.
And half the graduating engineers came from China, India, or some other non-US country. We study Business Management so we can move immediately from the classroom to the boardroom.
Well, it's not like if the US started to graduate engineers and computer science majors that US corporations would hire them. Visa labor is a hell of a lot cheaper. People are willing to work longer hours for less pay.
You left out Master of Gaming and Ph. D. in Twitting.
It's so obviously phoney given SAT score decline and comparative test scores internationally.
My wife's an AP teacher who has been on medical leave. Her substitute got fired because he could not pass the CBEST teaching test - think dumbed down SAT. So, to avoid controversy from the influential parents (this being Silicon Valley), he gave EVERY single student (115) an A grade!
My wife returns in January, these students need to take their AP exams in May, and they've never had a vocab test!
Your tax dollars at waste!
Ah, socialism at work in the People's Republic.
To which the union says pay us more to better yer kidz edmucashun.
When we moved here from Ct eons ago, my daughter went into our area's (very good schools they say, here in CA) high school and in her senior year was regurgitating drivel she'd has in Jr High and fresh/soph in CT
ummh muh
I assure you that CT schools have now "caught up"...
As a dedicated leftist looking at your remarks I would diagnose the problem as insufficient government money and public school spending. I think if you doubled the salary of the substitute and put walnut desks in the class that they could all achieve more. Besides, we do not want to handcuff teachers by forcing them to teach to a meaningless test.
Note GPA has gone up during the period when the "everyone needs and deserves a college education" philosophy has guaranteed that the average IQ of college entrants has actually gone down.
No wonder all that money is flowing to the education establishment. Its ability to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear is beyond price.
Well, it's for "the children," dontcha know?
Bingo, time for more schools of "hard knox".
nature and the laws of physics will make it so anyway.
A lot more people are going to college, but as you suggest that isn't necessarily a good thing.
Notice the other meme at work these days.
Everybody's got to get a college degree to be able to get a good, etc., etc., yetch, barf, etc., etc
When I was a boy, there were vocational high schools where kids got the reading writing and math skills.
No joke
And learned a trade.
Whaz wrong wid dat?
Oh, my Lordie Lordie, Lordie, we did that anymore then we wouldn't have need for the immigrants (legal and whatever's PC to call them now) to come into the country...
Oh nevethefuckmind...
Two cognitively dissonant policies
Financed with our dollars for your benefit by unelected people who otherwise don't give a crap and exempt.....
Oh never...
Check out what Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) is up to:
A trillion dollars in student loans. Record high unemployment. Three million good jobs that no one seems to want. The goal of Profoundly Disconnected is to challenge the absurd belief that a four-year degree is the only path to success. The Skills Gap is here, and if we don’t close it, it’ll swallow us all. Which is a long way of saying, we could use your help…
http://profoundlydisconnected.com/
Here was the grading criteria for my Son's 8th grade science class: 30% for class participation, 25% for neatness, 25% for working well with others, 10% for getting assignments in on time, and 10% for comprehension.
Yee Gawds. Isn't comprehension everything?
I retired from teaching high school mathematics 2 years ago. In the 20 years that I taught (2nd career) I saw a steady decline in student ability in entering my classes.
In my algebra 2 classes the first thing I always did was to give the students a simple 20 questions add, subtract, mult. divide test. Most of them got scores less than 12 when an algebra 2 student should get all 20 correct. I saved the results as part of my CYA file so I could show admin and parents why there was a 60 % failure rate.
In order to get into algebra 2 they must pass algebra 1 and geometry. How did they pass? It was summer school and something called credit recovery where no one fails.
Yep - let no one fail lest their little feelings get hurt.
almost forgot: the students would spend more time in trying to figure out how to cheat on the test than studying for the test.
Went to a graduation 2 years ago at a private prep HS with 320 students in the graduating class. Over half had a perfect GPA (4.0). I asked the kid who graduated how was this posibble? Was he a straight "A" student? He told me that he wasn't but they could get 5.0's for AP classes, and for extra credit assignments. So not only did half graduate with a 4.0 half of those or 25% graduated with a GPA higher than 4.0 even though 4.0 was supposedly the highest GPA at the school
The spirit of the age is to render all social, cultural, and economic organizations, worthless,
Pop culture, sports, the military, money, college, science, grades, personal records, relationships, beer, beef, bimbos. The spirt of the demos is to render everything it touches into having the consistency and value of warm piss.
I think the only things worth having are 30's movies, cans of Spam, and old style concrete bunkers. Probably smokeless tobacco as well.
A well-worn hat, comfortable chair, break-open shotgun, and old hound dog would be nice to have too. Sit on the front porch with Ol' Blue at my feet and the shotgun on my knees; tell the rest of the world to, "G'wan - git!"
Sigh. Mrs. Tippy wouldn't go for that for very long; she thinks I'm too ornery as it is.
...and a few decent friends who remember independence.
Maybe some smokeless powder too?
An imaginary dialogue between the “bosses”
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2013/12/an-imaginary-dialogue-between...
Higher ed was doomed when they started teaching political science. There is no science in it. We should have been warned.
"Riot after Chinese teachers try to stop pupils cheating"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10132391/Riot-after-Chinese-teachers-try-to-stop-pupils-cheating.html
It is a rampant problem in Taiwan and S. Korea as well. In short, not just a US problem.
Let me tell you a story of how grade inflation actually occurs. It was my 4th year in graduate school as a Teaching Assistant in history. I had been a "tough" grader, giving the grades that each student deserved. The professors did not seem to mind an reviewed my grading techniques each term and decided they were acceptable. Now each term, several young ladies would come to my office to ask what they could do to improve their grades; in most cases, they wore revealing outfits and flirted with me. I had arranged with a friend, whose desk was near mine, to always have office hours at the same time, so that we could always serve as witnesses for one another, in case any young lady should make an unwarranted accusation (because even 1 accusation from a woman, any woman, is enough the gynocracy of the American University to forever bar a male would-be professor from any type of employmeny). Eventually, the inevitable happened, one of the little tramps that came to my office in a miniskirt and cutoff without underwear (probably a Communications or Education major, since they were always the ones getting terrible grades and pulling these tricks), accused me of sexual harassment because I would not change her grade from a D to a C.
I was called before a tribunal of 3 professors, 2 of whom were radical, lesbian feminists, and asked to present my side of the story (they already had the little harlots version of events). They had already decided to revoke my fellowship at the University in question (and I was told that, unless I had a "very good explanation" for what happened, I would be expelled from the university). At that moment, I demanded, against their protests, that I be allowed to present a witness (as this was to be a private meeting and tribunal). I produced my friend, who had been hiding in the lavatory near the Department Chair´s office, much to their dismay and surprise, who insisted that my version of events was accurate and provided a sworn, notarized statement affirming my innocence. I then threatened to call an attorney. Reluctantly, the angry feminists backed down (quietly assuring me that though I may have saved my skin for the moment, they would do everything in their power to ensure that I never worked in a U.S. university again). After these events, I never hesitated to change the grade for any young women to whatever she asked... and rarely gave anyone a D again...
Believable, and the only solution this late in the game is to stand up to it. A camera in the office maybe?
Ok, here's another story....
20 years ago in 1st year university in Toronto I was a mature student who paid my own way and really wanted to achieve. My environmental studies class (a story on its own) was a maga-class of 2-300 and full of useless idiots because it was the "easy" science course that could fulfill your science requirement. Hell, that's why I picked it, too! But from day one I got straight A's. How could you *not* when tests were multiple choice questions and/or open book.
Well after Xmas holidays the prof responded to complaints about his "tough" marking. Kids complained they were not getting A's and wanted him to curve up. He responded saying "What about the kids who earned their A?" at which point I raised my hand and agreed that it wasn't fair to "water down" the A I worked for. I made few friends - but there were other kids who privately told me they agreed with me...
My son's high school chemistry class did not teach balancing chemical equations until well into the second semester (something I use to cover five weeks into the first semester in a regular high school course, by the end of the first week in AP). When I confronted the instructor he suggested that it was now thought that chemistry as it had been taught was too difficult, and was discouraging students from pursueing it as a career.
The second semester I actually caught him teaching reactions that could not actually take place. He could not understand the problem. I have since come to understand that teaching something that is true is no longer considered necessary. The objective is rather that the student have the experience of learning.
How many art history, social scientists, and English literature grads does the S&P 500 need to hire each year no matter what their GPA??
what happened to the gentleman's C
In our public grade schools they no longer give out report cards with alphabetical grades. They give out evaluations. They don't even bother anymore. Wouldn't want all the stupid kids to get their feelings hurt. Don't want to have a record of non-achievement to be held too with regards to federal funding. Etc... public schools suck. That's what you get with union labor. nobody is to be held accountable. lowest common denominator applicants only, please.
How many children must the Colorado public education system murder before these children are all returned to their mothers and these "schools" are banned? Guns didn't do this, a facility full of dysfunctional adults did, slowly, with intent, over many years. And the time before this. And the time before that. And the time before that...
HOTT NEA #1
HOTT NEA #2
HOTT Kipland Kinkel #1
HOTT Kipland Kinkel #2