by www,wilson.house.gov
About 1.8 million students will graduate from college
this year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At least
one-third of them will graduate with honors. In some colleges, about half will
be honor graduates.
It's not that the current crop is that bright, it's
that honors is determined by grade point average. Because of runaway grade
inflation, the average grade in college is now an "A." About 43 percent of all college
grades are "A"s, according to a recent study by Stuart
Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, and published in the prestigious Teachers College Record. About three-fourths of all grades are "A"s or "B"s.
Throw
out the universal curve that applies to everything from height to house prices.
That curve is reality. College grades are not.
At
one time, the universal curve applied to college grades: "A"s were about 10
percent of all grades; "B"s were about 20 percent; "C"s were about 40 percent;
"D"s were about 20 percent; and "F"s were about 10 percent. That grade
break-down, which could be more or less, depending upon a number of factors,
isn't even ancient history--it's more like an ethereal ghost that no one
understands.
Drs.
Rojstaczer and Healy report that in 1940 about 15 percent of all grades were "A"s.
While grades of "B" have remained stable at about 35 percent for the past six
decades, grades of "C" have dropped sharply from 35 percent to about 15
percent. Grades of "D" have dropped by
half over the past six decades, while grades of "F" apparently are issued only
to those students who didn't show up for class or whose brain is bottled in
formaldehyde in a science lab.
Several studies show a high correlation between high
grades issued by professors to students and high evaluations of professors by
students.
Why that matters is that professors are pragmatic.
College administrations have taken an easy way to evaluate professors' teaching
abilities by having students fill out a multi-question survey at the end of the
semester. Professors know that 19-year-olds will typically rate "likable" and
non-demanding professors higher. Add those evaluations to a few meaningless
professional papers delivered to a couple of dozen yawning academics at boring
conferences and a list of university committees the professor was appointed or elected
to, and opportunities for tenure and promotion increase.
Although there are thousands of excellent professors
who excel in all areas of teaching and scholarship, many professors, even those
with a string of academic letters after their names, may not even be aware they
are not as rigorous as they should be. After all, their own professors, wanting
to be liked and promoted, may not have demanded significant academic sweat, so
they aren't aware of what reasonable criteria should be for their own students.
There is also the reality that collegial "get-togethers" and participation on
useless college committees--and being liked by one's colleagues--may be an easier
route to tenure and promotion than doing rigorous scholarship and demanding the
same from students.
Because of grade inflation, students avoid professors
who believe the grade of "C" is the average grade and who set up standards that
require students to do more than show up, read a couple of hundred pages, and
answer a few questions. Fewer students in classes usually results in questions
from administrators who may claim they believe in academic rigor and integrity,
but who have the souls of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Some
departments traditionally grade tougher than others. Science and engineering
departments tend to have lower overall grade averages than those in social
sciences and humanities. Education programs tend to have the highest grade
averages. It's not unusual for the average grade in elementary education
courses to be an A-minus, and in secondary education to be a B-plus. That means either our future teachers are brighter than
the light from a supernova--or that some of the profs who are teaching our
future teachers don't know there are more than just two letters in the alphabet.
In some classes, at all educational levels, we don't
even require students to know anything more than hand signals, preparation of
crib sheets, and techniques of paraphrasing five different articles and calling
the result a research paper--assuming the professor even requires that much. The
one class in which most students can legitimately earn a grade of "A" without
cheating is Cheating.
Add into the slurpy mix of academics a few
inconvenient pressures. Athletics coaches want to make sure their pack of
future draft picks stay academically eligible. A significant minority of
students spend more time trying to plea-bargain the professor into raising the
grade than they do studying for the exams. And when plea-bargaining fails,
hovering overhead are the helicopter parents who want to make sure professors
truly understand how brilliant their darling children are, and how (horror!) a B-minus not only is the wrong
grade, but can damage their darling little Boo-Boo's fragile psyche and chances
to become a Fortune 500 CEO. Besides, the parent reasons that buying a college
degree is like buying a car--if you pay the money, you should get a car.
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