Is it too easy to get an A?
February 10, 2010 by Geneva ReidPosted in: Academics, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
Getting top grades can open doors to jobs and graduate schools. So the question is: How hard should a student have to work to get an A? The answer appears to be: not as hard as they’ve worked in the past.
Just take a look at the numbers on gradeinflation.com, a site created by retired Duke professor, Stuart Rojstaczer:
- From 1991-92, the average GPA at public colleges and universities was 2.85 — compared to 3.01 in the 2006-07 year.
- For private schools, the average GPA in 1991-92 was 3.09 with a jump to 3.30 in 2006-07.
As Rojstaczer points out, research has shown students are putting in half as much time studying — often less than 10 hours a week — than they were 40 years ago.
Add in the data revealing many freshmen spend more hours drinking than hitting the books and “we’ll end up with a generation of poorly educated college graduates who have used their four years principally to develop an addiction to alcohol,” Rojstaczer says.
About six years ago, Princeton University decided to take a stand against grade inflation.
By an almost two-to-one margin, faculty voted to limit A’s on average to 35% of the class.
If Princeton expected other schools to follow suit … well, they’re still waiting. Only Wellesley College tried to curb grade inflation by stipulating that median grades for introductory classes couldn’t be higher than B+.
And while Princeton may have had its “academic heart” in the right place, students haven’t been shy about expressing their unhappiness over the policy — especially considering the current economic conditions.
With the past year’s graduating class having a mean grade-point average that’s down to 3.39 compared to 3.46 six years earlier, students worry their chances of landing good jobs or being accepted to graduate schools are in jeopardy in this climate of fiercer-than-ever competition.
So Princeton recently put together a Q&A booklet, which will be sent to employers and grad school admissions officers nationwide.
But that still doesn’t even the playing field, according to many students.
“People intuitively take a GPA to be a representation of your academic ability and act accordingly,” junior Jacob Lowenstein told the New York Times. “The assumption that a recruiter who is screening applications is going to treat a Princeton student differently based on a letter is naive.”
So what’s the answer?
Clearly, there’s been a trend over the years toward higher grades – and less time studying. Then does this mean students aren’t learning as much in their classes as they used to?
What direction do you think higher education needs to take?
Let us know in the comments section below.
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Tags: Princeton University, Stuart Rojstaczer, Wellesley College
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February 10th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Grade inflation is and has been an issue for both private and public colleges and universities for some time. The problem however can not be fixed by establishing a mean number of A or B grades for a course as some universities have attempted. This is a giant move backward into the days when grades were based on the “curve.” Students should be evaluated against a pre-established set of criteria that is known to all. If the student is able to meet the appropriate criteria, then they should receive the grade that they earn. The answer rests in establishing rigorous standards that are well defined and hold students accountable to those standards. The task at hand for college and university professors is to take the time to create the standards and develop the rubric tools to communicate and evaluate student performance. This will go a long way toward increasing the value of a grade and a college degree.
Dr. Richard Fuller
Assistant Professor of Education
February 10th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Along with each grade, a transcript should state the percentile range that that grade represented in that particular class. Such contextual information would embarrass faculty members who give excessively generous grades and students should be happy that employers and graduate schools get an accurate picture of their performance. When I was a student, I would have been quite happy to have gotten a B in a course if the professor gave C’s to 70 percent of the class and that fact was made clear to everyone (in fact, I once got a C in an organic chemistry class in which the professor had given a C to about 80 percent of the class—I was unhappy because this fact was not made public).
By the way, you might also be interested in this…
http://orfe.princeton.edu/~rvdb/tex/grading/grading.pdf
February 10th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Grade inflation exists when better grades are not accompanied by better learning. Better grades sometimes may simply reflect that faculty are using assessment tools that are more meaningfully tied to instruction. More valid assessments may result in higher grades when faculty replace a belief that low course gpa’s are a sign of “rigor” and “high standards” with a belief that low course gpa may in fact be a sign of poor instruction and/or poor assessment practices. If more learning follows and is accompanied by higher grades, that’s not inflation.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:41 am
Why not publish a students grade along with the average grade in the class. Then individuals who bother can evaluate if the student is above or below the average based on a more complete reflection of
February 10th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Seriously, Laura? Are your students from Lake Woebegone? And do you really think students today are actually smarter and/or learning more than students of a generation ago?
And if, over time, better instruction results in better learning by everyone, then the standard for “average” adjusts upward. Awarding higher grades for superior performance doesn’t become meaningless just because the average performance level improves.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Release ranking and standardized test scores but not GPA’s. Then GPA’S
February 10th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Here is a letter to our campus newspaper that I wrote a couple years ago, in response to a student (XXX) editorial that (if I recall correctly) argued that if most students weren’t getting A or B, that meant the instructor was incompetent or just mean. sorry about the length.
I will provide a faculty perspective to XXX’s column concerning bell curve grading. I agree with her that there is no inherent reason that grade distributions must adhere to a bell curve, or more technically, a normal distribution. However, by definition most people are in the general vicinity of “average” (i.e. C) in their performance and abilities. The real world is not “Lake Wobegon” (Google it!) where everyone is above average. If everyone gets an A or B, I would argue that the tests are too easy or that the class is somehow pre-selected for above average ability (as with a small honors section).
We’re at a university where students should expect to be challenged with difficult material. Not everyone will be able to master the material, for any number of reasons, some of which have nothing to do with inherent intelligence of a given student. The most common reason for poor performance in introductory and GenEd courses I’ve taught is lack of effort or responsibility on the part of students. When I give weekly online assignments, typically only 70-85% of the students even attempt them, and often it is the same students who repeatedly “forget”. In such cases, a D or F may result because of multiple zeroes, even if exam performance is not that poor. Extra credit opportunities should not be expected to compensate for uncompleted required work. Similarly, in a class of about fifty students, at best one or two will ever come by to discuss a poor exam result before the next exam. Many never bother to pick up their previous exams. How can one learn from mistakes if one doesn’t know what they are?
Clearly there are many contributing factors to poor student performance: intrinsic ability, apathy, disinterest in the course material, illness, personal problems, working many hours to pay your tuition, lack of time management skills, inadequate study skills (only you know what does and doesn’t work for you), and an unreasonable expectation that a good teacher can “make” students learn difficult material without major effort on the students’ part. Moreover, many students have poor basic writing and analytical skills, a serious impediment to success that universities inherit from the K-12 system. I was fortunate to have mastered basic writing and study skills in my K-12 years, which obviously isn’t the case for many. Consequently, despite having some poor instructors when I was an undergraduate and a graduate student, I learned most of the material anyway through perseverance and an understanding of my own process of internalization of complex information.
Instructors also should be held to high standards (that is what course evaluations are for), but it really shouldn’t matter if your instructors are entertaining, friendly, or difficult, any more than you would expect your boss in your eventual career to expect little from you. Get what you can from them, and ask them for help. Of course, that won’t guarantee an A or B, because some students will always struggle with certain types of material. That often is not primarily the instructor’s fault.
The primary goal is not to get an A, rather to learn critical thinking skills and as much material as possible so you can use it in subsequent courses. Ultimately, critical thinking skills are most useful in the workplace and your life as an educated citizen. In your career, no one will care what grades you earned, just whether you do your job well (i.e. “A/B” work). If not, expect to earn below average raises and/or to be looking for a new job.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Addendum: I received several positive comments from colleagues after the letter was published.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
The evidence for grade inflation is that the average GPA for college students has risen between 1991-2 and 2006-7 and that students are not studying for as long today as in the past. The assumption is that today’s college students are of equal ability to college students in the past and that courses or exams, and/or concurrently, grading, has gotten easier, to inflate GPA. I see nothing in this article to corrborate this assumption. As college admissions have gotten more competitive, with more students applying for a relatively fixed number of college seats, it could be that only the better prepared students are gaining admission to college. These students would naturally achieve higher grades and have better study skills. This would equally explain grade inflation. In addition, these students, having better study skills would be more efficient at studying and would not require as much study time, equally explaing the reduction in observed study time. The conclusions in the article may very well be correct, but it is also possible that the level of students may be improving – which was clearly not addressed in the article. Lesser prepared students may be attending community college or opting not to go to college until later in life, both of which are growing phenomena that were not accounted for in the article. Based on this article, I only see that average grades are going up, but the reasons are at best speculative.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
How true is it that a GPA factors into job opportunities for undergraduates? I have never once been denied or given a job based on my GPA. I could see it as a door opener (and a very limited one at that), but not as a deciding factor. One of the problems with this discussion is that we don’t acknowledge that students are more concerned with grades than knowledge. College undergraduates are very adept at gaming the system in terms of picking classes they know are easy. This comes from my experience teaching college composition courses. Given that only a small number of undergraduate major in literature/composition, non-majors feel that my class should be easy, and that grades I give should not interfere with their GPA in any negative way.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Two things I’m considering.
1. I do believe there is grade inflation – the C (which used to mean doing what was expected) has become the A (which used to be doing exceptional work). I’m not sure if there is an easy fix for this. Grades is a number of classes are determined by the professor’s opinion of the quality of work (this excludes test, etc.). I don’t think this can be erased because critical thinking and expression of ideas has to be done in ways that move beyond a set option of answers or set structure.
2. James brings up an intersting point. It might be important to try and find a way to establish a difference between grades being falsly inflated and grades improving due to better pedagogy. I think as we continue to evaluate the ways we interact with students and subject matter, we improve those classroom experiences for the student, thus improving the grade.
February 10th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I don’t think grade inflation is the problem/reason at all as to why students are having an easier time getting A’s. Rather, I think the problem lies in classes in which it is becoming easier and easier to perform well, due to a certain teaching trend. As a recent college graduate, I can say that at least 90% of my classes over the last 4 years were taught in a format where the professor put would put his powerpoint notes on an overhead projector and read them for the entire class period. We wouldn’t even have to take notes on these slides, and they were always available to print out from our class website. We would be tested directly from these slides, as opposed to information from the books, which we were encouraged to buy for god knows what reason. (I caught onto this loophole sometime during my sophomore year and saved myself thousands!) All I had to do to get a good test grade was memorize key points from these slides–something I routinely did 20 minutes before a test–which were usually in bold font, underlined, accompanied by big smilie faces, or some combination of the three. This is not teaching! It is merely an exercise called, “How to Get an A in My Class”, one that any half-wit could easily learn to master, and for which he would therefore be awarded an “A”. I submit that this is the reason for higher grades in places of higher education these days; teachers are being hired who lack the ability and the desire to actually teach.
February 10th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
I’ve been teaching at a university for 17 years and have not drastically changed the way I teach (other than now using PowerPoints available online) or the level of difficulty. My class average on exams (typically in the 70s) and final grades has not appreciably changed in that time, and I sense no marked trend in either direction regarding students’ writing or analytical thinking ability. Thus, I’m not personally contributing to grade inflation.
February 10th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
While I agree that students should need to work hard for an A, I feel that Princeton and some of the collegues that are leaving comments are forgetting that the playing fields are not equal.
One section may have harder working, brighter, and better prepared students than another. This week I handed back a test that was very similar to one I gave in Spring 2009. This year the median grade was a high B, last year it was a mid C. I don’t think that I taught the course in a different way than I did a year ago. I attribute the difference in median grades to the calibur of the students. Should I have given less A’s less semester simply because a great student was surrounded by other other great students? Should an employer look at a transcript of a student who enrolled in last years class and see that the C was median (assuming that the last years students had continued to skip classes and ignore homework) without knowing that why there were several D’s and F’s in the class?
February 10th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I’m in my 34th year at a Division II Regional public university with a strong academic reputation. I once gave all 12 enrollees grades of A in an upper division biology course – they every one earned it. Then again, more than once in biology courses I have given nobody an A – no one earned it. As far as I can tell, in 33 years, most students have the habit of cramming the night before a test. Some are good at short-term storage and many are not but peer pressure rules and they conform to the culture. We have a strong undergraduate research program that is stimulating for the participants, whether they make A’s or B’s. In summary, I don’t think we’re grade inflating. If anything, I think grades are a little lower.
February 10th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
As both an employee and a student of a state university, in more recent years I have seen the A grades being handed to students who are too lazy and unmotivated even to attempt doing their homework. Instead, they band together and conspire to force the professor to lower expectations. Professors try to avoid giving the failing grade that the “me generation” has actually earned, because it reflects poorly on their teaching abilities, and consequently impacts their ability to move forward in their own careers. As a Communication major, I have been forced to work on “group” projects, and have seen first-hand the lack of effort (and probably ability) to the point that I am gravely concerned with what will happens to this country, when these “students” are leading the charge. Maybe they can bully the rest of the world into complacency as well, so they can continue keeping their little faces buried in their electronic devices and ignoring their most unpleasant responsibilities (LIKE WORKING).
February 10th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Anyone having difficulty accepting the evidence for widespread “grade inflation” in American colleges and universities is likely unfamiliar with efforts being poured into “retention.” As an undergrad in the ’80s, it was clear that many courses were structured to “weed out” those who couldn’t keep up. Only the truly stellar students were earning “A”s in Organic Chemistry or Vertebrate Morphology.
Fast forward 20 years and I’m a professor at a land grant university where my administration is seriously pushing faculty to increase retention. In other words, find ways not to flunk the students who really aren’t cut out (or maybe not yet ready) for the rigors of college study. I teach a gen-ed ecology class. Last year, 25 students (out of 135) dropped the class after miserably failing a very easy (judging by the other students’ grades) first exam. I learned afterwords that a few faculty in other departments were livid with me for allowing this to happen. How dare I flunk their students?! I now have a reputation for not being “retention-friendly” or something like that, and some faculty advisors have steered their students away from my class. While I don’t miss these students who don’t come to class and don’t study for exams, the decreased enrollment in my class does affect my department’s annual teaching budget. From student evaluations to departmental teaching budgets to the university-wide commitment to retention, we are pressured every day to teach and grade to the lowest common denominator. We still have a few weed-outs like Organic Chem, but for the vast majority of classes on campus, the system is broken.
February 10th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
How hard a student works is important for the student but irrelevant to the grade. Students incorrectly assert that because they studied all night they should get a good grade. Mastering material is easy for some; takes more work for others. Grades should reflect mastery.
February 10th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Perhaps we should abandon the idea of grades altogether – grad schools barely use them anymore. We need more sophisticated ways of evaluating people after college. Different jobs and grad programs need specialized criteria for figuring out who should be employed or educated. Grades distract students from why they are in college in the first place, waste the teachers’ time, and don’t often predict how well a person will succeed in most occupations or higher education environments. Time to move beyond grading.
February 10th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Dr. Fuller said:
“Students should be evaluated against a pre-established set of criteria that is known to all. If the student is able to meet the appropriate criteria, then they should receive the grade that they earn. The answer rests in establishing rigorous standards that are well defined and hold students accountable to those standards.”
I agree with him. Critera for earning a high grade (A or B) in a class used to be listed on the syllabus. The professor would go over the syllabus the first day so everyone knew and understood what was expected of them. If the students thought it was too hard, they could withdraw from the class. Then the professor would grade the remaining students accordingly.
One thing that has changed is that when the professor gives a student a bad grade, the professor is harassed by the student’s parents, the dean and even the administration to change it to a better grade, even when there was ample proof that the student did not deserve it. The administration and deans need to back the professor instead of caving in to the parents. And not punish the professor for giving out C’s or D’s. Instead, the administration should be proud that there are hard classes that prove (and improve) the students’ mettle.
February 10th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Amen.
February 10th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I am constantly amused by this website. Vacuous articles are written with what I can only assume to be a goal of inciting a real evaluation of the topic. Why not just post a subject line? Following each empty article, a group of professionals expose all the angles a good writer would have included in the first place. So, kudos to the respondents and jeers for the original article. This article in particular started off badly with the question of “how hard” a student should work to earn an A. That is missing the point, and I think most students now are missing the same point. In my courses grades are based upon what you learn, not how hard you work. You shouldn’t get a degree to reward you for your toil but to give you recognition for the information in your brain and how that brain has been improved as an information processing apparatus.
To add my eight farthings, I’d just have to say that BH broached the broader topic, that the coursework has dumbed down. It has to, since the high school bar has lowered so much in the last 20 years and the bachelor’s degree has become a commodity. In another ten years, the proliferation of online degrees, for which students have little accountability for academic honesty, might render the bachelor’s degree worthless.
I wish I were 15 years further along in my career. 20 years in, I fear I might see the end of a meaningful higher education system in America. There’s only so much we can do in four years for our students. The more time spent on damage control, the less time we can spend helping them reach the heights of their potentials.
February 10th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
We have a more rigorous GPA scale at St. Joseph’s Prep in Philadelphia than many of the other private high schools in the area. In fact, some of the public schools really watered down the scale, some giving A’s for less the 90 percentile work.
We conferred with many college admissions offices around the country and almost everyone told us to keep our standards high. Yes, our staff of college counselors communicate as much as possible with the college admissions staffs to make sure that they understand our grading system.
The college admissions staffs know how varied the marking systems are among high schools. And I always tell our students and parents that they ought not to want to attend a college that ignores these variations. If the variations are ignored, its a sign that the student is being treated no better than a commodity. Who would want to attend such a college?
And I might say an equivalent thing about a company that hires only by a raw GPA number.
February 10th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Laura Barnes is correct in that many of us are thinking more seriously about quality assessment tools. Some of us are investing time in a kind of student centered learning that vastly increases usable learning, while also creating a population of life-long learners. The scorn heaped upon Prof. Barnes and the assumption that grade inflation does indeed exist are both suggestive of a larger problem with the academy: Many of us dislike students and take joy in discussing their supposed failures. Rather than asking how to limit As we should be asking :What do we do to increase the number of students working at A level? We should quit confusing poor grades with professorial rigor. While some students will do badly no matter what we do, our job OUGHT to be to teach in such a way that they all can excel. We ought to create an academia where professors who regularly fail in to teach students and/or dislike students have to get other jobs.
February 10th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Janine and Humbug are correct. A large percentage of students entering college must be remediated before enrolling in the 1000 and 2000 level courses. These are basic courses that any student who has received a high school diploma should be able to pass. But they do not have the ability – for whatever reason – and have to enroll in the 0000 level courses to get up speed.
Instructors where I work are greatly disturbed by the low quality of students being admitted, as most students are exhibiting laziness, poor time management and very poor study skills, as well as a lack of respect for authority figures. They never learned good study habits in high school, which is ridiculous. And most instructors here bend over backwards trying to accommodate them — offering a huge variety of supplemental materials (websites, study guides, etc.) in addition to study sessions with them or with a group. The instructors stress over failing a student because it does reflect poorly on them, their job performance and the ultimate evaluation that they receive. But for the instructors with a passion for teaching, they are concerned for the students. There are still a great number of teachers like that and we do them a great disservice by forcing them to dumb down their classes for the low achieving students.
And, yes, parents get involved even though the student may legally be an adult. Parents call management and management tells the instructors to do whatever is necessary to pass that student. It is absolutely the wrong thing to do, but we are being coached into treating students as CUSTOMERS. We are in the customer service industry now rather than education.
We have an entire generation of stupid, lazy kids. You can dress it up however suits you politically, but facts are facts. Spend a little time with a college student and you’ll receive some enlightenment about the knowledge, intelligence, and work ethic of the generation that will be running this country. Not all of the kids are like that, of course, but most want the easy grade, an easy way through college, and a job that does not require them to do too much. Primary and secondary education systems need to be overhauled so that course work is legitimate for the subject being taught, standardized testing is appropriate (not the FCAT that we have in Florida) and good grades are the norm not the exception. And parents need to make a concerted effort to endow their children with respect, good study habits, a solid work ethic, sense of responsibility and a sense of pride in a job well done whether it is homework or working at McDonald’s.
February 10th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
This last comment, by Peg Lamphier is the most cogent of all, and also the one that arcs above the circular logic of institutional politics and addresses the meta-question: GOAL? To educate life-long learners to teach themselves from the world’s resources and remain engaged and curious; we must foster informed citizens with agency to address problems we face as a global culture. TEACH up! Help each student to self-compete AND learn to cooperate with others… education does not end with a grade, a degree, a job. Education is a lifestyle choice that teachers must encourage.
February 10th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
The premise of Princeton’s decision concerns me. Does an ‘A’ grade indicate that a student has an excellent grasp of the subject matter? Or does it simply indicate that they have a better grasp than the rest of the students? In my opinion, there is nothing inherently wrong with the entire class receiving an ‘A’ or the entire class receiving an ‘F’.
Grad inflation is not necessarily a problem to me – it depends on the reason for the inflation. If grades are being given out too easily, then I see it as a problem. If grades are improving because students are being better educated, then no big deal. I do not personally know the reason for the inflation, but the reason is just as important as the inflation itself.
February 10th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Either students are getting smarter, or professors are getting softer. I expect both are true. Let’s look at the case for each.
SAT math scores have increased more than 20 points from their low in 1980. Critical reading scores have not increased at all. Perhaps this is an example of Simpson’s Paradox (i.e., there are more lower scoring groups in the SAT population now than in the past). Data shows that, taken one ethnicity at a time, groups are improving. But this also includes those who get higher scores b/c they take the test 2 or 3 times (yes, it’s true, repeat test takers do better). So, students are getting to be slightly better test-takers over the last 30 years.
The cynical may say that students are “gaming the testing system.” I prefer to say that this is ethical – it’s the result of the pressure society puts on them. Likewise, some students are gaming the educational system, putting pressure on professors much as they did in high school, with helicopter parents complaining to deans, forming coalitions, giving low faculty ratings, and the like. Ah, where are the old days when a professor went unchallenged?
There is little incentive for a faculty member to hold his ground. Robert Frost may have solved the problem when he said, “…mark them with nothing but mercy, and (I) give them an A or at worst B”. Then, let life fail them.
February 10th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
I have found that teaching my students to think increases their ability to receive a better grade. Grades should be based not on tests that require a student to regurgitate information, but on the level of responsibility students takes in their own learning experience. We should be teaching success strategies while delivering resources to help students achieve their higher grade.
My classes require students to take a skills inventory at the start of the semester. This semester that all had only one or two out of 20 wrong, if any. This places them higher on the rubric score, meaning that I am adjusting the required workload to challenge them. Giving them a rubric guide encourages them to think I will “teach to the test” when in reality, I have them find the questions to ask and guide them to the resources for their answers. They are required to provide a list of resources and respective answers found; file and time management strategies. If they are not getting study skills in high school, we must provide them the path to discover them in the short time they are preparing for their life careers.
Yes, I give many students an A, but I have failed students and given a good number of C’s and B’s based on how much effort the student puts into their learning experience. I believe my students are preparing for success by taking ownership in their workload.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
I have been teaching mathematics in the US for 32 years. In the past 10 years, I have seen an extreme decline in the preparation of our students. Not only is the average declining, but the training of the top 10% is much worse. Discussions with these students indicate that the ease of getting A’s means that their ability is enough in high school, so they have never learned to struggle and work hard.
Combine this with pressure from parents, administrators and legislators, who insist that we ‘teach better’, so that more students will graduate, and grade inflation is an obvious consequence.
February 11th, 2010 at 8:43 am
No one ever seems to notice that grade inflation begin right around the time schools began using student evaluations of teachers in personnel decisions. Non-tenured faculty are under great pressue to produce happy campers.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:55 am
I have been teaching Anatomy and Physiology at various colleges and universities (and even gradualte level anatomy at medical and dental schools) for more than 20 years, and I can tell you beyond any doubt that students today are less prepared and less willing to work to gain knowledge than 20 years ago. They also come to college woefully unprepared by the secondary shools, for the most part. Of course, there are exceptions. My son, who is 29 with a BS degree in an engineering field related to printing, said to me a few years ago, “the kids that are coming to work right out of college are lazy! They think the world owes them a living, and that they should get top pay just for existing, without doing much to earn it.” I agree with his sentiment. The common attitude among students I see is that they paid for the course, therefore they should get an A. I have been forced to inflate my grades by the ‘system’ at my college, because the specilaized programs that require my class as a prerequisite upped their minimum requirement to a B- (from a C) because other instructors were lowering their standards. So I now make my students do all sorts of (educationally vaulable) extra work (homework, group work, case study analysis, etc) to justify that they actually deserve the higher grade. Incidently, I have the reputation of being one of the most difficult instructors, but my sections fill faster than most other instructors, so at lease some students respect and apprecaite the exta efforts.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:57 am
I agree with M. Snyder. Student evaluations should be eliminated. Instead, the chair of each department should appoint a small committee of faculty to randomly sit on classes taught by their peers and provide an evaluation to the chair.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:23 am
JL – what you describe sounds wonderful, and is very much along the lines of the many articles in ‘Academe’, describing how they teach ‘critical thinking’ in humanities courses.
What about the sciences, mathematics, and engineering? In these courses, students are expected to have a specific set of tools, in order to learn the material in the next course. That is why I suspect that the grades in these disciplines are a little more honest.
This was certainly the case in a piece by a Harvard professor a few years ago in ‘Newsweek’. He noted that average grades there in the sciences were lower than those in the social sciences, and much lower than those in the humanities. He also made the obvious statement that it would be unlikely that all of the science students were less intelligent than the other groups, and noted that science students taking humanities courses got much better grades than humanities students taking science courses.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Timothy – Thank you for your comments.
I have found that critical thinking is extremely important for my technology (MIS) courses. With the widespread use of the Internet and Social Networks, students are challenged to stay on track with their studies. Why not encourage their intuitive mechanisms to question – how do I make this better and how can this benefit not only me, but my successors? This multi-disciplinary approach can be taught in any course of study. As global citizens, our students will be asked to communicate effectively no matter what career or job-path they take. We, as their facilitators, should be lifelong learners ourselves.
If material is presented in a way that challenges the students to think, they are more likely to either accept the challenge, or run away from it. They all have the tools to accept it, but may need the nudge from their professors to do so. Those who struggle should be guided to find their own strengths; a team approach in class helps to offset any weaknesses. Have your students do a SWOT analysis at the beginning of the semester, based on criteria and course objectives. I have found this to build strong relationships that last beyond my semester with them.
February 11th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Glenda – your comments might be considered harsh, but are spot on. I have argued that it is society and potential employers who are our customers, not the students. With that perspective, how many more might work a little harder?
Rebecca – it is all very well to talk about ‘life-long learning’, in which I have been engaged for 53 years or so. However, without the necessary specific skills, that is impossible. Two years ago, AP reported that only 15% of graduating 12th-grade US students were prepared to take a college-level math class. Many studies show that math preparation is the best predictor of college success, no matter how we have tried to water the requirements down.
JL – Your comments remind me of the discussions that I have had with colleagues in our College of Education, who consider their work to be ‘higher’ learning than ‘mere’ content. Without a good skill set, which includes a lot of reading, writing, history, mathematics and science, making higher-level meaningful inference is impossible. We have tried to avoid this in the US for 40 years, and the Pacific rim countries are cleaning our clocks as a result.
February 11th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
The good news is that NJ, from where most of my students come, has released a new set of core standards for the P-12 curriculum. It requires the addition of STEM proficiencies at each grade level. There is hope for this next generation. We are, as Timothy suggested, on a downhill spiral without this type of initiative.
My incoming freshman were better prepared than I have seen in a number of years. They worked hard and most received an A in the fall semester. I did have a B- and a B+, for those who chose not to put their best into delivering their required workload for this course.
As part of a GIS forum and the MAC-URISA user group, I am encouraging the education of teachers, faculty from all disciplines to integrate STEM strategies within their lesson plans. As educators of higher learning, our challenge is not just with reprogramming the incoming freshman and transfer students, but in communicating with their pre-college educators. As Social Networks and mobile communications take the forefront in these students’ lives, we are forced to build our own partnerships that prepare them with the skill sets needed to succeed in a global environment.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:55 pm
We in Ohio have also put in new higher math standards. However, I have my doubts as to the effectiveness. I could be wrong, but my experience suggests that an honest Algebra II course can only be passed by at most 30% of students. What politician is going to accept that kind of state-wide graduation rate? The answer will be to either ignore the mandate, or dilute the courses. The latter will mean even more students who think that they have learned material that they have not mastered.
Anecdotally, with the push to ‘take Calculus’ in high school (it supposedly looks good on a transcript), we often have freshmen with 1 or 2 years of Calculus, who place into our remedial Algebra I class. Many schools in the area even offer ‘PreCalculus’ without any trigonometry! The classical proof-based 10th-grade Geometry course has become much more memorization, defeating its own purpose.
I went to school in the UK in the early 1970′s (Britain has dropped even lower than the US since). Every college-bound student (and those headed for business and the Merchant Marine), had to pass a national test in mathematics at age 16, which included PreCalculus, trigonometry, and Calculus I. it was cruel, but graduation rates in colleges were in the 90% rate for 3 years, unlike the 33% that we have in a state university. And that rate includes degrees with very little content, such as Elementary Education.
February 14th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
I was no where near college age in 1991 and 1992 so I can’t make a comparison to the change in student efforts and habits. Even though students are studying less now than they did in the past and receiving higher GPA’s I don’t think complete blame should be placed on students or a set number of grades should be distributed. Standards, the educational system, and people change over time. I think teacher and student expectations have a lot to do with the changes.
Either way, the numbers are just averages. We typically hear the negative side of stories and those that make for interesting conversations. Not all students spend more hours drinking than hitting the books and many students leave college with a quality education. It is absurd that schools take a stand against grade inflation by limiting the percentage of students who receive A’s. If teachers believe students deserve an A and they have the work to prove it then there is no reason why a student who is deserving of an A should receive a B because too many A’s are already distributed. I know a grade is just a grade, but students are still stuck on the idea that their grades are a reflection of their performance in the eyes of a future school or employer. Schools and companies still rely heavily on GPA’s in the exemption, admittance, and selection processes.
Higher education needs to reinforce the notion that the learning experience and the internal reward of quality effort are more important than grades (process over product). They should also assist in redirecting the focus of schools and employers to other measures of student performance and ability.
February 15th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
JL and Timothy Norfolk,
You both are in states where tougher standards were put in place for math. Timothy wondered if the legistlators are willing to accept lower pass rates.
I feel that non-teachers (principals, deans, legistlators) are part of the problem. They don’t want to tell the parents that Johnny and Jane can’t do math, reading, writing, whatever and pressure the teachers to let Johnny go on to the next course. I’ve seen those students who have had pre-calculus in my remedial math courses. When I was a graduate student in the 80′s, one college offered me a teaching job during the summer (after I passed an interview.) I’ll never forget their pay system. I would have had a base pay and a bonus pay. The bonus was based on the retention so many weeks into the term. Talk about an incentive to not fail students. (I didn’t take the job. In part I didn’t like their pay system and in part I didn’t feel comfortable with the subject material.)
Phil Moore
February 15th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Back-packing off Phil, in Florida we have Bright Futures, a scholarship that covers college tuition for certain students. The deal is that students have to maintain a certain high school GPA (3.0 I think) and Bright Futures pays sometimes 75% of college tuition. This scholarship is so attractive that high school teachers have been inflating grades so that students can afford to go to college. I’ve had students in my literature courses who could barely write a coherent sentence and read at grammar school levels. Yet, a majority of their tuition costs are paid for by the state. Once in college the student must maintain a certain grade point average, so that leads to students wheeling and dealing with professors, begging for grades. It is enormously awkward to hear from a student “if I don’t pass this class I can’t afford to go to college.” No professor should have to deal with this, and so here in Florida the legislature is part of the problem in terms of grade inflation.
Perhaps, there is someone else more familiar with Bright Futures who can be able to give a more comprehensive picture. From my vantage point this causes more problems than it solves in terms of student preparedness and retention rates. Not to mention the awkward ethical position educators are placed in by politicians who want to promise the world to their constituents.
Here’s the Bright Futures website: http://www.floridastudentfinancialaid.org/ssfad/bf/acadrequire.htm
February 15th, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Rachel – I agree. I am quite content to give every student an A, iof they have mastered what they need to. However, I just gave a test in Calculus III in which most students couldn’t do even arithmetic with a calculator at hand. Every year, I get more concerned about the students that we are turning out. Perhaps it’s just age, but my wife has returned to classes, is observing the same weaknesses in the younger students, and is destroying the curve in every class.
February 15th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Timothy, Rachel, Phil – I want to stay positive in believing that a thinking work force will aid in shifting the belief system back to the notion that knowledge is the key. We live in an automated society that believes the Staples “Easy” button is the key. I have seen students in graduate programs who knew nothing of punctuation and had minimal presentation skills.
My daugther studied Chem Eng at a private Tech Institute where students were encouraged to repeat their courses, to bring up their grades and to keep the faculty with a full student body. It kept their classes full; students referred to past notes and managed to achieve their A the second time around. The school was happy to have full classes and the students were high achievers who needed to see that A. This does not speak to how they really made that grade…
This comes down to a personal note. As educators we make the choice to rebuild the learning process for this new set of students and to encourage student teamwork that focuses on enhancing their strengths. Rather than memorizing biological nomenclature, students learn to cite resources that provide information to answer new questions they pose for themselves. It worked for Einstein, yes?
February 16th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
JL – this idea that you can avoid learning is, and replace it by citing appropriate resources just does not work, in my opinion. You can only build new knwoledge in the sciences by being very familiar with everything known. That’s why study takes so long, and is exactly what Einstein did.
February 17th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
It’s interesting to me that no one has brought up the economic impact of grades. Johnny and Jane, and/or their parents, are _paying_ tuition dollars for higher education. Higher education, perhaps once a lofty goal to improve and expand critical thinking as well as depth and breadth of knowledge, is now a commodity in the eyes of the general public. How does one justify spending thousands of dollars and incurring perhaps a lifetime of debt for a C average?
I agree with Dr. Richard Fuller – if students meet the criteria established at the beginning of the term, then they should receive the appropriate grade. Grading on a bell curve, where a certain number must do poorly or fail, is more of a way to justify poor teaching than student grades.
February 17th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
AM,
What about the economic impact of too many easy C’s? If the nation is full of people who can’t do the work and don’t have that life-long-learning attitude we hope they have, how many consumers will decide that foreign goods are better than American goods?
I do aggree with not following a bell curve, for reasons I’ve stated earlier. I don’t believe that Jonny and Jane should get the diploma because they paid the money. They are paying for a chance to listen to my expertise and for my time proven method of conveying that expertise. If Johnny and Jane don’t come to class and don’t do the homework and don’t prepare for the exams, I really really hope that no employer gives them a position with responsibilites.
February 17th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
AM and Phil;
For what it’s worth, I have never seen a case where ‘grading on the curve’ didn’t result in higher grades. In fact, that’s what too many students now assume. Some very good education studies show that performance will drop down to expectations when standards are lowered, with a small time lag.
February 18th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Timothy,
I once caused several jaws to drop when I told that the class that since mean score on the exam was above 75, students scoring below x (I no longer remember what score x was) would have a lower score if I curved the exam.
It’s funny, its only the underachievers who want a curve, but when you explain that curving is a linear function that matches the classes mean score with 75 and (mean + standard deviation) with 85, and show that some scores will go down, those students no longer want the curve.
By the way, in many classes, I find the grades to be bimodel and not a nice normal curve.
February 18th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Phil and Timothy – (years back) As a student of high school geometry, I was removed from the larger class and placed with two other students, to keep the curve realistic. We were the only ones who could perform the necessary steps to proof a theorem. I had complained that the teacher took a point off from 100 on the test where I expressed my creative side with a lower case letter to start my name (as e.e. cummings would appear in print).
What are we doing when we look to find a way to dimish the achievements of those who work hard and study?
Timothy – I do not advocate a “non-learning” environment. I do think we are challenged to create real “thinkers” who choose to learn. My students get out of the class what they put into it. I grade accordingly. Learning objectives in the technology classroom must be adjusted to meet the current standards. Literacy in podcasts increases as effective writing skills decrease. On a good note, this is the first year my students actually used Excel to perform their SUM and AVERAGE functions, rather than their high school calculator.
Economics has created the Customer-focused learning environment with the advent of for-profit institutions. At a private university (an NGO), my students are asked to take ownership in their education. I am not aware of anyone who gets a full scholarship here, as our Director of Financial Aid believes that an education is an investment and the student needs to invest something, too.
February 18th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Phil – after 32 years of teaching the material, I have some justification for setting some kind of absolute goal, since I know what they need for subsequent classes. Thus, I basically don’t adjust scores (we have +/- grades, so I have a little leeway). I also find bi-modal grades, by the way.
JL – I have serious concerns when you discuss podcasts over writing, as factual as the statement is. Without technology, about 80% of the World’s population starves in weeks. The language of technology and science is mathematics, which requires crucial attention to detail, and is virtually impossible to communicate verbally. It sounds rather apocalyptic, but our de-emphasis on writing skills could mean the end of Western technological civilization. Meanwhile, of course, the Pacific Rim countries are doing things the ‘old way’, and kicking our rear ends. Most of the papers I now review are from the old Eastern bloc, or Asia. As for being happy at students using Excel, rather than their calculators, how many could explain what that average tells them?
In short, students don’t ‘own’ their education. It is up to faculty to determine what they need to know. Isn’t that what we are paid for?
February 20th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Timothy – absolutely apocalyptic! As educators we set the standards, present the facts, while students decipher what to do with them. The majority of traditional students in NJ (as this population dwindles) are looking to be employable upon graduation. In a fast-paced office, copying a formula or using a predefined function in Excel will attain the desired outcome more timely than sorting through 25 values. Students truly must understand the need, use, and basis for the function by understanding how and why the calculation is performed.
We are now asked to provide educational outcomes that are compromised by the “practical” sales piece for students to apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios. As a professional student, one might be more concerned about the next research study to investigate than about the financial outcome of college loans for a 5 year ($100,000+) education. Where do we find these students and how do we nurture them? Let us continue to satisfy their quest for knowledge, if it indeed exists.
February 22nd, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Aristotle once said that “Education is not the filling of a vase, but the kindling of a flame”. We use rulers (grades) and weights (GPA) to measure the contents of the vase but are these tool appropriate when measuring the kindling of the flame?