Grade Inflation

[Josh '99]

[Q]cornelldavy Wrote:
When I wasn an undergrad, I took an 800-level Olde English course. Repeatedly.

I don't think it helped my GPA, though.[/q]That post was AWESOME.  :-D

[Josh '99]

[Q]Jerseygirl Wrote:
My personal pet peeve was that it's apparently impossible to get below an A-/B+ in creative writing classes because people think good writing is "subjective." We don't have to get into a detailed discussion as to why this is a load of crap, but it is. We may like to read about different things, but aside from oh, I don't know, proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation, there are other non-negotiables like plot and character development, sense of story, tension, realistic dialogue, voice, etc.
Writing well is as hard to do as anything else, and there's no reason creative writing classes should be graded as though that isn't true.[/q]Maybe they mark you down if you plagiarize?  Sorta takes away from the "creative" aspect.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Well, I learned a lot in "Introduction to Wine and Spirits", a.k.a. Wednesday Afternoon Winetasting, that has actually been of use in my career.  :-P

Got to admit that certain courses were a total waste (Econ 101 & 102, Urban Affairs Lab).  Others were actually quite interesting (Psych 101, Modern American History).  There was actually a 600 level ChemE course on Air Pollution I would have liked to take, but the prof who normally taught it was off campus that year.

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]Jerseygirl Wrote:

 Yes, but you missed out on the Heaney translation of Beowulf, which is really wonderful.[/q]

We didn't use a translation. :-P

I had originally intended only to take the first semester to finish off the English requirement, but the late http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/7/farrell.html Bob Farrell's Old English course was so much fun, I had to sign up for Beowulf.

[Jerseygirl]

JTW-
We didn't use a translation either. The Heaney version was merely suggested reading. I hope you know how lucky you were not to have Farrell in what would literally turn out to be his last years of teaching. He tended to nod off more and more frequently between his flashes of wit and brilliance.

JMH-
Well...plagiarism is a hard one, because compelling themes (love, loss, struggle, etc.) are pretty universal as it is. Most less than mediocre stories were just thinly veiled autobiographical accounts anyway. And as one becomes a better writer, one becomes better at applying a thicker veil to one's autobiographical accounts. The requests from one's friends to be story characters also increases.

[ugarte]

[Q]Jeff Hopkins '82 Wrote:

 [Q2]min Wrote:

According to the authors of the study, apparently it's the students themselves who are inflating their grades by deliberatively choosing 'easy' or 'easier' classes.

[/Q]
And this is a surprise?  I took as many intro courses as I could over my four years, and the 200 level courses I took were all ones that were known to be somewhat easier than most.  I figured it was the least Cornell could do for suffering four years in ChemE.

[/q]It is a pretty cool study, even if it isn't surprising. I love the idea that an obscure class surged in popularity as soon as it became common knowledge that the prof is a pushover.

Another interesting conclusion: students with higher SAT scores were less sensitive to the news about easy classes. Confidence, academic rigor or pinheads?

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]Jerseygirl Wrote:

 JTW-
We didn't use a translation either. The Heaney version was merely suggested reading. I hope you know how lucky you were not to have Farrell in what would literally turn out to be his last years of teaching. He tended to nod off more and more frequently between his flashes of wit and brilliance.[/q]

That's a pity.  He was a little scatterbrained even back in 1990, but the "cocktail party" tidbits he threw out added to the fun of the class.  I guess I'd say I was lucky to have him earlier in his career.

I have a friend who in high school used to make stick-figure comic books (he's a playwright now) and I made a few mock-ups for a version of Beowulf in that style.  I think Prof. Farrell (who was to appear as a narrator and commentator) was the only character besides Grendel and his mother who got a body.

The Heaney translation comes in one of those editions with the original on the facing page Loeb Classical Library style, right?  (I still haven't gotten around to getting a copy.)  What I could really have used for that course was a workbook-style edition of the text, triple-spaced to allow room to add a scansion and gloss.  I spent a lot of time copying Old English poetry out into notebooks to produce such a thing myself, but now one can find an electronic copy online and print it out triple-spaced after a few global-replaces on the HTML in a text editor.

[Q]Jerseygirl Wrote:

JMH-
Well...plagiarism is a hard one, because compelling themes (love, loss, struggle, etc.) are pretty universal as it is. Most less than mediocre stories were just thinly veiled autobiographical accounts anyway. And as one becomes a better writer, one becomes better at applying a thicker veil to one's autobiographical accounts. The requests from one's friends to be story characters also increases.[/q]

I know from even a few attempts at creative writing that accidental plagiarism is also a danger.  You read a turn of phrase that catches your fancy, it rattles around in the back of your brain, and seems apt for a bit of narrative you're writing, and by that point you've forgotten how it got in your head in the first place.  It's usually sufficiently modified to be merely derivative, though.

[jy3]

1st grade inflation, now hahvahd is doctoring newspaper pictures and trying to alter the past

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/06/14/harvard.headline.ap/index.html

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Why not?  They've had mysterious fires in the records department in response to geneder bias lawsuits.  This is nothing in comparison

[nyc94]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002336475_garfield15m.html

One high school â€" 44 valedictorians

[min]

more anecdotal evidence about the grade inflation phenomenon, this time from a part-time instructor and a parent...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060201593_pf.html

[likeshockey]

Grade inflation, let's talk about real estate inflation. The average apartment in nyc now is $1 million dollar. Maybe the two are tied together somehow and we have Alan Greenspan to thank because of the easy money.

[nyc94]

[Q]likeshockey Wrote:
Grade inflation, let's talk about real estate inflation. The average apartment in nyc now is $1 million dollar. Maybe the two are tied together somehow and we have Alan Greenspan to thank because of the easy money.[/q]

That's only if you insist on luxuries like two rooms or closet space for more than one person.  You can still get a studio for about $300,000 and a small one bedroom for half a million.  Really, who needs four burners on a stove when two will do?  It's just taking up space in your living room.  

Also, don't forget to thank the Asian central bankers for buying US Treasuries.  And Greenspan should have raised rates in 1998.

[Ken \'70]

[Q]ugarte Wrote:


Another interesting conclusion: students with higher SAT scores were less sensitive to the news about easy classes. Confidence, academic rigor or pinheads?[/q]

If you can run a mile in 5 minutes you don't worry so much about the difference between phys ed. classes that require a mile in 6 minutes versus 7 minutes.  High SATs mean higher cognitive ability means the freedom to take what you want rather than worrying about easier courses.  

The writers noted something to the effect that Cornell showed great naivete when it came to human nature.  That's correct to the extent that not believing in human nature in the first place is being naive about it.

Anyone know what the honors distribution is at Cornell?  My daughter just graduated from Duke where it's top 5% summa, next 10% magna, then next 10% cum laude.  Far cry from Hahvahd's 91%.



 

[Robb]

When I graduated in '94, the engineering college's policy was that a GPA >= 3.25 was "with distinction," and everyone else was "with diploma."  There was no strict percentage on it.  Of course, given that most classes were curved to a B- or so, you could probably estimate that the percentage of "with distinction" grads would be in the 15-20% range.

I don't think that applied to other colleges at the time (didn't the A&S college have those honors thesis thingys?) and may not apply to engineering anymore.