The tweet only breaks it into 2 buckets (<500 and >500 enrollment), but the the number of students enrolled in Econ, Biology (MCDB or MB&B at Yale), History and Computer Science is about 10-50x more than the ones towards the bottom like Gender Studies or History of Science. So technically, these subjects contribute the most to grade inflation/deflation at Yale
When I was at Berkeley, the mean GPA was B- (around 2.7). It's unexpected to see 3.7 as the mean GPA in other universities. That's a whole grade point higher.
What would be some good data sources to find out this dataset for other US universities?
Weird to call out gender studies as the leader, when 1) it’s not; 2) it’s specifically in a category of low enrollments, thus larger error; and 3) even the “hardest” field gives over 50% A’s.
Also weird to call this single recent snapshot as evidence of anything related to the trend without any historical data. They have 10 years of historic GPAs which show inflation, but grade inflation was a regular complaint I heard about Ivy schools in the 1990s. How do we know which disciplines are responsible for the rising GPAs? Anyway, given the low enrollment, it actually can’t be gender studies behind the overall inflation.
In practice the principal function of college grades (as with standardized test scores) seems to be to reduce the number of students applying to grad schools - easing the workload of understaffed grad admissions departments while maintaining a "high graduate admissions rate" for the college that discourages students from applying. (This is particularly important for med schools, which sharply limit the number of slots so as to restrict the supply of physicians.)
In some cases grades provide useful feedback as far as how well students are learning the material, but that doesn't seem to be the primary goal.
I'm disappointed that UC Santa Cruz adopted a more traditional grading system and (in 2010) largely abandoned the narrative evaluation system that it pioneered when it was founded.
I mostly agree with grades as a concept. I just hated the princeton grade deflation system because it was obviously harming grad school applications for us, and the administration would gaslight us. They got rid of it and basically said that the only reason was for the mental health of students.
I disagree with grades as implemented because schools have so many diverse grading policies. I think grading systems should be improved.
I'm not really sure what the point is here, especially when +/- 500 enrolled is the only separator (actual enrollment, professor, section and scheduling are just a few other factors that I imagine would affect final grade).
Nonetheless, it makes sense that less objective learning is graded on level of effort and exploration, instead of correctness. And that effort would be more inherent in students seeking out niche courses where they want to...wait for it... explore something fuzzy and interesting.
Of course there are students looking to mail it in, but in my experience those students are looking for the lazy professors and charitable TAs for the courses that fulfill the foundational degree requirements outside of their major (this is just as true for Eng students who need a writing credit, for example, as it is for English majors who need a quant credit).
Most interestingly, if a gender studies course was graded more objectively, I'm guessing there would be push back for excluding any opinions outside of the defined parameters of success. It's a lose-lose situation that devalues gender studies but I feel that's for the customers (students, alumni, major donors) to decide.
This is missing a possible explanation: Anyone who’s not getting an “A” in Gender Studies drops it.
I don’t know if this is true generally but it was the only class I personally ever dropped in college because the workload was too high. Huge final paper with a lot of required references. I didn’t need it to graduate so it wasn’t worth finishing.
If a humanities or social science course isn't directly applicable to your major/getting a job/getting into grad school and is going to put a blemish on your transcript, I could certainly imagine that you might want to drop it.
Readit News
Direct link to tweet: https://twitter.com/sfmcguire79/status/1730568207700771279
But then again, who wants to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a degree and a transcript that says you're bad. So I kind of get it.
What would be some good data sources to find out this dataset for other US universities?
Also weird to call this single recent snapshot as evidence of anything related to the trend without any historical data. They have 10 years of historic GPAs which show inflation, but grade inflation was a regular complaint I heard about Ivy schools in the 1990s. How do we know which disciplines are responsible for the rising GPAs? Anyway, given the low enrollment, it actually can’t be gender studies behind the overall inflation.
In some cases grades provide useful feedback as far as how well students are learning the material, but that doesn't seem to be the primary goal.
I'm disappointed that UC Santa Cruz adopted a more traditional grading system and (in 2010) largely abandoned the narrative evaluation system that it pioneered when it was founded.
I disagree with grades as implemented because schools have so many diverse grading policies. I think grading systems should be improved.
Nonetheless, it makes sense that less objective learning is graded on level of effort and exploration, instead of correctness. And that effort would be more inherent in students seeking out niche courses where they want to...wait for it... explore something fuzzy and interesting.
Of course there are students looking to mail it in, but in my experience those students are looking for the lazy professors and charitable TAs for the courses that fulfill the foundational degree requirements outside of their major (this is just as true for Eng students who need a writing credit, for example, as it is for English majors who need a quant credit).
Most interestingly, if a gender studies course was graded more objectively, I'm guessing there would be push back for excluding any opinions outside of the defined parameters of success. It's a lose-lose situation that devalues gender studies but I feel that's for the customers (students, alumni, major donors) to decide.
I don’t know if this is true generally but it was the only class I personally ever dropped in college because the workload was too high. Huge final paper with a lot of required references. I didn’t need it to graduate so it wasn’t worth finishing.