Gimme an A!

@raprap,

raprap wrote:

I found that even ChE's hated Organic, but most loved PChem. The nerds.

Rap

I liked Organic, but I loved physical chemistry. The chem course, as an undergraduate, that was the most stressful was the quantitative analysis lab.
That course payed off in the future however, as I've published several papers in the area of analytical biochemistry.

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@Miller,

The only thing I remember about chemistry is that proteins permeates. Wink

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

This thread is based on flawed logic. The only evidence presented of the alleged "grade inflation" is the fact that grades are improving. Since when is improved performance a bad thing?

This is an excellent observation. If the article reported the opposite - that the number of A's had dropped noticeably in the last decade, we wouldn't be discussing how professors are grading harder, we'd be discussing the poor state of our education system. Students today have many more resources available to help them learn. Why should we leap to the conclusion that more A's are due to grade inflation instead of improved performance?

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@engineer,

I think it cuts both ways. How can NCLB improve knowledge that is important to the students? It's been shown in Atlanta, that cheating by teachers is a common problem.

Under NCLB, it "seems" standards have been improving, but many more students have also been dropping out of school. This is an improvement?

The grade inflation study doesn't provide enough detail to determine either way whether it's based on real scholastic achievement or teachers giving better grades for under performance.

The fact that most students have access to more resources doesn't necessarily prove they are all do. We all know that grade schools still use standardized tests with all its shortcoming and failures. Many do not offer music or sports, and most kids are overweight. Lots of negatives from my perspective.

This link provides info on drop out rates by the Gates Foundation.
http://www.civicenterprises.net/pdfs/thesilentepidemic3-06.pdf

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

People who are motivated, intelligent and curious go to college. And people who went to college are the ones with the creativity and genius that have driven our progress for decades.

With respect, I suspect a post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy here. Colleges, especially prestigious colleges, can select the most creative and motivated students from each year of high-school graduates. Many of the students thus selected would have driven progress even if they had dropped out immediately after immatriculation.

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@Thomas,

I don't think so Thomas. First, the percentage of people who go to college has steadily increased.

There is also a strong correlation between college attendance and economic success. And, a strong correlation between family wealth and college attendance. And, of course, statistics will show the obvious correlation that people from well-to-do families are more likely to have successful, innovative, careers.

I can speak with confidence about my industry, software engineering. A college education is pretty well necessary (with a few exceptions) and all of the people with titles like Chief Scientist who are given the big bugs to create new technologies have Masters degrees or PhDs.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I don't think so Thomas. First, the percentage of people who go to college has steadily increased.

. . . and yet the number of people who change the world with their creativity has not. Which seems to make my point and contradict yours.

maxdancona wrote:

There is also a strong correlation between college attendance and economic success.

Sure. But that's just the correlation you expect if I'm right: if economic success comes from the traits that get you into college, not from what college teaches you.

maxdancona wrote:

I can speak with confidence about my industry, software engineering. A college education is pretty well necessary (with a few exceptions) and all of the people with titles like Chief Scientist who are given the big bugs to create new technologies have Masters degrees or PhDs.

Could be. But it may well be a college dropout who pays the chief scientist's salary. Who are the most successful individuals in the software industry? College dropout Bill Gates, college dropout Paul Allen, college dropout Larry Ellison, and college dropout Steve Jobs. They all did a pretty good job changing of the world without getting a college degree first.

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@Thomas,

Well... we have kind of gotten on a different argument. Originally this thread was about grades and I was arguing that the fact that the number of good grades being awarded didn't hurt anything. The discussion of whether college is a worthwhile enterprise at all is a completely different discussion (and if it isn't, then grades are rather irrelevant anyway).

You kind of got me stuck between the two arguments. So for this response I am going to drop the whole discussion of whether grade inflation is a problem (or if it exists at all).

I concede the point that college is not a requirement of success for everyone. Obviously if you have the raw talent and drive to start a successful and innovative technology company (and you come from a wealthy family as most of these guys did) then perhaps a college degree is just a waste of your time.

But let's look at education from a societal point of view. Underneath these demigods are thousands of the people who will be doing the real work. These people need to understand computational algorithms and linear algebra. They need to have exposure to different artificial intelligence technologies and be able to talk intelligently about distributed databases.

Could you imagine a modern society existing without a strong education system right through university level?

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
Grades inflated around 1965. Big change.

You haven't provided any evidence of this. But let's say you are right.

The people who graduated since 1965 were the people who built the space program from moon landings to the space shuttle to the Mars rovers. We discovered quarks, figured out how to stuff hundreds of thousands of transistors into a small piece of silicon and built the Internet.

Even if you are right, I fail to see how it hurt us.

RealJ is right, and furthermore it has hurt us, and if you can't see why, then you're part of the problem - especially in view of your idiotic statement about moon landings etc. What happened in 1965 was the passage of the ruinous "Great Society" legislation - now known to be "Great Bankruptcy of the United States" legislation, FYI - of that Vietnam-war-disaster initiator, Lyndon Johnson, whose name has almost joined in the bottom ranks of infamy that other Supreme-Court-attempted-overloading-president who brought us the 22nd Amendment, and whose name will not cross my lips. I still say East River Drive Smile

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

....Could you imagine a modern society existing without a strong education system right through university level?

And could you imagine a modern society existing without the "affirmative action" quotas and the like, causing more bankruptcies via unpayable debt in student loans than in consumer credit cards? The people who got us to the moon landings etc were overwhelmingly graduates of schools with no quotas!

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@High Seas,

I try to ignore you High Seas, but sometimes you make me chuckle.

The biggest beneficiaries by far of affirmative action are white women. There are more educated women then ever and we even have women astronauts now. My grandmother expressed regret that the only careers open to her as a woman were teacher or nurse (she had a mind for business).

I would think you might agree that modern society has made some progress.

Conservatism is based on the underlying fear that somewhere, somehow a black person might be getting away with something. It cracks me up when white conservative women, who now have such opportunity, forget that these programs benefited them much more than anyone else.

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@maxdancona,

All quotas and all affirmative action are contrary to the 14th Amendment, no matter who the alleged beneficiary may be - how difficult is that to understand? Grade inflation is one inevitable corollary; the Atlanta school "scandal" is another inevitable corollary - they were just trying to help "the kids"! The statement about the universities (unfortunately not many) which never applied quotas to admissions or exams remains valid; they also had to turn down federal funds, so the cost was high, but their grading curves remained fairly stable after 1965, as you would know if you had attended one of them.

Too bad for you that you had to go to a PC, quota-ridden school - as you must have done, given your absurd fantasies about "white women" and "black persons" "getting away" with any imaginary "benefits". The beneficiaries of affirmative action were in fact its victims - ending up with worthless degrees.

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@High Seas,

I think you are making a difficult case. Before 1965, and the follow up in 1972, women didn't go to college except nursing school or teacher college. Consequently there were zero women astronauts. Maybe 2 women engineers and no woman business leaders.

Now women are common place in top level universities like Harvard and Yale. Most corporations have women on their boards, and several have female CEO's. All of this would have been unthinkable before 1965 when even the idea of a woman in a professional position was an oddity.

Women were hardly hurt by affirmative action.

I am curious High Seas, what university did you attend?

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@maxdancona,

Your statements about women engineers, scientists, other university graduates before 1965 are so easily disproven as not to be worth contradicting. Separately, doesn't it strike you as presumptuous to assume, sight unseen, anyone's color, sex, degree type - and now to also ask for university names?!

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@High Seas,

Quote:

Separately, doesn't it strike you as presumptuous to assume, sight unseen, anyone's color, sex, degree type - and now to also ask for university names?!

Not really. It is just that I find it amusing that you yourself might have been a beneficiary of affirmative action.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
Separately, doesn't it strike you as presumptuous to assume, sight unseen, anyone's color, sex, degree type - and now to also ask for university names?!

Not really. It is just that I find it amusing that you yourself might have been a beneficiary of affirmative action.

I thank my lucky stars I was not - the degrees of those who were aren't worth the parchment they were printed on. It's amazing to me you didn't know that.

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