Should LACs no longer be considered the model of excellence?
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Anonymous
Yeah, rich people are willing to blow lots of $ on NE LACs to keep their kids among their own kind. |
Anonymous
Except it's easier to get a high GPA at a LAC than from a highly competitive public university. Another reason people with money like LACs. |
Anonymous
Cite your source. |
Anonymous
[guardian]
http://www.gradeinflation.com/tcr2010grading.pdf first chart compare public and private http://www.gradeinflation.com/tcr2012grading.pdf Sample soundbite which offers explanation of what drives grade inflation -- remember that LACs reward faculty for teaching (typically judged by course evaluations, enrollments) vs universities which care more about research. Remember also that LAC undergrads, especially the UMC ones are typically headed to professional schools. The establishment of a consumer-based approach to teaching has created both external and internal incentives for the faculty to grade more generously. Externally, higher grades translate into better future prospects for graduates. This motivation was stated explicitly as the reason that Haverford changed its grading policies campuswide in the early 1970s (Faculty of Haverford College, 1972), and we’ve found evidence in printed faculty governance meeting discussions for a desire to keep grades high elsewhere. Faculty members may sense that institutions similar to their own are raising grades and feel a need to keep up so as not to disadvantage their future alumni (e.g., Perrin, 1998). Scholarship programs that demand minimum GPAs may also provide local external incentives (e.g., Georgia Student Finance Commission, 2011). The consumer-based approach to undergraduate education has also resulted in a desire to keep students pleased with their class experiences and to measure the degree to which students are satisfied with their instructors and classes. Student-based course evaluations rose in prominence on college campuses in the 1970s, and their use became increasingly common though the 1980s and 1990s. In 1973, 26% of 600 surveyed liberal arts colleges employed student ratings of teachers; in 1983 and 1993, the numbers rose to 68% and 86%, respectively (Seldin, 1984, 1993). These evaluations are used for more than just improving instruction; in the 1980s and 1990s, they increasingly began to play a minor to significant role in decisions regarding pay, promotion, and retention of instructors. The widespread use of course evaluations likely has had a profound influence on grading. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0069258 Shows how even obviously inflated grades give applicants an edge. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/same-performance-better-grades/384447/ https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/the-history-of-college-grade-inflation/ Also, personal experience doing graduate admissions and seeing average GPA data on undergrad transcripts. |
Anonymous
| Honestly, I don't see how many of the comments in point 3 are applicable only to the LACs and not Ivies like Brown/Yale and universities like Tufts. Most top universities are highly liberal and no bastion of free-speech. Even U'Chicago, which is lauded by conservatives because of its free speech statement, attracts an incredibly left leaning undergraduate demographic that is conscious and engaged with social justice. I know this from personal experience- the kids who go to U'Chicago and the top Ivies are not that much different from those who go to the top LACs. |
Anonymous
| Perhaps the fact that 40% of many LAC student bodies are recruited athletes turns off some students? I'm sure that affects the intellectual atmosphere. |
Anonymous
| Interesting point about the recruited athletes - my DD just toured Middlebury and since they don't have frats and sororities the social groups are determined by rec sports teams - they say this multiple times during tour and my daughter was so turned off by that - she thought it sounded worst than HS - and she plays sports! |
Anonymous
Interesting that the graph shows that the most grade inflation was at the public flagship university (positive deviation from the mean) |
Anonymous
+1 I had the same reaction. |
Anonymous
|
Stupid red baiting bullshit.
Many liberal arts colleges provide excellent educations. It really just comes down to fit -- whether the student will do best in a small environment (with the plusses and minuses that go along with that). |
Anonymous
Huh. The data shows that public flagships are easier, grade-wise, than private LACs and engineering schools. Makes sense. |
Anonymous
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I suggest people who are genuinely interested look at the papers themselves. Here, for example, is the authors' summary of the first chart:
Private and public schools graded similarly until the 1950s when grading practices for these schools began to bifurcate. The reasons for this bifurcation are not fully understood, but it was during this time that quantitative measures of undergraduates took hold in graduate school and professional school admissions. It appears that sometime in the 1950s to 1960s, the major purpose of grading at colleges and universities changed from an internal measure and motivator of student performance to a measure principally used for external evaluation of graduates. As a Yale dean noted about Yale’s abandonment of their traditional qualitative assessments in favor of the common four point grading system, “We wanted to force graduate schools to look at the student, not at a grade point average. But to a large extent, our effort has been frustrated” (Polan, 1970). In response, private schools – more so than public schools – raised their grades. In the words of one late faculty member from Dartmouth, “we began systematically to inflate grades, so that our graduates would have more A's to wave around” (Perrin, 1998). The GPA gap between the private and public schools widened through the 1970s, and has stabilized since the 1980s.... The above two equations suggest that private schools are grading 0.1 to 0.2 higher on a 4.0 scale for a given talent level of student. Since the evidence indicates that private schools in general educate students no better than public schools (Perscarella and Ternzini, 1991), private schools are apparently conferring small but measurable advantages to their students by more generous grading. Private schools also have on average students from wealthier families, and the effect of our nation’s ad hoc grading policy is to confer unfair advantages to those with the most money. It is perhaps easy to see why graduates from certain private schools dominate placement in top medical schools, law schools, business schools, and why certain private schools are overrepresented in Ph.D. study (E. Bernstein, 2003; J. Burrelli et al., 2008). They grade easier and there is a tendency for graduate schools, professional schools, and some employers to confer extra stature to those who have attended selective private schools. Also, the fact that students from private schools tend to come from wealthier homes means they can stay in school longer. |
Anonymous
The graph you are referring to does *not* measure grade inflation. It measures deviation from the authors' predictive model (which includes an inflator for private schools). What it's saying is that public flagships don't grade as harshly as public schools generally and that private liberal arts schools are a mixed bag -- some inflate more than others. If you look at the LACs the authors' studied, most are not elites. If you do head to head comparisons between elite LACs and flagships -- e.g. Berkeley vs. Amherst -- you'll see that the LACs have higher GPAs. |
Anonymous
Every college has an economics major. Why not go to one that also offers finance and marketing? |
Anonymous
Because finance and marketing classes are vocational classes. They do not help the student develop the kind of analytical, critical thinking and clear writing skills that e.g. an economics major does. |