Reply to Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation

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Reply to "Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I teach STEM at one of the notoriously hard universities mentioned in this thread, and I can confidently say that Harvard's struggles with underprepared students are not only Harvard's struggles. Rather, this has affected all universities and all of my colleagues universally feel the struggle. As a result, we have had to redesign our courses, and we have become more lenient, whether that is a philosophy we want to adopt or not. Mostly, we feel it is our responsibility to help students succeed as best we can, and if that means changing previously difficult content to make it more manageable to the majority of the class, that is what we have to do.

And before the people of DCUM jump to the conclusion that this watering down is all due to DEI, or URM, or FGLI, I have faced similar struggles with students who are advantaged in every way and who come in with glowing grades, awards, and national merit recognitions, etc. I honestly believe that some factor has hurt attention spans almost universally among our young people. As the parent of a high schooler, what I observe among my college students has influenced the way I parent, and I am really invested in reducing distractions, and encouraging my teen to take on challenges that involve deep work and which do not guarantee success.  [/quote]

Yes this is not a H specific issue.

Today’s kids have smart phones and AIs. They don’t read as the past generations do.

Grades have increased over the past decades everywhere.

Yes today’s students are more competitive and hard working than their parents. And more international students contributed to the rising quality of students. So, grades are higher even without the inflation.[/quote]
+1, I think parents need to consider what its like to be a student currently.

Let's say you're a first year at UChicago studying physics. Your coursework is pretty damned difficult, so you need to focus on that, but you also know by the end of these 4 years you need a job. Let's say you're a somewhat knowledgable student and understand that a Physics BS qualifies you for little work in your field, and you know at some point throughout your degree you would not get into a top graduate program, so you need an industry job. Well to get an industry job, you need skills; quantum mechanics and theoretical mechanics are awesome courses, but they don't help your employer, so you enroll in an intermediate stats course with some ML in the course content...except that course is entirely in R (industry wants python), and you need to work extra hard, cause stats isn't your field. Now, add a few CS courses and math courses inapplicable to physics AND add a software engineering club (good luck getting in) and work on a few technical projects, and now you got your first data science interview! Except...you need to study leetcode and consistently technical interview prep, so you can actually get a job.

Mind you, we actually haven't at all talked about the fact that you are currently enrolled in Stat Models and Methods, Quantum Mechanics III, and Experimental Physics III for this quarter as a junior, and your coursework takes up a significant chunk of time.

This is why college students are a mess, and that's without the context that they're technically with weaker foundations that previous students.

I'd say grade inflation isn't even in the top 10 issue with the current academic climate.[/quote]

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