Fewer A's at Princeton this year

"I would expect a large portion of A's and B's at certain schools, to-wit: (1) schools with extremely high reject ratings (80%-95% of applicants for admission rejected, e.g., Harvard, Yale) and (2) schools where the average student is a mature adult who knows what he or she wants (usually having to pay one's own way serves as a motivator to do better than the kid that thinks that college is a Daddy-funded four-year beer party)."

The presence of "Daddy-funded four-year beer party" students at the 'top' universities suggests there should be a distribution of grades throughout the range. Recruitment inputs are not a predictor of performance, assuming the exam regime is tough, not soft.

I agree mature students, self-funded and supported by part-time work, adds a leavening of hard working students to the sample population. MBA students with work experience usually provide that (average age on campus MBAs is 28, while on off campus programmes it is 38, at least in the UK). We notice no, or very little, relationship between previous education qualifications and and passing grades, but then our exams are among the tougher in UK universities.

People are attracted to 'top' universities for the career cache of attending; once in (the only really difficult part of their careers) grade inflation 'guarantees' a passing grade. Informal pressures work to make that grade as high as possible. I think the failure rate is a more realistic measure of quality for those who pass than the application-to-places ratio. We fail 20-25 per cent of per exam.

As for City University, Washington State, I admit to no knowledge. I do know rhe reputation of the City University, London, so I cannot assess the value of two MBAs from Washington. I will accept your assurances in the knowledge that others on this board would correct you if you are exaggerating. Though, I am bound to ask, as MBAs have a common core of subjects plus a specialist set of Electives, how different were your MBAs in Entrepreneurship and Marketing to merit two separate MBA degree awards within a year of each other? It could not happen in the UK in the same university.

I accept that our language habits are formed earlier in life than our education achievements and I was not criticising you for a touch of 'looseness' in your expressions. When in a seminar, as we are in this Board, a certain self control should manifest itself from our education background. When in a bar or at a dinner party socialising, we may drop back to our pre-university training in the propierties of educated discourse while, among friends, we may revert to boisterous banter and graphic imagery. I do so regularly with my colleagues off campus occasionally and with my family and friends more regularly.

But we should know the difference in the settings.

So, no offence taken or intended in return.

I suspect we would probably agree a lot more if we were having a beer in Washington State or in the environs of Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

Prof. Kennedy,

You are very benevolent for forgiving the coarseness of my language in my previous posting. I shall attempt to watch my tongue in the future.
As to my two MBAs from City University in Washington state, most of their MBAs require 11 common core courses and four specialty courses, though the entrepreneurship degree required 9 core courses and 6 specialty courses. Having started the program on January 2, 1991, the MBA in Entrepreneurship was completed on July 29, 1992, leaving four specialty courses for the MBA in Marketing, which was completed in May 1993. This was done by attending classes three hours a night for two nights a week for two and a half years.

 

The point is a psychological and pedagogical one. In examination, you want students to understand that you don't presume that they know the material. They must demonstrate that they know the material. Statistically, the two methods arrive at the same point, but we're not talking about statistics.

This is why we do not use intuition to build things, which--if they go wrong--will result in death and destruction (skyscrapers, bridges, airplanes, etc.). If you knew anything about the inner workings of higher education, you would understand just how much bull---t your "intuitively obvious" comment actually is.

Have a nice day.

marilynd

 

The first point above should read:

"We're not talking about statisticis. We're talking about students."

Sorry for the omission.

marilynd

 

Marilynd,

As I stated on a different thread, I bear no ill-will against and, moreover, respect you as an intelligent person, notwithstanding our differences of opinion.
That being said, please allow me to explain that my thin-skinnedness in re the grade inflation debate no doubt stems from the fact that, in the last quarter of my first MBA, some administrator barged into one of my classes and launched into a vitriolic, hysterical tirade about grade inflation and would not even countenance the "more motivated students" hypothesis even though that MBA hails from a "working adults university."
Actually, even though I have not yet been a professor, I know quite a bit about the inner workings of higher education from many years as a student. I started my undergraduate degree at a small liberal arts college that had just been raised from community college level to four-year college six years earlier and completed my undergraduate degree at a small primarily undergraduate institution that happened to have an even smaller MA-only graduate program. I can say, therefore, that small four-year colleges usually require their professors to teach four classes a semester and two-year colleges, when they do hire full-time (which seems increasingly rare these days), require their professors to teach five classes a semester. Undergraduate institutions evaluate their professors primarily upon the basis of the quality of their teaching records for the purposes of hiring, tenure, raises, and promotions.
I have also attended a major PhD-granting flagship state university (for an attempted master's program from which I unfortunately washed with a brain tumor). As one of my professors was also Dean of Arts and Sciences, I and my fellow students in his class were made privy to the following facts re the inner workings of higher education in a major research university setting. First, that (as of 1986) a brand new PhD who just landed a full-time tenure-track assistant professorship at a PhD-granting university might expect a starting salary of $25,000 a year. Second, that, in a major research university setting, in order to get and retain tenure, one would be expected to publish one journal article a semester or a new book every three to five years (the latter option requiring that the department chair gets to see a new chapter of your book every semester). Third, that, in consideration of the amount of time that a young assistant professor would expect to spend developing lecture notes and generally adjusting to new academic duties, the publication requirement might be satisfied initially by publishing the dissertation within five years. Fourth, that the university press that publishes one's dissertation would likely charge a subvention fee of about $25,000 (the equivalent of one's first years' salary, which one's university would normally take care of).
My suggestion, so roughly worded, may have seemed a bit cynical. What I was attempting to convey was that I certainly have yet to see any proofs of "grade inflation" or that it can't be attributed to some legitimate causation (like brighter or more motivated students) and that (again maybe a bit cynical) maybe a few education profs came up with this idea when up against a close deadline for publication credits needed for their resumes. As to the obnoxious terminology, "it should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer," I think that comes from my freshman history professor Lew Chere, though it may come from Dan Arosteguy "Astroguy," my freshman economics professor.