Nearly Everyone Gets A’s at Yale. Does That Cheapen the Grade?

Johann! My youngest daughter graduated from FIT with an associates in metal working.

 

That's great, Nosborne. It's a terrific school. As far as Fashion goes, fabricating a metal dress must be fraught with difficulties. Anyone know how draping can be managed, with solid metal design? And seams would be welded, not sewn, I suppose. Wow. Dressmaking suddenly holds a complete other set of challenges! I'm getting my torch!

And hinged kick-pleats in skirts. Otherwise walking is impossible....

 

Oh, no. It's absolutely been done.

 

It has? Oh, well then, I shan't bother. Not a copier, I. Original or bust! Most likely the latter. But hey, just a minute. Who did it? Any big names - Karl Lagerfeld? Donatella? Giorgio? Calvin?

 

Oh yeah - A 'biggie' sure enough - Paco Rabanne - with plastic discs and metal hoops. Very nice.indeed. No welds.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/762106 "Paco" was a well-educated designer. Grad of l'École Nationale des Beaux-Arts. And I'm sure he had a great natural gift as well. Both show in his work.
Paco's full name was Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo. He died Feb. 3rd of this year, shortly before his 90th birthday.

And there's Iris van Herpen's fine steel mesh dresses here. As feminine as it gets, says Johann. I like.
https://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/13/iris-van-herpen-hacking-infinity-aw15-paris-fashion-week-pleats-gauze/

 

Well-done, both Iris and Paco. Great design and about as durable as is possible, I have no doubt. But ladies, when you're wearing one of these out shopping, don't get near any of those big magnetic cranes ...

Get more Iris here: https://www.irisvanherpen.com/
Get more Paco here: https://www.famousfashiondesigners.org/paco-rabanne

 

That steel mesh would be hell on your sewing machine Johann.

 

Yeah. I'd be saying goodbye to Crystal (that's her name - from her colour,"Arctic Crystal") but I wouldn't let that happen. I'd get some tough ol' industrial thingy that could take that kind of punishment and use it for that one purpose. I'd ask Iris van Herpen what I should get. She'd know instantly.

 

I would agree except that this is a new phenomenon. If students were reliably getting As in the early 2000s, this wouldn't be a story. Instead, grade inflation is increasing consistently at Yale and went into hyperdrive during the pandemic, while the students remain unchanged.

That suggests something institutional.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if the Yale and Harvard undergraduate student bodies are more interested in grade and GPA maintenance today than twenty years ago.

Students could be taking more action to maintain their grades through a wide variety of means – some commendable!, some neutral, some not great – including legitimately working hard, legitimately using supports some of which could also have become more available over time (e.g., multimedia, tutoring, counseling, learning and attentional disability accommodations), tactical course selection, tactical use of transfer credit, tactical withdrawal, and lobbying faculty.

The people who grade undergraduate courses could be awarding higher grades for reasons including the foregoing, their own increased adjunctification, and the increased importance to their own careers of their student evaluations.

 

I hate grades. They create distinctions where real differences do not exist.

I had a weird college transcript, made mostly of testing credits without grades. No one cared. I have an MBA with credits from three universities. No one cared. I have a PhD without grades or credit hours. No one cared. I have another doctorate with a weird (to us) grading system. No one cared. I never got a grade anywhere less than a B. No one cared.

Yes, there are situations where grades matter, but I'd bet in a lot of them it isn't really necessary. Just a convenient way to sort young people.

I had a student at SDSU who found out he couldn't graduate because he didn't have a 2.0 GPA in his major. He has to go to summer school and take an elective, so he took a "gut" course filled with scholarship athletes. He got his easy A, graduated, and went to the prestigious Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program and flew fighters.

 

Because of my career arc, I did a lot of work in performance evaluation. In all that time, in all those situations, I've come to this conclusion: almost everyone is doing well, and a few are outstanding. Grade accordingly.

• Fail
• Pass
• Pass with Distinction

That's it.

 

No, no, no. Everybody is a special snowflake, don't you know that? Just two grades: "Dismal" and "Miserable Failure". We need to equip these kids for life!

 

And, for the real super achievers, "Okay, I guess."

 

For Yiddish speakers, replace "Okay, I guess." with, "What, you think you're special or something?"

 

Seriously, I prefer "completed" and "not completed", the latter meaning "not yet ready to advance". I don't like "fail". Too much labeling there.

 

I don´t know much about American Elite Universities but considering what I´ve been reading lately, including this topic here, it seems they are in decline regarding many factors.

 

Funny how it feels that way as we go along. But looking back, not so much. Perhaps time heals the wounds. Or, perhaps, aged perspective brings new meaning to old experiences. But I do know this: I hate grading. It's the one thing that keeps me in corporate training and out of the academic classroom. Hands-down.

 

Of the 20 highest-ranked (according to US News and World Report), 15 are in the U.S. Four are in the UK and one is in Canada. (The Times ranking has 13 of the top 20 schools being from the U.S., two from China, one from Canada, one from Switzerland, and three from the UK.)