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I'm trying to find anything in this piece that moves it past a Grumpy-Old-Man-Complains-That's-Not-How-They-Did-It-In-My-Day argument. I'm not seeing it. No log
by jmull 7y ago
I'm trying to find anything in this piece that moves it past a Grumpy-Old-Man-Complains-That's-Not-How-They-Did-It-In-My-Day argument. I'm not seeing it. No logical or imperial arguments.
Grade inflation does mean an "A" doesn't mean what it used to.
But is that bad? (Or good?)
Letter grades are an arbitrary measure and are most generally used to compare recent graduates. For that gradual inflation is not a problem. (And, if you were comparing between generations for some reason you could apply an appropriate adjustment, though it's pretty unclear why you'd be doing that for anything serious.)
There also seems to be a strong implication that we used to have a stronger "fail 'em out if they can't handle it" approach to education and that we should return to that. I don't know if we actually used to (didn't seem that way to me in my day -- the mid-to-late '80s) but even so, I doubt this is an effective educational strategy for a large proportion of students, which leads to an inefficient educational system. (That is, it ends up providing an effective educating fewer students at a larger cost than other approaches.)
So, low-quality arguments. Not surprising though... they let anyone write opinion pieces these days! <-- this is a joke
- quotemstr 7y agoGrade inflation would be less of a problem if GPA didn't saturate --- but it does. The trouble is that if you squeeze everyone on to the top end of the scale, you diminish the ability to use GPA to distinguish talent levels. You turn school into a pass/fail system. Since not everyone is in fact equally talented, we end up losing information. Economic misallocation of resources makes us all poorer. There's real value in putting the smartest people on the hardest problems, and it's hard to do that when everyone graduates at that "the smartest people" level.
- jmull 7y agoYou’re assuming grades mainly exist to solve an industry problem. But why should that be true? If I’m running a school I’ll use grades to further my own school’s educational goals and trust the various industries and other post-graduation institutions to figure out how to determine who best fits their purposes for themselves. There certainly is a real value in putting the smartest (well, most able actually, but I know what you mean) people on the hardest problems. So better to use a system designed for the specific purpose rather than try to repurpose something made for a different purpose.
- quotemstr 7y agoI would argue that ability in industry is extraordinarily strongly correlated with ability to earn high grades.