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Grade inflation is always and everywhere an admission rate problem. The US college-applying population has grown (a lot). The Harvard class size remains the sa

Grade inflation is always and everywhere an admission rate problem. The US college-applying population has grown (a lot). The Harvard class size remains the same. Harvard continues to be a (the?) top tier school. This means that Harvard classes are probably getting better year after year. Even if Harvard is evaluating performance exactly the same (no new cushiness), if the admitted are better, they’ll be getting better grades on average, and those grades will be more compressed.

w-ll 4y ago
Legacy grows at least as linear tho.
ChuckMcM 4y ago
I don't think this tracks; The argument seems to be that there are more and more students, and the number that can go to Harvard is fixed, so Harvard is selecting for the "best and the brightest" which when they were less picky was a smaller percentage of the class but now they only get really bright and talented students. Does that more or less capture it? If so consider that grades are against the class, not the student. If grades did not inflate, and the quality of the students had risen, then the effort to get an A would go up commensurately with the quality of the student and those who weren't up to that standard would continue to get the B's and C's. What the article is saying is that by not grading on a curve (or letting the curve parameters creep up) the median GPA goes up and the standard deviation goes down (compression). Rather than having a consistent distribution with what ever students happen to be admitted currently.
- nine_k 4y ago
  If exam grades follow some absolute standard, then throwing better students at them would result at more As, up tp only A grades for an entire class. This is without any grade inflation: the absolute level of knowledge to get an A stays the same, but the absolute level of knowledge demonstrated by students goes up. To the contrary, to have any B or C grades in a class full of the brightest students, one needs to either increase the absolute expected level, or to give the class grades relative to its strength, which again means raising the expected level for an A. Exam questions from Harvard can be easily tracked 100+ years back. A researcher who'd give current Harvard graduates some of the older questions could find out if the toughness of the exams went up, down, or stayed.
  - ChuckMcM 4y ago
    > Exam questions from Harvard can be easily tracked 100+ years back. A researcher who'd give current Harvard graduates some of the older questions could find out if the toughness of the exams went up, down, or stayed. Agreed!
    - likely_harrison 4y ago
      Agreed! This would be great! My guess would be in 2022 the math is harder but literature easier.
      - eesmith 4y ago
        It would need to be done both ways. A 1923 student is not going to have read "The Gulag Archipelago" or "Things Fall Apart" or other works published after 1923, so would fail any modern questions which require having read those works. But even if you look to contemporaneous 1923 literature, I strongly suspect a modern Harvard student is more likely to have read black literature from 100+ years ago than a 1923 student. (For examples see https://histlit.fas.harvard.edu/files/histlit/files/america_3.pdf https://histlit.fas.harvard.edu/files/histlit/files/america_... with "Sample Oral Exam Questions" from a modern Harvard exam section on "Being Black After Reconstruction".) If the 1923 student didn't have to read 75% of what modern literature courses cover, and instead read a different 75%, perhaps with a stronger emphasis on British literature, then of course a 2023 student won't test so well on a 1923 test. But then, a 1923 student wouldn't test so well on a 2023 test. Even math has some issues. Here's a Harvard entrance exam from 1869: https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvard... You can see the math part requires details that aren't taught now: "Find the amount of £50 12s. 5d. at simple interest at 8 per cent., at the end of 5 years 2 months and 3 days." "From 1 sq. rod 5 sq. ft. subtract 7 sq yd. 139 sq. in." The Brits decimalized a half century ago, so kids aren't taught there are 20 shillings in a pound and 12 pennies in a shilling. Only surveyors use rods these days, and it's defined as 16 1/2 US survey feet - which is slightly smaller than the international foot defined in 1959. Or, "Find the cube root of 0.0093". By hand. We no longer consider that something worthwhile to teach. They aren't hard, but without that small bit of knowledge or training, modern students are very unlikely to get the right answer. Or, "State and prove the proportion which exists between the parts of two chords which cut each other in a circle. State what proportion exists when two secants are drawn from a point without the circle." I don't know about you, but my plane geometry isn't good enough to answer that question. That's due to post-war educational policy changes that de-emphasized classical geometry in favor of calculus.
klodolph 4y ago
- Harvard has a legacy admission policy. - Even if Harvard didn’t have a legacy admission policy, the ability to select the best possible students is limited (admissions is full of mistakes). - Incoming students often know that they can get a near equal education at other schools, even if they are admitted to Harvard. - Anecdotes from Harvard graduates suggest that performance of students at Harvard is not significantly different from other good schools. - Grade inflation affects nearly all US schools. Travel back in time to 1960 or earlier. You’ll find that the A grade in the US is reserved for the highest performing students, the top 15% or so. 30-35% would get a B, another 30-35% would get a C, and the remainder would get Ds and Fs. Today, more than 40% of all students get an A. If you think the explanation for why this happens at Harvard is different for the explanation for why this happens to most of the rest of the US, then you would want to explain what makes Harvard different.
- godelski 4y ago
  I'd argue that an equivalent education isn't that meaningful of a statement though. Top schools come with a lot more opportunities. Connections is a big one. My undergrad didn't do research and several top schools require a publication for admission to graduate school. An opportunity I never even had (a common lack of opportunity for many university students. There's only so many R1 unis). I definitely agree that you'll get a similar education at a large number of schools (after all, there are only so many professorships available and it is extremely competitive), but I think it would also be a mistake to believe that there is an equal outcome between schools. Prestige may be a confounder, but it is unfortunately a meaningful metric and students know this.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    Grades don’t measure opportunities. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here—should Harvard students get better grades because they are getting a better value out of their education than peers who are performing at the same level? I don’t think that’s a reasonable way for grades to work. If you’re not talking about grade inflation, if you’re just talking about whether it’s meaningful to compare education—I’d still say that it’s meaningful to compare the education you get at different universities. There’s plenty of room for cynicism, but I think people are sometimes too cynical about the value of the actual education that college provides. It’s well-known that people who are knowledgeable in a particular subject overestimate how easy the subject is to learn and overestimate the general public’s knowledge of that subject. In short, a chemistry major will think that chemistry is not so hard, and maybe conclude that they didn’t get much of an education in college. You can think of this as the flipside to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Ignorant people overestimate their abilities, and knowledgeable people also overestimate the abilities of ignorant people. Rephrased—smart people undervalue knowledge! I’m not going to try and make the case that the world is some kind of meritocracy, but I’d still place my bets on a 10% better student than on a student going to a 10% more prestigious school.

w-ll 4y ago

Legacy grows at least as linear tho.

ChuckMcM 4y ago

I don't think this tracks; The argument seems to be that there are more and more students, and the number that can go to Harvard is fixed, so Harvard is selecting for the "best and the brightest" which when they were less picky was a smaller percentage of the class but now they only get really bright and talented students. Does that more or less capture it? If so consider that grades are against the class, not the student. If grades did not inflate, and the quality of the students had risen, then the effort to get an A would go up commensurately with the quality of the student and those who weren't up to that standard would continue to get the B's and C's. What the article is saying is that by not grading on a curve (or letting the curve parameters creep up) the median GPA goes up and the standard deviation goes down (compression). Rather than having a consistent distribution with what ever students happen to be admitted currently.

nine_k 4y ago
If exam grades follow some absolute standard, then throwing better students at them would result at more As, up tp only A grades for an entire class. This is without any grade inflation: the absolute level of knowledge to get an A stays the same, but the absolute level of knowledge demonstrated by students goes up. To the contrary, to have any B or C grades in a class full of the brightest students, one needs to either increase the absolute expected level, or to give the class grades relative to its strength, which again means raising the expected level for an A. Exam questions from Harvard can be easily tracked 100+ years back. A researcher who'd give current Harvard graduates some of the older questions could find out if the toughness of the exams went up, down, or stayed.
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  > Exam questions from Harvard can be easily tracked 100+ years back. A researcher who'd give current Harvard graduates some of the older questions could find out if the toughness of the exams went up, down, or stayed. Agreed!
  - likely_harrison 4y ago
    Agreed! This would be great! My guess would be in 2022 the math is harder but literature easier.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      It would need to be done both ways. A 1923 student is not going to have read "The Gulag Archipelago" or "Things Fall Apart" or other works published after 1923, so would fail any modern questions which require having read those works. But even if you look to contemporaneous 1923 literature, I strongly suspect a modern Harvard student is more likely to have read black literature from 100+ years ago than a 1923 student. (For examples see https://histlit.fas.harvard.edu/files/histlit/files/america_3.pdf https://histlit.fas.harvard.edu/files/histlit/files/america_... with "Sample Oral Exam Questions" from a modern Harvard exam section on "Being Black After Reconstruction".) If the 1923 student didn't have to read 75% of what modern literature courses cover, and instead read a different 75%, perhaps with a stronger emphasis on British literature, then of course a 2023 student won't test so well on a 1923 test. But then, a 1923 student wouldn't test so well on a 2023 test. Even math has some issues. Here's a Harvard entrance exam from 1869: https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvard... You can see the math part requires details that aren't taught now: "Find the amount of £50 12s. 5d. at simple interest at 8 per cent., at the end of 5 years 2 months and 3 days." "From 1 sq. rod 5 sq. ft. subtract 7 sq yd. 139 sq. in." The Brits decimalized a half century ago, so kids aren't taught there are 20 shillings in a pound and 12 pennies in a shilling. Only surveyors use rods these days, and it's defined as 16 1/2 US survey feet - which is slightly smaller than the international foot defined in 1959. Or, "Find the cube root of 0.0093". By hand. We no longer consider that something worthwhile to teach. They aren't hard, but without that small bit of knowledge or training, modern students are very unlikely to get the right answer. Or, "State and prove the proportion which exists between the parts of two chords which cut each other in a circle. State what proportion exists when two secants are drawn from a point without the circle." I don't know about you, but my plane geometry isn't good enough to answer that question. That's due to post-war educational policy changes that de-emphasized classical geometry in favor of calculus.

klodolph 4y ago

- Harvard has a legacy admission policy. - Even if Harvard didn’t have a legacy admission policy, the ability to select the best possible students is limited (admissions is full of mistakes). - Incoming students often know that they can get a near equal education at other schools, even if they are admitted to Harvard. - Anecdotes from Harvard graduates suggest that performance of students at Harvard is not significantly different from other good schools. - Grade inflation affects nearly all US schools. Travel back in time to 1960 or earlier. You’ll find that the A grade in the US is reserved for the highest performing students, the top 15% or so. 30-35% would get a B, another 30-35% would get a C, and the remainder would get Ds and Fs. Today, more than 40% of all students get an A. If you think the explanation for why this happens at Harvard is different for the explanation for why this happens to most of the rest of the US, then you would want to explain what makes Harvard different.

godelski 4y ago
I'd argue that an equivalent education isn't that meaningful of a statement though. Top schools come with a lot more opportunities. Connections is a big one. My undergrad didn't do research and several top schools require a publication for admission to graduate school. An opportunity I never even had (a common lack of opportunity for many university students. There's only so many R1 unis). I definitely agree that you'll get a similar education at a large number of schools (after all, there are only so many professorships available and it is extremely competitive), but I think it would also be a mistake to believe that there is an equal outcome between schools. Prestige may be a confounder, but it is unfortunately a meaningful metric and students know this.
- klodolph 4y ago
  Grades don’t measure opportunities. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here—should Harvard students get better grades because they are getting a better value out of their education than peers who are performing at the same level? I don’t think that’s a reasonable way for grades to work. If you’re not talking about grade inflation, if you’re just talking about whether it’s meaningful to compare education—I’d still say that it’s meaningful to compare the education you get at different universities. There’s plenty of room for cynicism, but I think people are sometimes too cynical about the value of the actual education that college provides. It’s well-known that people who are knowledgeable in a particular subject overestimate how easy the subject is to learn and overestimate the general public’s knowledge of that subject. In short, a chemistry major will think that chemistry is not so hard, and maybe conclude that they didn’t get much of an education in college. You can think of this as the flipside to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Ignorant people overestimate their abilities, and knowledgeable people also overestimate the abilities of ignorant people. Rephrased—smart people undervalue knowledge! I’m not going to try and make the case that the world is some kind of meritocracy, but I’d still place my bets on a 10% better student than on a student going to a 10% more prestigious school.