4 ms·

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 select

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.
- oscillonoscope 4y ago
  How would you determine if the toughness of an exam from a hundred years ago matched a modern day one? The pedagogy, tools, and knowledge base differed dramatically in the past century. A question might look difficult but be intended as a take-home, be graded differently than binary right-wrong, rely on a trick of an outdated tool (ex. slide rule).
- eesmith 4y ago
  > then throwing better students at them would result at more As Also, the Flynn effect: "the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect > 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. I strongly suspect this wouldn't be informative. The base knowledge of what we expect students to know has shifted. Some might be topical: "How did Harding conduct his campaign?" "Name the primary components of a steam locomotive." 100 years ago I believe there was still an expectation that students knew Latin. The 1869 Harvard entrance exam at https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvard... has two pages of Latin and two of Greek. (Most of the student then would have come from an upper-class prep school, where they would have a training that let them be able to answer "Bound the basin of the Po, of the Mississippi, of the St. Lawrence." and "Supply the two names left blank in the following passage from the Oration for the Manilian Law.") Consider how calculus is now regularly taught in high school, while pre-war high school ended with solid geometry. Or, consider how an English literature course 100 years ago (and its tests) would have focused on the literature of England and the US, while the equivalent modern English literature course would likely have drawn from the much larger Anglo-sphere.

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.
oscillonoscope 4y ago
How would you determine if the toughness of an exam from a hundred years ago matched a modern day one? The pedagogy, tools, and knowledge base differed dramatically in the past century. A question might look difficult but be intended as a take-home, be graded differently than binary right-wrong, rely on a trick of an outdated tool (ex. slide rule).
eesmith 4y ago
> then throwing better students at them would result at more As Also, the Flynn effect: "the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect > 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. I strongly suspect this wouldn't be informative. The base knowledge of what we expect students to know has shifted. Some might be topical: "How did Harding conduct his campaign?" "Name the primary components of a steam locomotive." 100 years ago I believe there was still an expectation that students knew Latin. The 1869 Harvard entrance exam at https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvard... has two pages of Latin and two of Greek. (Most of the student then would have come from an upper-class prep school, where they would have a training that let them be able to answer "Bound the basin of the Po, of the Mississippi, of the St. Lawrence." and "Supply the two names left blank in the following passage from the Oration for the Manilian Law.") Consider how calculus is now regularly taught in high school, while pre-war high school ended with solid geometry. Or, consider how an English literature course 100 years ago (and its tests) would have focused on the literature of England and the US, while the equivalent modern English literature course would likely have drawn from the much larger Anglo-sphere.