6 ms·

Are you being facetious? If not, would you mind expanding on this? I'm greatly interested in the recent trend towards grade inflation.

Alex3917 14y ago
No that's the actual reason. During the Vietnam war you would get drafted unless you were in college, which means that anyone who failed out of college was basically put on the next plane to the jungle to get killed. Since most of the faculty were anti-war (or at least relatively liberal) most colleges either dropped the grading system entirely or else made grading significantly easier.
- philwelch 14y ago
  OK, but the Vietnam War has been over for almost 40 years now, but grade inflation keeps getting worse. Why?
  - Alex3917 14y ago
    - Grades don't mean anything, so there's no reason to give people bad grades. I know I quote this all the time on HN, but only because it's accurate: "A grade can be regarded only as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material." - Despite the fact that grades don't predict workplace performance at all, companies still use them to hire people. (Basically because it's a legal way to keep out black people.) Because of this, schools can boost their US News & World Report rank by giving people better grades, since starting salary factors into the rankings in many years. - Schools are basically run as businesses these days, and that's what the customers want. Asking why schools keep inflating grades is kind of like asking why McDonald's keeps making their chicken nuggets taste so fucking delicious.
    - mc32 14y ago
      -I don't know about you, but if I had to hire between 50 A students and 50 D students, I'd hire the A students. -Schools in Africa grade students, who are they trying to keep out? -Some schools might be run as a business; I think most aren't (they're subpar and inefficient). If they are, they're run as a mom and pop. If San Francisco schools were businesses, they'd have gone bankrupt and displaced a while ago.
      - Alex3917 14y ago
        "I don't know about you, but if I had to hire between 50 A students and 50 D students, I'd hire the A students." The science suggests that if you we're assigned both groups at random, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
        lbo 14y ago
        Any citations for this? I can buy that this is the case for some jobs, from some school districts, for many students, across a certain distribution of grades, some number of years after graduation. I have a hard time believing that a D student who barely passed college will do just as well in a new consulting job as an A student, simply because the A student probably has actually learned a hell of a lot more useful information.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        Alex3917 14y ago
        "Any citations for this?" There are only a handful of studies because it's considered kind of a dumb question to ask. But Alfie Kohn references some of them in his books, I think in What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated? But the ones that exist consistently show the same thing. This includes the huge internal study that Google HR did: "Unfortunately, most of the academic research suggests that the factors Google has put the most weight on — grades and interviews — are not an especially reliable way of hiring good people." "When all this was completed, Dr. Carlisle set about analyzing the two million data points the survey collected. Among the first results was confirmation that Google’s obsession with academic performance was not always correlated with success at the company." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?ex=1325480400&en=e71cadb22a20a3c4&ei=5088 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?e...
  - robryan 14y ago
    It is probably hard to change as students who were A students this year would be B students next year without the inflation.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      That would explain grade inflation remaining steady, not getting worse.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- alecst 14y ago
  http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/11/grade_inflation_is_one_of.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/11/grade_infl... "Finally, the "draft fear" explanation cannot explain why a very similar pattern of grade inflation has occurred over the decades in Canadian universities which were spared the tumult of the Vietnam protest era and student fears that they might be drafted and sent overseas to fight and die."
  - Alex3917 14y ago
    Once it starts in one place it's a race to the bottom everywhere.
Evbn 14y ago
To help students get draft deferments, schools gave kids better grades. I don't quite understand it, since GWB dodged Vietnam with bad grades. It has been written about, probably in the Atlantic or NYT, maybe 10 years ago.

Alex3917 14y ago

No that's the actual reason. During the Vietnam war you would get drafted unless you were in college, which means that anyone who failed out of college was basically put on the next plane to the jungle to get killed. Since most of the faculty were anti-war (or at least relatively liberal) most colleges either dropped the grading system entirely or else made grading significantly easier.

philwelch 14y ago
OK, but the Vietnam War has been over for almost 40 years now, but grade inflation keeps getting worse. Why?
- Alex3917 14y ago
  - Grades don't mean anything, so there's no reason to give people bad grades. I know I quote this all the time on HN, but only because it's accurate: "A grade can be regarded only as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material." - Despite the fact that grades don't predict workplace performance at all, companies still use them to hire people. (Basically because it's a legal way to keep out black people.) Because of this, schools can boost their US News & World Report rank by giving people better grades, since starting salary factors into the rankings in many years. - Schools are basically run as businesses these days, and that's what the customers want. Asking why schools keep inflating grades is kind of like asking why McDonald's keeps making their chicken nuggets taste so fucking delicious.
  - mc32 14y ago
    -I don't know about you, but if I had to hire between 50 A students and 50 D students, I'd hire the A students. -Schools in Africa grade students, who are they trying to keep out? -Some schools might be run as a business; I think most aren't (they're subpar and inefficient). If they are, they're run as a mom and pop. If San Francisco schools were businesses, they'd have gone bankrupt and displaced a while ago.
    - Alex3917 14y ago
      "I don't know about you, but if I had to hire between 50 A students and 50 D students, I'd hire the A students." The science suggests that if you we're assigned both groups at random, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
      - lbo 14y ago
        Any citations for this? I can buy that this is the case for some jobs, from some school districts, for many students, across a certain distribution of grades, some number of years after graduation. I have a hard time believing that a D student who barely passed college will do just as well in a new consulting job as an A student, simply because the A student probably has actually learned a hell of a lot more useful information.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - Alex3917 14y ago
        "Any citations for this?" There are only a handful of studies because it's considered kind of a dumb question to ask. But Alfie Kohn references some of them in his books, I think in What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated? But the ones that exist consistently show the same thing. This includes the huge internal study that Google HR did: "Unfortunately, most of the academic research suggests that the factors Google has put the most weight on — grades and interviews — are not an especially reliable way of hiring good people." "When all this was completed, Dr. Carlisle set about analyzing the two million data points the survey collected. Among the first results was confirmation that Google’s obsession with academic performance was not always correlated with success at the company." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?ex=1325480400&en=e71cadb22a20a3c4&ei=5088 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?e...
- robryan 14y ago
  It is probably hard to change as students who were A students this year would be B students next year without the inflation.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    That would explain grade inflation remaining steady, not getting worse.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
alecst 14y ago
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/11/grade_inflation_is_one_of.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/11/grade_infl... "Finally, the "draft fear" explanation cannot explain why a very similar pattern of grade inflation has occurred over the decades in Canadian universities which were spared the tumult of the Vietnam protest era and student fears that they might be drafted and sent overseas to fight and die."
- Alex3917 14y ago
  Once it starts in one place it's a race to the bottom everywhere.

Evbn 14y ago

To help students get draft deferments, schools gave kids better grades. I don't quite understand it, since GWB dodged Vietnam with bad grades. It has been written about, probably in the Atlantic or NYT, maybe 10 years ago.