At UCLA, students are graded with a bell curve. They have become masters at figuring out exactly how much should they study, relative to their peers, to fall wi

At UCLA, students are graded with a bell curve. They have become masters at figuring out exactly how much should they study, relative to their peers, to fall within the right tail of the curve. Students no longer share notes, neither talk to each other beyond superficial matters. They find their college party and romance partners in other disciplines, unsurprisingly. And as a T.A., don't even _dare_ to not give an A to a student. He'll grade _you_ down, and your chances as a T.A. (that is, the means to get a salary or an extra as a PhD student) will vanish. The paradox here is: how can everyone get an A and still be graded on a Bell curve? To this day, I don't quite get it. In any case: students get A, but they all need one or two years of lab internship before they can do else other than harm themselves in the lab. The author of the text is totally right. And there are no politically correct solutions. None at all. We all expect the system to somehow collapse at some point, and then restart.