4 ms·

The unrecognised benefits of grade inflation

9 points by robinhouston 12y ago

danieltillett 12y ago
The argument basically boil down to if you can't judge the individual (since everyone gets an A) then you have to judge the institution. This means the institution has an incentive to improve their reputation. The authors then make the leap in logic that institutions will try to raise their reputation by improving their education quality. Given that improving teaching quality is a hard problem, the much more likely approach that they would take is to improve the apparent teaching quality by investing in flashy things like new buildings and rock star academics. At least we now have a rational explanation for the recent activities of university management.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  The best way to improve the reputation of the institution is the improve the calibre of students you admit. But how do you do that if they all come to you with inflated grades?
- collyw 12y ago
  Pretty much what I got from the first paragraph. Starts with the conclusion, rather than a question. I didn't feel the need to read much further.
coldcode 12y ago
So why have grades at all if everyone gets an A. Of course that would suppose that students and institutions are capable of being completely idealistic and self motivated which I doubt.
calibraxis 12y ago
The article's underlying assumptions are depressing. A nice aspect of being a developer in "startups" is that no one ever cared about my grades. The notion that a university feeds you to employers after stamping a grade on your head... pathetic. If these institutions are the best our current world has to offer, guess we're born into a rather silly time. Some of my friends and I pay someone to teach us regularly. We research how we each learn effectively, and expect that to be respected. (Or we find a more respectful teacher.) We use techniques like retrospectives to help steer us. Reducing that to some silly letter/number, for some managerial bureaucrat, would be dignity-less and counterproductive. We're pretty privileged, so with a little money we can escape the substandard education that most people suffer.

9 points by robinhouston 12y ago

The argument basically boil down to if you can't judge the individual (since everyone gets an A) then you have to judge the institution. This means the institution has an incentive to improve their reputation. The authors then make the leap in logic that institutions will try to raise their reputation by improving their education quality. Given that improving teaching quality is a hard problem, the much more likely approach that they would take is to improve the apparent teaching quality by investing in flashy things like new buildings and rock star academics. At least we now have a rational explanation for the recent activities of university management.

jiggy2011 12y ago
The best way to improve the reputation of the institution is the improve the calibre of students you admit. But how do you do that if they all come to you with inflated grades?
collyw 12y ago
Pretty much what I got from the first paragraph. Starts with the conclusion, rather than a question. I didn't feel the need to read much further.

coldcode 12y ago

So why have grades at all if everyone gets an A. Of course that would suppose that students and institutions are capable of being completely idealistic and self motivated which I doubt.

calibraxis 12y ago

The article's underlying assumptions are depressing. A nice aspect of being a developer in "startups" is that no one ever cared about my grades. The notion that a university feeds you to employers after stamping a grade on your head... pathetic. If these institutions are the best our current world has to offer, guess we're born into a rather silly time. Some of my friends and I pay someone to teach us regularly. We research how we each learn effectively, and expect that to be respected. (Or we find a more respectful teacher.) We use techniques like retrospectives to help steer us. Reducing that to some silly letter/number, for some managerial bureaucrat, would be dignity-less and counterproductive. We're pretty privileged, so with a little money we can escape the substandard education that most people suffer.