I understand why they do it, they want their students to not have problems due to low grades, but that also means that a Harvard degree isn't as useful as a sorting mechanism because I can't tell the difference between top students and the rest.
They got into Harvard and were subsequently successful there.
Do you really benefit from knowing which of two Harvard grads got a few extra questions right in a handful of exams?
It isn't just "a few extra questions", when professors makes tests harder they add more interesting questions that requires you to think further rather than just plug-n-chug. The difference between a 4.0 student and a 3.0 student at lets say Caltech is enormous, so yeah I care.
If you do, and an entire classroom of kids manages to answer them correctly, "I guess I have to still give some of you Bs and Cs" isn't a great response.
It isn't like students at any institution understands the material as well as the professor even when they get the highest grade in that class, but that is the goal. The better the students the closer you can get, Harvard just refuses to test that properly, or if they do test it they don't record that grade.
Pedantry and intellectual hazing seem endemic in academia -- from the perspective of someone who spent entirely too many years in the sector (all the way through postdoc).
> Pedantry and intellectual hazing seem endemic in academia
I wouldn't call interesting test questions pedantry or intellectual hazing. Giving tons of basic easy questions is pedantry and intellectual hazing to me, I'd rather just have the harder questions.
But on the other hand, yeah, for fragile egos and given the very high stakes associated with one's transcript, not everyone is there to get good and it can absolutely be devastating to never ace tests like you did in earlier years.
Different programs/eductators may have more sympathy for one group than the other, but there's no viciousness involved.
I would understand the third level (possibly even the second level) as including that ability to apply knowledge in nonstandard contexts that the previous poster was talking about - being able to see not just how to perform a calculation, and how to use it in a given context, but also how to create that context when necessary - seeing that the question on how humans move in groups could be modelled as a fluid dynamics problem, for example.
The general wisdom amongst teachers is that most exams should be able to differentiate between these three levels of understanding, so you want questions where the student can just follow the line and do the right thing, but also questions where they're being asked to apply knowledge in different contexts, prove why something is true, or explain why some fact is valuable or relevant in a given context. This isn't about grading on a curve, it's about differentiating between how far different students have come in their understanding. (And the corollary if that differentiation is that if all the students have the same understanding, it's likely that the course wasn't challenging enough, and many of the more advanced students could have been pushed more.)
That said, these regions are more about assessment in general than specific written exams, and the third level will be easier to test in some exam formats than others - a multiple choice exam leaves little opportunity to demonstrate that understanding, whereas an oral exam allows the examiner to explore the subject a bit more deeply. I studied in the UK where a single end-of-unit written exam is mostly the norm, and so these exams had to test all the different levels of knowledge, but if you're gathering results over the course of a year or semester, that might look differently.
Harvard admits quite a few people who would normally not qualify as the cream of the crop. Above average, even good - but the worst Harvard admit is probably on par with the smartest kid at the local community college. They might bring other things to campus! But that doesn't mean you want them handling your legal defense or managing your money.
> and were subsequently successful there.
If 80% of the grades at Harvard are As, this just means you're not in the bottom 20%. I would also generally assume that this 80% is not uniform - some classes or even majors will give out higher percentages of As than others.
No amount of conformity and intelligence can explain 80% A's if there is a curve that mandates otherwise. This grading distribution can only occur if the faculty permit it to, both at an individual level and at a policy level.
A curve requiring an entire class of people who all got 90% of the questions right on an exam to have a particular distribution of As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs would be insane. Curves are supposed to account for "this test is quite difficult and has an expected range of passing scores that doesn't quite fit in the ten point scale" scenarios.
If you can get into Harvard, you're supposed to be an A student.
A perfect educational system would have every student getting 100% on every test, right? That's the ideal. Unless, of course, that the purpose of the educational system isn't actually to educate people but instead to weed out certain classes of people.
"We want the best" is what every employer will always say but the truth is that they really only need someone who can do the job. We as a society put way too much importance and faith in credentials.
Then perhaps there should have been more available to be learned. If most people are above 90%, then you're holding the best back. (If you're saying that more should be taught, but not be on the test... Why?)
The only way for everyone to reach full understanding at the same time is for everyone to be the same or for some people to have been held back. I view the latter as being far more achievable than the former. I would also say that holding the best back... is probably not what we want the #1 ranked University in the world to be doing.
> A perfect educational system would have every student getting 100% on every test, right? That's the ideal. Unless, of course, that the purpose of the educational system isn't actually to educate people but instead to weed out certain classes of people.
No, a perfect educational system would not have every student getting 100% on every test because not every student is the same and also such a test fundamentally provides no information to the tester.
A perfect system would probably have every student on an individual (or near-individual) learning schedule, and even there I would expect perfectly calibrated tests to average around 50% with adjustments as required for psychological impact or to improve recall. From that, you can identify what elements need to be covered again, and what can be skipped when moving forward because they are already known.
> "We want the best" is what every employer will always say but the truth is that they really only need someone who can do the job. We as a society put way too much importance and faith in credentials.
This is probably correct for your average community college. It might be correct for a average state school.
When you get to 'literally the number one Univeristy on the planet', perhaps employers are also actually looking for the best people on the planet.
There is, and you can go get a masters or PhD if you want that.
> If most people are above 90%, then you're holding the best back.
The Feynmans of the world are perhaps not too concerned with their GPA.
> perhaps employers are also actually looking for the best people on the planet
In that case, they probably shouldn't be looking at grades at all.
This is a ridiculous statement. Let's assume you have a room full of perfect students. You spent the week teaching them about subject X and came up with a test to determine if they got the gist of what you taught.
On Friday you give them that test and every student gets 100%. By your reasoning, because they all got 100% this test was a waste of time and would "provide no information to the tester."
My argument is that the test served its purpose: It demonstrated that everyone understood the subject and you can move on to the next. Could some students have absorbed far more information in that same amount of time? Probably. Is that the teacher's job though? No. Their job is to teach a certain subset of a subject and do their best to make sure every student understands it well enough that they can move on to the next.
The problem with this method is that smarter students get bored out of the minds and end up feeling like they're in prison for their academic career. However, the system itself wasn't made for them. It was designed for the average.
If you feel that grades should be used to separate or weed out students who don't perform as well you're trying to twist "education" into something that it's not: A caste system.
I would say I am trying to return education to its original purpose, instead of the world's worst but also most common form of daycare.
My AP Physics class had 20 kids in it, 10 of us got 5s and 10 got 4s on the AP Physics exam. Should some of us had our scores lowered for a better bell curve? No; he was just a really great, engaging teacher who pushed us to achieve.
There is no problem if a subset of the total population does very well (or very badly). But if half of all AP takers got 5s and the other half got 4s, then it would be time to reexamine the test.
Similarly, if there was a study group in a class that did very well, that's no problem. But if nearly the entire class gets As, that signals that the class could be more rigorous, cover more material, etc.
I get why they don't do this — they don't want to disadvantage students as they go looking for jobs. But some schools are happy to have a reputation for for tough grading. My college had freshman courses where only 10% could get an A or A- (this amounted to 3 students, since the classes were capped at 30). And the incoming average SAT was 1520, so pretty much all of the kids were "A students" coming in. Among graduate schools and top employers, it's known to be a school that is very academically challenging.
Maybe, maybe not. If you spot check and a statistically significant sample shows kids are indeed learning first year college physics effectively in AP courses, perhaps you do a little happy dance and be glad something's working.
Employers don't seem to be hiring Harvard grads and going "holy shit this person doesn't know anything they're supposed to know" to half of them. Employers seem to be generally happy what an A student from Harvard comes to them with.
> But if nearly the entire class gets As, that signals that the class could be more rigorous, cover more material, etc.
Or that you've got a self-selecting population of high-achievers.
> My college had freshman courses where only 10% could get an A or A- (this amounted to 3 students, since the classes were capped at 30).
That's depressing. "You're an A student, but I'm required to give you a B for organizational reasons" is an absoutely nasty thing to do to a college kid.
That's because they (1) know there's rampant grade inflation and (2) use other indicators to assess candidates. And I've definitely heard people grouse about Ivy League grads, and how they'd rather hire from other places.
> That's depressing. "You're an A student, but I'm required to give you a B for organizational reasons" is an absoutely nasty thing to do to a college kid.
"Organizational reasons"? No. It's because they view grades as a tool to let kids know how they are doing compared with their peers. If you don't want to go to a school like that, there are plenty of grade-inflationary schools out there for you to go to.
Of course, that doesn’t have to be a letter; percentages along with specific corrections would do as well. But once there’s a convention people often use it.
Grading students relative to each other gives different information and probably not precise across cohorts at that.
Grades don’t show your ability relative to others, they show your mastery of a set of knowledge and skills. You mastering something doesn’t prevent your neighbor from also mastering it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_the_United...
In my day, Rank-Based grading was the system, but not just among the students in a specific class -- it was based on historical numbers. The same course was taught for many years so it was easy to get that longitudinal view.
Especially in secondary and high school, a 'C' meant you were average for the students who took the class. The tests had questions of differing levels of difficulty. If you couldn't answer the difficult questions, you clearly didn't "master" the material and therefore couldn't get an 'A'.
People with average ability would be expected to get an average on the test, so a 'C' would still mean you learned the material adequately and could move on to the next class / grade.
If everyone at Harvard exits with a good grasp of Calculus, that's useful information. If only half of people from BU graduate with a good grasp of Calculus, that's also good information. BU and Harvard don't need to have the same proportions of A students for it to be a useful data point.
Incorrect! An A just means you got 90% or better accuracy on tests/quizzes. 60% means you earned enough to move on to the next subject.
Therefore, "What's expected of you" is to get a D or better. Otherwise only an A would be a passing grade.
You're not going to get into a prestigious school with grades like that but community colleges will still take you.
Why? What benefit is there to the world to making students flunk out of a school when that same student would have passed with flying colors elsewhere? "Sorry, you've got a great grasp of engineering that any firm would benefit from, but you'll work at McDonalds now, because Bob got one more question right. Thanks for the $100k and four years of your life!"
The goal of education is to educate, not to flunk a certain percentage of people.
No. The purpose of normal college is to educate.
The purpose of Ivy league school is to separate the exquisite from the mediocre. If you aren't exquisite then why are you going to $100k college? Because your parents can afford it.
There is some low income kid who actually is exquisite who should get that seat in the exquisite class.
You don't deserve to pass just because you're not an idiot. If you are even a little bit of an idiot you should not be able to get a Harvard education. You should flunk out, lose your parents money, and try again in community College.
You are not entitled to pass because you are average and your parents are rich. College is not risk free.
You should be entitled to pass if you can successfully demonstrate your understanding of the subject matter in question. Proposing to curve passing grades down "UNTIL a certain percentage fails" is just... nutty.
> You are not entitled to pass because you are average and your parents are rich.
Yes, which is why grades should be based on "did you learn?", not "do the grades look like a proper bell curve?"
> There is some low income kid who actually is exquisite who should get that seat in the exquisite class.
A low-income kid is the least likely to be able to take the risk of going to a college that's intentionally trying to flunk people out even if they're competent at the subject matter.
This seems to presuppose that the grading system is universal across all universities - i.e. that we would expect the vast majority of Harvard students to get an A, but the vast majority of students at a middling community college to get a C or D.
Is this really the case? I'm not American, but in the British education system, this is broadly considered not to be the case - if anything, the more prestigious institutions historically have had much higher standards for each grade.
Another expectation is that students' performances at university typically cannot be easily predicted from school grades or tests, and that all universities will have a proportion of students who do very well, and a proportion of students who do not do well at all. There is no real expectation that, say, the Oxbridge universities only take students who will definitely get a first, and the other universities mop up. Oxford and Cambridge are definitely more prestigious and therefore harder to get into, but they're by no means some "sure thing" where if you've passed that hurdle, you'll be able to pass everything else.
Back to US schools, I'd like to see some analysis on the correlation between the proportion of # of GE courses for a program and that program's grade inflation levels. Also, compare public vs private schools' grade inflation. Schools in general have a strong incentive to send their students to internships and post-grad programs at prestigious IB firms, consulting firms, law schools, grad schools, and etc; and I wouldn't be surprised if private schools tend to have more lenient policies in relation to grade inflation to boost that goal.
(edit: grammar)
Students like this aren't always shy about demanding a formulaic way to get an A. You can try to fight it, grade on a curve, etc, but there's only so much time in a day and in the end it's much easier to come up with a formula that they can follow, and to let them follow it.
On a side note the bigger joke are the scholarships for sports - you dont even need to be able to read if they put you on the football team.
You are confusing cause and effect there. By giving everybody high grades, they are reducing the ability to tell Harvard graduates apart, thus increasing the desirability of getting into Harvard and decreasing the need to put in effort after being accepted.
What would be really interesting is if the same effects happen at top universities in the East Asian countries. I would be fascinated to know why the divergence if we found that only 20% of students at, say, Seoul National University got top marks in their classes.