There are some things that make it hard for me to get a handle on grade inflation.
A larger proportion of the population goes to university/college. The population is much larger. Individual schools may have grown/shrunk in raw number of students. In order for Harvard to have the same percent of all students as it had in 1960, it would have had to increase enrollment to keep up with both the higher proportion of kids going to college and the higher raw number of kids of college age. Also it pays to remember that "things aren't like they used to be, and they never were". Those of us who are now can retiring can remember walking to school through waist high snow uphill both ways. Art [EMAIL PROTECTED] Social Research Consultants University Park, MD USA (301) 864-5570 Jay Warner wrote: > No, I haven't read it. The causal link appears obvious. So I immediately > want to play contrarian :) Certainly, this linkage could account for why > average grades did not go down at the end of the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, I > am suspicious that a general attitude is developed in some cases, an implicit > social contract entered into by the students and the instructors. This > unstated contract, involving entitlement, appears to me to have a major part > in whether the linkages below operate. And yes, clearly there are many other > forces at work to apply pressure on both students & instructors to provide > grades regardless of learned content. > > Now, if someone can bring that social contract to the surface, and puncture > it so the students go along emotionally as well as intellectually, I would > love to hear the details. Perhaps this is in the book, too? > > Jay > > EAKIN MARK E wrote: > > >>I just received a Springer-Verlag statistics catelog. In it was a book by >>Valen E. Johnson titled Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education. >>According to the summary in the catalog, the book argues that since >>students award faculty with higher teacher evaluations when the faculty >>give higher grades and students tend to take courses with faculty that >>give higher grades, grade inflation is the obvious result. Has anyone read >>the book? I would be interested in knowing whether it would be a good >>book to purchase. >> >>Mark Eakin >>Associate Professor >>Information Systems and Management Sciences Department >>University of Texas at Arlington >>[EMAIL PROTECTED] or >>[EMAIL PROTECTED] >>. >>. >>================================================================= >>Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the >>problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: >>. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . >>================================================================= > > > -- > Jay Warner > Principal Scientist > Warner Consulting, Inc. > 4444 North Green Bay Road > Racine, WI 53404-1216 > USA > > Ph: (262) 634-9100 > FAX: (262) 681-1133 > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > web: http://www.a2q.com > > The A2Q Method (tm) -- What do you want to improve today? > > > > > . > . > ================================================================= > Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the > problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: > . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . > ================================================================= . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
