Interesting Article on Grade Inflation

"Last week, the Harvard Crimson reported that the median grade at Harvard College is an A-, and the most common grade awarded is a straight A."

Yep. Everyone is _equal_ under communism. So no one strives. And it shows, from OECD...

"Overall, according to the U.S. Department of Education, American students' rankings in math have slipped from 24th to 29th compared to the last test in 2010. In science, they've gone from 19th to 22nd, and from 10th to 20th in reading." ...Jim Thompson

When I retired, I was offered a position in the mathematics dept. at UMO. One of the reasons I did not take it was trying to deal with this sort of crap.

Larry

Its a shame we can't use a technique from AI called back propagation. A professor's rating, including the reliability of his grading, is based upon the eventual outcome of his students.

A prof cranks out a lot of capable students who make it in industry and he gets a higher weighting average then the bozos who crank out the knuckle-draggers. Statistical methods spread the blame (or credit) backwards evenly throughout a student's academic history. Eventually, high value nodes (better teachers) will accumulate higher scores if they turn out a statistically higher number of successes.

Curiously a friend of mine has just started teaching at a local University. She was in a panic to get her grades in on time. Well today her lament was that she was now, less than 24 hours later getting complaints from students over their grades.

I told her that if it ever occured that she wasn't receiving complaints it would mean she was doing something wrong.