Classes began for me last week, and once again an age-old question came up among my colleagues, one which even my professors 30 years ago commented on: Do you believe, generally, current college students are weaker academically and less mature than those years ago? Do you believe academics were more rigourous when you were an undergrad? Do you believe there was less grade inflation then? ********************************************************* 08-27-06, 11:31 AM frankvan I'm not currently teachng anything, nor ever taught at the university level, but I do have a few friends who do. They would certainly agree with grade inflation, plagiarism, and inadequate preparation. If it were only me, I might attribute my opinion to my curmudgeonly nature, but my scholarly friends see a decline in the rigorous demands their own education required. My daughter-in-law, in fact, recently gave up teaching english at Morgan State University in favor of pursuing a real estate broker career because of the numbers of students she had to fail because of widespread plagiarism. In fairness, the main reason my generation never resorted to plagiarism was probably because the computer hadn't yet been invented. Wink ********************************************************* 08-27-06, 11:51 AM DorianGreyed I first went to college in 1966. I went to three different schools, and ended up with 8 credit hours, which led to my going back to college in 1991. I got my B.S. in 1994 from one of the same schools I had been in back in the 60s. The difference was astounding. Some of my fellow students in the school of education (who were going to teach in a couple of years) couldn't have passed the entrance exams in the 60s. Many asked me to "look over" their papers for them. More often than not, I saw incomplete sentences, lacking verbs, subjects, and showing no agreement in verb tenses, and worse. Spell check took care of most spelling errors, but homophonic errors were everywhere. I graduated in three years, but couldn't have done it had the standards been what they were when I first went to school. Carrying as many as 28 hours in a semester was possible because so little was demanded of students. I can't imagine that the situation has improved in the last decade. ********************************************************* 08-27-06, 12:21 PM newnickname Playing devil's advocate, it's possible that there has also been a positive change in the way students are taught and graded. What could be happening is that the teaching and testing methods which were heavily biased towards those who excelled in pencil-and-paper tests, and who could easily grasp subjects presented in classical academic style (dry lectures), are being replaced.
Not everyone learns the same way, and few subjects can be authentically assessed by written exams. We all know about academic whizzes who are useless in the real world, and test-taking geniuses who can score high on any test, but can't change a lightbulb.
Maybe those complaining about academic weakness are just old curmudgeons resisting a shift from the exclusive focus on 'left-brain', masculine, classical teaching. ********************************************************* 08-27-06, 12:38 PM DorianGreyed While you may be right, and probably are to some extent, all of the long-time teachers I know feel the same as I do, that school districts simply require less of students today. Most agreed that much of each period was devoted to discipline problems. (I am speaking of the K-12 districts, who send students to universities and colleges.) Of course, mandatory testing, both state and federal, and the resultant emphasis on school performance has taken its toll on the actual time teachers have to teach. Teachers are told to make sure that the students pass. This, of course, causes the teachers to teach the test, which means that students will be able to answer test questions, but not necessarily be able to explain why that is the correct answer. ********************************************************* 08-27-06, 01:03 PM newnickname Taking a (semi-) fictional example; a teacher allows students to re-submit a paper as often as they like. Each time, the teacher grades it and adds comments. Each time, the student goes off and does some research and revision. Eventually, every student in the class gets an 'A'. Of course, students in other classes, who got one shot at the paper, are howling about grade inflation and so on - but which set of students actually knows the topic better, and did the most work? (And which teacher did the most work?)
I was talking to an instructor who got into trouble, early in his career when he was young and idealistic, at a university in Canada (I think it was in Alberta). He gave his entire class 'A's and 'B's. The university administration asked how everyone could pass a course. He said, facetiously, because they were good students and he was a good teacher. Actually, he had set criteria for each grade, and the students had met the criteria.
The university didn't work like that; in every class students had to be marked on a curve. Some students had to fail, even if the class was the most brilliant class ever, and they all grasped the work completely. It's crazy, if you give it a moment's thought, but it's how most universities work. ********************************************************* 08-27-06, 01:11 PM juanruiz
quote: Taking a (semi-) fictional example; a teacher allows students to re-submit a paper as often as they like. Each time, the teacher grades it and adds comments. Each time, the student goes off and does some research and revision. Eventually, every student in the class gets an 'A'. Of course, students in other classes, who got one shot at the paper, are howling about grade inflation and so on - but which set of students actually knows the topic better, and did the most work? (And which teacher did the most work?)
Interesting, but what teacher at the high school, or professor at the college level has time for this? Most hs teachers have 5 or 6 classes of 25-30 students. At the college level, you either have TA's, grad students who have their own classes to attend, or faculty, who are facing publish or perish during their probation, as well as significant committee assignments. ********************************************************* 08-27-06, 04:58 PM newnickname It came up as a case study in a course I was doing on evaluation. I don't know how much it was based on fact, and how much a hypothetical situation. Of course, it would be very time-consuming for everyone involved, but it's an example of how imaginative approaches which can be seen as lax are possibly better.
Another way of looking at it is that grades aren't so important anymore. UBC has stopped automatically selecting students with the best grades for its medical course, for example. Exam-experts, it turns out, don't make the best doctors (big surprise). The university would much rather have a well-rounded 'B' student - someone with interests outside academia, and social skills.
At the other end of the process, I've heard of a law office in Vancouver that absolutely won't hire the 'top' law students out of university. They're all pains in the ass and impossible to work with, apparently. Again, they'd rather have someone with unremarkable grades and a life.
My wife works at the co-op program at SFU , here in Vancouver. It could be seen as another way around the problem that, outside academia, academic grades are pretty meaningless; people skills and practical experience count for so much more.
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