Grading with an easier hand might encourage more people to take STEM courses, especially women. I can make a defense for grading on a curve with new material, or a new approach, when norms have not yet been established. But grades are not a prize, a punishment, or a gift, as we used to always think when we were students ourselves and kept rationalising that the teacher "doesn't like me." Grades are a measurement.
I had a Sociology 101 professor who told us Day One: "I have been teaching this course for fifteen years. I know what you should have learned by the end of the semester. I don't grade on a curve."
People would have fewer fevers if nurses graded our temperatures along a curve. We'd all be healthier right away!
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In fact, I have an idea for how to fix global warming.
Richard Feynman. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. "
But sometimes students are pretty easy to fool too. Up until the time when the bridge they design actually has to hold traffic.
My Thermo professor graded on a curve. Top half: B or better. Average grade- 55 or 65?
Key was to go over his notes until you were very familiar with them. Like he said when you went to his office for help, "Didn't you go over your lecture notes?" Snarky but accurate. Familiarity with his notes helped you see the curve balls- a.k.a. thinking exercises- on the exams.
(One of our engineering profs, who wrote our textbook, didn't do a good job of breaking things down for his students [NOT the Thermo prof- he was a very good lecturer]. He set a 65 as the cutoff for a B. One week he was out of town for a conference. Another prof took over our classes that week. When our prof gave us our weekly quiz on the material we covered when he was out, he was surprised to find out that the average grade was ~10-15 points higher. No accident there.)
The idea of grading making it easier because of females is absurd. As others have pointed out, that will also help lower performing males. The best student in my engineering cohort was a female. She could do homework problems in class in 20 minutes that would take the rest of us several hours- and working together.
Engineering curses are tough, with good reason. You don't want bridges to collapse and refineries to blow up.
That problem of helping lower-performing males is easy to handle: just have a female quota for A's.
Of course, that will turn all graduating females, regardless of real achievement, into a ghetto, which is the problem with all affirmative action.
Grades might work as a measurement in a system where students have little or no choice about classes. In the university, grades are simply the price with which demand is regulated. In a hot major (or class), the price of an A is set high to limit demand. In a lame major (or class), the price of an A is set low to stimulate demand. Engineering classes are "hard" because they are the gateway to good jobs, and therefore many people (and many of low ability) would like to pass through that gate. "Soft" majors are soft because there would be no buyers at a higher price. I teach what many regard, and not without reason, as a soft major. It's not inherently soft. I could make it as hard as the business school, if the market would bear it. Which it would not.
The budget of most departments is based on strident credit hours (SCH's). The exceptions are departments that obtain substantial research grants, and these are mostly in the "hard" sciences. This is why departments in the "hard" sciences can give "hard" classes. Take away the grant money and Physics is scrambling with journalism for SCH's. Departments can afford to have "high standards" (i.e. high priced A's) when they have excess student demand because of perceived job prospects, or when they have enough grant support to compensate for low SCH's
This operates at the level of the class as well as the major, although all professors are not equally susceptible to "market pressure." To teach a "required course" is to enjoy "monopoly privileges," and "price setting" is certainly one of those privileges. But to a student (i.e. the consumer), SOCI 105, POLS 101, and GEOG 202 are just interchangeable commodities that serve to add three credit hours to their degree plan. They chose one over the other based on price--how much effort they will have to expend for an A, B, C, or even D. You'd be surprised by the demand for "easy D's" (an "easy D" is a class one can pass after showing up only for exams).
When I began teaching in 1989, 2.6 was a "normal" class average, and anything above 2.8 was suspicious. Now its around 3.0, and I have direct competition in departments I will not name where the average is 4.0. An individual professor can drag his feet on grade inflation, but if he is not shielded from competition by special circumstances, he can do nothing to stop it.
Students know that they are competing for grades, but they don't understand that professors and departments are competing for students, and that the later competition severely distorts the "signal" of the former competition. This is probably one reason young people overestimate their own intelligence, and then are crushed when the real world places such a low bid on their value.
Of course I meant student credit hours, not strident credit hours, but the typo is a happy one.
@ JMSmith - I had never known this, but it makes entire sense.
If the goal is a degree, any degree, the model fits nicely.
But if you want a specific degree, e.g. an EE degree, the engineering department already has a monopoly on the required courses and can set the rigor on the courses as hard as they please. Except for the physics requirement, but even there the engineering department at UW-Madison has been trying to work up their own course so that they can keep all the credit hours in-house.
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