Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 278 posts

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#21

Post by drewg123 »

hashkb wrote: post #16
matte_black wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have school grades ever deflated? Or undergone some sort of correction? No citation needed, anecdotes are fine.

Yes. At my school we had a real curve. If we all got perfect scores, that's a C for everyone. (More often we all got 15s and they became C's). Teachers who gave too many A's would be benched. We laughed at Ivy League 4.0s which just require a phone call from a parent.

MIT?

My wife went there, and while most STEM grad schools understood that grades at MIT were not inflated, medical schools did not seem to care. One of her friends had to first get inflated grades doing a STEM masters degree before she could get into med school due to her uninflated MIT undergrad grades.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#22

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

If something like the Flynn Effect[0] is real and persistent, it could make sense that grade inflation is natural, and that fewer truly qualified students would be able to get university placements, scholarships, and so on, just because there are far greater numbers of deserving, materially higher-achieving students now, but the number of available “prestigious” outcomes has not grown as fast.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect >

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#23

Post by syntaxing »

(Paywalled so I can't read the whole article) This is mainly due to society's (I'm in the US) mentality that if a kid get's low grade, s/he are lazy and a failure. We really need a reform to gauge aptitude better and accept the fact that some people are better at blue collar jobs than white collar jobs (and vice versa). Our current standardized test system does not reflect this.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#24

Post by recharged93 »

Do grades even matter anymore?

Unless you're applying to a gov't job, you're connections, friends, professors that like you, github accounts, art or MBA portfolio are the tools that move you "up" in the world. And in that order.

Online education dilutes GPA too. As well as more tech skill degrees (devops certs), aka those were called trade/vocational schools in my day.

I've never seen a GPA on an intern application/resume in the last 3yrs. Unless and (unfortunately) its from a visa student. Hmmm.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#25

Post by MaxBarraclough »

tfigment wrote: post #11

Still only matters for first job and then if you have nothing else to show. As a hiring manager, its a minus for me to see unless its for intern. But surprising how often i see on cvs. (Speaking as former top of ChE class and frequent outlier to be removed on grading curves.)

How can good grades ever be a minus?

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#26

Post by phlyingpenguin »

JTbane wrote: post #8

It seems there is a moral hazard involved here- administrators pressuring professors to pass more students, which leads to grade inflation. All this to retain students and keep the tuition money flowing. I'd love to hear from front-line profs about this issue- does grade inflation need to be addressed?

I teach. I can say that I have never had direct pressure to pass students or raise grades, but there are two issues that I run into related to grades.

First is the ever-growing methods of academic dishonesty. I do not have enough hours in my life to create and design new homework that prevents cheating. It's possible for some assignments, but not all. I don't give up on cheating detection, but this leaves tests and participation (be it simply turning in work or in-person) as the primary grade-changing events for many students.

Second is the issue of student "litigation". It is not unusual to find a student that will fight to get their 4.0 by attrition, and that requires very good record keeping on the professor's part, taking away from time for other tasks.

My situation is at an extension of a very large university. We focus on teaching and student connection, not research. I know that these experiences change drastically when professors have graders and a research program taking their time away from teaching duties.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#27

Post by [deleted] »

syntaxing wrote: post #23

(Paywalled so I can't read the whole article) This is mainly due to society's (I'm in the US) mentality that if a kid get's low grade, s/he are lazy and a failure. We really need a reform to gauge aptitude better and accept the fact that some people are better at blue collar jobs than white collar jobs (and vice versa). Our current standardized test system does not reflect this.

[deleted]

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#28

Post by joshvm »

hashkb wrote: post #16
matte_black wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have school grades ever deflated? Or undergone some sort of correction? No citation needed, anecdotes are fine.

Yes. At my school we had a real curve. If we all got perfect scores, that's a C for everyone. (More often we all got 15s and they became C's). Teachers who gave too many A's would be benched. We laughed at Ivy League 4.0s which just require a phone call from a parent.

This is standard practice at a lot of universities. At my university results were scaled based on the class performance in that exam and the performance of everyone in other exams. So if you're all 4.0 students, but the exam is horrendous and everyone only gets 20%, you'll probably end up with a good grade still.

I studied physics. It was possible to game the system to a certain extent. If you took the (subjectively) hardest modules like gauge theory, you could get a high grade even if you only answered half the paper. So if you were smart, but not top of your class, you'd be better off taking the hard subjects because every mark you got was effectively worth more. If you took the easy and popular modules, every mark would count and it might even be normalised down.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#29

Post by protonimitate »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #25
tfigment wrote: post #11

Still only matters for first job and then if you have nothing else to show. As a hiring manager, its a minus for me to see unless its for intern. But surprising how often i see on cvs. (Speaking as former top of ChE class and frequent outlier to be removed on grading curves.)

How can good grades ever be a minus?

I think he's saying that if you are applying to a job and have more than 0 experience, you shouldn't be relying on your GPA as a selling point.

And I agree - GPA is pretty irrelevant to anything in the business world. All it proves is that you can play by the rules in the school system - not a real indication of your experience, skills, or relevant knowledge.

Re: With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster

#30

Post by rxhernandez »

matte_black wrote: post #9
krapht wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it is. Grade inflation is a well known, documented phenomena. Unfortunately I have no time to link the papers on this subject, but if you search, they are there.

Have school grades ever deflated? Or undergone some sort of correction? No citation needed, anecdotes are fine.

One of the Cal Polys has an engineering program which curves the average grade to a C+ which automatically disqualifies the average from many engineering jobs.
Post reply on HN