Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#11

Post by king-geedorah » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #8

Do college grades even matter at all? I mean maybe for your very first job or for grad school applications, but in both cases they're still going to be a minor factor unless the grades are awful.

For most of the professional schools (medical, law, and dental school) it is by far the most important metric. Business school is a close second and might have a little more leeway but it is still the biggest blocker of attendance for most applicants. Sure you can get into some business or law school, but after a certain point the ranking of the institution does matter for most people unfortunately.

Even for grad school it is still a very important metric, especially as not all undergrads are at R1 institutions where they can participate in (non bs) research. But lets say you're really just in it for the education and don't care, even then many valuable/important jobs only recruit from the top x schools in there respective fields.

So I would say yea, it does matter. In fact it's one of the few things that matter in many of those school applications.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#12

Post by elil17 » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:18 PM UTC

I can think of three reasons why some fields might have higher grades than others:

1. The field is easier/has a lower "skill cap" (some business degrees might fit in here)

2.The people in the field are nice/particularly concerned with giving students positive feedback (based on stereotypes you'd expect this applies to women's studies)

3. The field isn't very prestigious and/or has low earning potential, so students don't go into the field unless they're very dedicated, so everyone in the classes works hard and performs at a high level (I could see this applying to pretty much everything on there above 75% As)

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#13

Post by atticora » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:18 PM UTC

HuShifang wrote: post #4

Why on earth would this be remotely noteworthy to Tyler Cowen, an economist ? Set aside the cultural stuff -- it's obviously just market dynamics at its core. Humanities degrees are -- rightly or wrongly -- not considered to benefit one's future livelihood, so a priori, they are not seen as being as valuable as others in a financial sense, which drives down enrollments in humanities classes. When enrollments go down,…

Grading policy is interesting to Tyler Cowen as an academic and teacher, and as an economist.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#14

Post by darth_avocado » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:19 PM UTC

HuShifang wrote: post #4

Why on earth would this be remotely noteworthy to Tyler Cowen, an economist ? Set aside the cultural stuff -- it's obviously just market dynamics at its core. Humanities degrees are -- rightly or wrongly -- not considered to benefit one's future livelihood, so a priori, they are not seen as being as valuable as others in a financial sense, which drives down enrollments in humanities classes. When enrollments go down,…

One problem though, humanities and social/behavioral science still dominate the overall enrollment. STEM enrollment although increasing recently, still has relatively been constant through the years. You could argue more people are going towards business majors, but business majors end up having to take those courses anyway. That still should not explain the difference in rigor when it comes to STEM vs humanities/social/behavioral sciences.

Example: https://www.ppic.org/blog/is-the-decline-in-the-humanities-o...

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#15

Post by gotoeleven » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

So-called 'standards' are socially constructed by a euro-centric phallo-centric white-supremacist colonialist patriarchal dialect, and they are constructed specifically to otherize the marginalized, the non-cisgendered, and all the BIPOCs except asians.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#16

Post by thanhhaimai » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

When I was at Berkeley, the mean GPA was B- (around 2.7). It's unexpected to see 3.7 as the mean GPA in other universities. That's a whole grade point higher.

What would be some good data sources to find out this dataset for other US universities?

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#17

Post by tifik » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

gotoeleven wrote: post #15

So-called 'standards' are socially constructed by a euro-centric phallo-centric white-supremacist colonialist patriarchal dialect, and they are constructed specifically to otherize the marginalized, the non-cisgendered, and all the BIPOCs except asians.

Thats a pretty strong statement. Can you elaborate on that a bit? Im not familiar with the US university standards, and while what you write seems like intuitively it could be true, based on the history of US, I'd be curious about specific examples of standards that cater to a particular race and gender.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#18

Post by LordDragonfang » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

sampo wrote: post #6

Direct link to table: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GAQ2nQUW0AAqPI6?format=jpg&name=... Direct link to tweet: https://twitter.com/sfmcguire79/status/1730568207700771279

@dang Could we change the link to this? There's no analysis at MR and the comments are awful.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#19

Post by LordDragonfang » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:34 PM UTC

zerocrates wrote: post #2

I saw this earlier via Paul Graham's Twitter, when I was foolishly venturing into the algorithmic feed. He'd gone with the same takeaway, specifically pointing out gender studies. Bit of an odd choice given that it clearly shows History of Science and History of Medicine as slightly "worse" in this regard and with higher enrollment.

I mean, that kind of makes sense, since those are likely just required humanities courses for the "more difficult" science majors. Assuming those students are used to working harder for their A's, they'd have a competitive advantage in the more lenient humanities grading.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#20

Post by slibhb » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

HuShifang wrote: post #4

Why on earth would this be remotely noteworthy to Tyler Cowen, an economist ? Set aside the cultural stuff -- it's obviously just market dynamics at its core. Humanities degrees are -- rightly or wrongly -- not considered to benefit one's future livelihood, so a priori, they are not seen as being as valuable as others in a financial sense, which drives down enrollments in humanities classes. When enrollments go down,…

I don't see any evidence that Tyler is surprised by this. If you read his blog, it's wide ranging and the fact that he's linking something doesn't imply surprise. To me, the surprising thing here isn't the humanities. It's Math (52%) and Physics (67%).

That aside, I don't think your explanation is good. There are many forces behind grade inflation. Some of them are safetyism, suspicion of inequality, cheating via the internet, widespread subjectivism (who's to say who's right or wrong?), and so on. Probably the biggest factor is affirmative action. Having accepted a large number of students for reasons other than their academic performance, it's not possible to simply give them worse grades. It would look bad. The result is high grades for everyone and the creation of pseudeo-academic disciplines where everyone gets an A.