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Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#31

Post by bigbillheck »

xdennis wrote: post #28
bomewish wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s being sarcastic

It's quite hard to tell it's sarcasm since they really do talk like that. Only "except asians" gave it away for me.

Sounds like a skill issue, perhaps you should study the humanities to improve your analysis.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#32

Post by mikeyouse »

LegitShady wrote: post #30
thelock85 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STEM majors were 38% of Yale 2022-23 undergrad degrees. STEM + Econ - 48%. Arts & Humanities - 24%. Social Sciences - 38% https://oir.yale.edu/data-browser/student-data/degrees/bache...

why would anyone bundle STEM and econ?

Because Econ in good schools is extremely math heavy and is obviously STEM-adjacent.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#33

Post by thelock85 »

LegitShady wrote: post #30
thelock85 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STEM majors were 38% of Yale 2022-23 undergrad degrees. STEM + Econ - 48%. Arts & Humanities - 24%. Social Sciences - 38% https://oir.yale.edu/data-browser/student-data/degrees/bache...

why would anyone bundle STEM and econ?

Mech.E + Econ here. As I recall after Intro to Micro and Macro, it was all calculus and statistical modeling.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#34

Post by bigbillheck »

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,…

> noteworthy to Tyler Cowen ... the cultural stuff -

Isn't Cowen a bit of a culture warrior? The Marginal Revolution commentariat is certainly full of them.

EDIT: He liked Richard Haninia's recent book: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/09/th... and Steve Sailer is a regular commentator.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#35

Post by esafak »

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.

When I hear things like this I think of the Sokal Affair, and this gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzVc7s-_e8&pp

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#36

Post by dmvdoug »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #19
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.

I’d think exactly the contrary: science majors would approach a history of science course expecting a history of discoveries leading from the Days o’ Ignorance to the Present, the Frontier of Knowledge. Or at the very least they’ll expect the course to be an internal history: history as told by scientists, not historians. But any history of science class that’s history is likely to be looking at questions of interest to historians, which are squishy, interpretive and don’t automatically privilege the Present state of knowledge as inevitable because it’s correct and science finds correct answers.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#38

Post by wskinner »

Whoa! In my undergraduate computer science program at a top US public university, each course was graded to a curve that determined the number of grades in each range. If memory serves, 27% of the class received A or A-. I knew grade inflation at private schools was real, but am still surprised to see 70% of Yale kids getting As in CS. At that point, they might as well just assign pass / fail grades.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#39

Post by natbennett »

This is missing a possible explanation: Anyone who’s not getting an “A” in Gender Studies drops it.

I don’t know if this is true generally but it was the only class I personally ever dropped in college because the workload was too high. Huge final paper with a lot of required references. I didn’t need it to graduate so it wasn’t worth finishing.

Re: Who is responsible for grade inflation at Yale?

#40

Post by LudwigNagasena »

LegitShady wrote: post #30
thelock85 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STEM majors were 38% of Yale 2022-23 undergrad degrees. STEM + Econ - 48%. Arts & Humanities - 24%. Social Sciences - 38% https://oir.yale.edu/data-browser/student-data/degrees/bache...

why would anyone bundle STEM and econ?

Because it’s basically applied math.
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