Berkeley's Grade "Deflation" Is A Myth?

sakky
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:41:06 +0000

But an exam question such as that seriously detracts from the purpose of the American Studies major. You can list all the presidents in chronological order and know nothing about American history.



Similarly, you can derive long series of engineering equations to perfection, yet know nothing about actual real-world engineering. Yet deriving a laundry list of equations is precisely what many engineering exam questions require you to do. See below.



In a similar sense, this seriously detracts from the purpose of an Engineering major. Its even worse than the former because a student actually has to use these skills in his career. Engineers often work in a hazardous work environment and mistakes can be dangerous. I would know, my father being a technician for a chemical plant. Instructors need to be objective and test on important concepts.



I agree, but that begs the question of precisely what these important concepts are, and crucially, whether those concepts are being tested currently. The (sad) fact is, as most working engineers would surely attest to, engineering coursework, and especially engineering coursework exams have relatively little to do with the actual engineering job. As I alluded to above, no engineer actually goes around frantically deriving a long series of equations by hand within the space of 90 minutes as a regular part of his job, yet that is precisely what engineering coursework exams require you to do. Yet if you can’t do that, then you flunk your coursework and you won’t be hired for an engineering job.

I’ll give you an example. I know one guy who worked as a summer engineering intern, where one of the older grizzled engineers - who held a graduate degree in engineering - asked him to help him understand some of his daughter’s high school calculus homework. That engineer obviously had known calculus had some time in his life. Yet, the fact is, he had never used it in his several decades of working as a real-world engineer, and as a result, had understandably forgotten it all, to the point that he couldn’t even remember how to compute simple integrals. However, that intern clearly knew how to do so, for that was what he was being tested upon, and if he didn’t know it, he would have flunked out. I am quite confident - as was that intern - in saying that of everybody in that particular engineering office, that intern was clearly the most practiced when it came to actually deriving calculus and engineering equations. All of the other engineers had learned that material in school, but hadn’t used it in years. That intern even once brought some of his engineering texts into the office, only to have the other engineers leaf through them and laugh at how they could no longer solve even the simplest problems anymore and how far their academic skills had regressed. Yet these engineers were responsible for numerous large-scale and technically complex projects, whose underlying calculations were all handled by computer simulation.

The underlying fact is, the vast majority of what you learn - and certainly what you are tested upon - as an engineering student, you will never actually use. Most likely, somewhere between 90-98% of what you actually learn within an engineering program will not be used.

If anything, I would argue that my reform would actually make the engineering exams more relevant, not less, for it would actually test people on whether they know how to build something, not whether they can simply churn through a long string of equations. {Granted, the quarreling aspect of my proposal is probably not socially valuable, but neither is the quarreling that occurs regarding the humanities exam grading.} Engineering programs - even the best ones - are notorious for churning out engineering graduates who don’t actually know how real-world technology actually works. For example, many graduating electrical engineering students at even the best schools do not really know how, for example, a TV actually works, and certainly wouldn’t know how to build one. Many mechanical engineering students do not really understand how a a car or an airplane works, and certainly couldn’t design even a crude one. Those topics are (perhaps shockingly) not actually taught within engineering courses.

Hence, I agree with you that engineers sometimes do work in hazardous environments and do need to be well trained, but I am entirely unclear as to what speedy mathematical skills have to do with that.



All in all, these “corrections” to the grade deflation of specific major compromises the academic integrity of the university. I don’t think they’re warranted given the minor problem it has now and the major problems it would cause.



Then let me put it to you this way. As I’ve said on other threads, there’s a certain school that shall remain unnamed across the SF Bay whose engineering program is just as prominent as Berkeley’s, if not more so, yet practically never flunks out any of their students. Presumably, the engineers from that school may also work in hazardous environments where mistakes can be dangerous. So why is it fine for that school to not flunk out their engineering students, but a problem when Berkeley does so?