Berkeley's Grade "Deflation" Is A Myth?

sakky
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:33:24 +0000

It’s much easier to tell an Engineering student he failed an exam based around mathematics than an American Studies writing a subjective essay about democracy. The former students has little power to challenge the instructor while the latter can quarrel all day with valid arguments.



One way to solve this problem is to run more easily quantifiable exams in American Studies, or more qualitative exams in engineering. For example, one exam question in American Studies could be to list every single US President in chronological order, and for every wrong answer, points are deducted. {For those who would argue that such a question would be unfair, hey, it’s no more unfair than engineering exams that essentially require students to derive a long series of equations, decrementing points for every one they get wrong.} Similarly, engineering exams could be a matter of having students design the best possible piece of technology given X number of hours in the lab. Students then could argue afterwards why their design should be worth more points than they were allotted.

But more importantly, simply because a discipline is subjective doesn’t mean that you can’t implement exacting standards. For example, to obtain a PhD in a humanities at Berkeley is a excruciatingly difficult process that can take well over a decade to complete. You can’t simply submit a subpar dissertation and then argue with your committee that you deserve to be granted your PhD. If your committee deems that your work is unworthy, then you’re simply not going to graduate, and a significant percentage of PhD students - well over half in some disciplines - never do finish the program. Otherwise, we would see Berkeley humanities PhD programs with nearly perfect graduation rates, and where the grad students stay for only a few years.

So that begs the question, if the humanities departments can enact such exacting standards for its grad students, why can’t they do the same for the undergrads?