<p>@MomfromKC</p>
<p>That would be even worse than the current system! Instead of working to get that A for the GPA (90 or above for places that use just A/B/C/D/F and above 95 for places that use +/-), you’d see people whose sole purpose in school was to get that 100% (because a 99% just won’t do). It would turn education into even more of a numbers joke than it already is.</p>
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<p>Similar problem here. A few of my professors have been arrogant in the sense that they think their material is easy, and they expect students to grasp it easily. These are the generally the same professors that give the class a huge curve, but a curve doesn’t do much justice when most of the class is completely lost. Some of my ta’s and tutors have actually been better at teaching than the professor (and with a better attitude, too).</p>
<p>But all scapegoating aside, I agree with MomfromKC. People will die if engineering gpa’s are inflated too much.</p>
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<p>I got an 80%. Is that good or bad? How good or bad?</p>
<p>See the problem?</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I think making engineering classes easier will just make people try less rather than allow more people to graduate. In the end this should have a negative impact, if people aren’t used to thinking as much in college they won’t think as much in the workplace.</p>
<p>You’ll do realize that the students have attempted to equalize things by taking fewer classes each semester and graduating late? When I was in college 82-86 nobody signed up for 12-14 credit hours. Back then we were still signing up for 16-18. Then sometimes you had to drop one. Then somebody figured out to just stop even trying to get to 18, 16 was enough. And that was before AP classes. So everybody was starting from zero. I bet everybody would be taking 5 years to graduate now if AP credit hadn’t been invented!
In case you folks didn’t get it I’m in the it is hard, but it is worth it camp. What the heck is the point of geting a BA in English, History, etc. if you just have to go to grad school immediately to even be considered for decent job? I would rather spend 5 years to get a BS in engineering than 6 to get a masters in anything else.</p>
<p>Part of the problem certainly lies on the professors. Engineering profs are stubborn and refuse to change their teaching styles to match the reality: most people cannot learn from lectures alone. Unfortunately, this usually stems from the dual nature of a professor: researcher and lecturer. I can tell you which side of the coin usually falls to the wayside when push comes to shove… Basically, the only way to make it through an engineering curriculum is to teach yourself. If you can do that, then you will do very well (top of the class). Those who rely solely on the instructor will do miserably, and that’s why you see such low average scores. </p>
<p>But inflating grades is not going to help at all. I would rather hire the engineer who shows resourcefulness and curiosity then hire someone who just coasted through their classes because they got a higher score than they would have previously.</p>
<p>Besides, the main reason for inflating grades in the article is patently wrong: there’s more evidence suggesting that we’re graduating too many engineers and scientists, not too few. So why should we make things easier? If anything, we should make our classes more difficult, increase the knowledge requirements, and improve our teaching.</p>
<p>I agree, we may well be graduating too many engineers, but not enough technicians. There really should be a fall back degree for people with decent but not astounding technical skills so that the real engineers can do more challenging work. Those of you who are working engineers look around at your technicians? Barely graduated from high school because they didn’t do well in a classroom/lecture situation but good with their hands? Women who could have “kicked backside” as engineers if only their parents had realized girls can do that or they hadn’t gotten married at 18? (Some of my best technicians were women ten years older than me who never even went to college because of that kind of thing.) I spent a heck of a lot of time doing grunt work, because there was no one else around who was qualified. There is a gap there that should be filled.</p>
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<p>I’m going to chime in here because you singled out my alma mater (UCF) for some odd reason, categorizing it as easy. As someone with a quantitative degree from the school, I can assure you it was anything but easy. There was little to no grade inflation. I wish I had the benefit of a few curves, but they were few and far between in the math classes I took.</p>
<p>I like that you also used MIT as the high bar (I won’t argue with you there). Obviously an excellent school. Like many, I used their open source classes to supplement my classes. Guess what, we learned the exact same things (amazing, I know). I also used the past tests from MIT to study from. Guess what, many times they were often easier than the tests I took at my school!</p>
<p>I saw many students at UCF wash out from STEM programs because of the difficulty and lack of grade inflation. It typically wasn’t for their lack of trying, but rather the difficulty of the classes and material. High standards, difficult tests and little to no curve, that was my experience at UCF.</p>
<p>I think the difference from MIT to a “lower tier” school like UCF is fairly simple in two ways; 1) you’re going to get better professors (in general) that are more published at a school like MIT (this is really what makes up a large portion of the rankings system), and 2) you are going to get a higher overall caliber of student coming directly out of high school. Kids that are valedictorian and scored in the 98th percentile in the SAT’s. MIT’s reputation allows them to bring in that type of student.</p>
<p>I think many people are so caught up on rankings and “tiers” (especially here on CC), that they lose sight of the fact that there are many bright students at lower ranked institutions that could not go on to the MIT’s of the world due to family situations, cost and/or geographic proximity, among other reasons.</p>
<p>@OminousRun - It was not my intention to diss UCF, I’ve worked with a few professors from that school and they have been top notch. It was not my intention to call UCF’s program easy, just to place it as easier than MIT’s, something that is also (I presume) true of my own alma mater.</p>
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<p>Fair enough, but I think you’re falling into a general misconception. It isn’t necessarily the “school” that is tougher, but rather the program/major. Math and Science are fairly black and white. While you can make tests easier or harder depending on the questions selected (and the grading scale), you can’t really hide from the core material that needs to be covered in these majors. The material (and the dedication it takes to master it) is really what pushes people away from STEM.</p>
<p>As someone that jumped around to a few different majors (as well as two different schools, including a tier one private school), the science and math classes I took were always more difficult and required much more dedication than the humanities or business classes I took. I had many classes from all over the map, as reflected by my 168 credits by the time I finally finished my degree. I could have probably breezed through a business degree with a fairly high gpa (3.5+), but I grinded through the quantitative program and my gpa took a bit of a hit (3.15 in my major).</p>
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<p>then by implication, is it then perfectly fine for the world to have humanities and social science graduates who may be incompetent idiots (but nevertheless have high grades)? </p>
<p>Where the concern becomes especially salient is that many of these HASS students will win admission to the nation’s top law and business schools partially on their high grades. Nor does grade inflation stop within the top law/business schools, as practically nobody ever flunks out of them. Surely the events of the last few years have decisively demonstrated the dangers that incompetent businessmen and lawyers, especially those within the financial sector, can wreak upon the world. So why must engineers and doctors be competent, when apparently lawyers and businessmen need not be?</p>
<p>Like I’ve always said, if the goal is to flunk out incompetent idiots who are merely looking for a self-esteem boost, then let’s flunk out all such people in all majors, not just those in STEM.</p>
<p>Sakky,</p>
<p>Because peoples physical life and body are not in risk by businessmen and lawyers</p>
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<p>Now that I think about it some more, the example of the physician is not only not apropos, but is actually ironic. Arguably the most difficult step of obtaining an MD is simply being admitted to med-school in the first place, as practically nobody ever actually flunks out of med-school. Yet the fact is, med-school admissions are predicated largely on grades, and savvy premeds have deduced the optimal strategy of taking the easiest possible coursework that fulfills admissions requirements. As has been established in the premed section of CC (and which nobody seriously disputes), for the purposes of med-school admissions, better to not take a difficult optional course at all than to take it and receive a poor grade. Sad but true. Med-school adcoms therefore are rewarding not the most competent students, but rather the ones with the highest grades, which is not the same thing. The latter group surely includes some ‘incompetent idiots’ who nevertheless can present inflated GPA’s from a litany of easy classes in easy majors. Keep in mind that you major in anything, even a gut major, and still be admitted to med-school. </p>
<p>So why must engineers be forced to survive a difficult major, but not (all) aspiring physicians?</p>
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<p>Oh really? Are you sure? Have you been reading the news lately? Thousands of injuries and some deaths have resulted from the austerity protests that have swept across Europe recently. Heck, just today, a dozen people were injured in protests in Romania.</p>
<p><a href=“Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands”>Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands;
<p>But what’s obviously far worse is the havoc wreaked on poorer nations due to a financial crash. For example, in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998, thousands died and untold numbers were injured in the rioting that engulfed Indonesia. Many more surely perished in the widespread poverty and social frustration that afflicted Asia following the crash. Heck, even today in the United States, there are plenty of stories of people being forced to delay or forgo medical care because the crash has not only cost them their job (and hence their accompanying health insurance) but also has crushed their savings and hence rendered them too poor to afford to pay out of pocket. Bernie Madoff’s son committed suicide over the tarnishment of his family’s name from his father’s financial transgressions. Or consider the fact that the Picower family - funders of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT that researches cognitive diseases - has agreed to repay more than $7 billion as recompense to Madoff victims. That funding might have instead been used to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, but now we’ll never know. </p>
<p>The upshot is that economic and legal transgressions/incompetence and the resultant social turmoil are extraordinarily hazardous to the public health and welfare of society. I therefore don’t see why it’s so crucial for society to produce competent engineers, but not a problem to produce incompetent businessmen or lawyers.</p>
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<p>Actually, the difficulty of the material of the tests alone tells you little. What ultimately matters is how the test answers are graded, and specifically, how the curve that the professor uses to convert test scores into grades. Even the easiest possible test material can nevertheless be used in a brutally difficult course purely due to the harshness of the curve. You alluded to this yourself. </p>
<p>To give you an example: I remember one student who scored in the 80’s% on an engineering exam… and was distraught to the point of tears. Why? Because the mean score was a 95 with such a tight distribution that the curve converted his score to at best a D, and perhaps an F. </p>
<p>What matters is therefore not the absolute number of points you score on a test - which is a function of the ‘ease’ of the test questions - but rather your score relative to everybody else. For precisely this reason, many engineering students learn to fear “easy” tests, because they know fully well that such a test will result in a high curve where a few silly mistakes may well relegate you to failure. </p>
<p>To judge the difficulty of MIT is therefore not to simply look at their tests alone, but rather to consider the following analogy. Imagine yourself taking a ‘class’ in basketball with 10 of the most talented college basketball players in the world. Now imagine that the worst player amongst that group must receive a failing grade in basketball by virtue of the curve. Furthermore, everybody knows fully well that the worst player amongst that group will fail, and so everybody is desperately motivated to avoid being the worst player. Does that sound easy to anybody?</p>
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<p>You are assuming that the differences in grading is constant across the entire grade spectrum, and this assumption is almost certainly false: the differences in grading is almost certainly concentrated on the low end of the grade spectrum. Let’s face it - practically nobody actually flunks out of the humanities, or even comes close. A “poorly-performing” humanities student is still probably receiving a 2.5 or maybe even a 3.0, whereas a ‘poorly- performing’ engineering student is perhaps receiving a 1.8, representing an entire 0.7-1.2 GPA differential from the humanities.</p>
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<p>So by implication, the better strategy is to then prevent those other departments from jumping off the (grade-inflation) bridge, right? So if engineering won’t inflate their grades, then neither should the other departments.</p>
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<p>I just found the 3rd quote above from KamelAkbar, which renders the first 2 above quotes moot. You may believe that when engineers are incompetent, people may die. But hey, when physicians are incompetent, people die too, yet that apparently hasn’t stopped med-school adcoms from concentrating upon pre-med GPA’s with little accord given to grade inflation differentials. How many engineering students have been rejected from med-school because the adcoms instead admitted other students who presented high GPA’s from joke majors (who perhaps completed their premed coursework at an easy community college)?</p>
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<p>Then let me give you another potential problem. Ever ask yourself why so few engineering students win major international scholarships such as the Rhodes or Marshall, relative to other majors? Heck, I have a suspicion that a highly disproportionate number of Rhodes/Marshall winners from MIT did not actually major in engineering despite the fact that MIT is arguably the world’s premier engineering school. </p>
<p>Is it because engineering students are simply too incompetent and lazy to qualify for those awards, or rather because they have difficulty obtaining the high grades along with finding the time for extracurricular activities that those awards desire because they must study all the time? Heck, the Marshall Scholarship specifically requires a minimum GPA of 3.7. If you’re a terrifically well-rounded engineering student with a 3.6, too bad, you can’t even apply, because all they’ll see is that you don’t have a 3.7. But somebody with a 3.8 in Film Studies is welcome to apply.</p>
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<p>That unfortunately does not seem to be the case. There were some old threads where engineering students from high-ranked engineering schools with 2.8-2.9 GPA’s lamented their difficulty in even landing interviews relative to engineering students from lower-ranked regional schools who had slightly higher GPA’s (i.e. 3.1’s) because at least they satisfied the commonplace 3.0 employer cutoff. If you (barely) miss the cutoff, many employers won’t care how highly ranked your program is. All they’ll see is that you missed the cutoff. </p>
<p>Here is one of those threads:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1083856-graduating-low-gpa-what-my-options.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1083856-graduating-low-gpa-what-my-options.html</a></p>
<p>How will changing grading for liberal arts students solve any of engineering’s problems? I mean, maybe they’ll get more prestigious scholarships… but will more engineers start graduating, or will anybody compare engineers’ GPAs to LA grads’?</p>