<p>I’ve heard from many sources that MIT is easier than it used to be (although part of the reason is because it has diversified - UndulyLamarific said that Caltech, too, is easier than it used to be).</p>
<p>But yet, on the other hand, MIT and Caltech have more competitive applicant pools and stronger students than they used to have. Acceptance rates in past decades have been far lower in the past.</p>
<p>So I have a few questions. 1: Is the trend of easier courses universal among colleges across the US? (not just MIT and Caltech). And 2: If students are stronger than they were in the past, and the curriculum is easier than it was in the past, but is still very rigorous for most of its students - then how could the arguably weaker students in the past have coped with harder workloads? Did more students drop out in the past? Were GPAs in Caltech and MIT lower than they were in the past? Were lower GPAs expected of Caltech/MIT grads?</p>
<p>Third question: In the case that graduation rates for Caltech have been lower in the past (that is, IF they were lower in the past), then does this mean that Caltech’s graduation rate increase is due to Caltech addressing the issue directly at hand, or does this mean that the increases in graduation rate were more so due to the aforementioned factors (namely, stronger students?)</p>
<ul>
<li>This is a direct question in response to sakky’s numerous complaints with Caltech not doing enough to address its high dropout/transfer rate. I do not take sides on this - I just think another question would be helpful.</li>
</ul>
<p>Fourth question: Now, on the other hand, has the VARIANCE in the student body’s ability (at Caltech/MIT) changed over the years?</p>
<p>how are you measuring the easiness of the course?
i doubt its getting “easier”</p>
<p>some cause might be
-course seems easier for more recent students from more competitive applicant pools, but itself did not get easier
more is known about the world today, something that was new, complicated and high tech 10 years ago do not seems as confusing today.
-students today can start getting used to the harder course load in hs with all the AP classes</p>
<p>AP depends on the school
for a school that has AP score average of like 3 , it might not be harder
for my school where most people get 5’s , the class is harder (twice the hw, and deeper into the subject)</p>
<p>taking and doing well in AP classes are definitely harder than just normal classes. and its not just the curriculum that students are getting used to, it’s also the pressure and balancing of activities.</p>
<p>and students will learn more with AP classes and are thus more prepared for college in general.
AP class are after all just an introductory college class
and i think that article has to do more with taking APs for GPA then how hard the curricula</p>
<p>more people taking AP classes are just another sign of people learning more in the same time frame .etc.</p>
<p>just my speculation</p>
<p>i don’t get your logic
but wtv
i mean the course work load is all subjective
calc bc might be easy for some one that took precalc, someone that only took algebra 2 would be totally confused</p>
<p>if the applicants are more competitive the same course load will be easier on them…</p>
<p>In any case - in terms of AP course load - yes, applicants in HIGH SCHOOL are stronger than they were in the past. And there are MORE stronger applicants in high school than there were in the past.</p>
<p>==</p>
<p>My point was, however, that a number of people have also said that at the same time that applicants are getting stronger, that COLLEGE courses have been becoming easier (by people like mathwonk and UndulyLamarific). I also read from sources in this forum that Caltech and MIT used to be a lot more of a firehose in the past. Perhaps it’s that people there were more specialized (and more theoretical/mathematical) than they are now.</p>
<p>Mathwonk’s concern above was that AP courses may be rigorous - but they aren’t teaching real math (and do not prepare their students for theoretical math courses).</p>
<p>My (admittedly somewhat cynical) opinion is that MIT hasn’t actually gotten easier, but that alums always mope about MIT being way less hardk0re than it was back in the day when they had to walk uphill both ways to 77 Mass Ave, etc.</p>
<p>I think that in general, incoming MIT students are both more talented on average and more prepared on average when they come in. That’s not to say that high schools on average are better, but that it’s easier for very talented students to come by enrichment in high school, even if they don’t go to an east coast prep school.</p>
<p>What’s that quote about the good old days being the world’s youth?</p>
<p>If students were weaker “back in the day when they had to walk uphill both ways to 77 Mass Ave, etc.” and if they had a more hardcore curriculum - then it’s predictable that those students would be doing far less well than students are now (as in, students back then would have lower GPAs/higher drop out rates)</p>
<p>But no one has agreed that the old curriculum was harder yet. </p>
<p>Both Mollie and I speculated that it’s might seems easier nowadays because of the better prepared students.</p>
<p>Have you thought of the possibility that the old curriculum might be actually easier?
Again it’s all sort of subjective. Furthermore the the schools are more competitive now so its more likely for people to drop out from the stress/get lower scores from the curve for GPA because of the competition?
Again, all guess.</p>
<p>I strongly suspect that colleges in the US are substantially easier than they were in the old days. Of course I can’t “prove” that, but it is a strong gut feeling based on the evidence put before me. See below. </p>
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</p>
<p>While it may indeed be true that MIT and Caltech have more competitive applicant pools compared to the past, I’m not entirely sure that that holds for schools across the board. Specifically, I am not sure that the average high school graduate or the average college freshman (whichever one you want to look at) is really better than his counterpart in the past. See below. </p>
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</p>
<p>To your first question, they didn’t cope. To the rest of your questions, the answer is almost certainly ‘yes’. Grade inflation only started taking hold in the 60’s and 70’s, largley as a response to the Vietnam War draft (as profs would try not to flunk students out as that would mean losing a student draft deferment and thus possibly getting sent to war). </p>
<p>
</li>
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<p>Ben Golub would have more information about this, but I am 99% certain that Caltech graduation rates were lower in the past, and substantially so. </p>
<p>Secondly, while some of it may indeed be because the average Caltech student is better than in the past, much of it is also due to the fact that Caltech is a more accomodating school in the past. To give you a simple example - Caltech didn’t even have the Humanities and Social Science department until a few decades ago. In the old days, if you came to Caltech and found out that you wanted to study one of the arts, you basically had no choice but to drop out. A similar thing happened at MIT - the MIT didn’t even start offering degrees in humanities and social sciences (except for management) until a few decades ago. Heck, the Sloan School didn’t even offer undergraduate management degrees until 1984. So, again, in the old days, if you came to MIT and found out that you wanted to major in something artsy, social-sciency, or businessy, you were SOL. As a case in point, Sloan management is now the 2nd most popular undergraduate major on campus after EECS (of all types). </p>
<p>When you offer students more choices of major, your school becomes easier to graduate from simply because there is a greater chance of providing programs that the students want. Given the high popularity of Sloan right now, I think it’s almost certain that Sloan’s relatively new undergraduate program has corresponded to increasing MIT’s graduation rate. Not to mention that the Sloan management degree program is almost certainly easier than the MIT engineering or natural science programs, such that if you come to MIT and find the technical curricula to be too hard, you can just “retreat” to shelter at Sloan. {Yet, Sloan grads make some of the highest starting salaries of any major at MIT, meaning that the ‘retreat’ to Sloan may actually be a brilliantly cunning move.} </p>
<p>But anyway, even putting that aside, I strongly suspect that graduation from SOME college is a lot easier than it was in the old days. Let’s face it. In the old days, the vast majority of Americans never went to college. Heck, the vast majority of Americans didn’t even graduate from high school. To be a college graduate from ANY college in those days was to be a member of a very rare group. </p>
<p>Nowadays, that’s just not true. Now, being a college graduate is so common as to be mundane. That’s why a lot of companies can demand college degrees for jobs that, frankly, have nothing to do with a college education. They can often times demand that their secretaries have college degrees. Back in the old days, just being a high school graduate was often times enough to qualify for practically any secretary job. Nowadays, companies can demand college degrees just because they can - in short, because there are enough college graduates out there that they can start increasing their demands. I worked at one company where every secretary had at least a master’s degree (and a few even had multiple master’s, and one even had a PhD). None of their degrees had anything to do with their jobs, but it didn’t matter - the company could demand graduate degrees even from its secretaries just because it knew it could. </p>
<p>The simple availability of the college degree has vastly increased due to the sheer number of colleges that opened in the last few decades, as well as the expansion of slots in those colleges. I seem to recall reading somewhere that before WW2, only a few hundred 4-year colleges existed in the US. Now we have about 2500. The growth in total seats in colleges has vastly exceeded the population growth. The upshot is that a college degree (from SOME college) is simply far easier to get than it was in the old days. </p>
<p>Graduate professional programs have likewise adjusted. For example, throughout most of American history, you didn’t need a bachelor’s degree to go to law school and/or to become a lawyer. Harry Truman never graduated from college, but still studied in law school for 2 years. Abraham Lincoln never graduated from any school (not even grade school), but yet still won admission to the Illinois Bar. Walter Reed (of the eponymous medical center) only studied for 2 years post-high-school to receive his MD, at age 18, from the University of Virginia (hence, he didn’t need to have completed an undergraduate degree first). </p>
<p>The same thing seems to have happened with the high school diploma. Let’s face it. The HS diploma nowadays doesn’t exactly mean a whole lot - there are cases of people graduating from high school who can barely read or do simple math. Again, while I can’t prove this, I suspect that this didn’t happen in the old days - that high school teachers in the old days would not hesitate to flunk you out. However, given the litigious nature of K-12 education these days combined with the phenomenom of social promotion, these days you almost certainly have a substantial number of people who graduate from high school who really shouldn’t be graduating. In other words, graduating from high school is probably easier today than it was in the past.</p>
<p>So having said all that, this is where I believe Caltech (and to a lesser extent) MIT is wrong in terms of how they flunk some of their students out. Like it or not, we live in a world where college degrees (from SOME college, ANY college) are so readily available that employers now demand degrees for even their most basic jobs. Hence, by flunking some students out, Caltech is gravely hurting those students. You know what’s going to happen. When you submit your resume for a job, and you don’t have a degree, your resume is going to get tossed. The employer isn’t going to care WHY you don’t have a degree. All they’re going to see if that you don’t have a degree, and that’s the end of the story. You can’t sit down with them and explain that you just happened to go to a very difficult school that flunks a lot of very worthy people out. You won’t even get to have that conversation with them. </p>
<p>The truth is, whether we like it or not, employers now use education as * screening mechanisms*, such that many of them won’t even interview you if you don’t have a degree. The reason why employers do so now and not in the past is simply because they CAN. Back in the old days, there were so few college graduates that screening for such grads made no sense because you would reduce the number of candidates to a miniscule level. Nowadays, with college degrees being so readily available, you can successfully screen for degrees. But that means that those people who went to difficult schools like Caltech and flunked out will get screened out, despite the fact that they are far more qualified than those people who graduated with cheesepuff degrees from no-name schools but who didn’t get screened out (because at least they have a degree). Similarly, graduate schools (i.e. law schools, med schools) now require a bachelor’s degree, or at least several years of college with strong performance (hence, not failing). </p>
<p>Look, I don’t like it that employers use degrees as screens. But like it or not, this is the world we live in. Those schools who pretend otherwise are just hurting their own students. Sure, back in the old days, flunking out of Caltech (or any college) was no big deal, because there were so few college graduates anyway. You could still get a quite decent job, or still go off to law school or medical school without a bachelor’s degree. These days, it’s not so easy. </p>
<p>Now, I can understand Caltech (and MIT, Berkeley and other difficult schools) not wanting to grant degrees to people who they don’t think meet their standards. Fine. But I think, at the very least, you can still help those students out. For example, how about just not print on the external transcripts any failing grades of any of the students who flunk out (i.e., as if they had just retroactively dropped those classes). Or at least convert them to grades of “C-”. Something that looks better than an F. Why not? They’re not going to graduate from your school anyway. So who cares what their real grades are? Let them transfer to another school with a clean slate. Let them pursue the rest of their career with a clean slate. </p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. Right now, if you flunk out of college, that fact will haunt you for the rest of your life. Any future employer, any grad school, any of these institutions who ask for your transcripts will notice that you flunked out and may choose to hold that fact against you. Even personal bankruptcies are, by law, wiped from your credit record after 10 years (and many credit bureaus will wipe it after 7). But your academic record sticks with you * for life *.</p>
<p>Variance has probably increased. Back in the old days, colleges didn’t have admissions committees. Instead, your admission was based on obtaining a minimum score on the entrance exam. </p>
<p>Hence, if nothing else, you knew that every student scored at least the minimum necessary to get admitted. </p>
<p>These days, you can’t be so sure. There are no minimum criterions that everybody has to meet. Some people with relatively low qualifications that ordinarily should have resulted in rejection will nonetheless get admitted anyway because the admissions committee finds some redeeming virtue in that students application. Note, I am not commenting on the propriety of this policy, I am simply pointing out that this happens. The point is, no longer is there a standard that everybody has to meet to get admitted. Hence, that would indicate that variance has probably increased. It doesn’t prove it, of course. But it is an indication.</p>
<p>Very nice post, sakky! Indeed, it is probably far easier now to graduate with SOME degree due to those departments. I’m also curious about whether it has been becoming easier to graduate with math or theoretical physics degrees now than it has been in the past. </p>
<p>==
One of the best sources of information pertaining to whether the curriculum was more difficult in the past or not may come from parents of MIT/Caltech students who were themselves MIT/Caltech grads. If these parents saved their problem sets, textbooks, and answers, then they probably would have a means of comparing difficulty between earlier years and later years.</p>
<p>What we do know - is that for one thing, the Putnam was much easier in the past, and that for another thing, that there was not as much to learn in the past as there is now. Before the 1960s, many fields that exist now didn’t exist in the past. And I wonder if increasing educational standards could correspond to the fact that people now just need to learn more in order to do any scientific research at all (another thing is that fluid intelligence is known to decline with age and that “Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them” - in the words of Eugene Wigner.)</p>
<h1>But on the other hand - it seems that most of the additional research is being taught in grad school. Undergrads are typically only exposed to material that has been developed before say, the days of Quantum Electrodynamics.</h1>
<p>
– lapse in attention, I meant, acceptance rates now are far lower than they were in the past.</p>
<p>I did just that. The textbooks and problem sets are of equal difficulty. But the students today have the distinct advantage of being able to use calculators and laptops instead of slide rules. Even typing up a paper is now easier, due to word processing and spell check. Those old typewriters were not very unforgiving when it came to typos. Laboratory work is move advanced today, but the equipment is also much easier to use. They now get to use Digital balances with auto-tare instead of verniers, and computerized, self integrating results from spectrographs instead of the old sheets of semi-log graph paper. It all adds up to greater ease of use and faster results. Math difficulty is pretty much the same as always, except the students are taking beginning Calculus in high school instead of Freshman year. I’m not sure how much of an advantage that is to the students today, however.</p>
<p>On the other hand - that sort of beginning Calculus is purely computational rather than theoretical or difficult. The post I quoted above illustrates a math professor’s complaint about the AP-obsession of schools. Depth is sacrificed for breadth.</p>
<p>“Now, I can understand Caltech (and MIT, Berkeley and other difficult schools) not wanting to grant degrees to people who they don’t think meet their standards. Fine. But I think, at the very least, you can still help those students out. For example, how about just not print on the external transcripts any failing grades of any of the students who flunk out (i.e., as if they had just retroactively dropped those classes). Or at least convert them to grades of “C-”. Something that looks better than an F. Why not? They’re not going to graduate from your school anyway. So who cares what their real grades are? Let them transfer to another school with a clean slate. Let them pursue the rest of their career with a clean slate.”</p>
<p>Sakky,</p>
<p>I have been reading posts on your position on Caltech’s graduation for some time. I have to say I did not always agree with them but having a son that recently graduated from the institution I have changed my opinion.</p>
<p>I naively bought into the idea that a student that did not fit at Caltech could simply transfer to another university. For all I know you can find examples of students that indeed transferred to Duke or Harvard, but this is far from the norm. What I have learned through my son is that many of students will probably not make it into schools that a year or two before were their safeties.</p>
<p>I don’t think either one of your examples would work because a transcript with no grades would probably convey the same information about the student performance. I personally don’t think converting grades would be an acceptable solution but that is beyond the point. The reality is that this is a problem that should be addressed, and the Institute has the resources to do something about it. I want to believe, and I think I am correct on this, that the community cares enough about to be looking for a solution.</p>
<p>I don’t think will work either but for the sake of discussion why not offer students a “transition year” through Occidental or a nearby college or university? During this year the student could build up his/her GPA and show the upward trend that other schools look favorably. Of course this would not work for every student that chooses to leave, but it would make the safety net stronger than it is.</p>
<p>Please do not interpret my reference to Oxy as condescending since I am implying that another school’s drop out would be successful there. I think it is far to say that students accepted to Caltech have already proven that in the right conditions they can excel.</p>
<p>It probably wouldn’t work perfectly. But I would argue that it would work a lot better than what happens now. For example, there are plenty of state schools that really do admit students, including transfers, largely based on “the numbers”. Hence, even if you do go to a school like Caltech and do poorly but have your failing grades excised out (or at least converted to C- grades), then, combined with your still-valid SAT score, your application may still be strong enough to merit admission to that state school. In any case, I would argue that that’s still better than what happens now. </p>
<p>And besides, only in rare cases would I envision a Caltechstudent presenting a transcript with absolutely NO grades. That would only happen if the student truly did fail every one of his classes. In most cases, a student who does poorly will only fail (or get D’s in) some of his classes. In that case, I would advocate simply excising those bad grades from his transcript. Again, why not? He’s not going to graduate from Caltech anyway. So what does it matter if he did poorly in some of his Caltech classes? Let him just take a ‘retroactive drop’ of those classes. </p>
<p>For those rare students who really did fail every one of their classes, why not just act as if that student had never registered for any classes at all? Just give him an official withdrawal from Caltech retroactive to the day before classes started. Again, if the student isn’t going to graduate from Caltech anyway, why not do this? It doesn’t hurt anybody. </p>
<p>I see that you’ve invoked the notion of information signalling. You say that conveying a blank transcript would convey the same information as what happens now. I’m afraid I must disagree. After all, * this entire problem * is predicated on the lack of available information. After all, if all other schools really knew how difficult Caltech really was, such that those who flunk out of Caltech are still, frankly, probably better than a lot of other students who those other schools actually admitted, then they would admit those failed Caltech students, and I agree there would be no problem. For example, a school might see that somebody got an F in Caltech in his “Super-Complicated Quantum Theory of Everything” course and would simply not that that’s a course that practically everybody in the world would get an F in, and not hold it against the student. The problem is that those other schools either don’t know this, or they do know it and don’t care. Either accidentally or deliberately, they are misinterpreting the information. Hence, if this is what happens, then the best thing to do is to simply deny them the information. After all, better to not provide any information at all than to provide information that you know is going to be misinterpreted. </p>
<p>I think this phenomenom is demonstrated most starkly in law and med-school admissions. The truth is, law and med-school admissions are just a game of getting high grades. They don’t reward knowledge, they don’t reward challenging curricula. They reward grades. Hence, it’s far better to get an A in “Counting from 1 to 10” than an F in “Super-Complicated Quantum Theory of Everything”. Sad but true. Hence, law and med-school adcoms time and time again will choose to misinterpret information conveyed by grades, especially bad grades in difficult classes. Hence, I think this is a situation that is crying out loud for denying information that we know will be misinterpreted. Just like how the market misinterprets how flunking out of Caltech is supposedly worse than having a degree from a 4th tier school (even though most students at the 4th tier school would get absolutely creamed if they had gone to Caltech). </p>
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<p>Well, actually, I’m not sure that the community really does care. While I don’t want to overly put words in Ben Golub’s mouth, he has several times expressed the sentiment that the legitimate danger of flunking out is what gives Caltech that ‘extra edge’ -i.e. that the knowledge that you really could ruin your career is what supposedly drives the students to go the extra distance. Hence, it seems to me that at least some of the Caltech community view the danger as an inherent part of the program, and hence wouldn’t want Caltech to find a solution.</p>
<p>As far as I know MIT has not begun to offer ‘Physics for Poets’ yet so everyone can relax! MIT and CalTech are still amazing tough schools to get into and graduate.</p>
Indeed, it is probably far easier now to graduate with SOME degree due to those departments. I’m also curious about whether it has been becoming easier to graduate with math or theoretical physics degrees now than it has been in the past. </p>