And of course it is not just MIT .
Family member did CMU and NCstate for engineering. CMU routinely covered things in one semester that Ncstate had in 2. Typical “sophomore “ classes at CMU paralleled senior or grad engineering courses at NCstate.
UPenn Multivariable covers in 5 weeks what the VTech and VCU corresponding classes designated for stem/engineers covers in a semester, spends the rest of time going into more advanced topics.
I am sure there are plenty of examples.
Sometimes these differences in coursework make it seem logical that SAT (or AP scores) could serve as at least some standard of a benchmark for assessing preparation. Certainly in Virginia, gpa inflation is rampant at many supposedly good public schools, with the avg AP score 2 or 3 yet the average grade is an A . SAT (&/or AP scores) are better, ime, to delineate the differences these schools should be trying to assess.
Brown just called it.
Gift Link to WaPo
They also announced that they will continue with Legacy and Employee preferences.
But it’s probably harder to get a C at HYPS than your flagship 
What is a “C” . . .
There is no “C” in “Yale”.
That’s because there are no “C” students at Yale . . . . that would mean average and we can’t have that.
Agreed.
But I also agree with MWolf, more vehemently than anybody could know from my post, that it shouldn’t be this way, and that it’s destructive to education.
My equating students to customers was the kind of cynicism that’s fueled by dismay.
Market thinking has pervaded education. College application is a market, grades are commodities, course registration is a market, etc.
And we all know about “return on investment” as a measure of educational value, where return equals salary after graduation (—not, oh I don’t know, the “return” of learning something substantial about the world, whether it makes you rich or not).
People in the humanities, where grade inflation is worst, know all this most keenly. Every day they’re told that humanistic knowledge is without value (understood monetarily), that the English major is dead because it doesn’t pay, and so on.
Grades in humanities courses are most inflated for many reasons (papers vs. exams, an emphasis on revision in the writing process, etc.). But humanities teachers know that if they start regularly dispensing Cs, students will not elect to take their courses—enrollments drop, tenures lines are cut, and disciplines die indeed.
i think “rate my professor” is part of the problem too. professors can’t afford to grade harshly and get bad ratings, which translates into fewer students signing up for their classes. personally I think this is a bigger problem than people realize.
A "C’ is a 1% value at Brown, which also happens to be their lowest letter grade.
Some of my earlier posts distinguished between upper and lower level courses. My upper level courses were primarily in STEM subjects, particularly engineering. More objective fields may lean towards a more standardized curriculum. For example, an ABET-accredited engineering program has to cover a certain specific content. Some more well known colleges, including Stanford, have largely chosen to forgo ABET accreditation in most tech majors, to offer more flexibility in major requirements.
Regarding upper level course content/rigor, my personal experience was upper level EE courses at UCSD were on average similar or higher rigor than upper level EE courses at Stanford. Rather than rigor, there were more notable difference in content. UCSD leaned heavily towards Qualcomm tech, and the Qualcomm way of doing things. This makes sense considering that Qualcomm was founded by a UCSD professor, has a lot of former Qualcomm employees who teach classes, is located practically within walking distance from classes, and is by far the most common employer of EE grads. Grading distribution was much lower at UCSD, with a far smaller portion of A’s at UCSD than Stanford. However, I wouldn’t necessarily assume this means its more difficult to get an A, as UCSD admissions are less selective for undergrads. I didn’t see any correlation with SAT scores of students.
I also took a couple basic breath requirement and/or just for fun courses at U Wyoming and SUNY. For example, I took a remote class in criminal psychopathology at U Wyoming for fun and have also taken psychology classes at both Stanford and SUNY. The small sample size makes it difficult to know how much of differences are isolated to the specific course or specific professor and how much is a consistent trend. For example, one of the psych courses at UWyoming was essentially regurgitation of simple textbook material. The professor didn’t even need to be there. In another the professor was very engaged. He had an online discussion about topics on a forum like this one, and required posting something like 20 messages per day, discussing the topics with other classmates + professor chiming in. He also added to the curriculum to fit with students interests. Like UCSD, I saw an extremely strong local bias in content. We talked about nearly every major court case in Wyoming, but few out of state cases.
Overall, I’d say the average rigor was higher at Stanford, but it was not consistent for 100% of psych classes. Overall I’d say the hardest to get an A was at SUNY, which relates to some classes having a far more challenging grade distribution, in which extremely few students receive A. This wasn’t consistent across all classes, but there were a small minority of classes where <10% of students received A’s and most received C’s or lower. Stanford would never offer a class with this type of grade distribution. If it was attempted, I’d expect students would quickly complain, and administration would quickly step in. Again it didn’t follow SAT scores of students well.
I agree with all your interesting points. It seems to me that there is no coming back from this grade inflation situation (in college or HS).
I just don’t know how that could happen given where things are and the possible consequences of giving lower grades that you laid out so well.
I also don’t see how the “student and family as customer” view changes either. A similar thing happened in healthcare where patients now see themselves as customers (which started happening more than a decade ago). Some docs are still kicking and screaming…but it’s futile.
IMO there’s no putting the “I’m a customer” genie back in the bottle.
Notice they left the “M” off this statement. My impression is it’s rather “easy” to earn a C at that M.
In part I think this is a function of ever rising costs and the financial burden of both healthcare and higher education. If you’re busting your back and going into debt to pay these bills, then you feel in the role of a customer. Not saying that’s right, but I think there is some predictable cause and effect at play as costs rise.
The way I read it, they haven’t settled on a recommendation for this one yet (so they’re continuing with it for now…but saying a decision has not yet been reached).
From their Exec Summary:
“Developing a recommendation about family connections that reflects Brown’s values and honors its commitments requires further deliberation and reflection, and the committee will benefit from opportunities to learn more about the perspectives of faculty, staff, alumni and students to inform its ongoing consideration of these issues. The committee will develop plans to gain further insights from these constituencies to inform a path toward a recommendation.”
Depends on the subject and department. For example, some economics departments have less and more math versions of intermediate economics and econometrics courses, and some math departments have honors or harder versions of real analysis and other upper level courses.
Also, there may be in-major upper level electives, some of which are considered harder than others.
Differences in FL pacing can be seen in high schools. In some high schools, level 4 is the AP level, while in other high schools, it may be necessary to get to level 6 to get to the AP level. Also, AP level may vary, as in where students completing the course score 3 or 5 on the AP exam.
Wouldn’t specialty upper level courses be more likely to be absent at one’s home school and therefore be more likely targeted for cross registration? Lower level courses are more likely to be offered at one’s home school.
Certainly there’s upper level electives known to be more difficult than others, so a student could self-select rigor in that way.
But there’s not 3 levels of the same class and upper level courses, like there is for GIR physics.