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<p>So? Like I said, that’s what happens in science/engineering. I would argue that the grading there is arbitrary too. </p>
<p>Let me give you some examples. In one particular physics exam, a question was asked whose entire answer was based off one particular equation in the book. If you just happened to have luckily written that equation on the sheet that you were allowed to bring in, then you got full points. If you didn’t, then too bad, you got at best partial credit. Since there were only 5 question on the entire exam, then having that equation on your sheet was basically worth the difference of a full letter grade. However, this equation was merely one among hundreds in the book, and there was nothing seemingly remarkable about that equation (i.e. it was never mentioned in lecture or the notes). Hence, only a few people actually chose to include that equation on their sheet, hence they were the only people who got that question completely right and hence ended up with better grades than everybody else. I would argue that that’s completely arbitrary. </p>
<p>Here’s another. One math professor ran a exam grading policy where he would provide partial credit to somebody who who wrote down the correct steps necessary to solve a question but didn’t actually completely solve that question, but would actually provide zero credit if you actually tried to solve it but then made a computational mistake and got the final answer wrong, his reasoning being that anybody can then make a computational error to make his final answer match (for example, you can make a mistake such that your final equation becomes 0=0). The problem is that he didn’t tell anybody that this was his grading policy. Hence, many students first wrote down what they would do, and then actually tried to compute it but do so wrongly, and hence get zero’s on those exam questions, whereas if they hadn’t even tried to compute the final answer at all, but just stopped after they had written the steps, they would have gotten partial credit on those questions. I would argue that that’s arbitrary. </p>
<p>In fact, the entire notion of partial credit is arbitrary. It has been said in this thread that science and engineering questions have right/wrong answers. The problem, as I’m sure that most science/engineering students will tell you, is that, on the exams, few if any students will actually be able to compute all of the right answers all the way to completion. A typical science/engineering exam is about 3-5 questions, *each one * of which would probably take the entire exam period to carefully compute all the way to completion. Clearly you don’t have time to do that for the entire exam. Perfect scores are practically unheard. Everybody is living off partial credit. </p>
<p>But think about what that means. Which steps are worth partial credit, and which steps aren’t? How many partial points should be assigned to each step? That’s arbitrary. For example, let’s take a 20 point question. One professor might decide that it can be solved in a series of 10 discrete steps, each one worth 2 points each. However, another prof might decide that actually only 3 discrete steps exist, and the first step is the most important one, so the first step is worth 10 points, and the rest are worth 5 each. But the point is, it’s arbitrary. Furthermore, as a student, you don’t know what the steps are (obviously because if they actually told you the steps, that would tell you how to solve the question). Hence, when you write down all of the steps, you don’t actually know how much partial credit you got. Maybe you got most of the points. Maybe you only got a few. It’s arbitrary.</p>
<p>The point is, you need to disabuse yourself of the notion that science/eng have clearcut grading. They do not. The grading is arbitrary there too. Yet that doesn’t stop sci/eng from holding rough grade curves. Hence, you basically end up with the same “random coin-flipping” that determines grading in science/eng that you do in humanities. </p>
<p>Hence, both worlds have to put up with arbitrary grading. The difference, again, are the letter-grade curves. </p>
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<p>I was simply using PhD committees as examples that show that you can impose tough standards on disciplines that are supposedly difficult to judge. </p>
<p>Besides, this opens the door to yet another possibility. You guys say that it’s impossible to apply tough standards to humanities undergrads. Fine, let’s say that’s true. But then that begs the question of why we automatically assume that humanities undergrad work is automatically good. Why don’t we just assume it is automatically bad? </p>
<p>Here’s what I mean. As said above, right now, the difference in undergrad humanities grading is often times between an A or a B (or very rarely a C). The philosophy seems to be that since you can’t really tell who’s work is good, then you give the students the benefit of the doubt; you generally give everybody a pretty good grade unless the work is clearly so egregiously terrible that it deserves a terrible grade. The assumption therefore is biased towards good grades.</p>
<p>But why is the bias towards good grades? Why can’t the assumption be biased towards bad grades? For example, I could just as easily say that since I can’t really tell whether the work is good or not, I am going to simply assume that the work is bad unless the work is clearly so good that it deserves a good grade. Hence, I will simply give everybody a C or worse unless I am so impressed by a particular work that maybe I’ll give a B, or in rare circumstances, an A. Why can’t I do this? There’s no reason why I have to give the students the benefit of the doubt. </p>
<p>Lest anybody think this is an unusually harsh and punitive grading philosophy, hey man, sci/eng students have been putting up with this sort of weeder grading for decades and nobody’s crying for them. {Ok, well, nobody except me.} If they should have to put up with it, then humanities students should put up with it too. Otherwise, nobody should have to put up with it. </p>
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<p>If you really want to quell the grade inflation, then it seems to me that tackling the problems in the humanities would be the first priority, because that’s where the grade inflation is most endemic.</p>