And rigor varies by academic program, even in the same department. Corporate Finance/Valuation is a rigorous course at virtually any college. It is quantitatively based, and an answer on an exam is either right or wrong. Organizational Behavior can be taught in either a rigorous manner or not. Both courses will get the same number of credits for a business major at the same college. A survey course on Russian Lit which fulfills a humanities requirement at a college is not going to have the same rigor as a Russian lit class where the students are reading works in the original, comparing early versions of Tolstoy short stories and novellas to themes fully developed in his novels, assessing the works (all written in Russian) of post-Soviet writers to those working under the Tsars. Both classes can be tagged “Russian Literature” in the course catalogue, same number of credits. But a Russian lit major can’t take the survey course for credit, and a non- concentrator is likely not able to qualify to take the more rigorous course.
@bluebayou, publics enroll the vast majority of students in higher ed in the US.
Also, UChicago and Reed had graduation rates of around 50% for long periods of time yet have not gone out of business yet.
A little off-topic, but this statement blows my mind. I took a course in corporate finance in college (and again in law school), and I don’t remember at all that 100% of answers on any exam had right/wrong answers. More importantly, in my IRL professional capacity, I deal with corporate finance and valuation pretty much every day, and I could not fathom teaching anyone about them without discussing aspects of them that are subjective and variable. A course in which every answer on the exam was either right or wrong could not possibly be a rigorous analysis of corporate valuation.
ahh, yes, those so-called schools for rigor. While I don’t know what period of time that Chicago had a 50% grad rate, its current mean GPA is no different than Northwestern, i.e, B+. Reed is not much lower.
The point again, is that with such a ‘high’ GPA, few students are failing to “get good grades.”
yeah, I’m aware of that: see my comment about income (and think about it critically).
OP should have transferred when it became apparent that the rigor:prestige ratio was off. A lifetime is a long time to carry around a regret like this.
@bluebayou, at the UofC, that would have been 30 years ago and the decades before.
“And rigor varies by academic program, even in the same department.” - Finally somebody else mentioned that. Thank you!
Yes "rigor’, varies from Dept to Dept, professor to professor, but I still maintain that overall, the majority of teachers end up teaching to the norm, this can be seen from kindergarten through graduate school. The brighter the norm, the deeper & more complex the instruction.
"I still maintain that overall, the majority of teachers end up teaching to the norm, this can be seen from kindergarten through graduate school. The brighter the norm, the deeper & more complex the instruction. "
- This is just a theory. In addition in some publics TA’s do not lecture, only profs. And guess what is happening at many privates and other highly ranked research oriented places. Those world renown profs focused more on their own research then their students. That has been compared and discussed on the personal level, I do not know any internet statistics about this fact, but I know many very top (#1) HS kids who went to state public colleges and they had to adjust their academic efforts upwards considerably, while whose who did not fall off their original academic track right after first semester… Again, blankly saying something like this or the other way has no meaning, it has to be proven. And one point of proof is that when they all end up in the same class at the same Grad. School, Harvard grads, Berkeley, Yale, and state publics grads, they appear to be on the same footing, there is no difference in how they are prepared, Harvard grads do not have advantage, none. And beyond the Grad. School, their placement does not reflect anyhow the difference in their college rigor.
Everybody though is entitled to their opinion, then go ahead and spend all this money on Harvard, leave the Merit scholarships at other place to others, they will be more than happy to have them.
Lots of schools have various levels of courses. For example, here are some math courses at a highly selective college and an open admission community college:
Level Harvard Diablo Valley
Remedial Algebra 135
Remedial Precalculus 191
Remedial/Slow Frosh Ma, Mb
Frosh Social/Life Sci 182, 183
Frosh Regular 1a, 1b 192, 193
Soph Social/Life Sci 18, 19a, 19b
Soph Regular 21a, 21b 194, 292, 294
Soph Honors 1 23a, 23b
Soph Honors 2 25a, 25b
Soph Honors 3 55a, 55b
The regular courses are likely similar. However, the more selective college offers more honors courses, but the remedial courses do not start at as low a level. This likely reflects the distribution of students. But a student in the regular math courses (at either school) should not be assumed to be as strong in math as those in the top level honors courses, or as weak as those in the lowest level remedial courses.
“The regular courses are likely similar. However, the more selective college offers more honors courses” - I stated many posts before, that class selection at state publics is very wide and includes the into classes for variety of majors that are not the same class. I do not even count Honors, I believe that Honors are close to non-Honors version of the class except they require a bit of more work in exchange for individual attention from the prof. I do not count them as different. I mean that in intro selection for Physics (as one example), most pre-meds do not take the same intro Physics as engineers (it may be more of different major oriented Physics), there is also calc-based and non-calc based Physics and so forth. I do not know how many. But there is an Honors one also that I do not count at all as being different, it is not different enough to be considered as different class. The same goes for other classes like BioChem, Chemistry, Bio, all have Honors versions, but in addition they have versions that are more oriented to different majors.
You cannot blankly compare like this. You have to find a version of the class that is similar at several schools. Then take it at different places to compare. Even this will be very inaccurate as after you take the class for the first time, the second time will feel less rigorous because of the background that you obtained first time around.
So, how in a world you can compare except assuming that highly ranked place will teach with more rigor. You can assume it as much as you wish, but do not ask others to assume the same.
Miami- a college filled with kids whose mean SAT math score is 550 is going to have trouble convincing the rest of the world that they are teaching a large class of intro physics for NON-PHYSICS majors with the same rigor as a college filled with kids whose mean SAT math score is 750. You yourself have stated some version of this many times- that in the US we do a terrible job of math education, and that kids graduate from HS thinking they are ready for college level math even though they are performing at the level of 15 year olds in other parts of the world.
How you think these kids with their weak math prep are faring in college level physics is beyond me. Clearly, the class is being taught with “less rigor” than it is at a college with kids whose overall prep is better.
The “outliers” at the weak math prep college- i.e. the kids majoring in math or physics or electrical engineering are not taking the physics for non-majors. So they are out of the pool entirely. I don’t know any college that would give credits to an electrical engineering major taking intro physics which is non-calc based. Sure- the kid can take the class. But not to fulfill a requirement in his/her major. So those well prepared math kids are not showing up in the lower-rigor physics class.
This is the point people are trying to make. Not that a college with a stronger student body is in and of itself more rigorous… but that at the individual course level, a professor can’t possibly teach the kids who maxed out in trigonometry or who don’t have a solid grounding in algebra, with the same rigor as the kids whose prep is stronger.
And colleges in the US are filled with these poorly prepared kids- as you yourself have stated many times.
Take any teacher at any level. Give them one section of students with an 90 IQ, one with a 110 IQ, & one with a 130 IQ, have them teach the same class to each section & you are going to tell me that they are going to make each section just as rigorous as the others? If so, they are not going to last in the profession.
@csdad, are you in higher education?
I’m curious if you realize what matters for lasting there.
Purple Titan,
Cd dad has said elsewhere that he is a school psychologist. I think his opinions are valid. Maybe a standard deviation from average for each IQ example (85, 115) and then 130 might have been clearer.
I wouldn’t consider it “higher”, I am in Pupil Support at the high school level & an adjunct at a Community College… I know that at my CC you have to adjust the level of difficulty to fit your consumers, if not, your failure rate would sky-rocket, kids would stay away from your class in droves & you probably would not stay employed. I realize it is much different at higher levels of college education. Had two recent Ivy league grads at dinner tonight & posed the question to them “do most professors teach to the norm of the class”, they both thought that in most cases they did. In their experience only the poor(their description) professors made the class either too difficult, or too easy, and in their 4 years they could only think of 2-3 in each of their experiences that fell into that category.
@jym626, as you probably know, at most major research universities, whether a prof gets tenure comes down almost exclusively to how much they publish. And once they get tenure, holding all students to the same standard certainly won’t get them fired.
BTW, I’ve read people write about Harvard professors who teach the exact same class and have the exact same standards for Harvard College students as for Harvard Extension School students, yet I don’t think anyone will say that on average, the students in the College and Extension School are the same quality (and I don’t see Harvard getting rid of those profs).
I’ll concede that CC is different.
And surely you know, that rocks for Jocks is taught at a different level than other geology courses 
But at some colleges, physics for poets, courses don’t exist.
Its been a source of contention at older daughters undergrad, that English majors are taking same entry science/math courses as pre- meds.
That is awful. My D was a Human Development major at Cornell. Many in that major had a goal of med school, others did not. They had different science courses depending on what your goal was right from freshman year, even though they were in the same major.