Replacing Standards with Sympathy
Higher education once stood for rigor, accountability, and personal responsibility. But grade inflation and diluted curricula have already eroded the pretense of academic excellence. Now, a new initiative at the…
Posts tagged with
“grade inflation”
The Case Against Online AP Testing
This May, Advanced Placement tests for 28 of 36 AP subjects were held entirely online. Going forward, College Board will administer most exams through Bluebook, the central testing platform that…
Approaching Academic Armageddon
Over a mere two days recently (May 14-15), the major daily news outlets serving higher education, Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education, reported the following: Data collected…
The Consumer Mindset Undermines Colleges
A recent Inside Higher Ed Student Voice survey found that over 60 percent of college students view themselves as customers, an alarming sign for anyone concerned about the integrity and…
Solving the Grade-Inflation Problem
Educators on the right and left condemn grade inflation in K-12 and universities. Inflated grades mark the transformation of education from actual learning to credentialing. Grade inflation at America’s universities…
Is Grade Inflation Yale’s Fault?
Nearly 80 percent of grades at Yale University during the 2022-23 academic year fell within the “A” to “A-minus” range, according to a new report in the New York Times.…
The Coming Wave of Freshman Failure
A columnist covering K-12 education, I come to you, dear reader, with a warning: There’s a coming wave of college-freshman failure that will stress the institutions and systems of our…
The Case Against Admissions Selectivity
It’s time to do away with selective college admissions for undergraduate education. Now, let’s get the caveats out of the way. When it comes to specific training that requires particular…
“Contract-Grading” and the War Against Academic Excellence
When I was in high school in the mid-1990s, we were all required to swim in gym class. This was before wokeness. Since then, concerns over “accessibility,” “inclusion,” “acceptance,” and…
Making a College Degree More Valuable the Wrong Way
It’s old news by now that the wage premium attached to a college degree largely depends on the field of study. Engineering and health care, for example, are far more…