So there are two conclusions one can draw from a university giving 50% A's.
1) Kids are getting smarter
(arent the SAT/ACT scores relatively stable)
2) Grade inflation.
I'll take #2 for the win. I guess I should set up a poll to see what people on SDN think.
Actually, if SAT/ACT scores are
stable it means the population taking the test is becoming
less intelligent and/or
less prepared from year to year! Due to a well-documented effect (the term escapes me), test scores tend to increase over time (i.e., over the life of a test, the mean score of test takers will rise such that the percentile rank of any given score will fall over time). As a result, if scores are staying the same from year to year, then we are actually seeing a
loss of some attribute being measured by the test!
I just get really irritated when there is grade inflation across different departments within the same school....say between science majors and education majors.
I know quite a few people with education majors that are around the 3.8-4.0 gpa marks but can't do basic math/understand "advanced" vocabulary.
My husband was a dual chemistry/education major before he dropped the ed and decided to pursue a PhD. Basically to get an A in many of his ed classes he just had to hand in his homework at some point in time.
I guess I am just one of those people who will always believe that GPA=/=intelligence or ability
True, although at least where I've been, science majors generally only
thought they had tougher work than other majors! (I've been on both sides of the fence, so I know what little science majors really have to do by comparison to other disciplines and how much some of them complain about their "heavy" courseloads vs. those of other students.)
I agree, most of the time GPA is only a measure of how much effort one put in.
Gotta disagree here. IME, the students w/ the highest GPA often did the "least" amount of work (i.e., they were most efficient). I have talked w/ B students who have literally spent
days memorizing the book verbatim. They could rattle off 10-20x as much as I know about the subject matter, yet they will probably never achieve an A with their current way of doing things (not to say they cannot if they learn to learn the material but with their current approach it is highly improbable). They spend 10x (literally) the amount of time and effort working on things that I do, yet they do not understand what they are doing and, therefore, are unable to get the A. (I've watched that and, as a tutor, it's hard to figure out how to help them.) I really do not see much of a correlation between time spent and GPA achieved. Sure, if you spend absolutely no time studying, you're probably not going to do great despite your natural abilities; however, I have found that, at least for me, even if I don't do any studying beyond having attended most classes, I can usually still synthesize my way to a/the correct answer on most exams (ending up w/ an A) simply by using background knowledge and/or common sense. (How do you think many of the answers came about in the first place? Someone had to think up those terms and w/ some decent background, it's often not too difficult to predict how an experiment probably turned out if given a brief description of what was tested, for instance.) So, seeing as strong students are able to figure these things out without studying, I don't really think it has as much to do with study time as much as you suppose. While there is certainly a correlation, study time really relies upon aptitude in order to be effective. An approximation for GPA might look something like GPA=(K*M*I*S*A^2)/E where K is some constant, M is motivation (generalized), I is interest (per class), S is study time, A is aptitude, and E is emotional stressors.
