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Earlier I posted a chart about the GRE score distribution of people going to graduate school. This post tells a different story, but with similar underpinnings. In it, Mark Perry shows us that at the undergraduate level at Cornell University 100% of education courses have a median grade of an A or an A-. Don’t all of you get cynical on me now – that should be an obvious outcome. After all, the education departments have the experts on education, so we’d expect them all to perform best!

5 Responses to “Grade Inflation and Education Majors”

  1. RIT_Rich says:

    While I have yet to meet any education majors that have impressed me with their intelligence, for arguments sake lets assume that Cornell’s education students have the same acceptance criteria as math students (they’re probably pretty close). Given the same stock of students, we’d expect them to get much higher grades in the easier courses offered in education, as opposed to math. But this isn’t…grade inflation. Its just that the material is comparatively easy (which makes it, in my opinion, an intellectual slum).

    Also, why does this matter? An engineering grad with a 2.5 undergrad GPA is going to make considerably more money than an education undergrad with a 4.0. Employers are aware that the two are not comparable. In the end, one would have to be pretty clueless to go to Cornell for an education degree.

  2. Harry says:

    Rich from RIT nails it, and Wintercow, I detected a bit of cynicism, which I never commit.

    I have only briefly taught college courses, so my experience is limited. I will say, however, that I felt much pressure not to give a bad grade, especially since all of my students were seniors, a few of whom played sports. Had I been teaching math, it would have been easier to defend a D, and not to have to go through weeks of paperwork and inquiry.

    I have friends who sent their daughters to expensive colleges to study science, where they got well over 3.0 in tough courses, but not 4.0. When professors from more elite institutions are easy with grades, they present their students as worthy, but they may have been more worthy to get in.
    My friends think they may have been better off sending their kids to Penn State, and encouraging them not to major in math or chemistry, since to get to first base in grad school you need a 4.0.

    I can understand Wintercow’s frustration, wanting to require his students to learn, as he did at his alma mater. One has to look in the mirror every day, unless you are a Liberal.

    OK, I got cynical

  3. Greg says:

    “Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university.”

    This could not be more true. They force us to pursue our Masters at Boston University and it is a joke. On the first day of class one our professors said, “if you show up, you’re guaranteed a B+.”

  4. […] Education. Grade Inflation and Education Majors […]

  5. It is complicated. RIT_Rich sez: “An engineering grad with a 2.5 undergrad GPA is going to make considerably more money than an education undergrad with a 4.0.” But does the world need a C+ engineer? I always thought that you should major in something you are actually good at. A classmate in criminal justice said that it took his C+ engineering sister over a year to find a job. That she might make more than a teacher speaks to other problems, entirely. Teachers have lousy pay and great retirements. Maybe there are better reward regimens.

    Harry in 2 sez: “My friends think they may have been better off sending their kids to Penn State, and encouraging them not to major in math or chemistry, since to get to first base in grad school you need a 4.0.” Well, OK, but you cannot get a BA in communications with a 4.0 and then choose mathematics or chemistry for grad school. Some kind of path is typical. Also, it is not entirely true that you need a 4.0 or high GRE or publications or whatever to get into grad school. It is usually a mix of things, and there are many, many schools to choose from.

    I can imagine the iniquities suffered by truly righteous monks at Lhasa in Tibet, with mere sycophants being promoted and given acolytes of their own. What I mean is, there is no human institution which is not flawed. The question is, really, what self-correcting mechanisms are within the system? Is the system stable or meta-stable or unstable?

    Perhaps the only real consideration is whether you are happy, Grasshopper.

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