This idea relates to what might be the tip of the iceberg of all of the huge problems which lie at the feet of the education industry. Grade inflation, is the rising tide which lifts everyone, except for those who would like to have some sort of continuity in what college graduates and their degrees actually represent.
This is the other side of the coin, in that there are plenty of comparable problems with lowering standards, and lack of real rigor in many areas of many colleges. The fact is that these sort so of problems lie in areas which have the most to lose. It would seem to be quite difficult to water down, to create subtle shifts, ending with what could be seen as an emasculated (sorry for the gender reference…) in… an upper division chemistry, math, or engineering class.
In the humanities, things are different, and especially so in the humanities in Ivy League schools.
We are arriving at a system which doesn’t tax students intellectually (when compared to the workload of comparable students in the 1950’s), it charges far more than inflation, or any reasoned explanation can present (over $50,000.00 a year for a four year undergraduate degree!!), and has changed the hallowed halls of academia from Ivory Towers to dens of political correctness and ‘one size fits all’ politics…
This is primarily a problem with academic life in colleges and universities, but high schools are slowly adapting to these progressive forms of corruption. Since GPA is one of the primary means to get into the school of one’s choice, the fact that any AP, IB (or any other ‘advanced class’ formats and curricula) usually result in students competing for 5.0 grades…versus the good 4.0… I wonder which the long term outcome is in creating this sort of multilevel playing field…
GradeInflation.com
http://gradeinflation.com/
Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses
http://www.amazon.com/Academically-Adrift-Limited-Learning-Campuses/dp/0226028569/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
College the Easy Way
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/opinion/05herbert.html?_r=2
Grade Inflation Article
http://www.mnsu.edu/cetl/teachingresources/articles/gradeinflation.html
Grade Inflation
http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/28/grade-inflation
The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/gi.htm
