NYT Article Re: Sense of Entitlement to Good Grades

[UnlikelyGrad]

I used to know this guy who mas a math TA. Calculus I TAs have the hardest road, as far as I'm concerned, because they get into the PhD program to do theoretical mathmatics, then wind up having to explain begining calculus to Freshmen who somehow managed not to take any math in high school -- ever.

Math is a serious problem nowadays. I definitely saw this in my years as a tutor--for example, kids who were failing algebra because they'd never mastered fractions or multiplication. My PI (who teaches PChem) often goes on rants about how students who have taken three semesters of calculus (prerequisite for his class) who don't know the product rule [(uv)' = uv' + u'v], which is generally taught in the first month of Calculus I. And my sister, who is currently teaching a senior-level undergrad course in engineering, complained that she had to teach her students about Venn diagrams. (Her 12yo daughter was laughing as Sis wrote her lesson plans, because she understands Venn diagrams...)

How do people get to higher math classes without understanding the basics? I tend to think that teachers don't want to do their students a "disservice" by holding them back. In reality, letting them move on without a solid foundation in basics is the real disservice. Having failed a number of classes myself, I've learned that everything is easier the second time around.

[Tonights]

And my sister, who is currently teaching a senior-level undergrad course in engineering, complained that she had to teach her students about Venn diagrams. (Her 12yo daughter was laughing as Sis wrote her lesson plans, because she understands Venn diagrams...)

That's just frightening.

I kind of feel like my math teachers let me slide a little bit. I have a learning disability coupled with a very shaky foundation on mathematical basics, but I sort of got shuffled along with the rest of the honors/AP group in my extremely small school district because the rest of my grades were very high. I never did well in any math class, but that was despite constant tutoring and a large amount of despair. The thing is, I think I would have been better suited if I'd been held back and actually given a foundation of understanding instead of passed along to harder and harder courses which I then proceeded, of course, to not understand.

[MDLee]

This attitude kills me!

I mean, as an undergrad it was bad enough...but what really gets my hackles up is when in the MASTER'S program students are like, "Who needs to read? What do you mean they don't give you an 'A' for effort?!"

...sigh.

[synthla]

I mean, as an undergrad it was bad enough...but what really gets my hackles up is when in the MASTER'S program students are like, "Who needs to read? What do you mean they don't give you an 'A' for effort?!"

What I don't understand about that is, at the graduate level, who doesn't want to read?? Sometimes I feel like that's half the reason I'm going in the first place - I'm obsessed with learning as much as I can about my area.

[RedPotato]

I read this article, the day it was published. And I think its a terrible representation of students. It makes all us undergrads look like little entitled jerks. The universities tell us the grades dont matter, but if they didnt, why do we get grades? why do the schools have deans lists? and why are the scholarships provided by my school dependent on grades?

I work my hardest for my grades, and I study more than most people.... I deserve those As and Bs I get, because I work hard, and that makes me good at what I study. But dont pretend that we want the grades to inflate our egos, we do it because we need those scholarships to stay at the school.

/rant.

[MDLee]

What I don't understand about that is, at the graduate level, who doesn't want to read??

You know? I used to think the same thing...but it seems that sometimes people think they can slide through grad school the way they slid through undergrad...like they're entitled to a Master's, or a PhD. Seriously irritates me--since my goal IS to learn as much as I can and push myself as hard as I can... sigh.

::steps off her soapbox::

[GirlattheHelm]

First off, the NYT needs to shove it and write a fucking article - this is lame... Sigh. News was killed when Murrow got the axe.

So, yeah, we've raised some bunch of snob nosed kids who are now disaffected college students. Raised on NYT's articles, no doubt. Now the populous is surprised and outraged?

We've got college brats preaching tolerance, empathy, feelings, and coddling. Of course they expect easy grades - they've been spoon fed and kumbaya-ing from the get go!

What's that kindergarten theme song? As follows: You can be anything you want to be!

NO YOU CAN NOT.

Now, get over it. And the news needs to get a new freakin' hobby; just because a few people are hollering they are entitled doesn't mean we have to pay any attention. This gives them way more credit than they deserve - like we actually have to entertain the god damn notion.

[MDLee]

What's that kindergarten theme song? As follows: You can be anything you want to be!

NO YOU CAN NOT.

Now, get over it.

Oy. THIS is the biggest lie perpetrated to our young people today. Spoon fed "Honey...you can do ANYTHING you put your mind to!" As if hard work could really get you a career in engineering if you actually SUCK at math! As if you could suffer through basic Dr. Seuss books and still be an awesome novelist!

Then comes the point when you wake up to a big ol' stack of rejection letters...and you begin to wonder if maybe you should've chosen a different field. Sometimes, wanting something badly isn't enough...

[thepoorstockinger]

First off, the NYT needs to shove it and write a fucking article - this is lame... Sigh. News was killed when Murrow got the axe.

Really? There hasn't been real news since 1960? For real?

We've got college brats preaching tolerance, empathy, feelings, and coddling. Of course they expect easy grades - they've been spoon fed and kumbaya-ing from the get go!

I can see where you're coming from but I am not sure if people being taught "tolerance" is really to blame here. I'd kind of prefer if kids are taught tolerance. Hardwork too... but I see nothing wrong with tolerance.

Now, get over it. And the news needs to get a new freakin' hobby; just because a few people are hollering they are entitled doesn't mean we have to pay any attention. This gives them way more credit than they deserve - like we actually have to entertain the god damn notion.

I don't see a problem with the Times reporting on this. It's not like they ran it front cover. Grade inflation is a fact and they're reporting on one of the potential causes of it. They're not supporting it in the same way as they don't support murder when they report that someone got shoved in front of a subway car.

[GirlattheHelm]

Really? There hasn't been real news since 1960? For real?

Depends on what you call 'real news'. Sure, lots of stuff goes on but very little of it, as I see it, is newsworthy. And that which is newsworthy, in this day in age, goes uncovered, misunderstood or is misinterrpreted for the chase of something that sells. Having 24/7 coverage of everything means that, in the loud boom of it all, anything important cannot be heard or is difficult to even weed towards or through.

I saw Edward Murrow as the best form of educated broadcasting for the thinking person on important topics of the day. At the cut of his work, Murrow gave his warning (just watch Good Night/Good Luck and then research it, folks - unless you grew up with a neurotic and paranoid grandmother who forced you to watch that stuff other than cartoons) and we have failed to understand it or act upon it. As I see it, there are few 'real' fortune tellers - we are given the past and can time travel into the pages of history but the future is a harbinger of the unknown - so when a warning, like Murrow's, manifests on our doorstep it shouldn't be so easily ignored.

And yet we ignore it for what? We have 'info-tainment' to be proud of and to highlight the importance of tabloid information. I'm often outraged by what is on the front of the paper and how it is put there; journalism is no longer a forefront of information but a basis for opinion and political striation governed by editors and the political goons that puppet them. I often see newspapers these days as a utilitarian object for wrapping fish and news broadcasts as the reason to flip the channel (okay, I'm just being really jaded right now).

I can see where you're coming from but I am not sure if people being taught "tolerance" is really to blame here. I'd kind of prefer if kids are taught tolerance. Hardwork too... but I see nothing wrong with tolerance.

There is a lot wrong with the idea of 'tolerance', in my humble perspective, and its soft notion adds quite a bit to the flowering of the other aspects I mentioned. Tolerance avoids the very basic principles of living in a free world and instead of accepting our differences we are left to stew in our uneasiness with each other. The idea itself puts up a notion that we must endure others rather than accept that we are different. To accept that people live their own lives means we are offered the option of outrage, offense, and then turning our cheek to live our own way. It, on principle, avoids allowing us to attack each other. We don't have to 'investigate' what people are doing. We can shut the doors and be individuals. As a libertarian I want to shut out what my neighbor is doing, build a high fence, and go about my business without harassment or having to harass people.

But tolerance means my neighbor and I must kumbaya on a level. It's like we must 'try' to get along. It's like kid's saying they 'tried' - failing to recognize that you cannot go halfway on success and/or failure! The same goes for the term and notion of 'tolerance'. We're not 'trying' to get along if we must accept each other as different.

I don't want to tolerate my neighbor being gay; I don't want to tolerate my mother being a republican; I don't want people tolerating my right to own guns - no, I want to understand we must accept these things as facts of our (and other's) being and leave it at that. Tolerance, as I see it, is a maddening cop-out for a politically correct term that people could swallow. I see acceptance as the real key to learning to having respect for other human beings and their right to exist as they see fit - even if the hellfire against them still rages in our eyes.

I don't see a problem with the Times reporting on this. It's not like they ran it front cover. Grade inflation is a fact and they're reporting on one of the potential causes of it. They're not supporting it in the same way as they don't support murder when they report that someone got shoved in front of a subway car.

Well, if it was not obvious enough, I see a problem with the Times itself and am uncompromisingly biased against it. As for this article in particular, my big gripe about it is that the idea of 'grade inflation' is a farce in and of itself. These are constructs like 'critical thinking' and are wishy-washy subject matter that falls through as rather arbitrary. And no, I am not harping that anyone's 4.0 doesn't mean anything; in our culture it very well does. But on the broad perspective, reporting on this only succeeds on a lot of navel gazing and doesn't perpetuate anything.

Look, we're not making widgets in a college setting so this constant eventfulness, trying to assess what a university is doing and how well the students are doing, is (in reality) a laughable task. Universities are not asking students to do mechanical work, redo plumbing systems or put the electrical wiring in a house; we're creating a quantitative matter out of something superbly qualitative and utterly bound to its context. Besides, universities challenge this notion at every faculty, chair, senate and administrative meeting without success. It's a built in flaw to the mission statement of any college, university or place of learning in general. Yes, we can give lots of reasons as to why grades plummet or rise; such as trying to keep students in school during the Vietnam draft. Trying to pin the blame on teachers, professors, faculty, students, or an upbringing is limiting at best.

Not that you might want my two cents on it but I see the real fact of the matter is that a four year degree, is now the equivalent of a high school diploma. We go to school for over 18 years because that's what we do; it has become the new rite of passage and hence, to put through all these people grade inflation must occur. The standards have to be dulled to manage the pressing weight of a change in the social culture and the economic expectancy for such 'qualifications' as the load is no longer only a culling of the 'exceptional'. It is almost everybody. It doesn't matter that you can't or don't know how to do anything, such as trade-work, once you leave college but that you paid for you rite of passage through and have, most probably, been mellowed - having time to sew your wild oats and are welcomed with open arms into a service society only then. It's a far fetched idea, I suppose, but standing next to the kid who drank his way through college, who still will get his BA, makes me wonder. And the trend may be ever upward - so what do we expect will happen when the masses all must go to graduate school?

:shock:

Hopefully I 'splained myself a little better.

[illinoisellie]

Perhaps instead of tolerance - "open-minded-ness". Though they teach "tolerance" when they really want the latter. Just look at neo-racism - people pretend to be "tolerant" but don't actually keep their minds open to new ideas...

I don't mind parents telling their kids that they can "do anything". They can (i've seen it done) - you just have you work your ass off at it. So perhaps parents should add that caveat...

I am kinda iffy about the whole "I'm bad at math" or "i'm bad a science" thing. I think if you have the right environmental stimuli - wonderful professors who actually teach, teachers who focus on girls in math/sciences when they are being driven away by the stereotypes of society trying to push us towards english or social studies - you can do well in math or science. I am really not convinced that enough of that math and science ability is given by genes.

That said - I think intelligence is more broad than just math or science intelligence. I agree with Sternberg's theory of triarchic intelligence - general intelligence(not the same as the little "g" one) is made up of: analytic intelligence, creative intelligence and practical intelligence.

But as for the good grades for effort - I think that's a bunch of bull. Even in undergrad (there is nothing more annoying to me than people saying "Oh, that's so undergrad!" or "That is such an undergraduate analysis!" - Excuse me, I'm reading graduate textbooks for my gen ed classes. pissoff) there is so much variation in different schools that the GRE test had to be created(either that or they just want our money ).

So whiny undergrads who do nothing but drink and party telling their professors that they want a better grade?? You gotta be kidding me. In college, kiddies, we use the scientific method - "effort" is a very subjective concept. One cannot give it a completely objective score. Therefore, the professors will grade your multiple choice or written work(read: subjective, haha) in an objective way. Thus, reducing your successes(and failures) in life to a number from 1 to 100.

[ChickenPotPie]

I think it depends on what one considers the meaning of the grade to be. Is it a measure of a student in relation to his peers or is it a measure of mastery of the subject? If it's a measure of mastery, I'll bet there would be a lot fewer A's.

I personally would like to see hard work rewarded to some extent because achievement is based on a combination of intellectual potential and hard work. Hard workers are very capable of high achievement because they can overcome their limitations. Hard work can overcome a lot and should be rewarded some, but it can't overcome large intellectual limitations. I think it would be nice if more courses offered meaningful extra credit (and not cake EC), that could impact one's grade by maybe half a letter grade.

[coyabean]

This is what happens when large portions of the population to go to college.

College is the new high school.

And that just about sums it up.

There's been a whole war or words about this on The Chronicle.

[coyabean]

Not to get all nerdy up in here but I was just reading a book last night in the bookstore that has an interesting take on this conversation: http://www.nurtureshock.com/.

The first chapter discusses how excessive positive reinforcement trains the child brain to expect immediate reward for all effort. Once the brain forms these receptors that process reward = effort it makes it difficult to change that later in life. The result is an adult with no concept of persistence -- that is using failure as a learning experience. I think we're seeing the first adult generation with brains wired for immediate reward. Why wouldn't they think they should get an A for trying? That's what they got at home. That's fine for self-esteem -- although the science also debates that, long term -- but it's not so good for ingenuity. Learning has a built-in failure component. it's that moment in your research where you have seemingly read everything in the world, can't figure out up from down and, if you're me, you drink while crying. But if you are accustomed to occasional failures you think this is a normal, or at least a familiar, process. You persevere and then one day you get your light bulb moment, or you just work like a pack mule and cobble something together reasonable. Either result never happens if your brain shuts down the first time an expected reward doesn't materialize.

So, I've been thinking about what this means. I'm sure there are some workplace and productivity consequences. But, for the more immediate future I'm thinking this is my competition in grad school...and I'm feeling pretty good about my odds.

[gr8pumpkin]

I think the difficulty in combatting this mentality (and it goes to the issue of grade inflation as well) is that so many universities have bought into very simplistic methods of student evaluation of professors (and/or TAs), and if there is any sense by the professor that these evaluations might mean something in terms of compensation, promotion or being attractive on the job market, there's pressure to give that magic B even on marginal work because of the high correlation between the grade a student receives and how they evaluate the professor. It's ridiculous, but when you look at studies on grade inflation, it's there.

 

Bumping for truth, and interested in the opinions of today's gradcafe cohort on this.

[gr8pumpkin]

Not to get all nerdy up in here but I was just reading a book last night in the bookstore that has an interesting take on this conversation: http://www.nurtureshock.com/.

The first chapter discusses how excessive positive reinforcement trains the child brain to expect immediate reward for all effort. Once the brain forms these receptors that process reward = effort it makes it difficult to change that later in life. The result is an adult with no concept of persistence -- that is using failure as a learning experience. I think we're seeing the first adult generation with brains wired for immediate reward. Why wouldn't they think they should get an A for trying? That's what they got at home. That's fine for self-esteem -- although the science also debates that, long term -- but it's not so good for ingenuity. Learning has a built-in failure component. it's that moment in your research where you have seemingly read everything in the world, can't figure out up from down and, if you're me, you drink while crying. But if you are accustomed to occasional failures you think this is a normal, or at least a familiar, process. You persevere and then one day you get your light bulb moment, or you just work like a pack mule and cobble something together reasonable. Either result never happens if your brain shuts down the first time an expected reward doesn't materialize.

 

 

Alfie Kohn concurs with this, and he's about as compassionate an education expert as they come.

[Varangian]

Assuming I TA next year I prefer the Yoda philosophy. 

 

[kittythrones]

I used to talk to ex-bf's POI all the time. And one day, a very odd conversation popped up between us - about how I would be a horrible professor. I would be a horrible professor because I don't believe in giving out As and I will have a tiered system per semester - 1 A for the whole class, 6 Bs, and the rest Cs to Ds and have all of the students compete against each other for the grade. 

 

Anyway, the POI just stared at me and he started laughing. He stated that there was no way I would ever get tenured or be kept that long because most school administrators do not see the students as people who are there to learn anymore, but more as "students who pay for the name of the school and to get straight As without trying". In essence, more students = more profit. The professors didn't agree with this but they had to do what the administrators said. 

 

After hearing this, I was like ....thank you for this, I will be homeschooling my children if I ever have any and I will send them to school in France - where thank god, the school administrators believe in public humiliation.

 

F**k feel good, we shouldn't be coddling people and we shouldn't be treating children / students as friends. 

[overworkedta]

I don't agree with the "everyone gets an A" philosophy and I think we have tons of grade inflation in the States for sure.  The British system has its problems but at least getting a first there is a pretty high bar.  It means something.  The problem is, instead, with everyone getting an upper-second, I think.  But at least the top is a high bar.

 

However, I think an arbitrary "one A a semester" system is just as bad because, after all, it's arbitrary.  The French department at my undergrad pretty much subscribed to that theory and it made people ragey.  I don't think it made me a better student.  I think it just made me break into tears a lot in my dorm room freshman year and curse the arbitrary standards set out for A's on homework (which were pretty subjective as opposed to exams).  It was later told to me that year by an upper-division student in French that, yes, the reason for this was the limit of 1-2 students getting an A in the course.  So, grades were artificially low on homework.  I seriously just wanted to give up.  Why bother if you always get a B no matter how hard you work on the homework?  There's no incentive to try harder or to improve.  And it seems rather prejudicial for one student alone to be "singled out" because you'd really have to chose that student which seems all kinds of wrong to me.

 

So, long story short I don't think your having high standards is bad at all.  I think arbitrary grades are just no better.

[themmases]

I'm sure entitled undergrads are just so frustrating to shoo out of office hours (actually I know they are), but I really find these discussions frustrating. Articles like the one in the OP strike me as being of a piece with other media smearing "millenials" as shallow and entitled, hurting our job prospects and blaming us for serious social and economic ills like the student debt crisis-- just for acting like regular (i.e. feckless, naive) young people. I don't think grad students, who are authorities in these undergrads' lives and probably also belong to generations that were/are being treated this way, should contribute

 

I also don't think people who are "obsessed" with learning more about their field or can't understand why anyone ever wouldn't want to do a reading for class are in a good position to judge what most undergrads have ever been like, or whether standards have changed. A group of people known for experiencing imposter syndrome probably shouldn't also be claiming to be able to differentiate internal and external performance pressures in an academic experience they had years ago, on a totally different campus from where they most likely teach.

 

While I guess we can argue about whether "participation trophies are dumb" is a searing insight into youth culture, we can probably all agree that undergrads are no exception to organisms everywhere being affected by their environment. It's not clear to me why, in this particular case, that makes the undergrads themselves the assholes. Undergrads have power when they whine about this stuff because administrations (you know, the people earning all that tuition money your grandkids will be paying back) support them in behaving like customers, and some of them have shameless, privileged parents. But undergrads also lack power because they are just gaining life skills, dependent on grades to sustain attendance and sometimes scholarships at a huge financial investment, and saddled with misinformation and poor content area mastery by a dysfunctional K-12 system

 

To the extent that undergrads who whine about their "effort" are surrounded by other callow young people who don't put forward effort or manage their time well, those students really are doing something special that they were told they needed to do. Whether a 19-year-old student really needed to put in all-nighter level effort to master undergrad material or just thought she did, that sucks way more for her than for the grad TA who got theirs and just has to answer her emails. If it sucks to be the grad TA with different ideas about grading, that's probably because it generally does suck to have different ideas.

[geographyrocks]

I realize this doesn't cover the more popular departments, but this fits mine:

 

Why there is grade inflation = in order to get funding from the university, the department must show that students are interesting and learning.  In order to get more students in this major, they don't grade as hard as they could because they believe a bad grade will lead the student to a different major.  If they don't get funding, they can't pay their professors or hire new ones.  If they don't get funding, they can't pay for the software or equipment needed.  IF there is no software or equipment, they can't teach those classes.  So on and so forth.

 

It's a super f'd up process.  I'm all for encouraging students who are working hard, but if they aren't getting the material then they don't get an A.  

[kittythrones]

I don't believe in an arbitrary-grade A. I believe in doing what top law schools believe in doing - survival of the fittest & Socrates method for humanities (to promote critical thinking). Have the students all take the same exam, homework, and final. I am not suggesting this for humanities. I am suggesting this for the STEM classes. Whoever gets the top grade in all, average-wise, gets the A then so on and so forth. Why should every person get an A if they score over a 90? It cheapens the value of getting the A.

 

As an undergrad, I took a bunch of math courses with a couple of French students. Guess what? They trounced every single American student with EASE. Do you know how humiliating it is to sit there for 20 minutes and not be able to solve the problem but have the French students beat us in 10 minutes? I also had a professor in undergrad who didn't believe in giving out As, I had to work my ar*e off to get that A and I still only got a B+ but I am grateful for that class. I learned more in that class than I did in most of my undergrad class. 

 

 

I don't agree with the "everyone gets an A" philosophy and I think we have tons of grade inflation in the States for sure.  The British system has its problems but at least getting a first there is a pretty high bar.  It means something.  The problem is, instead, with everyone getting an upper-second, I think.  But at least the top is a high bar.

 

However, I think an arbitrary "one A a semester" system is just as bad because, after all, it's arbitrary.  The French department at my undergrad pretty much subscribed to that theory and it made people ragey.  I don't think it made me a better student.  I think it just made me break into tears a lot in my dorm room freshman year and curse the arbitrary standards set out for A's on homework (which were pretty subjective as opposed to exams).  It was later told to me that year by an upper-division student in French that, yes, the reason for this was the limit of 1-2 students getting an A in the course.  So, grades were artificially low on homework.  I seriously just wanted to give up.  Why bother if you always get a B no matter how hard you work on the homework?  There's no incentive to try harder or to improve.  And it seems rather prejudicial for one student alone to be "singled out" because you'd really have to chose that student which seems all kinds of wrong to me.

 

So, long story short I don't think your having high standards is bad at all.  I think arbitrary grades are just no better.

Edited March 23, 2014 by kittythrones

[Karoku_valentine]

The letter system is just idiotic. With a regular 1-100 system, all those problems would go away, as everyone would get the grade they deserve, and the inflation factor would be minimize.

[Cheshire_Cat]

I think there should be one criteria for students making the grades they make.  Do they understand the material?  I had a system in undergrad.  I would go to all the lectures, but not take notes.  Read all the assigned readings, and do all the homework.  In my whole undergraduate career, there were less than 10 class where that system did not give me an automatic A. For those classes, I had to put in a little more effort, outline some chapters, memorize some formulas, find some extra practice problems... (I am smart. Blame genetics. But most people should be able to make Bs)

 

I think with most topics, putting in the effort that I did should result in at least a B.  However, some topics are just hard to understand.  And if you don't understand the material, you shouldn't pass.  

 

So I guess my stance is that for most classes, putting in the effort should give you the grade, because for most topics,  that much effort you should give you an understanding of the material.  But there are some that require extra effort to understand the material, and when those classes come up, you have to make the effort.  You can't just say "well, I tried like I always do"  it certainly doesn't work that way in the real world.

[GradSchoolTruther]

It's quaint kittythrones believes she'll have the income needed to homeschool or send her kids to school in France.