I was a TA at Yale when I did my PhD there and I contrast that experience to when I was a TA at University of Calgary. Whether it’s a higher sense of entitlement or just grinding it out to maximize your official grade the contrast between these two schools was striking. At Yale you’d better think twice about honest grading because if you did there would be an army at your door with pitchforks ready. You then have to spend hours explaining why they didn’t deserve a higher grade. At the end of the day you’re worn down and there’s very little incentive to grade honestly as you get pain nearly nothing and you’re really there to finish your PhD.
The problem is when the grades given on assignments influence what goes on your final exam papers.
At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later.
Of course universities don't like this, since they don't consider students mature enough that they do the homework if it doesn't "count".
That's right! You're paid nearly nothing so you represent cheap labor for the Yale. I guarantee you that somebody is getting paid a lot!
The problem with these so called "Higher" institutions is that the people fulfilling the actual function of the University don't actually get treated all that well. Everyone just walks all over them, including the people in charge. It has become a crazy lopsided system. These schools are basically becoming feel-good daycare centers for adult children of rich families
Research suggests 'honest grading' is a pipe dream anyway. The book 'A Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives' dedicates most of its final chapter to grading. Even people specifically trained to grade to a very strict standard were incapable of doing so when they knew almost anything at all about the student.
It’s a system that polishes privilege, its byproduct a contempt for earned authority. Many of the people who started with this attitude had it ratified and encouraged by perhaps the most prestigious university in the world — and now they’re running the whole show.
Emphasis on now added.
Who in their right mind thinks people who attend Harvard and a handful of other elite universities and prep schools haven't been running the whole show since before the American Revolution?
The modern US has centralised more power in the hands of institutions which those Ivy League graduates dominate (i.e. the federal government and the large banks). Also other big capitalist enterprises in the past cared less about degrees than now.
So I'd say that America always had class distinctions, and the Ivy League always was a ticket to the highest class. But it dominates that class more than it used to.
This reminds me of the fact that in the early republic, the majority of American presidents and powerful statesmen were Freemasons. There was even a anti-elitist party, called the Antimasonic party, formed to counter the Masons' influence in politics.
The article is short, and only uses an anecdote to support its claim. While I can generally agree that places like Harvard work more in connections, networks, and money than intellectual rigor, the article is too short and missing enough detail to fall flat.
As a former undergrad, the points about grade inflation are 100% correct, and everything else is garbage.
> Many of the better-off young people at Harvard appeared to require intense favoritism to reassure them, perhaps because of the less-moneyed achievement and potential that loomed all around. Though some of the anointed developed their capabilities to the full, the institutional imperative to establish a hierarchy between them and us took precedence.
This is just utter nonsense. There are a lot of very legitimate ways that the school favors its privileged students (self selecting social clubs with dues, the disaster that is on campus dining, not subsidizing a whole lot of expenses that they ought to, forcing students on financial aid to work for the school, etc.) but the insinuation that the professors and other teachers at the school systematically favor privileged students in some sort of effort to reaffirm social hierarchy is totally unsubstantiated, and, quite frankly, a disgusting and slanderous accusation. I didn't like all (or even necessarily most) my professors/advisers/TAs that much, but I am honestly outraged on their behalf after reading this.
Yeah it seems like a well timed attack piece considering all the recent Harvard headlines.
Not that I disagree - Harvard is more likely concerned with reputation and possible future donors than intellectual integrity - but it doesn't make a good foundation for an article.
I just remember the difference between Stanford 30 years ago and San Jose State.
At Stanford students that were failing a class or getting a grade that was too low would just drop it and retake it the next semester. At San Jose State you couldn't drop a class after the first two days. Stanford you could retake a class for a higher grade. SJSU, you could retake a class if the grade was lower than a C. But they'd average the two grades.
San Jose States Engineering department also graded on a curve, no exceptions. Only 5-8 people out of a class of 30 was going to get an A.
Also at San Jose State if your grades dropped too low you didn't get put on academic probation, you were gone.
Not just picking on Stanford, I've heard similar reports from people that went to other high ranked schools.
I wonder how they're measuring it. I attended Caltech in the 70s, and the percent who entered as freshman and graduated as seniors was much lower. You could see it just in the number of students at each level, it declined every year.
It could also be at least partly related to higher selectivity and more financial aid, and/or rich parents, that make school easier.
But I dont actually know what goes on in ivy and off ivy league elite schools.
Also consider that these may just be better run schools which also provide more and more useful assistance to students.
Edit: I would like to add I think this article title is extremely clickbaity, and plays on the recently resurgent class warfare phenomenon. It pains me that articles like this, from sources like this, are becoming normalized and even acceptable on HN. There's no merit to this biased pile of shit. And I'm not an ivy league graduate having a security crisis. Journalism should be objective.
The silliness, of course, is that if you are among the "elite" and "privileged" going to an Ivy League school, nobody is going to give a shit about your grades anyway. Your career and success is already pre-ordained. Why on earth would you bother arguing with your professor that your "A-" should be an "A"? You're going to go to work at your daddy's investment bank after you graduate either way! You think big name banks and consulting firms are going to say "Gee.. he's a Kennedy, but his grades are so bad! We can't bring him in." Just party and get C's and D's--you're already set for life.
> You're going to go to work at your daddy's investment bank after you graduate either way!
Privilege has its limits. Let's take your example. If you're inheriting Dad's investment bank, you still have to keep winning their clients. Most institutional investors have policies which require them to freeze and reconsider firms after leadership changes. If you flunked your way through Harvard, that's going to be difficult.
More often, Dad doesn't own the investment bank. He's a senior officer there. This, again, confers some advantage. But outside of inheriting an estate, there are lots of controls prevent blatant nepotism.
You completely misunderstand the level of "privilege" of the average ivy league student. While there are some students who are definitely going to get amazing opportunities through their parents regardless, the average student comes from a family that makes about $200-250k/year. That's wealthy and privileged for sure, but not typically "graduate with a 2.0 straight into a six-figure job set up by your parents" level of wealthy and privileged.
While I didn't go to an Ivy, that's clearly not true. Do you honestly think Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Goldman, law schools, medical schools, etc., are going to accept you if you have poor grades? Not everyone can count on "daddy".
Full Disclosure: I work at an Ivy League institution, but not with undergrads, nor is teaching my primary job.
I also went to another Ivy League school, many years ago. I wasn't well off, but I wasn't struggling to pay for school, either. I can tell you for a fact that the pandering to student complaints described in the article wasn't the case when I was in school, but that was many years ago.
I TA'd while in grad school last century, at the University of Michigan, and I've TA'd recently at my Ivy League university's extension school, where endowments aren't a consideration. I can tell you that we get FAR more requests for grade adjustments now then we got we got decades ago. That seems to me to be as much a function of the change in the students over time as the change in institutional finance. What's surprising to me, though, is that even in an extension school, instructors STILL entertain and indulge what I would consider frivolous student regrade requests, as described in the article - even without the monetary drivers the article's author ascribes to the Harvard instructors.
So, why do professors pander to students' regrading requests, even if there is no apparent monetary motive? I believe that the cause is the rise in "instructor review" websites, and the easy communication between students. If an instructor is rated poorly by students, his class enrollments drop. If an instructor's enrollments drop too far, and they aren't tenured, they may be asked to find employment elsewhere.
So, while the monetary motive may be there, there is also the "popularity" motive. Word about poor or overly strict instructors travels very quickly among a student body. If students don't have to take a class from an instructor they feel is too strict or a poor lecturer, they won't. It's the economics of the instructor market, not the university endowment, that I feel is often the motivating factor behind pandering to students
Cultivating this attitude in future leaders does in fact seem to help them gain power. I think it ties in with the need for A) impeccable credentials and B) the ability to cavalierly invite the CEO, world leader, whomever, to play golf.
In some people we call it charisma, in others we call it entitlement. I'm starting to wonder if it's not only the person we describe, but also our own position and personal knowledge of them that influence the decision on which one to call it.
I'm working on an edtech startup and with it I've been spending a lot of time at Princeton University. From my experience with Princeton, Ivy League school are VERY overt about promoting elitism within their communities. I understand the thought behind it but a lot of these students are in for a rude awakening when they go work for an investment bank and find out that their Ivy League elitism means nothing if they can't produce in the workplace.
Eh, investment banking is arduous cause of the hours, and does require you to be pretty smart, but its not as meritocratic as your claiming. It's stacked with Ivy League kids exactly because elitism at big banks works in their favor during the hiring process.
Well, I think what's more likely is these people will be fine since most jobs are obtained primarily based on prestige and connections, and keeping an elite job once you have it just requires minimal competence. The more elite your job, the less you are punished when you fail (CEOs, for example, get bonuses when they fail). The people who are in for a rude awakening are those that think working hard and being very smart at a decent school will get them anything close to what C students from ivies waltz into without trying once they hit the working world. Remember, the C business students are the boss, A engineering students are the employees is the general rule of thumb.
Do enough people really have a subscription to the Washington Post? Or is this trending purely because a lot of people agree with the opinionated title?
I had a different experience at an Ivy, but I'm not rich. Wouldn't say arrogant either, although I should probably leave that up to others to judge.
My point is that "rich" and "arrogant" are key words here. Such people tend to get preferential treatment in our society, at Harvard and elsewhere. It's hardly specific to Harvard.
This calls to mind the amusing Harvey Mansfield, who used to be the only "conservative" (arguable) professor in the government dept. (I missed him in my time there epochs ago.)
He gave two grades, the official, inflated, career-preserving grade, and the real (his true assessment) grade. You could come ask him for the real grade if you wanted to know the awful truth. ;-)
Cornell wasn't like this... (at least in the 90s).
3.2 would get you on dean's list.
There were freshman weed-out courses to winnow out dumb and lazies.
I remember getting D+ on a paper that nearly gave me a stroke, and professor stood by it. Asked TA to re-grade it and gave me the same grade.
Some guy in my dorm got a letter from school with threat of expulsion if he didn't improve his 1.7 GPA, after just 1 tough semester.
I once made the mistake of taking a comp sci course as an elective where most of the students were comp sci majors and already new the materials. Never went to so many TA office hours in my life, just to get B+.
Full Disclosure: I work at an Ivy League institution, but not with undergrads, nor is teaching my primary job.
I also went to another Ivy League school, many years ago. I wasn't well off, but I wasn't struggling to pay for school, either. I can tell you for a fact that the pandering to student complaints described in the article wasn't the case when I was in school, but that was many years ago.
I TA'd while in grad school last century, at the University of Michigan, and I've TA'd recently at my Ivy League university's extension school, where endowments aren't a consideration. I can tell you that we get FAR more requests for grade adjustments now then we got we got decades ago. That seems to me to be as much a function of the change in the students over time as the change in institutional finance. What's surprising to me, though, is that even in an extension school, instructors STILL entertain and indulge what I would consider frivolous student regrade requests, as described in the article - even without the monetary drivers the article's author ascribes to the Harvard instructors.
So, why do professors pander to students' regrading requests, even if there is no apparent monetary motive? I believe that the cause is the rise in "instructor review" websites, and the easy communication between students. If an instructor is rated poorly by students, his class enrollments drop. If an instructor's enrollments drop too far, and they aren't tenured, they may be asked to find employment elsewhere.
So, while the monetary motive may be there, there is also the "popularity" motive. Word about poor or overly strict instructors travels very quickly among a student body. If students don't have to take a class from an instructor they feel is too strict or a poor lecturer, they won't. It's the economics of the instructor market, not the university endowment, that I feel is often the motivating factor behind pandering to students.
There is a recurring theme of incentives becoming out of alignment with purpose. This happens in business, medicine, government...
It's become a real focus for me, and CEOs should consider this very carefully. What are the company's goals, really, and are the incentives offered, all the way from the janitors up to their own compensation, in alignment with those goals?
The professor stated blatantly: The students are paying too much for us to fail them. Said another way: The students bought their grades.
Does anyone have knowledge of incentive structures at universities that they'd defend as being in strong alignment with the goal of turning out the best educated students? What was that incentive structure?
It's an interesting anecdote, but makes conclusions about the aggregate. Give me almost any university, and with time I could probably find at least one story like this.
I'm not saying it isn't true, just that this evidence is weak.
[+] [-] rdlecler1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomasahle|8 years ago|reply
At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later.
Of course universities don't like this, since they don't consider students mature enough that they do the homework if it doesn't "count".
[+] [-] jostmey|8 years ago|reply
The problem with these so called "Higher" institutions is that the people fulfilling the actual function of the University don't actually get treated all that well. Everyone just walks all over them, including the people in charge. It has become a crazy lopsided system. These schools are basically becoming feel-good daycare centers for adult children of rich families
[+] [-] otakucode|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sabas123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jseliger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehwebguy|8 years ago|reply
Edit: Thanks for the downvote but giving higher grades because it's more convenient than doing the right thing is... the wrong thing.
Painful that at some point it felt like your (and many others') best choice but it was still wrong flat out.
Hey maybe now you can "change the system from the inside!"
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] giardini|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] da02|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NumberSix|8 years ago|reply
It’s a system that polishes privilege, its byproduct a contempt for earned authority. Many of the people who started with this attitude had it ratified and encouraged by perhaps the most prestigious university in the world — and now they’re running the whole show.
Emphasis on now added.
Who in their right mind thinks people who attend Harvard and a handful of other elite universities and prep schools haven't been running the whole show since before the American Revolution?
See for example:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/11/obama-joins-l...
[+] [-] adrianratnapala|8 years ago|reply
So I'd say that America always had class distinctions, and the Ivy League always was a ticket to the highest class. But it dominates that class more than it used to.
[+] [-] irrational|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sid-kap|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alttab|8 years ago|reply
The article is short, and only uses an anecdote to support its claim. While I can generally agree that places like Harvard work more in connections, networks, and money than intellectual rigor, the article is too short and missing enough detail to fall flat.
[+] [-] tomtheelder|8 years ago|reply
> Many of the better-off young people at Harvard appeared to require intense favoritism to reassure them, perhaps because of the less-moneyed achievement and potential that loomed all around. Though some of the anointed developed their capabilities to the full, the institutional imperative to establish a hierarchy between them and us took precedence.
This is just utter nonsense. There are a lot of very legitimate ways that the school favors its privileged students (self selecting social clubs with dues, the disaster that is on campus dining, not subsidizing a whole lot of expenses that they ought to, forcing students on financial aid to work for the school, etc.) but the insinuation that the professors and other teachers at the school systematically favor privileged students in some sort of effort to reaffirm social hierarchy is totally unsubstantiated, and, quite frankly, a disgusting and slanderous accusation. I didn't like all (or even necessarily most) my professors/advisers/TAs that much, but I am honestly outraged on their behalf after reading this.
[+] [-] nxsynonym|8 years ago|reply
Not that I disagree - Harvard is more likely concerned with reputation and possible future donors than intellectual integrity - but it doesn't make a good foundation for an article.
[+] [-] tlb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
Non Ivy League highly selective schools: Caltech 92.3%. Stanford 93%. MIT 92.2%. UC Berkeley: 90.9%. Low 90% success rate is normal there.
[+] [-] Gibbon1|8 years ago|reply
At Stanford students that were failing a class or getting a grade that was too low would just drop it and retake it the next semester. At San Jose State you couldn't drop a class after the first two days. Stanford you could retake a class for a higher grade. SJSU, you could retake a class if the grade was lower than a C. But they'd average the two grades.
San Jose States Engineering department also graded on a curve, no exceptions. Only 5-8 people out of a class of 30 was going to get an A.
Also at San Jose State if your grades dropped too low you didn't get put on academic probation, you were gone.
Not just picking on Stanford, I've heard similar reports from people that went to other high ranked schools.
[+] [-] WalterBright|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akhilcacharya|8 years ago|reply
sigh
[+] [-] milkywayz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnfy|8 years ago|reply
But I dont actually know what goes on in ivy and off ivy league elite schools.
Also consider that these may just be better run schools which also provide more and more useful assistance to students.
Edit: I would like to add I think this article title is extremely clickbaity, and plays on the recently resurgent class warfare phenomenon. It pains me that articles like this, from sources like this, are becoming normalized and even acceptable on HN. There's no merit to this biased pile of shit. And I'm not an ivy league graduate having a security crisis. Journalism should be objective.
[+] [-] ryandrake|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|8 years ago|reply
Privilege has its limits. Let's take your example. If you're inheriting Dad's investment bank, you still have to keep winning their clients. Most institutional investors have policies which require them to freeze and reconsider firms after leadership changes. If you flunked your way through Harvard, that's going to be difficult.
More often, Dad doesn't own the investment bank. He's a senior officer there. This, again, confers some advantage. But outside of inheriting an estate, there are lots of controls prevent blatant nepotism.
[+] [-] opportune|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buchanaf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devopsproject|8 years ago|reply
because someone is paying good money for that "A"
[+] [-] boredom_boredom|8 years ago|reply
I also went to another Ivy League school, many years ago. I wasn't well off, but I wasn't struggling to pay for school, either. I can tell you for a fact that the pandering to student complaints described in the article wasn't the case when I was in school, but that was many years ago.
I TA'd while in grad school last century, at the University of Michigan, and I've TA'd recently at my Ivy League university's extension school, where endowments aren't a consideration. I can tell you that we get FAR more requests for grade adjustments now then we got we got decades ago. That seems to me to be as much a function of the change in the students over time as the change in institutional finance. What's surprising to me, though, is that even in an extension school, instructors STILL entertain and indulge what I would consider frivolous student regrade requests, as described in the article - even without the monetary drivers the article's author ascribes to the Harvard instructors.
So, why do professors pander to students' regrading requests, even if there is no apparent monetary motive? I believe that the cause is the rise in "instructor review" websites, and the easy communication between students. If an instructor is rated poorly by students, his class enrollments drop. If an instructor's enrollments drop too far, and they aren't tenured, they may be asked to find employment elsewhere.
So, while the monetary motive may be there, there is also the "popularity" motive. Word about poor or overly strict instructors travels very quickly among a student body. If students don't have to take a class from an instructor they feel is too strict or a poor lecturer, they won't. It's the economics of the instructor market, not the university endowment, that I feel is often the motivating factor behind pandering to students
[+] [-] killjoywashere|8 years ago|reply
In some people we call it charisma, in others we call it entitlement. I'm starting to wonder if it's not only the person we describe, but also our own position and personal knowledge of them that influence the decision on which one to call it.
[+] [-] Bretts89|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebola1717|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wfo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] positivity89|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bllguo|8 years ago|reply
My point is that "rich" and "arrogant" are key words here. Such people tend to get preferential treatment in our society, at Harvard and elsewhere. It's hardly specific to Harvard.
[+] [-] cpr|8 years ago|reply
He gave two grades, the official, inflated, career-preserving grade, and the real (his true assessment) grade. You could come ask him for the real grade if you wanted to know the awful truth. ;-)
[+] [-] pcurve|8 years ago|reply
3.2 would get you on dean's list.
There were freshman weed-out courses to winnow out dumb and lazies.
I remember getting D+ on a paper that nearly gave me a stroke, and professor stood by it. Asked TA to re-grade it and gave me the same grade.
Some guy in my dorm got a letter from school with threat of expulsion if he didn't improve his 1.7 GPA, after just 1 tough semester.
I once made the mistake of taking a comp sci course as an elective where most of the students were comp sci majors and already new the materials. Never went to so many TA office hours in my life, just to get B+.
[+] [-] grzm|8 years ago|reply
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...
Also important to note is that it's apparently an opinion piece.
[+] [-] boredom_boredom|8 years ago|reply
I also went to another Ivy League school, many years ago. I wasn't well off, but I wasn't struggling to pay for school, either. I can tell you for a fact that the pandering to student complaints described in the article wasn't the case when I was in school, but that was many years ago.
I TA'd while in grad school last century, at the University of Michigan, and I've TA'd recently at my Ivy League university's extension school, where endowments aren't a consideration. I can tell you that we get FAR more requests for grade adjustments now then we got we got decades ago. That seems to me to be as much a function of the change in the students over time as the change in institutional finance. What's surprising to me, though, is that even in an extension school, instructors STILL entertain and indulge what I would consider frivolous student regrade requests, as described in the article - even without the monetary drivers the article's author ascribes to the Harvard instructors.
So, why do professors pander to students' regrading requests, even if there is no apparent monetary motive? I believe that the cause is the rise in "instructor review" websites, and the easy communication between students. If an instructor is rated poorly by students, his class enrollments drop. If an instructor's enrollments drop too far, and they aren't tenured, they may be asked to find employment elsewhere.
So, while the monetary motive may be there, there is also the "popularity" motive. Word about poor or overly strict instructors travels very quickly among a student body. If students don't have to take a class from an instructor they feel is too strict or a poor lecturer, they won't. It's the economics of the instructor market, not the university endowment, that I feel is often the motivating factor behind pandering to students.
[+] [-] wolf550e|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamvalve|8 years ago|reply
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|8 years ago|reply
It's become a real focus for me, and CEOs should consider this very carefully. What are the company's goals, really, and are the incentives offered, all the way from the janitors up to their own compensation, in alignment with those goals?
The professor stated blatantly: The students are paying too much for us to fail them. Said another way: The students bought their grades.
Does anyone have knowledge of incentive structures at universities that they'd defend as being in strong alignment with the goal of turning out the best educated students? What was that incentive structure?
[+] [-] kafkaesq|8 years ago|reply
And there's certainly no need to soft-peddle Harvard's moral and intellectual cowardice, as revealed in this episode.
[+] [-] jtraffic|8 years ago|reply
I'm not saying it isn't true, just that this evidence is weak.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]