I remember how it was -- JR
Grade Inflation and Campus Protests
By RICHARD K. VEDDER
Why the outburst of campus protests in recent years, culminating in the sizable and sometimes violent demonstrations at such prestigious universities as Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, and Stanford? While many factors are at work, one that seldom gets mentioned: boredom. Students often have a lot of free time. TikTok, Instagram, drinking, sex, and internet porn do not provide adequate fulfillment.
Why? Most college students don’t have much to do academically. Why is that? Grade inflation. Surveys of time use by the federal government suggest that the amount of time college kids spend on their academic work has fallen from an average of perhaps 40 hours weekly in the middle of the last century to about 27 or so hours today. Since a “year” in American collegiate parlance is actually only about 32 or so weeks, college students probably average less than 900 hours annually working on school tasks, probably less than much younger elementary or high school students—and less than half as much as the highly productive professional, technical, or managerial workers that most college students aspire to be.
Harvard’s great political scientist Harvey Mansfield has taught in every decade since the 1960s—seven in total (as have I). In a great recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Mansfield recalls how students do far less reading and writing in class than they did decades ago—but for much higher grades. Mansfield taught at the oldest and most elite of our colleges, while I had very similar experiences, teaching a bit at highly selective schools, but mostly at a very typical high mid-quality state institution with only moderately selective admission criteria, Ohio University. When I started teaching American economic history in the 1960s, students were expected to read a textbook and about five other supplemental books. In my last years of teaching (until a couple of years ago), I considered it an accomplishment if students read the text and maybe a couple of short supplemental readings. Looking at old gradebooks, in the mid-1960s, my average grade in an introductory economics class was a “C” and it was rare for even 10 percent of students to get an “A.” Mansfield notes that a majority of grades today at schools like Harvard are “A” or “A-.” Nearly all students wrongly consider themselves Masters of the Universe.
The grade system provides vital information not only to the universities themselves but to future employers wishing to separate the best and brightest from the mediocre and mundane. If everyone gets nearly the same grades, their informational value is virtually lost. Student incentives to work hard are dramatically reduced, allowing them time to form campus encampments and demonstrate for days over events occurring thousands of miles away that only very tangentially touch on their lives.
A major factor in the rise of grade inflation probably was the introduction of institutionally administered student evaluations of professors on most campuses in the late 1960s or 1970s. In an attempt to make colleges more comforting and responsive to students in order to avoid unwanted campus discontent, college administrators initiated evaluations that at many schools were perceived by the professoriate to have some importance—bad evaluations sometimes severely reduced the prospects for tenure, for example. By giving high grades, professors thought that could buy some popularity and indirectly job security.
I believe the increased role of the federal government has lowered the quality of American higher education materially in the last half century or so, but a case could be made that schools receiving federal financial support should not be allowed to have average cumulative grade point averages above 3.0 (“B”) for the undergraduate student body (exceptionally good students could still get near 4.0 averages). State governments could do the same for the universities they subsidize. Another approach would be to introduce a “grade inflation tax” whereby schools would lose a proportion of subsidies—including research support, Pell Grants, etc.,—if the accumulative grade point average of all undergraduates exceeded a “B” average. Collegiate apparatchiks, in turn, would have to harass or incentivize faculty into making the grading system useful again.
To be sure, there are other factors involved in today’s campus protests, and one can legitimately argue that peaceful protests that do not interfere substantially with the pursuit of knowledge and discovery of truths are actually good—signs of a vibrant campus with a considerable diversity of views and members of the university community interested in the broader world. The protests of the Vietnam War era, for example, occurred when grade inflation was dramatically lower. But students today are not challenged by their academic duties enough, leading to such modern phenomenon as excessive time spent on social media rather than learning the verities contributing to prosperous and long lives. College should be more than four or five “gap years” of fun between secondary school and the “real world.”
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14965
**************************************************Confidence in colleges, universities reaches all-time low, new poll indicates
Confidence in colleges and universities has reached a new all-time low, according to a recent poll commissioned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago.
"In two AmeriSpeak panels representative of the U.S. household population, we asked Americans: ‘How much confidence, if any, do you have in U.S. colleges and universities?’" a press release from FIRE reads.
The question is similar to one asked by Gallup last year, which found that Americans who had a "great deal" of approval for institutions of higher education had plummeted from 57% in 2015 to 36% in 2023.
By comparison, FIRE's report indicated only 28% of Americans had "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education as of May 2024.
Thirty percent similarly said they have "very little" or no confidence at all in higher education.
Democrats, women and younger Americans aged 18-34 saw "some of the largest drops," according to the report, while the level of confidence among conservatives – which was already low in the past – has "reached a floor."
On one hand, some say colleges and universities have lost their credibility as many Americans realize their return-on-investment in higher education failed to meet their expectations.
"Those of us who attended college or University in the mid 2000s (when quality started really dropping) have seen that it had little or no impact on our careers and that most of what we were taught ended up having very little value in the real world," Bobby Kittleberger, a web designer and founder and editor of Guitar Chalk, told Fox News Digital.
"Colleges are now viewed as having primarily a social agenda and not an economic or even an educational agenda. Even if you want an education driven by a social agenda, the asking price is incredibly high," he added.
He also argued that information is easily accessible on the web and the astronomical cost of a college education doesn't make much sense as an investment, especially considering that the wages for jobs that require a degree have not kept up at the same pace.
In a previous interview with Fox News Digital, Kittleberger said he actively encourages his kids to skip college because his degree in computer science has been "completely irrelevant" to his real world work.
His perspective aligns with the growing trend of skipping out on the traditional 4-year college plan. Many members of Gen Z, for instance, have shunned that path in favor of trade school, leading many to coin them as the "Toolbelt Generation."
Some contrarily speculate that partisan politics inside the classroom and recent on-campus chaos surrounding the Israel-Hamas War could be to blame for disillusionment with higher education. Last December, for instance, University of California, Santa Cruz professor John Ellis wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the system of higher education needed to be reformed by getting left-wing activists out of the classroom.
"Never have college campuses exerted so great or so destructive an influence. Once an indispensable support of our advanced society, academia has become a cancer metastasizing through its vital organs. The radical left is the cause, most obviously through the one-party campuses having graduated an entire generation of young Americans indoctrinated with their ideas," he wrote at the time.
He cited "virulent antisemitism" that flared up following Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks against Israeli civilians as an addition to – or byproduct of – already pervasive cultural issues like censorship, DEI content and ideologies like "anticolonialism" and "anticapitalism."
In that same month, as then-Harvard President Claudine Gay was embroiled in controversy over campus antisemitism, college admissions consultant Christopher Rim told Fox News he was "completely shocked" to see students turning down their acceptances to the university for the first time in his career.
"This is the first time and first application season where I've seen a student who got into Harvard early that I've worked with for almost three and a half, four years now, starting in ninth grade — we're seeing them say, ‘You know what? I want to apply to other schools because what if I graduate and this stigma and this reputation of Harvard stays the same?’ That's their true concern," he said.
The Ivy League institution also reported a dropoff in early applications, something Bob Sweeney, a retired college counselor at New York's Mamaroneck High School, told Bloomberg he believed could have been partially caused by the antisemitism controversy.
FIRE's report additionally noted confidence had reached record-lows after "months of campus protests over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Congressional hearings about antisemitism on college campuses."
A separate FIRE/NORC poll found that 72% of Americans believed that students who participated in encampments should face punishment though those included in the poll disagreed on how severe such punishment should be.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/confidence-colleges-universities-hit-low-new-poll-indicates
***************************************************Australia: Physics students in catastrophic decline in senior high school
A catastrophic decline in the number of students studying physics in senior high school is ringing alarm bells, with one eminent scientist fearing Australia will lose the expertise it needs to be competitive as an advanced economy.
The University of Western Australia’s David Blair, who won a Prime Minister’s science prize for his role in the discovery of gravitational waves, said if school physics enrolments continued to fall at their current rate there would be no female school leavers qualified to study physics at university by 2032 and no males by 2035.
“We are on track to having no young medical physicists, no physicists to become tomorrow’s astronomers, no physicists to support the energy transition, no physicists to support the nuclear industry – not just submarines but crucial medical products – and no climate scientists,” he said.
“Hospitals employ medical physicists who are essential for producing the short-life radioactive isotopes for medical diagnoses and PET scans.
“Our mineral industry depends on a huge number of physicists.”
Data from WA, which Professor Blair said was representative of Australia as a whole, shows year 12 physics enrolments fell from 3868 in 2015 to 2436 in 2023. The number of girls studying physics fell even faster over the period. Girls made up 42 per cent of the year 12 physics cohort in 2015 but only 31 per cent by 2023.
Professor Blair and a fellow Prime Minister’s science prize winner, Susan Scott from the Australian National University, are pushing for a rethink of school science to keep children interested so more choose to study science in their senior years.
The pair are leaders of the Einstein First program which, backed by UWA, now operates in 55 schools, teaching year 3 to year 10 students modern physics topics that engage their interest, such as black holes.
Figures show that 14-year-olds are far more interested in physics after doing Einstein First. Before the course, only about a third of the girls and half the boys found physics interesting. After the course about 80 per cent of both girls and boys were interested.
A $1.5m Australian Research Council grant for the Einstein First team was announced on Friday for them to revitalise school science education and improve the training of teachers to teach modern science.
Einstein First and UWA have also just launched 12 Quantum Explorer STEM clubs, which are particularly aimed at sparking the interest of girls.
The Australian Academy of Science is also part of the push to improve science and maths education in schools, and on Tuesday launched two free online “toolboxes” for primary school teachers to help them teach these subjects.
Academy CEO Anna-Maria Arabia said that the science kit (Primary Connections) and the maths kit (reSolve) catered for teachers at whatever level of science understanding they had and helped them teach in effective ways regardless of where their students were at.
“We would love all teachers to be trained in science and maths but that is long-term,” Ms Arabia said.
The academy’s secretary for education and public awareness, Lyn Beazley, said the new resources were needed to fill a gap.
“Today’s teachers work so hard, but they are extremely time – poor, with many competing demands. This can lead to teachers preparing for what their students need to know, rather than designing how students will best learn,” Professor Beazley said.
Launching the new toolboxes at Hughes Primary School in Canberra, federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the resources were designed to take the load off teachers and engage students and help them to fall in love with science and maths.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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