Absolutely not true having worked there -- it's difficult to get an A at Harvard, with the average grade being more in the area of a B-plus. It's also true that the grade inflation has happened across academia in this hypercapitalist and careerist landscape. I've seen it now in at least five universities in the US and UK, as well as passing and graduating students who haven't met the requirements in some of those universities (which I did not see at Harvard, by the way). So students everywhere are paying for A's.
Yes, it was a while ago, but I've been in academia with competitor institutions to Harvard and I've seen the same trends and conditions in every single institution. Harvard is not above or beyond the pressures in that sector despite its endowments -- which btw differ greatly between the various schools. The grade inflation to a significant extent is driven by the need for institutions to attract foreign students who pay much higher tuition but in many cases do not have sufficient English skills or skills in critical thinking (if they come from countries where rote learning is emphasized, e.g. India and China). It's a catch-22 because they need the income from those students to survive but they also have to pass them with decent grades to keep them coming.
I think you just proved my point, although I'm not sure foreign students with limited English skills are driving the problem. I, too, have significant personal experience at and with prestigious institutions of higher education deemed to be "highly selective," on both coasts. All seem to have folded to the allure of money (often spent on funding more administrators and fancy buildings, rather than educators). They have allowed themselves to be rolled by the woke mob in admissions and grading policies; therefore, I suspect the students lacking in critical thinking skills are not primarily foreign students. IMHO these institutions are not really caught in a catch-22 unless the decision makers lack moral courage. Do they deserve to survive?
My son was a student at UC Davis in CA a few years ago, and he had a professor and his wife in his department who were totally disgusted with the UC system and how it aggressively went after foreign students (especially China!) for the money they got for out of state tuition...foreign students paid top dollar to attend. Everything was slanted towards getting and accommodating the foreign students because of the money they brought in, while American and more importantly, California students got the leftovers. The ratio of administrators to teachers was abominable. The town also hosted a big Islamic mosque and a Confucious institute. The campus was very dense with Chinese students who of course were spying, without a doubt.
Yes, good questions, good points, and a big topic. Don't get me started on the take-over of higher education by highly-paid administrators, the edifice complex, the chasing after money, and the increasing reliance on low-paid adjunct faculty with no benefits who are dependent on high ratings from students to stay employed. Many of my academic colleagues have retired early because the administrators have no education experience and are making their institutions into corporate degree factories, with pressure to 'dispense' good grades to the consumer (aka student). The question of whether they deserve to survive is, I would agree, a valid one.
That said, there are still many academics (and scientists) who strive to be good educators and care deeply about their research --many of whom have been involved in proving just how bad the covid clot shots are -- so let's not throw Harvard and other 'babies' out with the bathwater. Maybe with a different system of incentives, we can turn the sector around. Happy to hear more thoughts on this.
I agree with virtually everything you say, and I was happy to read that some scientists were able conduct research the outcome of which was not preordained by Big Pharma and the public health bureaucracy. But I have my doubts about whether our existing institutions can be saved, given the extent of the corruption. Is anyone in this community involved with the new University of Austin?
Oh they are beholden to some entity who is paying for the research. Defense, biotech, Dept. of Energy... In hard sciences there is often a curtain drawn between researcher and their client. For example, you are given tasks/experiments to formulate and do them without knowing they purpose. Medical research isn't often (as we know) given such freedoms to pursue truth or undiscovered reality. And I will add scientific researchers at uni's are most often conservative.
That's indeed the nut of it. If you don't understand your job and objectives, grants dry right up. Universities created this mess as we all do when we get addicted to sucking at the tit.
Not surprising given that the pressure on faculty to give good grades is happening in every university. I graded many papers at Harvard as a teaching fellow and teaching assistant, and it was quite a challenge to give a grade below B because the quality of papers tended to be high with such competitive students (except for a few students in each class) and because students who got a low grade would demand evidence for how their paper didn't measure up and you would have to justify that lower grade.
Given how much students pay now for a university education, they are "consumers" not "students" and believe that they are buying a product called a diploma, not a service called an education. That's the problem -- they want the credential and the jobs and opportunities and prestige that flow from it, and not necessarily the learning.
Not to mention a lot of the people teaching at universities are adjunct faculty on contracts with no benefits who depend on student evaluations to keep getting new contracts. If the students give them low ratings, they will lose their income.
My point being that Harvard is a high-profile example of an institution that is facing the same impossible pressures that are being felt across the sector, all driven by a hypercapitalist landscape that is incentivizing the chase for money at the expense of all else.
But thanks for sharing the article, Fla Mom! I have family in Florida and love it down there.
Is the rate that low? Prof. Harvey Mansfield stopped fighting grade inflation almost 23 years ago, giving grades based on the average grades given in the humanities at Harvard, while also giving them a private grade of what they really deserved. He said that since no other professor would give a real grade he was harming his students by doing so himself. Grade inflation has only gotten worse there since then.
Sad, but also gives us the opportunity to make the changes that actually benefit humanity. The first step is recognition that the system was designed to fail . Rockefeller not only corrupted the medical health system, but also the educational system. Americans were better educated before the 20th century than they are now.
Imho, it started *way* before Rockefeller. Getting rid of government schools is essential, I think. School choice funding is how to start. Our all-the-way homeschooling journey included many books written in the 1800s all the way back to antiquity.
"The first step in understanding the state of education today is to review how government came to be the dominant force behind schooling in the United States. From the outset of the first settlements in the New World, Americans founded and successfully maintained a decentralized network of schools through the 1850s. Then, beginning in New England, a wave of change swept across the country, which soon saw states quickly abandoning the original American model of decentralized, private education in favor of government-funded and operated schools.
"This movement not only altered the direction and control of elementary and secondary education in the United States, but it also contradicted many of the principles Americans had fought for less than a century earlier:
- A country founded in opposition to central governmental authority allowed for bureaucratic management of its schools.
- A country synonymous with "free enterprise" and distrust of legally protected monopolies built a government monopoly in schooling.
- A country that stretched the exercise of individual choice to its practical limits in nearly every sphere of life severely limited the exercise of choice in schooling, assigning the responsibility for education to the discretion of government authorities.
"The system of K-12 government schooling that exists to this day clashes with the political, economic, social, and cultural traditions of the United States to an extent unparalleled by any other institution in American society."
I believe most of us on this substack would agree that we've been duped and it's time for change. Thankfully, more families are homeschooling and pulling their children out of public schools or at the very least, monitoring their education more closely. It's also time to realize that higher educational institions are not what we've been sold as imperative for good jobs and one's best life. Skills for making useful products are in such demand now because of the emphasis for a college degree. Not everyone is cut out to be what we like to call, a Professional and skilled laborers are not given the respect they deserve.
Hyperinflation. Buckets of money. Buckets of A's. Everybody knows the score.
You know I think you gave out that link before in a similar convo because once I started reading it, it rang a bell. Love him. Musta been satisfying to hip check those haughty little prigs.
Isn't that where disgraced Mayor Beetlejuice from Chicago went to work as a professor? Harvard is such a joke these days, brains out the window.
Totally. The cat is out of the bag on that joke of a Libtard indoctrination institution.
By cia design, to aid in the destruction of America. They are making Progress, that is for sure.
My grandkids make a lot of progress in their diapers as they potty-train.
I see no difference between the end result of Harvard and pampers.
80% at Harvard make A's. They grade on a curve. ; )
Paid good money for those A's.
Absolutely not true having worked there -- it's difficult to get an A at Harvard, with the average grade being more in the area of a B-plus. It's also true that the grade inflation has happened across academia in this hypercapitalist and careerist landscape. I've seen it now in at least five universities in the US and UK, as well as passing and graduating students who haven't met the requirements in some of those universities (which I did not see at Harvard, by the way). So students everywhere are paying for A's.
how long ago did you work at Harvard? It sounds like you're describing the way Harvard once was, not what it has become.
Yes, it was a while ago, but I've been in academia with competitor institutions to Harvard and I've seen the same trends and conditions in every single institution. Harvard is not above or beyond the pressures in that sector despite its endowments -- which btw differ greatly between the various schools. The grade inflation to a significant extent is driven by the need for institutions to attract foreign students who pay much higher tuition but in many cases do not have sufficient English skills or skills in critical thinking (if they come from countries where rote learning is emphasized, e.g. India and China). It's a catch-22 because they need the income from those students to survive but they also have to pass them with decent grades to keep them coming.
I think you just proved my point, although I'm not sure foreign students with limited English skills are driving the problem. I, too, have significant personal experience at and with prestigious institutions of higher education deemed to be "highly selective," on both coasts. All seem to have folded to the allure of money (often spent on funding more administrators and fancy buildings, rather than educators). They have allowed themselves to be rolled by the woke mob in admissions and grading policies; therefore, I suspect the students lacking in critical thinking skills are not primarily foreign students. IMHO these institutions are not really caught in a catch-22 unless the decision makers lack moral courage. Do they deserve to survive?
My son was a student at UC Davis in CA a few years ago, and he had a professor and his wife in his department who were totally disgusted with the UC system and how it aggressively went after foreign students (especially China!) for the money they got for out of state tuition...foreign students paid top dollar to attend. Everything was slanted towards getting and accommodating the foreign students because of the money they brought in, while American and more importantly, California students got the leftovers. The ratio of administrators to teachers was abominable. The town also hosted a big Islamic mosque and a Confucious institute. The campus was very dense with Chinese students who of course were spying, without a doubt.
Yes, good questions, good points, and a big topic. Don't get me started on the take-over of higher education by highly-paid administrators, the edifice complex, the chasing after money, and the increasing reliance on low-paid adjunct faculty with no benefits who are dependent on high ratings from students to stay employed. Many of my academic colleagues have retired early because the administrators have no education experience and are making their institutions into corporate degree factories, with pressure to 'dispense' good grades to the consumer (aka student). The question of whether they deserve to survive is, I would agree, a valid one.
That said, there are still many academics (and scientists) who strive to be good educators and care deeply about their research --many of whom have been involved in proving just how bad the covid clot shots are -- so let's not throw Harvard and other 'babies' out with the bathwater. Maybe with a different system of incentives, we can turn the sector around. Happy to hear more thoughts on this.
I agree with virtually everything you say, and I was happy to read that some scientists were able conduct research the outcome of which was not preordained by Big Pharma and the public health bureaucracy. But I have my doubts about whether our existing institutions can be saved, given the extent of the corruption. Is anyone in this community involved with the new University of Austin?
Oh they are beholden to some entity who is paying for the research. Defense, biotech, Dept. of Energy... In hard sciences there is often a curtain drawn between researcher and their client. For example, you are given tasks/experiments to formulate and do them without knowing they purpose. Medical research isn't often (as we know) given such freedoms to pursue truth or undiscovered reality. And I will add scientific researchers at uni's are most often conservative.
I think the key is who or what funds the research. If certain research isn't funded, it doesn't happen.
That's indeed the nut of it. If you don't understand your job and objectives, grants dry right up. Universities created this mess as we all do when we get addicted to sucking at the tit.
That research isn't going to happen if it isn't the 'right' research.
You thinking about go out there?
Later Jay
Seems to be true:
"Harvard Report Shows 79% A-Range Grades Awarded in 2020-21, Sparking Faculty Discussion," from the Crimson itself:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/5/faculty-debate-grade-inflation-compression/
Not surprising given that the pressure on faculty to give good grades is happening in every university. I graded many papers at Harvard as a teaching fellow and teaching assistant, and it was quite a challenge to give a grade below B because the quality of papers tended to be high with such competitive students (except for a few students in each class) and because students who got a low grade would demand evidence for how their paper didn't measure up and you would have to justify that lower grade.
Given how much students pay now for a university education, they are "consumers" not "students" and believe that they are buying a product called a diploma, not a service called an education. That's the problem -- they want the credential and the jobs and opportunities and prestige that flow from it, and not necessarily the learning.
Not to mention a lot of the people teaching at universities are adjunct faculty on contracts with no benefits who depend on student evaluations to keep getting new contracts. If the students give them low ratings, they will lose their income.
My point being that Harvard is a high-profile example of an institution that is facing the same impossible pressures that are being felt across the sector, all driven by a hypercapitalist landscape that is incentivizing the chase for money at the expense of all else.
But thanks for sharing the article, Fla Mom! I have family in Florida and love it down there.
Thanks, I agree with you on all counts.
So you said it wasn't true then you said it was true in the next sentence.
Worked at H? Makes sense.
Is the rate that low? Prof. Harvey Mansfield stopped fighting grade inflation almost 23 years ago, giving grades based on the average grades given in the humanities at Harvard, while also giving them a private grade of what they really deserved. He said that since no other professor would give a real grade he was harming his students by doing so himself. Grade inflation has only gotten worse there since then.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2001/2/5/mansfield-to-give-two-grades-pstudents/
I think most can agree that the academic system in the 20th century has been rigged to program rather than educate students with higer learning.
It's so sad.
Sad, but also gives us the opportunity to make the changes that actually benefit humanity. The first step is recognition that the system was designed to fail . Rockefeller not only corrupted the medical health system, but also the educational system. Americans were better educated before the 20th century than they are now.
Imho, it started *way* before Rockefeller. Getting rid of government schools is essential, I think. School choice funding is how to start. Our all-the-way homeschooling journey included many books written in the 1800s all the way back to antiquity.
"The first step in understanding the state of education today is to review how government came to be the dominant force behind schooling in the United States. From the outset of the first settlements in the New World, Americans founded and successfully maintained a decentralized network of schools through the 1850s. Then, beginning in New England, a wave of change swept across the country, which soon saw states quickly abandoning the original American model of decentralized, private education in favor of government-funded and operated schools.
"This movement not only altered the direction and control of elementary and secondary education in the United States, but it also contradicted many of the principles Americans had fought for less than a century earlier:
- A country founded in opposition to central governmental authority allowed for bureaucratic management of its schools.
- A country synonymous with "free enterprise" and distrust of legally protected monopolies built a government monopoly in schooling.
- A country that stretched the exercise of individual choice to its practical limits in nearly every sphere of life severely limited the exercise of choice in schooling, assigning the responsibility for education to the discretion of government authorities.
"The system of K-12 government schooling that exists to this day clashes with the political, economic, social, and cultural traditions of the United States to an extent unparalleled by any other institution in American society."
https://www.mackinac.org/3249
https://www.thesouljam.com/post/the-ugly-truth-about-the-education-system-you-were-never-told
I believe most of us on this substack would agree that we've been duped and it's time for change. Thankfully, more families are homeschooling and pulling their children out of public schools or at the very least, monitoring their education more closely. It's also time to realize that higher educational institions are not what we've been sold as imperative for good jobs and one's best life. Skills for making useful products are in such demand now because of the emphasis for a college degree. Not everyone is cut out to be what we like to call, a Professional and skilled laborers are not given the respect they deserve.
'Duped' is a good word for it.
Hyperinflation. Buckets of money. Buckets of A's. Everybody knows the score.
You know I think you gave out that link before in a similar convo because once I started reading it, it rang a bell. Love him. Musta been satisfying to hip check those haughty little prigs.
I probably did; I love that piece. I learned a lot from it.
They all get an A for Affort. They can’t spell but they can hire someone else to spell.
It's a joke but that's where our next generation of leaders is getting their "education".
Sums it up right there.
well she us a racist negro, and a faggot at that. so...