04-28-2004, 03:25 AM
As I was reading this piece of news, I was oddly reminded of the way Blizzard likes to fix some loopholes and problems in their games.
In short: starting this Fall, Princetown University will put a cap on the number of A's that can be attained per course. The cap will be at 35% for undergraduate courses, and at 55% for junior and senior independent work. At least that's what the news piece says. They don't mention how they are actually going to implement that, but the obvious guess would be that only the top students in the A bracket would get the A's, leaving some students on the lower end of the A bracket with B's. The reason behind this, according to Princetown, is that they currently average 44% to 55% A's per class and they want to go back to the early 90's average. Obviously, a University with the high standards of Princetown doesn't want people saying that all their students are getting easy A's, so the quick, band-aid solution is to put a "cap". <_<
The way I see this, this cap can only help make the competition among top-tier students even more fierce than it already is. Survival of the fittest. I'm a top-tier student, and I'm always engaged in a neverending battle to get the highest grade of my class. Putting a cap on the number of A's that can be awarded per class is not going to change the way I study; I'll just be more stressed than I already am. But what about the B student who occassionally gets to enjoy a hard-earned A? They get ripped-off.
Regarding professors, I don't know what's going on at Princetown but professors are either making their classes really easy or they are just too good at teaching that students get good grades. My experience as a student has shown me that no matter how good the professor, there's always going to be a good portion of the class that will fail miserably, so I would lean more towards the first option. In any case, the problem here are the professors and/or their teaching standards. Princetown is basically going for a big band-aid, slap-in-the-face solution that completely bypasses professors and places the burden of the problem on students. They are the ones that have to deal with it.
I wonder if Princetown actually took the time to conduct an extensive study of how their own teaching faculty is working.
In short: starting this Fall, Princetown University will put a cap on the number of A's that can be attained per course. The cap will be at 35% for undergraduate courses, and at 55% for junior and senior independent work. At least that's what the news piece says. They don't mention how they are actually going to implement that, but the obvious guess would be that only the top students in the A bracket would get the A's, leaving some students on the lower end of the A bracket with B's. The reason behind this, according to Princetown, is that they currently average 44% to 55% A's per class and they want to go back to the early 90's average. Obviously, a University with the high standards of Princetown doesn't want people saying that all their students are getting easy A's, so the quick, band-aid solution is to put a "cap". <_<
The way I see this, this cap can only help make the competition among top-tier students even more fierce than it already is. Survival of the fittest. I'm a top-tier student, and I'm always engaged in a neverending battle to get the highest grade of my class. Putting a cap on the number of A's that can be awarded per class is not going to change the way I study; I'll just be more stressed than I already am. But what about the B student who occassionally gets to enjoy a hard-earned A? They get ripped-off.
Regarding professors, I don't know what's going on at Princetown but professors are either making their classes really easy or they are just too good at teaching that students get good grades. My experience as a student has shown me that no matter how good the professor, there's always going to be a good portion of the class that will fail miserably, so I would lean more towards the first option. In any case, the problem here are the professors and/or their teaching standards. Princetown is basically going for a big band-aid, slap-in-the-face solution that completely bypasses professors and places the burden of the problem on students. They are the ones that have to deal with it.
I wonder if Princetown actually took the time to conduct an extensive study of how their own teaching faculty is working.
The gods made heavy metal and they saw that is was good
They said to play it louder than Hell
We promised that we would
When losers say it's over with you know that it's a lie
The gods made heavy metal and it's never gonna die
- Manowar
They said to play it louder than Hell
We promised that we would
When losers say it's over with you know that it's a lie
The gods made heavy metal and it's never gonna die
- Manowar