Kerry and Bush both had about the same grades in college -- after the campaigns last year depicted Kerry as the "brainier" of the two. Kerry just recently finally released what his actual grades were at Yale.
quote: BOSTON — Sen. John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year -- in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.
His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 -- his highest grade -- in political science as a senior.
"I always told my dad that D stood for distinction," Kerry said in a written response to reporters' questions. He said he has previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than studying.
Under Yale's grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade.
In 1999, The New Yorker (search) magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year. Bush's highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.
Kerry, a Democrat, previously declined to release the transcript, which was included in his Navy records. He gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.
Kerry graduated from Yale in 1966, Bush in 1968.
Personally, I think that's pretty low for both of them -- I can't imagine what my family would say if I had scored that badly in college. Then again, I didn't attend Yale...
Farmgirl
[ June 09, 2005, 04:01 PM: Message edited by: Farmgirl ]
Posted by msquared (Member # 4484) on :
Truth in advertising. Bush always said that he was an average student.
msquared
Posted by Jay (Member # 5786) on :
Here I thought D was for Diploma
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Did anyone think that John Kerry came across as extremely intelligent? For me, I think it would be more disturbing if he was, because that would mean that my vague conspiracy thoughts were correct and he purposefully threw the election.
It was a depressing election being pretty sure that I was significantly more intelligent than either of the candidates. Well that and realizing that there were no good guys and that the American public doesn't mind that no one in the election seemed to care that much about saying thing that weren't obviously untrue.
Posted by stacey (Member # 3661) on :
Wow, your exams must be really easy in the US. A pass here is 50%, a C. I don't mind a C. C's get degrees as the saying goes......
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
Keep in mind this was before grade inflation. Still, this is very amusing.
Posted by Danzig (Member # 4704) on :
To me, Kerry came across as more intelligent than Bush, but not by a whole lot.
How much more is significantly, MrSquicky?
Posted by Sopwith (Member # 4640) on :
Wasn't terribly impressed with the intellect of either candidate. But didn't they have some great PR groups?
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
I knew neither were Albert Einstein's reincarnation, but that brings me to my other point. Just because you do bad in school doesn't mean you aren't intelligent. Einstein failed school for the most part, he dropped out of high school and didn't attend college.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Also, just because you aren't extremely intelligent doesn't mean you cannot be an excellent president.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
I never thought grades or going to college makes one more intelligent, or by not going it makes you less intelligent.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Good grades doesn't necessarily mean a high intelligence. It can also be done through hard work and study. High intelligence and low grades can also indicate laziness.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
As it did with me.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
quote:I knew neither were Albert Einstein's reincarnation, but that brings me to my other point. Just because you do bad in school doesn't mean you aren't intelligent. Einstein failed school for the most part, he dropped out of high school and didn't attend college.
Einstein did bad in school because he was lightyears ahead of every teacher he ever had. He was expelled from high school, he did not drop out, because he continually challenged his teachers and their teachings.
He failed an entrance exam that would have allowed him to study as an electrical engineer, due in large part to the fact that he was sixteen at the time, and he didn't study. Eventually he wound up at a Swiss university, where he routinely skipped class to study physics and math texts in the library.
Einstein was reading physics texts at 12, Darwin at 13, the only degrees he had were honorary.
I think you are correct in saying he was "bad at school". But I think saying that "he failed school for the most part" is an uninformed statement. It's a common misconception, but it's not true.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:High intelligence and low grades can also indicate laziness.
I think that high intelligence actually promotes laziness a lot. If you never, ever have to study in high school, it's too easy to find college too hard to bother with.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
If John Kerry were intelligent he would have put the party's interest ahead of his personal ambition and not weakened What's his name. Dean. Maybe. Intelligent doesn't mean effective. I guess that's where we're going with the grade thing.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:I can't imagine what my family would say if I had scored that badly in college.
A lot of things about this sentence really bother me, but I'll focus on one: Why is what your family says about your grades of such paramount importance that you would say "I can't imagine what my family would say..." instead of, for instance, "I can't imagine how disappointed I would feel..." ...?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Perhaps her family was putting her through college. In that case, they *should* have something to say about her grades.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Should they? I'm of the opinion that they should trust that she's doing her best, and they should also consider that grades are in many respects essentially meaningless. When I was in engineering school, people with averages ten or twenty percent higher than mine used to come to me for help.
Added: And either way I certainly don't think that the parents' opinion should be the first consideration when you see your transcript. Regardless of who's footing the bill, how you feel about your own grades is more important than how your parents feel about them.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:I'm of the opinion that they should trust that she's doing her best
Why? Because all kids do their best? Or because *their* wouldn't let themselves fall behind? Or because that individual has shown themselves to be trustworthy?
I don't think it's unreasonable for parents to require a certain GPA if they are going to pay for college. Academic scholarships work that way, and there's nothing wrong with parental scholarships having that element as well.
Parents don't have a duty to put their kids through college, after all.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Why? Because all kids do their best? Or because *their* wouldn't let themselves fall behind? Or because that individual has shown themselves to be trustworthy?
Because grades just aren't very important. And also a bit of that trustworthiness one, too.
quote:I don't think it's unreasonable for parents to require a certain GPA if they are going to pay for college.
I think it's more than unreasonable, I think it's silly. How can the parents have a clue what reasonable expectations are? They have no frame of reference.
And I think that in a system where post-secondary education is not free or at least comparatively low-cost, then yes, parents ought to try to provide that option for their children if it's possible.
Posted by msquared (Member # 4484) on :
So when I had a GPA of 0.5 my last quarter in college, my parents should not have been pissed that I wasted $10,000 of thier money?(This was in 1981.)
msquared
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Had you wasted it?
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
wow Twinky. I never really thought about it until you just brought it up. Why DID I say that?
Having less than nearly perfect grades just isn't done in my family. I don't know how to express it any other way.
I'll put it this way -- I have a bachelor degree and I probably have the LOWEST degree of anyone else in my family (I'm counting mostly my sisters, but also most extended family). I got good grades all through high school, but struggled to match my older sister's straight-A's that she got all through college (even though I was in a totally different field and didn't have her 'drive').
I don't know exactly why I said that. I just remember how disappointed my grandparents (who basically raised me) seemed to be if I got less than an A -- not because they insisted on A's, but because they felt I was always capable of an A, so when I got a B, I wasn't doing my best.
And no -- my family did not financially help me through college - my father was already dead, as was my grandmother, and my grandfather soon afterwards (all the people who would probably really care about my grades). So then I guess it carried over only as my own expectations of myself.
Farmgirl
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
If I was a parent paying for my child's education in college there absolutely would be expectations of performance. Not to pick on msquared but a 0.5 GPA? I think I would be a little upset too Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
quote: they should also consider that grades are in many respects essentially meaningless.
What respects are these?
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Farmgirl:
I had a similar problem, but I guess the difference between you and I is that I do see it as a problem, and my parents' expectations never translated to my own expectations for myself.
My parents' expectations were never explicitly stated in terms of grades, but when my transcript consistently came back with grades in the 67-73% range (with occasional dips down into the 50s and spikes up into the 80s), it was clear that they didn't believe that their brilliant little boy might not actually be the smartest kid in engineering school.
That doesn't mean I'm a bad engineer. Grades do not translate to real-world success or failure, nor are they particularly indicative of actual intelligence. Letter grades are better than numerical grades, but not that much. I always received exemplary evaluations on my co-op work terms, but I was consistently near the bottom of my class for the first three years of university.
Posted by romanylass (Member # 6306) on :
If we are paying for our kid's post-secondary education, and especially if they are still living at home, you can be sure we will have expectations. College is voluntary, if they don't want to go and do the work they can GET A JOB. If they are just slacking their way through college to avoid looking for paid work, I'm not financing that.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Grades do matter in many things - like getting into graduate school for example. True, most employers don't check your GPA, but if you're looking toward higher education they do make a difference, particularly if you're wanting to get into a competitive program.
The program I'm looking toward only admits 28 people ever other year. You better believe I care very much about my grades.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I had to trick myself into making good grades, but it worked reasonably well.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
My point is simply that saying "we'll fund your education as long as your grades exceed our arbitrary setpoint" is stupid; Parents have no frame of reference to tell what the target average grade should be. I hope that a good parent can tell if their child is slacking through university or actually applying themselves, regardless of whether the child is living at home.
Grades aren't terribly important for grad school in my field. What matters more is your experience and how well you get along with the researchers.
Even in cases where grades matter, the standard is arbitrary. How do you compare a 3.8 GPA from university A with a 3.5 GPA from university B? You can't.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I do think that it is reasonable if the parents' standards are the same as the university's standards for graduation. If the kid literally cannot graduate with the grades he's getting, then he is wasting his parents' money. That makes the standard non-arbitrary.
I (usually, with recent horrifying exceptions) see grades as tools, to get you where you want. If you want to go to med school, they do need to be high. If you want to graduate and then work at a desired job, they need to be high enough to graduate and get the desired job. They aren't an end in themselves, but they aren't meaningless.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
In that case, kat, there's no need for the requirement. At my university, anyway, if you fail consistently you don't get to come back. You just go home with your tail between your legs. Added: Someone else can have that spot then.
As to your second paragraph, grades being meaningless doesn't contradict your sentences about med school and graduating. That medical schools require high grades does not make grades themselves any more meaningful.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
But it does mean that desiring high grades is not a pointless activity. Disagreeing with the weight given to them doesn't change that weight is given to them, and if you want to go to med school, you have to have high ones.
For myself, high grades had a very specific meaning: money. If I had good grades, scholarships paid for school. If I didn't have good grades, I paid for school. Good grades definitely had a value, to the dollar amount.
For families with limited resources, setting a standard for grades that would induce other people to pay for school has definite merit.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:For families with limited resources, setting a standard for grades that would induce other people to pay for school has definite merit.
Why? What's wrong with "do your best?"
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
They probably wont. Besides, what exactly is "your best"? Every waking moment devouted to school? There has to be a line drawn somewhere, and one way of drawing it is grade goals.
Hobbes Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
But effort is not correlated with grades. It certainly wasn't in my case.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
I agree, but Kat's point is that grades are a very important part of the university, for better or for worse, and it's not totally ridiculous to base your goals on them, since so much of the world puts a strong emphasis on them too.
Hobbes Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I think this is better on a case-by-case basis. In my case, grades definitely did correlate with effort. The exceptions were on the fortunate side; while I did get good grades in some classes I slacked in, I never got a bad grade I didn't earn.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
That's fair enough. It definitely wasn't that way for me, though.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Until my senior year, my worst grade was in Landscape Architecture 101. *hangs head in shame* It was winter semester, 7:30, graded on attendance. I have no excuse.
---
Maybe it's schools. Grades were not a good indicator of learning in high school, but they were a better one in college. I think they are an even better one in grad school, but I'm not sure yet.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
The difference between seperate universities is one thing, but also between the arts and the sciences, and the individual courses within them. There is no 'good grade' except to you personally, where a particular grade becomes meaningless.
But not many people can rise about the pleasure of seeing an above average grade on a paper or exam or course result. It's easy to say 'I don't care about my grades' if they are decent, but much harder to say, 'my a+ is irrelevent' and mean it. As a result, grades are not meaningless. They are not the end of the world, but they are a goal.
Parents do care about how you do because not only is a huge amount of money invested in you, they also want you to be The Best in whatever you are doing, whatever path you choose. The money thing can be only an excuse to guilt you into performing well and thus giving them the satisfaction of that piece of paper that "proves" to them and others that they have brought up a child successfully. I'm not saying they even do this conciously.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
'Good grades' to my parents would have been me getting a 4.0 throughout college, because they know that even in my electrical engineering curriculum it wouldn't have been a stretch for me.
'Good grades' for me were getting pretty much straight B's while putting forth very little effort. I just have always had things I would rather do than sit in class and hear things explained for the fifth time when I understood the first, or second time through.
Plus I'm lazy.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
If I've raised my child for 18 years I have a good idea of what he or she is capable of. And with my husband and I both being college educated we know what it takes to succeed in school.
So I do have the capability to determine whether or not my child is putting forth an adequate effort in college, and if I'm paying for it I absolutely have the right to set standards.
To insinuate that parents should pay for school regardless of how the child performs is ridiculous. We're talking about significant sums of money and if that child is still my dependent (and if they're full time students they are) I can set whatever parameters I wish.
I don't demand all A's out of my kids. I do know what they're capable of and expect them to at least try. That goes for elementary and middle school and it will go for college as well.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
Disclaimer: I'm quite in a middle of a situation of this type, so I might not be entirely "objective". I'm sorry if I come out too harsh, and I'll listen gladly to any corrections.
quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Parents do care about how you do because not only is a huge amount of money invested in you, they also want you to be The Best in whatever you are doing, whatever path you choose. The money thing can be only an excuse to guilt you into performing well and thus giving them the satisfaction of that piece of paper that "proves" to them and others that they have brought up a child successfully. I'm not saying they even do this consciously.
Ugh... been there. Recently. "We don't care about the grades" worked while I was first/second. Not so much afterward. And sometimes parents don't seem to understand there's much more to life than school, and that even failing one entire year isn't the end of the world. Now is the time to learn a hundred things that they don't teach you in school, and sometimes those experiences will affect your grades. But no matter how much they try, they won't be able to see that. Because when they say "I've been through this" they don't actually remember to continue "and it has affected me as much as you".
quote:Originally posted by Belle: To insinuate that parents should pay for school regardless of how the child performs is ridiculous. We're talking about significant sums of money and if that child is still my dependent (and if they're full time students they are) I can set whatever parameters I wish.
I'm sorry, but that really sounds like tyranny to me. Have you considered what the child's options are in this? Pay for himself? What if he can't afford it? Should he work to support himself? What if that affects how much he would like to involve himself in his study? And what makes you think that what you view as reasonable expectations are reasonable after all? I've come to study in France, under a different system, in a field my parents know next to nothing about, and yet they should get to set standards?! They think so, I don't. That kept building up over the years and led to a split between us. There are more reasons than this, but this is one of the main ones. They now think I'm blackmailing them: "either you agree with me, or I won't talk to you". I'm not. I've reached the point where listening to their expectations only drove me mad and decided I'm not going that way anymore. The "but we still love you" line doesn't work anymore, not when it constantly stands at the end of reproaches.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
quote: Pay for himself? What if he can't afford it? Should he work to support himself?
Yes. If necessary, drop out of school, save up money, then go back. A college education is a luxury not a neccesity. If a parent is kind enough to help pay, then the kid should feel gratitude.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
Trust me, I feel gratitude for that. But I won't let money received from them make me feel guilty about the grades I get. That's why I recently told them I won't take money from them anymore, actually. My brother has agreed to give me money in form of a loan that I'll pay back when I'm able, but otherwise I would have been in a very delicate situation. They think I'm nuts and said they could still help me, but to me that money would come for too high a price, the price of accepting each and every one of their demands.
Posted by antihero (Member # 8156) on :
I'm in high school. According to my tests, I have an IQ of a little over 150. Theoretically, I should be getting straight 'A's in school. I get straight 'B-"s. I know people who I consider far less "intelligent" than I who get straight 'A's. I know people who I consider as intelligent as I who get straight 'B's.
IQ is a farce, of course, as numerous studies have demonstrated. So what really qualifies intelligence? When I know someone for a while, I get an assessment of what I think is their "intelligence". But that intelligence doesn't correlate at all to grades or IQ, or even how intelligently someone speaks.
With the people I've talked to, intelligence in them seems to be, almost, sentience. It's the difference between the red-pills and the blue-pills among us - who sits with what they have, never dreaming of another level of understanding, and who constantly analyzes existence; breathes reality? To me, intelligence is the level to which you analyze your world. I'm a firm believer in that quote of Socrates, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I have a friend, brilliant physicist and philosopher, who can't stand that quote. He believes that people merely do what the serotonin tells them to do. That we're just bundles of atoms. I don't, but I have no way of proving that we aren't, which I think is the nature of faith. But if I believe we have what might be termed souls, and aren't meaningless clumps of amino acids, then I also have to believe that we must analyze our lives and existences... and I don't know why. Thus, anyone who does that, is, in my mind, intelligent, but I can't quantify that intelligence, nor can I prove or give evidence to support that that is what intelligence really is.
Long post, that.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Um, Corwin, failing an entire year is the end of the world, or at least any reasonable expectation of other people paying for your slacking.
Incidentally, what's the situation with student loans in the US? In Norway you get a loan from the state that's interest-free for one course of study, usually four years. You have to pass (not just take, but pass!) a given number of credits each semester, though, or they start charging you interest. It's enough to live on, given that you are going to live in cheap student housing, of course. I saved up mine for going to school here; most people blow theirs on beer the first month of the term, of course. It's not quite so bad now that they've changed to handing it out in monthly installments; but back when it was one installment each semester, I knew at least one guy who would live like a king for a month, then eat day-old bread and ketchup for the rest of the month. Also he tended to flunk. Great fencer, though, beat me every time.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Um, Corwin, failing an entire year is the end of the world, or at least any reasonable expectation of other people paying for your slacking.
Not if it is due to circumstances other than that person not wanting to study. Sorry, I realize I probably shouldn't have opened the discussion since I'm not willing to go further and explain all the circumstances at this moment.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Corwin, you may not be aware of my situation.
I did fail an entire semester. And no one continued to pay for my school.
It took ten years before I got back to school, and I absolutely firmly support my parents decision not to pay for me to go to school after I failed.
I needed to learn that failures of your own doing must be accepted and dealt with. I'm glad no one bailed me out, I had to learn how to stand on my own two feet.
If my child fails, no it isn't the end of the world, but it is the end of my paying for their school. If they want to go to school they'll do what I did - support themselves and pay for school on their own when they're ready to commit themselves to it and finish.
I'm in school right now finishing up and I'm paying for it myself and it's a struggle, but this time my grades are excellent and I'm committed and I'm going to do well. Had my parents enabled my slacking off and my nonchalant attitude, I doubt I would have been as successful as I am.
As a parent there is no law that says I have to pay for my kids college education. But I do believe it's my job to teach them responsiblity and how to accept consequences of your actions. Continuing to bail them out when they fail does not teach them that valuable lesson.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
You're making the false assumption that failure is always a consequence of not trying hard enough -- the same assumption my parents made about my "poor" grades.
Since we're talking about personal situations, I'll apply your "parents get to set standards" to my own university education:
Because my parents "knew" that I was capable of getting A's (I wasn't), but I got B's, they should have withheld the money they'd invested to cover my tuition costs.
I would have tried to apply for student loans. Because of the way the Ontario Student Assistance program works, I would have been rejected since my parents 1) had made tax-deductible investments specifically intended for (and legally restricted to) paying for their only child's post-secondary education, and 2) had sufficient income and other investments to cover all of my costs, not just tuition, if they so desired.
I would have wound up losing my berth in engineering school -- all because my parents couldn't accept that yes, there were indeed people in engineering school who were outright better at some things (notably abstract theoretical math) than me, and that getting straight A's (or, indeed, more than a handful of A's before fourth year) was simply beyond my ability.
The way things worked in reality is that they used the Education Savings Plan money to pay my tuition and my first term in residence, and I used my co-op work term income to pay for my residence/rent and living expenses after the first term.
A friend of mine started in the same program as me a couple of years later and had parents who thought like you do, Belle. Her grades were comparable to mine, but her parents were not satisfied. Finally, they issued an ultimatum: one more term, and if your grades don't come up we stop paying. She chose to switch out of engineering to environmental science, got much better grades, and made her parents happy. Luckily, she likes environmental science and doesn't regret having made the switch -- but that's a fluke, and no thanks whatsoever to her parents.
I will always be grateful that I had my parents and not hers.
Posted by johnsonweed (Member # 8114) on :
Wow, what a thread this has become. I'm not sure how to respond because I have been thinking about this so much lately. I have to deal with this from too many perspectives to have easy answers. You see I have been thinking about this because my son (7th grade) who got straight A's throughout most of the year slacked off and got some B's here at the end. He still made "gold" honor roll, but told me that he did not work as hard. I was really taken back, because the rule has always been do your best. The problem is that his best really is straight A's, so I have come to expect that from him. Perhaps I put too much pressure on him to succeed, but I really feel that it is for his own good.
I often think about my own lazy experience in school (can you say hypocracy?). I did not always work at my potential, but it worked out for me since I ended up with a PhD and have done quite well for myself. I know first hand that there is room for some failure on the road to success, so why do I have these crazy expectations for my kid? My wife constantly reminds me that I have set the bar kind of high for him and maybe he just gets tired and reacts. I don't know. I really need to work on this.
The final reason that I have been thinking about this is I just submitted my grades for the smemster. One of the hardest things I do as professor is assign grades to the students in my courses for all of the reasons that have been articulated in this thread. What is an 'A'? To me it means outstanding work AND effort in the course. The trick is believeing that the exams I write are fair and reasonable tools to assess the performance of the students in the class. Is an 'A' always an 'A'? I don't know. I have looked at the exams I wrote 10 years ago and comapred them to now and they are different. I have re-read the term papers from that time and compared them to now and my expectations have changed a bit as well.
I often wonder if the 'A' I give is the same as the 'A' of my colleagues? Probably not. You have all proabaly heard about the grade inflation issue in American colleges. Even schools like Harvard suffer from it (though they insist that their grades are high because of the student quality they receive as freshman). I have often thought that we have less of an issue of grade inflation as we have a problem with expectation depression. Perhaps I am guilty of this as well.
Letter grades are unfortunately the only tool we have right now. There are alternative forms of assessment,I know, but they are not manageable with the number of students we see each term. The one thing we rely on to help determine the meaning of a student's GPA is the standardized test. However, this is not perfect. Exams like the ACT, SAT and GRE are really only useful for determining the likelihood of success in the FIRST YEAR. These tests do not indicate how well a student will do in the program. The best indicator I have seen of overall student performance is effort. Of course ability is very important, but perseverence really makes or breaks students most of all.
Sorry for all the rambling.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I think that if you failed a year of University, and took reasonable efforts to actually pass (i.e. you attended all or most of the classes and handed all the assignments) then that could be considered circumstances outside of your control.
However, if you fail because you just didn't bother, then why should your parents continue to pay.
However, I don't think parents should withhold financial support if they can provide it if their son or daughter is not performing perfectly yet seems to take an active interest in other things (i.e. just passing in University but is the head of the debating club).
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It was the end of my first semester teaching journalism at American University. The students had left for winter break. As a rookie professor, I sat with trepidation in my office on a December day to electronically post my final grades.
My concern was more about completing the process correctly than anything else. It took an hour to compute and type in the grades for three classes, and then I hit "enter." That's when the trouble started.
In less than an hour, two students challenged me. Mind you, there had been no preset posting time. They had just been religiously checking the electronic bulletin board that many colleges now use.
"Why was I given a B as my final grade?" demanded a reporting student via e-mail. "Please respond ASAP, as I have never received a B during my career here at AU and it will surely lower my GPA."
I must say I was floored. Where did this kid get the audacity to so boldly challenge a professor? And why did he care so much? Did he really think a prospective employer was going to ask for his GPA?
I checked the grades I'd meticulously kept on the electronic blackboard. He'd missed three quizzes and gotten an 85 on two of the three main writing assignments. There was no way he was A material. I let the grade mar his GPA because he hadn't done the required work.
...
Other students were more persistent, particularly a bright young man who'd been in the same class as the briber. He'd gotten an A-minus and made it clear in an e-mail he wasn't happy with it: "I have seen a number of the students from the class, and we inevitably got to talking about it. I had assumed that you are a tough grader and that earning an A-minus from you was a difficult task, but upon talking to other students, it appears that that grade was handed out more readily than I had thought. Not that other students did not deserve a mark of that caliber, but I do feel as though I added a great deal to the class. I feel that my work, class participation, and consistency should have qualified me for a solid A."
When I ignored the e-mail, he pestered me a second time: "I know it's a great pain in the ass to have an A-minus student complain, but I'm starting to wonder about the way grades are given. I would be very curious to know who the A students were. While other students may have outdone me with quiz grades, I made up for it with participation and enthusiasm. I really feel that I deserved an A in your class. If I was an A-minus student, I assume that you must have handed out a lot of C's and D's. I don't mean to be a pain -- I have never contested anything before. I feel strongly about this, though."
I shouldn't have done it, but I offered to change the grade. My student was thrilled. He wrote, "With grade inflation being what it is and the levels of competition being so high, students just can't afford to be hurt by small things. I thought that you did a great job with the course."
It's worth reading the whole thing. The section where I bolded the sentence is particularly annoying.
Posted by johnsonweed (Member # 8114) on :
"...I thought that you did a great job with the course."
This has become a real issue/problem. Student evaluations are taken into consideration for tenure and promotion decisions now. No one wants bad reviews, or bad word of mouth (see RateMyProfessors.com).
Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
So, a parent really can't *know* their child and its performance well enough to set reasonable standards for scholastic performance?
My grades were worse in college than in elementary or high school, but my grades in HS were good enough to get me scholarships so I didn't have to have my parents pay for school. So I guess I avoided the problem of having my parents know me well enough to set realistic goals. I got the entire spectrum of letter grades above F (never failed a class at the end of term), but I definitely got higher grades in the classes where I put forth effort.
I think there's some correlation, and I think that parents *can* know their children well enough to motivate them to achieve, and not necessarily with money. Especially if they don't have the college nest egg's worth of wealth to spare.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Twinky we're talking about failure here, not making B's.
If you fail every course in a semester there is a pretty darn good chance you didn't try hard enough.
I'm not talking about pulling the plug on my kid if she makes B's, sheesh.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Also, why is there the assumption that parents "owe" their children a college education?
There are plenty of people out there whose parents don't pay for their college. Having your college tuition paid for is a privilege, not a right. And privileges can be taken away at the discretion of the person providing the privilege.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
The people in Dag's article do not teach engineering at my school. Most students in my class shoot for a C, and not everyone makes that!
Hobbes
[ June 09, 2005, 11:34 PM: Message edited by: Hobbes ]
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I find it interesting that the subjects mentioned in Dag's article were communications, english... soft subjects, in short.
Posted by Eaquae Legit (Member # 3063) on :
I'm mostly with Belle on this one. I have a grade-determined scholarship I've worked very hard to maintain, and it's a large part of how I can go to school. As for the rest, I've paid for it myself, or will be paying for it later (loans). I've had crummy-paying jobs (~$2-5/hr). I know there have been times where I've just been lucky, but I've worked for almost everything I've got.
I don't think it's unreasonable for parents to ask for a certain standard, not if they're paying for everything. It should be a reasonable standard, and hopefully by this time the parents know their child well enough to know what "reasonable" is. And they have the prerogative to be flexible if things don't come off exactly right. But if the child doesn't like it, there's always getting a job. I sound heartless, I guess, but I've never understood how a parent is just expected to finance a child's education. It just boggles my mind.
(For context, I suppose, I am Canadian, and I know our schools are a lot cheaper tuition-wise.)
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
When I got to college, I was surprised at how easy the grading was. I turned in papers that I thought were okay, but by no means fantastic, and was extremely surprised to have 4.0s on all of them. In high school AP classes I would have gotten C's and B's on most of them.
I BSed a paper one time having almost no knowledge on the subject (I hated the subject and the class, and had taken on one too many classes that semester, so I figured I'd sacrifice one and fix it later, stupid I know, but that's what I did), and got the paper back with a 3.9 grade. I asked my prof about the grading process and she admitted she had a friend of hers grade the papers for her, and then asked if I wanted my grade bumped to a 4.0.
I didn't ask that my grade be lowered, I'm not stupid, but I was certainly surprised, and lost all respect for the prof.
And there have been times when I've tried really hard and only gotten a 3.5, technically a solid A or A- and I've been disappointed, but I seldom complain. I'll admit to being one of those students who is pissed when they get a 99% or an A but want the 100% and the A+. But usually I get angry at myself for not knowing enough, not at the prof for grading me accordingly.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Anyone who puts in even a moderate amount of effort at the junior college I'm attending right now can get A's. All the instructors tell you exactly what's going to be on the tests, if you even study a little you should be able to get good grades.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people who don't put forth any effort at all.
I haven't found it difficult to maintain a 4.0 since I started back, so long as I'm diligent and stay on top of my workload.
Posted by Kiwi (Member # 7982) on :
quote:However, if you fail because you just didn't bother, then why should your parents continue to pay.
Absolutely. They shouldn't. Because:
quote: Also, why is there the assumption that parents "owe" their children a college education?
There are plenty of people out there whose parents don't pay for their college. Having your college tuition paid for is a privilege, not a right. And privileges can be taken away at the discretion of the person providing the privilege.
Exactly. I don't know anyone whose parents pay for university. Maybe it's different there, but here in NZ, everyone I know (and I would say the vast majority of students that I don't know) has a student loan. Your fees, textbook costs and some living costs if you can't afford to support yourself all go on the loan. Everyone qualifies for it, and it is interest free as long as you're still a student, but you get interest once you leave uni and have a paying job.
I have to say it's certainly possible I would have tried harder in uni if I had had to work first and save up the money for uni, rather than putting it on the loan and paying it back later. But it's still my debt at the end of the day, and if I fail I still have to pay it. Lessons need learning and all that. Most uni students are 18 or over - adults. If their parents want to pay for uni, great. But it's not a right. If my parents were paying for uni and I failed a semester, there's no way I'd expect them to continue paying my fees - I wouldn't even ask, I'd feel too bad (unless there was a really good reason why I failed).
To me, grades matter, but aren't hugely important. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't rather have an A than a C! But I'm pretty much happy with "decent" rather than "excellent" grades. Unfortunately, that may make it more difficult for me to get my first "proper" (post-uni) job, particularly with only a B average in law school, when I could be getting A's if I spent every waking hour studying. But every waking hour studying? And stressing over exams (more than I already do )? Maybe I'm just lazy, but the A's aren't worth it to me. And besides, it makes the few I've got more special.
--tt&t
Posted by Rappin' Ronnie Reagan (Member # 5626) on :
The U.S. government expects parents to help their children with college tuition. You aren't considered an independent student unless you've served in military, are married, were born before 1980, or have dependents. U.S. government loans are also a lot worse than the loans in NZ. Here the maximum per year for an undergrad is around $5,500. My tuition freshman year was almost $30,000, and that's pretty normal for a private college, I think. Obviously public universities are cheaper, but $5,500 doesn't cover the tuition for the university here either.
It's been expected in my family that my parents would help pay for college all my life. They helped my brother when he went. I consider it part of raising a child. If/when I have children I'll help pay for their college education. I'm tired of feeling bad for feeling like I'm spoiled because my parents pay for my tuition.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
There's no reason to feel like you're spoiled and you definately shouldn't feel bad. Just realize that you are lucky to have parents who are so willing to help.
The government doesn't expect parents to help their children with college tuition. Half of Americans don't even go to college. It is perfectly possible at a public college, to work part time all through school and with the aid of the limmited government loan money pay for it without the help of parents. There are also non-government loans that can be obtained. There's also grants and scholarships.
Parental help is definately nice, but it's not a requisite. The government only has a limmited amount of funds for student loans, and since most students do get help from their parents, that is a reasonable measure to asses the amount of government help they get. That's not equivalent to the government expecting parents to fund their kid's education.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Belle:
quote:Twinky we're talking about failure here, not making B's.
No, you said:
quote:So I do have the capability to determine whether or not my child is putting forth an adequate effort in college, and if I'm paying for it I absolutely have the right to set standards.
So parents have the right to set whatever arbitrary standard they want, and children don't get a say. You said that, not me. I just applied that to my own situation when I was in university.
quote:Also, why is there the assumption that parents "owe" their children a college education?
I didn't say that. What I said was: "And I think that in a system where post-secondary education is not free or at least comparatively low-cost, then yes, parents ought to try to provide that option for their children if it's possible."
"Ought to try" is a far cry from "owe." I actually believe that post-secondary education (that includes universities, comminity colleges, trade schools, et cetera) should be free, or susbsidized so significantly (via loans that do not accrue interest while you're in school, but smaller so that they don't leave you tens of thousands of dollars in debt when you're done) that parental help is not needed, but failing that, then yes, I do think that parents should try to help with post-secondary education if the child wants to pursue it.
Note that I didn't say the kid should get a free ride, what I said is that 1) parents should help make the option of university/college/trade school available to their children (that's should, not must), and 2) they shouldn't set arbitrary standards for maintaining the funding based on grades (where an arbitrary standard is "you will receive a grade greater than X or we will cut you off").
If the child tries something, hates it, and withdraws to switch to something else, do you maintain funding? Do you write it off? Do you cut them off? Do you make that first semester's tuition, which was clearly a poor choice, into a loan rather than a grant (that whole "pay for your own mistakes philosophy").
I believe that it is the responsibility of the parents to help their children get ready to be functioning people and citizens (I also think that the government shares this responsibility). That includes (for both parents and government) helping to make post-secondary education of some stripe an option (again, not exlcusively university), since it's constantly getting harder to get jobs with only a high school diploma.
I certainly believe that children should learn to make and fix their own mistakes, but I also think that cutting someone off at 18 or 19 and turning them loose in the real world is overly harsh. There is a balance to be struck, and I happen to think that my parents hit it very well (because my mother wanted to give me everything under the sun while my dad understood that I needed to move ahead at least partly under my own steam, and if I moved in the wrong direction I could sort the problems out myself).
It's not as though I got a free ride. I got a lot of help, yes, but I handled my own finances, and even managed to start saving for retirement while I was still in university because of the combination of my parents' investments and co-op. I have a really, really hard time seeing this as a bad thing.
Kiwi,
quote:Exactly. I don't know anyone whose parents pay for university. Maybe it's different there, but here in NZ, everyone I know (and I would say the vast majority of students that I don't know) has a student loan. Your fees, textbook costs and some living costs if you can't afford to support yourself all go on the loan. Everyone qualifies for it, and it is interest free as long as you're still a student, but you get interest once you leave uni and have a paying job.
In Canada you can't get a student loan if your parents earn enough to pay some or all of your costs, even if they aren't giving you a dime. If you don't meet your parents' arbitrary grade standard and they cut you off, the loan system doesn't care and won't fund you.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
There are also some exceptions to the independent student rule. I had to go through a ton of paperwork and a lot of meetings to get my undergrad college to declare me as independent. My parents wouldn't help, yet they were giving me financial aid according to my parents income. The loans I took out to meet the total costs always had some extra for books. The refund check would be sent to my parents house.
Whereupon my mother would cash it and not tell me about it. I didn't even know that the checks had ever arrived until a monk in the business office told me.
RRR, you aren't spoiled. I think spoiled has a connotation of a kid who gets whatever he wants and doesn't appreciate the fact that he does. You appreciate your parents paying for your schooling. You realize that it's something that not every kids gets. You aren't spoiled. You're lucky to have parents who will help you on that end of things.
And it's true, a student loan in the US wouldn't cover even a state run university anymore.
As for grading, with inflation, it all depends on the college you go to. My undergrad college had a nickname of St. C's. The average grade WAS a C. You were on the Dean's List if you had a B average. I had a 3.3 and graduated cum laude. Did I get A's? Not until my junior and senior years. I took a semester of ROTC when I was in college. Thiis includes two classes--a leadership lab and a military science course. ROTC was run through the state university and not through my school, so the credits I got were from UNH, not my college.
I was shocked when I got A's in both courses. I didn't feel like I'd earned them, and they seemed like nothing to me. But every A I got at my undergrad college, I worked for, I earned it, and I was proud of it.
If a kid has a parent paying for college, I wouldn't think it'd be too much to ask the kid to pass, so that the money for the potential credits isn't wasted. If the kid has plans for graduate school, he'd better work for higher grades than passing if the intended field of study calls for higher grades. If he doesn't, then it doesn't matter much, because in the end, everyone gets the same piece of paper.
One of the most intelligent people I know is a professor at the college I attended. He also graduted from the same college. He once told me that his GPA was 2.73.
I was shocked. I mean, this guy is brilliant, and by no means lazy (he runs marathons, dammit). He still got his masters and PhD.
*shrug*
The current study body at the school keeps asking the administration to stop hurting their grad school applications with their grading standards. They're saying that because the school doesn't inflate grades, they're being put behind kids from other schools with higher GPAs from inflated grades.
The administration refuses to lower their standards.
Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
Twinky, it doesn't have to be an "arbitrary" standard. If a parent knows their child well enough, a reasonable expectation of that child's capabilities can be ascertained, and standards set accordingly. Not all parents bother to know their children that well, I agree, but I think that it is an achievable situation. Because of your experiences I can see why you might not think so, but I think it's possible. Especially in Belle's case, I don't think the standards would be "arbitrary," and I bet she'd be open to negotiation given her children's strengths and weaknesses.
I absolutely agree that an attitude of "you come home with straight As or we cut you off" is unreasonable, but I don't think that's what Belle is advocating, and certainly not what I proposed.
Posted by Theca (Member # 1629) on :
I agree with Belle too, for the most part.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
No it's not an issue of straight A's or I cut you off.
I said I should be able to set standards, and those standards would be based partly on what the child is capable of and partly on what is acceptable at the university. If a C is required for the course to count toward your major and you consistently make D's when I know you're capable of better than that, then I would have to say it isn't an adequate effort.
However, some courses are tougher than others. I made a C in my biology class in college, I was devastated - first C I ever made! But I didn't slack off, I wasn't goofing around I really studied and had trouble with the subject matter.
I would absolutely understand if my child went through something similar. But if she's a straight A student in high school and she comes home with in incompletes and D's and F's in college, then I'd have to say it's time for her to stop living off my dime and take responsibility for herself.
If she were living on campus somewhere I'd probably insist she come home, and stay at home and attend junior college for a while to get her grades up. I'd pay for the junior college classes so long as she demonstrated she was ready to buckle down and get to work.
She would never be thrown out on the street or completely cut off, I would always be there to support my kids. But I don't consider paying for college to be part of my obligation to support them, if they've proven they will only squander what I offer.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Twinky, it almost sounds like you're advocating no standards should be used. Please tell me that's the wrong impression.
I don't think Belle's statement that you quoted meant that she believed in setting arbitrary standards. Standards, yes, but standards that take into consideration extenuating circumstances.
If my son goes into engineering and tells me one semester he taking several very difficult courses, I will understand if his grades slip. But I also hope I will know him well enough to know whether he put forth a good effort. If I find out his grades are falling because he's been skipping classes, partying, etc., why in the world would I keep funding that?
And, BTW, grades do matter in the real world when you are right out of college. I have a lot to say about hiring in my department and that is one thing I look at. It's definitely not the only thing and usually not the most important, but it does mean something. For someone right out of college, you don't have a lot to guage a prospective employee with.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Interesting. In my field, it was references, some that were professors.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Belle, when you say "parents have the right to set the standards," it might well be that your standard is pass/fail, but other parents (like Afaf and Joe, my friend's parents) can have other standards. Parents will always say that their standard is based on what they "know" their child is capable of, but I think that they're wrong as often as not. I think so because the child could be in a completely different field from either parent, or a different school.
In my case, I like to think I'm smart, but the people in my program came from right across the country. The applications process included grades, yes, but it also included a whole bunch of essay-style questions for both the applicant and several personal references (friends and teachers; naturally the applicant didn't get to see those reference essays).
My average dropped 30% from high school into my first term of university, and stayed in that ballpark until my final year. Should my parents have told me to stop living on their dime because my average (67%) was only 7% above the fail threshold?
Basically, I don't think setting a "standard" in terms of a target average grade is necessary at all. What's more important is qualitative assessment. "We expect you to try to do well" is all that should be necessary. I absolutely agree that if the child is slacking off, partying all the time, and failing as a result then parents shouldn't keep funding that, but I don't think that grades are the sole or best indicator of it. Hard-and-fast "do better than X" rules are not necessary and don't help.
zgator:
quote:Twinky, it almost sounds like you're advocating no standards should be used. Please tell me that's the wrong impression.
In my perfect world, there would be no grades in any school of any kind. I view them as a necessary evil since we do not live in my perfect world.
[Added: It's the overemphasis on grades in the Western world that creates the problem Dagonee's article discusses.]
quote:For someone right out of college, you don't have a lot to guage a prospective employee with.
If you're coming out of my program, you have two years of work experience with up to six different employers. Most companies didn't even ask me for my transcript, though I always had copies on hand in case they wanted it. The important thing was that I had received positive evaluations from all of my work term employers and had handled some pretty big projects. There are companies -- ones who ask for transcripts to be submitted along with the resume package -- who would screen me out of the interview selection process on the basis of my B- cumulative average.
I like to think that it's their loss. Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
It likely is their loss, but don't think too poorly of them. Screening applicants is hard - way harder than I thought it would be when I started my business.
For any test to include or exclude applicants from the evaluation process, there will be false positives (let someone in who you would never want to hire) and false negatives (keep someone out you would like to hire).
The final step is the interviews, and that's the best test for keeping out false positives short of a 10-year record of drunk driving for a school bus driver. But it's an expensive process to interview, and test that will cut the workload in half with almost anything less than 49% false negatives will be a useful test, depending on the type of position being hired for.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
As a college teacher (ca. this year) I am tentatively in support of parents setting grade requirements and holding their kids to them -- provided the requirements are not of the all-A sort.
It's quite possible to be getting a lot out of school if you're earning straight B's, but I've never known a student to be learning much while getting straight C's. Further, many of the C students tend to bring down the classroom experience for those people who are invested in the class.
The main problem with holding your kids to a high standard is that this may lead to cheating if the kids don't feel able to meet the standard. At "elite" universities this is not uncommon -- Princeton has 30 cases in a typical year.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
I don't worry about it too much, Dagonee, because most of the companies that do that (notably ExxonMobil) are not companies I'm interested in working for. Actually, of all of my employers, my favourite company was one that didn't ask for a transcript; I supplied one, and during the interview they asked me questions based on it. The questions were all "So I see you've taken these courses," not "So I see you got 54 in 1B calculus." That company (Suncor) also has a very open corporate culture and, not coincidentally, is consistently rated as one of the best places to work in Canada.
I don't fault companies that choose to use grades as a metric; rather, I reward companies that choose not to by applying to work for them.
[Added: I got 54 in 1B calculus, but I think my posts on the subject over the years here show that I have a pretty firm grasp of the concepts. My grade certainly isn't representative of my grasp of that material.]
Posted by johnsonweed (Member # 8114) on :
Twinky,
This is a tough thing for prof. to deal with. Sometimes we know that a particular student's grade doesn't necessarily reflect what they learned, but in an effort to be fair to the class, we give them the grade they earned (based on point total). It actually works the other way sometimes as well. Students who memorize for the exam only fall into this category. I have talked to students who got A's on one exam and after a week or so can't answer the questions again. This is why I give comprehensive finals with essays that require synthesis and extention of the material.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Unfair! How are we supposed to get straight A's if the professors insist we retain what we've learned? Everybody knows it's the exam that's important!
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
If you like comprehensive, then you'd love law school exams - they're nothing if not comprehensive. Usually the final is the only factor in the grade for the course.
But they generally don't leave room for a lot of extension of the material - you do that, and your answer will almost certainly be incomplete.
Posted by Epictetus (Member # 6235) on :
twinky, I get what your saying. My parents didn't pay for my college as I was recieving a music scholarship, but my mother had very serious misconceptions about what I was really capable of. I've always known I was smart, and in high school, she explained away my less than perfect grades as just being too far ahead of the class to care (which wasn't strictly true in every case, but she knew those cases where I was actually having trouble with the course.) As such, when it became clear that I was going to have to pull out of college because of poor grades, she was initially very pissed off at me. Upon discussion of course, we settled it, but it was the first time that I really realized that my mom had a different perception of my intelligence and my study-ethic than was actually true.
So in short, yes parents should have standards, but try not to have unrealistic views of their capabilities. Straight "A"s in High School are significantly easier to achieve than in college. (At least that's how it was in my High School, I don't want to speak for any other school.) Anyway, what you "know" about your child is not necessarily a priori thruth.
edited for grammar
Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
I don't think knowing your child well necessarily correlates with knowing their field of study well, and I still think it's possible (difficult yes, but isn't that so with all things parenting?) to know your child well enough to tell if they're slacking or not putting forth their best effort, and that it's possible to set standards by that which are not "arbitrary." The word arbitrary denotes that little to no thought was put into the setting of a standard, and a truly involved parent can tailor the standard to the student, and therefore have it not be arbitrary.
Posted by Kiwi (Member # 7982) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: If you like comprehensive, then you'd love law school exams - they're nothing if not comprehensive. Usually the final is the only factor in the grade for the course.
But they generally don't leave room for a lot of extension of the material - you do that, and your answer will almost certainly be incomplete.
I hate law exams.
Particularly open-book exams. And exams where they deliberately give you more questions than you can possibly answer well in the time allowed. What in heck is the point?
As for exams that are only 2 hours long and are worth 80% of your final grade?
ESPECIALLY when an answer that would get an A for one lecturer is a B- for another!
Yep, it's exam time for me at the moment. I did like one exam; Insurance Law. It was still only 2 hours but worth 70% (or it could be worth 100%, depending on your mark for the previous 30% exam - if your 30% mark would help, it counts, but if it would drag your final down, it doesn't. A rule which I'm not sure is fair, but I like it! Haha. I probably would have liked it even more if I'd done badly in the 30%, but I got an A for that so yay - fingers crossed for another A in this one) Also this exam was closed book, AND most importantly, we had sufficient time to answer the questions - one essay and one problem question worth equal marks, so an hour for each. Which was awesome. I mean, they were hard questions, and you wouldn't get good marks if you didn't know the material really well, but Insurance happens to be a subject that I like so I had heaps to write about and found it ... not easy, but certainly the most pleasant exam I've had in my entire time at law school I believe. We could actually make sure we went through the facts and approached each issue clearly and thoroughly. Not the case with most law exams - and they wonder why we miss stuff and scribble illegible bulletpoints in the last ten minutes when there's still an hour's worth of stuff to do. If they want to cover everything, why not make it a 3 hour exam?
I do NOT understand why lecturers like to trick students, trip them up, put obscure facts in that you don't pick up until the third reading, even though they've written 3 pages of facts for one question (I understand the need for a complete fact scenario, but 3 pages? For a 20-minute question?!) When you have to read it at least twice!
On a different note, twinky and sarah: I never said I disagree with parents helping get their kids through college. I didn't say anything about anyone being spoilt. I think I said it was great if parents wanted to help out, particularly in places where it's very difficult to do it without help (like twinky not being able to get loans if his parents earn too much etc). I do not think it's a right though. I don't think it's something you can expect. I'm not saying either of you did expect it, etc etc. Just that that's my point and I'm sticking to it.
...Back to study for me. One more exam to go and then HOLIDAYS!! Posted by johnsonweed (Member # 8114) on :
My hat is off to you legal types. That is a tough way to earn your cheddar!
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Although I'm sure the general high regard in which lawyers are held more than makes up for it.
Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
You know, I have no idea how much work it takes to do well in any program other than my own to get an A. I'm impressed that so many parents know what grade their child is capable of getting based on their experience at a different university in a different program 20ish years ago.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
I've come to the conclusion that grades don't matter - or, at least, they shouldn't matter as much as they do. In one college class (first semester algebra), I received an A even though my semester average was only 86 percnet. Because it was the highest average in the section, the teacher bumped me up to an A even though I didn't earn it. In another course I did A work throughout the semester, but I received a B essentially because I did not agree with the instructor on things that should be a matter of conscience and were not part of graded work in the class, (it was a religion class in a church-run university). The community college I attended allowed instructors to lower grades for attendance issues, and many did. You could get 100 percent on all classwork, but if you missed more than four sessions throughout the semester (sometimes six), your grade was lowered.
Edited to add: Oh, and then there was a cultural anthropology instructor I had who told us all semester that one of the books on the syllabus (and it said this on the syllabus, as well) was optional and that he would not test on it. Well, come time for the final, about a third of the questions on the final were from that book, with no warning at all. Anyone who questioned that (and I was one) were told to shut up or we wouldn't be allowed to take the exam at all. So there is a big arbitrariness factor among some instructors.
Anyway, I think there are just too many variables to grading - subjective judgements by instructors and professors, policies that allow grades to be dependent on things other than mastery of the material, and so on - for grades to be held as "the" measure of what a student has learned in a particular class in a particular semester.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Just another college student’s point of view:
Parental Expectations: My parents have always had a very “hands-off” parenting style, at least when it comes to grades. For me, this has worked out fine: I got good grades in high school because I a) knew I could and felt I ought to achieve my best and b) knew that colleges and scholarship committees placed a high value on grades.
I also knew before high school even started, that unless I did some major, major ass-kissing, my step-mother would stridently object to my father paying for my college education (my dad wasn’t too eager to do so either, since he paid for his own college experience---back before college tuition started rising at 2 or 3 times the rate of inflation). My mother could never afford to pay for tuition, even for an in-state school, and my dad’s income level would have made Financial Aid laugh at me-- my mom works in Fin Aid, so I’m pretty certain that I don’t qualify for anything worth speaking of. I personally didn’t want to hold off on college until I had earned enough money.
So I searched for scholarships and schools offering merit money. I’m currently attending a pretty good liberal arts school (DePauw for the Indiana hatrackers) with tuition, room, and board paid for. Fees, books, and incidentals I pay for out of a secondary scholarship and through work during the school year and summer. My dad pays for travel to and from California whenever I go home--he wouldn’t see me much otherwise, because I can’t afford to fly out more than once a year.
Now is this the ideal situation? No, but problems between my dad and I are mainly a result from my stepmother’s and mine mutual loathing for each other, not because of finances. I get a nice present on my birthday and at Christmas time, when I go home Dad pays for random things like new sneakers or let’s me “borrow” old pots and pans. His old car will be mine when I need/want it (I don’t need a car now, and don’t want to pay for insurance, so it’s staying in California for the time being). Plus he paid for some pretty hefty medical bills from my stay in the hospital last year.
Would I like it if my dad helped me out more with finances? Of course! I’d love to be able to afford a cell phone, or more meals out, or larger shopping sprees at Walmart. But I don’t *expect* him to help me out, because, like it or not, at the age of twenty, I’m considered an adult by the government, by my parents, and by myself.. I get the independence of adulthood-- freedom to decide if I want to work for that A, or if a B+ is acceptable *to me*, but I also have deal with the responsibilities of adulthood which include working to pay for my education and living expenses.
If other students want to be financed by their parents, and their parents are willing to do so, then I welcome them that opportunity. But if a set of parents are paying for their child’s education and living expenses after 18, then, no disrespect intended, but I don’t think the college student has quite hit the “adult” stage yet. He may be quite responsible, but he’s still dependent on his parents. I think our culture is moving to a point where the actual transition into adulthood is happening later and later, which is fine. But if someone is still dependent on his parents, then he’s also answerable to them, including in matters of grades. This doesn’t mean the parents can or should rule over their children--even eight-year-old should have some independence, if they’ve shown they can handle it--but I think it’s ok that parents place some guidelines on their dependents. If I were to become unemployed at 30, and have to move back under my mom or dad’s roof, then I would have to follow their rules again to some extent, regarding chores, kitchen duty, etc.
One thing that really irritates me is how the government handles the financial aid situation: a student’s parents are not required in any way to fund their child, but a student’s parents’ incomes are always counted against him. If I didn’t get scholarships, there’s no way I could afford to go to a state-school full-time, let along a private school: I couldn’t even get more $5k of loans a year. And as Mack said, there’s a lot of hoops that need to be jumped through if you want to gain independent status. If the government is going to count parental income against students when figuring financial aid, then there ought to be a law requiring the parents to help out the student, at least for the amount it costs to attend an in-state public school. Germany has such a law: parents are required to provide for their children if they’re in a uni, and a child can sue if the parent doesn’t pay up. It’s not fair to either party, but it’s the only way I can see to keep students from being caught in the same situation I faced in high school.
Grade Inflation: It exists. It’s bad, but in some disciplines more than others. At my school, and most others I would bet, it’s easier to get an A in the humanities than in the sciences, with the sciences somewhere in the middle. However, the math major GPA is one of the highest at my school, and it’s pretty difficult to get an A in a literature class, even for the majors. One English teacher hasn’t given out an A in two years--the last student she gave an A to she also brought up against the ethics committee to accuse him of plagiarism on a paper--not because she had any proof, but just because she didn’t think a student could write such a good paper.
Anyways, it’s hard to make blanket statements regarding the difficulty of getting high grades by school or department. I think parents, in setting any sort of grade requirements ought to take this into consideration. However, the average GPA of all the majors ought to be available for any university, although it can take a bit of digging to find the information, and a parent can take that kind of information into consideration.
This is a long post. Sorry Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
quote:DePauw for the Indiana hatrackers
Excellent! I know someone who went there, she hated it but that's because she didn't like Indiana and missed her family, nothing to do with the school.
You've got to be asking yourself why I mentioned that.
Anyways, Zan's got a strong point, some indicator has to be used, but what it means depends on the school, the teachers and the student. The beginning of my college experience I treated it like high school (despite knowing better ) I never studied, put little effort into my homework, didn't pay attention in class, skipped some of them (which is terrible, I'm not that kid darn it!) and my grades the first year showed it. Nothing close to flunking bad, but it was obvious this wasn't the best I could do. My parents were kind of critical, but I was clearly more upset about it than they were so they let it go, and this year I learned my lesson and am applying myself... well more anyways (still don't study ) and my grades, once again, reflect that.
I forgot who made it but the point was right, parents from different fields are probably clueless. Those here who mention how bad it was to get a 'C', for instance, can't apply that knowledge when their kid goes to engineering school (I keep mentioning it not because I'm so self-centered I think it's the hardest thing around, it's just the one area on which I can speak from experience) where a 'C' is a decent grade. My Freshman year, when I got straight 'B's, I was still above average, and the average wasn't stupid kids you remember from high school who didn't care and didn't try.
And going the other way, I would (will I hope ) undoubtedly be too lenient on any child of mine who goes into a liberal arts degree, where 'C's are apparently a mark of dismal effort.
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For someone right out of college, you don't have a lot to gage a prospective employee with. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you're coming out of my program, you have two years of work experience with up to six different employers
But most people don't. Which of course becomes basically everyone not getting an engineering degree. For most people work experience means McDonald's, or at best, helping out a professor during the summer, and that's not a mark of laziness or stupidity on the part of the student, it's just a different field. How would you screen applicants fresh out of college when almost no one has any related work experience? I'm there with you on the grades aren't everything bit, but they're certainly something. When your option besides grades is nothing at all, you take the grades.
Is it impossible for a 'C' student to have tried harder and be smarter than an 'A' student? No, it's not. Is it likely? Once again, no, it's not. The people getting the best grades might not be the smartest and most dedicated, and those getting the worst might not be the least intelligent and least dedicated, but I find it hard to believe that there would be little correlation between the two.
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Most students in my class shoot for a C, and not everyone makes that!![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
)? Maybe I'm just lazy, but the A's aren't worth it to me. And besides, it makes the few I've got more special. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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