By N.S.
The first expose of "affirmative grading was in circa 1970. I wrote my own in 1997, which the national association of scholars' academic questions published in its spring 1998 issue: "Making Up the Grade: Notes from the Antiversity."
https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2008/04/grade-inflation-in-higher-ed.html
"Grade Inflation in Higher Ed"
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2024/08/15/grade-inflation-is-the-new-affirmative-action/
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Old saying in ghetto schools:
"nig*ers come and nig*ers go--through our 4th grade class;Some are actually under 16 years old."
--GRA
Take two:
"nig*ers come and nig*ers go--through our 4th grade class;Some are actually under 17--when they finally pass."
--GRA
Grade inflation starts in K-12. A high school diploma is viewed as an entitlement by parents and kids. Keep them enrolled and keep them attending because of money, such as school lunch reimbursements. Go through the motions of playing school.
Phony Statistic #1, the graduation rate. Dr. Superintendent, Ed. D., and Dr. Principal, Ed. D., are proud of the graduation rate and the local newspaper proudly prints that it's higher than last year's graduation rate.
But in fact it's basically just an attendance certificate. All it means is that they did a better job of convincing kids to not drop out, and they kept the pressure on teachers to not give Fs. But the college's Schools of Ed. already do a pretty good job of training teachers to "let" every student "succeed" and they're already on board.
Phony Statistic #2, the GPA. You see these state university flagship campuses reporting that the entering freshman class has a median GPA of 4.10 or 4.20 or so. So they all had A+ averages coming out of high school? Thousands of A+ high school students?
Then the lower level colleges just throw the doors open to anyone and they get student loans. Even kids with SAT scores in the 300s going to college ... and taking out thousands in student loans.
That's the Garbage In. So the college needs to produce Garbage Out. The sense of entitlement extends to the college diploma, too.
The name of the game is Retention. Keep them coming back (and taking out more student loans.) That means giving out high-enough grades to keep the lowest tier from falling below a 2.0 GPA. Even if they can't compose a proper paragraph or solve an eighth grade algebra equation.
And for the little geniuses with the 4.2 high school GPA, well, they expect the A's to keep on coming. I had one dual-enrollment student (high schooler taking a college course) who missed two weeks at the end of the semester because she was going all over the country visiting colleges. She ended up with an 88 average so I gave her a grade of B. She complained. "But I've never gotten a B before." Well, honey, you got one now.
And various other cases of helicopter parents who were unhappy when their little geniuses didn't get the desired results. And me getting stabbed in the back by a Dean (a foreigner, at that) who apparently had been contacted by some of those parents.
At the bottom of the barrel, colleges tried putting the dummies into remedial classes. Fine for a motivated adult who's going back and is just rusty on recall from five or ten years ago. But among the 18-year-olds, massive failures because they didn't work hard enough and that goes back to the sense of entitlement of having gotten passed along through all of K-12.
And again, Retention. The administration takes a dim view of faculty who give too many F grades. The flunk-outs don't come back, or they file academic appeals.
The colleges' new solution? Get rid of the remedial courses. Let them enroll directly into college credit courses and just tack on a 1-credit "support" course. Which is generally treated as a joke by the student. So the credit-level course has to be dumbed down + the grading has to be inflated. Same old problems.
Some really dumb administrators go for the idea of a 3-week summer session that will "catch them up". Yeah, sure. The kid has a high school diploma, has trouble solving an 8th grade equation like 3x + 4 = -26, and if you replace the numbers with fractions, it's game over. In either case his approach is to reach for his phone to take a picture of the problem with the math solver app so he can copy the answer. Or write an essay? There's essays on the internet and now AI can write one for you.
And you're going to get that student up to speed on 12th grade level math and English in 3 weeks? If I could do that, I wouldn't be teaching here at Podunk State College. I'd be traveling the country giving seminars on how to perform miracles.
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