Michael Granaas ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: While more careful admissions processes would certainly limit the
: variability in students, and therefor grading, how is it any different
: from grading? If you are going to be more careful with admissions you
: need a ranking system of some sort to determine who will succeed and who
: will fail. This is just puts the Social Darwinism issue at a different
: stage of the process.
There's a fundamental difference between admissions decisions and grading
decisions: the former involve allocating an inherently scarce resource.
There's a limit to the total number of students a school or program can
admit, regardless of how certain qualities are distributed among the
applicants. However imperfect the available criteria for selecting a
subset of applicants are, you're going to *have* to use *some* criteria.
All you can do is try to make them as "fair" as possible. There's a
genuine cost associated with admitting another applicant.
But evaluating performances within a class doesn't involve any inherently
scarce resource. There's no particular cost that increases with the
grade a student gets.
