[PEN-L:2572] Re: The "value" of an education

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

     As with some of Louis's posts on these matters I'm not 
sure where he is coming from on this, but...
    I can say that here at boondocks James Madison 
University, home (allegedly) of the nation's largest 
College Republicans club, there is a great uproar going on 
on campus right now about the issue of grade inflation.  I 
even had a piece in the student paper about it and will be 
on the student radio station tonight about it, hence my 
current interest.  I got involved because there was an 
article in the student paper last semester alleging grade 
inflation in one of my classes because the highest grade on 
an exam was a 72 and it was falsely claimed that "one can 
get an A with just a 59".  The editorial writers in the 
student paper also claimed that higher grades today are 
justified because today's students are better than they 
used to be in the past.  Talk about throwing red meat in 
the face of a baby boomer!
     Anyway, the performance on last semester's final exam 
in my principles of macroeconomics class was by far the 
worst I have ever seen, only one student out of 73 getting 
above a 58%.  The final GPA was well below 2.0, no grade 
inflation in my classes, although we have plenty on campus, 
much of it encouraged by our corrupt administration.
     Anyway, I wrote a rather scathing piece about all this 
to the student paper.  Will be curious this evening to see 
how the call-ins go.  So far, a lot of faculty members have 
been very pleased with my observations.  The administration 
is holding its tongue for now, although I do not think that 
they are pleased as I trashed them on a bunch of other 
stuff too.  If I keep this up I might become another Jim C.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 25 Jan 1999 11:06:21 -0500 Louis Proyect 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> (from another very interesting article in Salon, at http://www.salon1999.com/)
> 
> A C A D E M I A , I N C .
>                                         
> Why have today's students become a bunch of grade-grubbing morons?
> 
> Editor's note: This is the second in a series of stories on the influence
> of corporations and corporate culture on universities. 
> 
> BY MICHAEL O'DONOVAN-ANDERSON | Teachers, as you may not know, complain a
> lot. There is, after all, a great deal to complain about, and teachers,
> being smarter (and having more flexible hours) than the average malcontent,
> fully exploit their opportunities. Class size (too high), pay (too low),
> culture (too little), the administration (too administrative), government
> (too corrupt), pay (still too low), vacation time (never you mind, I work
> hard!). Among favorite topics, however, nothing comes close to students
> (too much to fit between parentheses). 
> 
> Most of the griping is summed up by Miss Parker: "You can lead a
> horticulture, but you can't make her think." But some of the mutterings to
> which I am privy suggest something worse: whorses who cannot even be led to
> culture. Having taught philosophy, history of science and ancient Greek
> literature at schools from 400-student liberal arts colleges to Ivy League
> universities, I think I know what they mean. 
> 
> I recall one student in particular who had done rather poorly on a writing
> assignment and had come to office hours to talk me out of her grade. I
> explained what I expected from such a paper, what was fruitful, what was
> unlikely to be so, and tried to get her to see the demand for thoughtful
> writing as a way to come to terms with issues that she cared about. 
> 
> Me: Let's talk more about this paragraph: Why do you think that Antigone's
> obligation to her brother is the most important factor? 
> 
> Her: Is that wrong? Did I lose points for that? 
> 
> Clearly, something about this approach was deeply puzzling to her, and we
> replayed the same conversation until she suddenly realized what it was I
> was having trouble seeing. 
> 
> "You don't understand," she announced with a trumpish air. "I need this
> class to balance the GPA in my major." Well, why didn't she say so before? 
> 
> Perhaps it has always been thus. As I have just complained about my
> students to you, my colleagues complain to me, and Augustine and Epictetus
> complain to us all. Poor Socrates tried dialogue after dialogue to teach
> philosophy to the budding politicians he attracted; all they wanted was
> rhetoric. But the present bout of chronic student malaise among liberal
> arts students seems different and deserves more than nostalgic
> name-dropping: Why would it make sense to a student to argue for a grade
> she doesn't deserve in one class by citing her poor performance in another?
> What failure of education leads to the complaint (from one of my teaching
> evaluations) that "he seemed to grade with some objective standard in
> mind"? And what accounts for the level of disdain necessary for a student
> to hand in, as his own, a photocopy of someone else's paper?
> 
> It's the economy, stupid, here and everywhere. When it comes to questions
> of the value of an education, we have gradually adopted a disturbingly
> anemic vocabulary. Discussing the benefits of education, the U.S.
> Department of Education mentions only the following: "higher earnings,
> better job opportunities, jobs that are less sensitive to general economic
> conditions, reduced reliance on welfare subsidies, increased participation
> in civic activities, and greater productivity."
> 
> 
> Louis Proyect
> 
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]