

Ivy League Grade Inflation - rouma7
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21615616-not-what-it-used-be-grade-expectations

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georgeecollins
Many years ago, when I used to hire programmers, someone told me that a CS
degree from an Ivy league was less of a reliable predictor of engineering
talent than a CS degree from a University of California school (Cal, UCLA,
UCSD, UCSB etc.)

The logic of this was that the engineering schools of UCs had a serious "weed
out" process. If you went to an Ivy and made your major CS, because it was
fashionable, you got through no matter what.

I don't have anecdotes to verify this-- much less data-- but I thought it was
an interesting observation.

~~~
hga
Some of this has to be biased by the fact that there's no Ivy League school
with a top CS program, unless you count Stanford, whereas UCB is, perhaps
anonymously, one of the 4 (the other two being CMU and MIT).

Hmmm, my vague and out of date memory is that public universities are well
represented in 2nd tier CS programs, and I can't remember any Ivies in that
list. But that's old, iffy and perhaps obsolete info.

One very obsolete thing is equipment: the wealthier schools used to have a big
advantage in being able to supply computer time to their students.

~~~
seanflyon
> there's no Ivy League school with a top CS program

How do you define "top CS program"? I can't find a ranking that doesn't have
Cornell or Princeton in the top 10. Defining "top program" as top 5 seems a
bit odd (even then Cornell occasionally makes the list)

~~~
hga
Last time I checked (last decade, I suppose), "everyone" agreed Stanford, UC
Berkeley, CMU and MIT had the world's best CS programs, with a big gap before
the next "tier".

I'm willing to believe, maybe back then, but especially today, that some Ivy's
are ranked high in the 2nd tier.

~~~
seanflyon
I can't find anyone but you who defines "a top CS program" as the top 4
schools, but you are right that the top 4 are better tan the 5th and 6th.

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ivraatiems
The interesting question is, is this happening only at the Ivies or across the
board?

I haven't seen any data on grade inflation from non-top-tier universities. I
would wager that if we're looking at second-tier (non-Ivy but still very
restrictive), top-tier technical (engineering, etc.) and art/music schools, we
would be seeing significantly less grade inflation.

Does anyone know if there is any data on this?

~~~
ggchappell
I think data comparing grade inflation by discipline would also be
interesting.

For example, I would guess that in fields in which grading can be more
objective (consider the question of whether a computer program performs to
spec vs. grading an analysis of some kind of literature), consistency in
grading would be easier to maintain.

Then there are considerations of what grading is _for_. If we consider grades
to be certification that a student meets the standards of a profession, then
majors leading to professions with lax standards might give higher grades.

~~~
ivraatiems
Speaking as someone who is double majoring in "hard" and "soft" science, I can
say that in my anecdotal experience, grading is tougher the "harder" the class
is.

However, it's also possible I'm just worse at the harder science, and better
in courses which require qualitative high performance. Another student could
have the opposite effect.

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rogueleaderr
Ivy league students today are on average much smarter than ivy league students
in 1950.

If the point of grades is to sort students then sure, grades are "inflated" in
that they don't accurately reflect increasingly fine distinctions in
intelligence or effort. But if grades are supposed to reflect how well
students understand the material on some sort of remotely absolute scale then
we should expect to see average grades going up over time.

