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Grade Inflation Gone Wild
Grade inflation in high school
Grade inflation in high school
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Have you ever deemed the modern college admissions process unfair? In the article by Frank Bruni tilted “College Aadmission Sshocker” he explores the increased greed of the universities at the expense of the students. Bruni is able to establish a well thought out and cunning satire about the insane practices in modern day universities, through the use of the rhetorical devices wit and incongruity. The article well establishes incongruity throughout the piece helping develop a strong satire. As colleges strive for the top percent of students each year Stanford university decides to kick it up a notch:
The essay of Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s by Brent Staples clearly mimics a problem solution essay that is very heavily focused on the problem. Staples takes a very assertive standpoint in insisting that over inflation of grades due to particular pressure on adjunct professors are devaluing degrees from collegiate institutions. Staples is convincing in this assertion as he uses generalized facts, “In some cases, campus wide averages have crept up from a C just 10 years ago, to a B-plus today.” This alarming quotation is used as evidence that supports Staples’ claim of a major problem facing collegiate institutions nationwide. The solution that Staples proposes, is a new grade point average formula.
Individual professors inflate grades after consumer conscious administrators hound them into it” (Staples 1). Another reason they do this is because many students will threaten that they will give bad reviews on the school if they aren’t given the grades they want: “Writing in the last issue of the journal Academe, two part-timers suggest that students routinely corner adjuncts, threatening to complain if they do not turn C’s into A’s” (Staples 1). Students are taking college so seriously whether it's about money or their grades, it’s getting out of hand. Some students are even suing to get good grades.
Brent Staples wrote a beautiful, yet unconvincing article about colleges giving away “free” A’s to students. The article, “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s,” appeared in 1988 in the New York Times paper (Staples 935). Staples himself has earned a PhD in psychology and is a member of the New York Times editorial board (935). The general purpose of this article was to inform the audience that over the past couple of years, university grading policies have become extremely lenient (935). The audience is a very limited to educational administrations and alumni of major universities.
This route is chosen because the belief has been that a college degree insures a higher income. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, a college degree accounted for $15,000 in additional income per year versus a high school diploma ($30,000 versus $45,000). Over a thirty year career, that equals a $450,000 difference. There are drawbacks
Anyone in this situation or one who knows someone in this situation can understand the anger and many other feelings that graduate is left with. Moving on, Murray positively suggests that society will adapt to the reality of things like cost, time of education, and job market. Using ethos, Murray presents Bill Gates and Steve Jobs being “exemplars” of success with their skill, rather than a college degree. He goes on to say “Every time that happens, the false premium attached to the college degree will diminish.” (679)
Wouldn’t you be happy if you’re receiving an A in the class, instead of the D you’re expecting of getting? However, are you really learned enough to deserve an A? Or is just a simple letter grade that school is willing to giving it to you for free. In the essay “Why colleges shower their students with A’s” author Brent Staples argues that in the past couple years, due to the increasing in consumer demand and tough competitions among the society, university’s grade policies have become extreme lenient to the point that the school is basically giving students free A’s, though they don’t deserve the A. I was entirely shocked on the other hand, because what can possibly make universities lower their grading standards. Interestingly, Staples states,
In “Grade Inflation Gone Wild”, Stuart Rojstaczer explains how he came up with the idea of creating a website that contained data information of college and universities found in the web. This website that he created included 80 college data information on grades. He created this website for others to find. Rojstaczer’s findings lead him to learn about grades and compared them with private and public schools. He notices that throughout the years grades in school has been going up.
While the ever increasing pressures and cost of a college education seem to be a recent event, they problems have persisted for many decades. In 1979, William Zinsser wrote “College Pressures” in order to portray the daily struggles of college students and argue how students see college differently in the modern era. Zinsser stresses how college has changed from being an institute purely focused on higher learning to one of almost strictly vocational purposes. He argues that modern students equate college degrees more with higher paying jobs than as a symbol of knowledge in a specific field, and that these pressures to succeed greatly impact the student’s health. Through my own college experiences, I can certainly verify that college is more
Recently, many have begun to attack and degrade higher education in the United States. In the book How College Works, authors Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takacs claim, “As state support has eroded, and as more students attend college in an increasingly desperate attempt to find viable jobs, the price to students of attending an institution of higher education has gone up, especially at more selective institutions” (172). So is college even worth it? Caroline Bird’s excerpt from her book Case Against College “Where College Fails Us” is an adequately written article that agrees with those who question whether college is a good investment. Bird argues that although some students would benefit from college and succeed, many fall short, wasting
Brent Staple’s essay "Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A's" had various elements that helped provided evidence and persuade the readers. The first thing I noticed when reading this essay was the comparison between the marketplace and college. This comparison helps to develop Staple’s argument because it explains something that is unfamiliar by comparing it to something that is more familiar. I can assume that the target readers were business men and women. Since I am unfamiliar with some business terms, I found that this essay explained something that was unfamiliar with something else that was unfamiliar.
As a college student who is currently spending thousands of dollars to further my education and achieve a career goal, it was, at first, disheartening to read Caroline Bird ’s essay “College is a Waste of Time and Money”. However, after thoroughly examining her points, I now see that her essay is illogical. In her piece “College is a Waste of Time and Money”, Caroline Bird argues against the idea that “college is the best place for all high-school graduates” (1); in other words, college isn’t for everyone. Throughout her writing, Bird supplies her readers with evidence that explains how, for some individuals, college is a waste of not only time and money, but of intellectual effort, as well.
Grade inflation has been rising in education in the United States. Stuart Rojstaczer and Phil Primack both have arguments about grade inflation. They both see how it is affecting the quality of education. Today, the expectations and pressures to receive the higher grades takes its toll on the students and the professors. Rojstaczer and Primack make their points about the widespread occurrence of grade inflation affects the credibility of earning a degree.
If a person’s parent or guardian drilled the idea of college into your head, or if they told you ‘do what you want’ or ‘I don 't care’, or ‘You’re not going’. While college is great, there are other means of education. The value of college is a low because there are people who do not qualify for a college education, and also because there are other ways of post-secondary education other than college. College is not valuable because many people will not make it into a 2 or 4-year college, much less graduate from one. To support this, in the article Why College Isn 't For Everyone, it says, “As a general rule, I would use graduates in the top quarter of their class at a high-quality high school should go on to a four-year degree program, while those in the bottom quarter of their classes at a high school with a mediocre educational reputation should not.”
Investing in a college diploma always coming with good returns as it is a priceless ticket to enter the doors for almost all of the jobs nowadays, it also an investment worth making nowadays, even the tuition payment is costly but it has a lot of benefits after students are graduated. Smith (2006) stated that according to information released by the U.S workers with a college diploma earn nearly twice as much as those without one in 2009. College diploma is dependably a speculation worth making on the grounds that college graduates make profit. According to Singletary(2014), the Pew Research Center noted that college graduates aged 25 to 32 — the supposed millennials — procure about $17,500 more every year than utilized adolescent grown-ups