4.8 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
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A couple weeks ago, I did my own solo Q&A session. Now John is back, and I decided to put him in the hot seat. Let’s get into it. Yan Shen asks our opinion of the contretemps between Nancy Mace and Michael Eric Dyson. Stan asks if we’ve seen Matt Walsh’s film, Am I Racist?. Eli, noting the rampant grade inflation at many institutions, asks if we have a way of fixing the problem and wants to know if our own grading standards have changed over the years (here’s the Yascha Mounk post she references). RAO wants to know what we think of alternative education, like home schooling, micro-schools, charter schools, and so on. Jerry Zuriff wants to know why John likes hip-hop. Given that, on average, American girls perform better than American boys in high school, Michael asks if colleges should give preferences to males over females. Or would that run afoul of SFFA v. Harvard? And finally, DG wants to know why John never got interested in sports.
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0:00.0 | Dear Glenn and John, this from Eli, |
0:05.0 | your friend Yasha Monk, |
0:08.0 | recently wrote an interesting piece on the phenomenon of grade inflation |
0:11.0 | at American universities, particularly the elite schools in which |
0:14.1 | he suggests that we simply abandon our, quote, irredeemably broken grading system in lieu of fixing it. |
0:24.2 | And he links to Mount. |
0:27.2 | He notes that the average GPA at Harvard, for example, is now 3.8, |
0:37.0 | having risen from an estimated 2.6 in 1950. |
0:41.5 | This effectively discourages students from taking challenging courses that are more likely to pull down their |
0:46.4 | GPA relative to their peers and also penalizes students for uneven performance over time. |
0:54.3 | Again, favoring the middle of the pack |
0:56.1 | over, say, brilliant low-income students |
0:58.5 | with one bad semester. |
1:01.5 | As the two of you have argued vociferously for college admissions based on academic |
1:05.8 | merit and you both teach at elite schools, I wonder how your position translates to your |
1:12.3 | own grading practices in the classroom. |
1:14.4 | Have your standards changed over the years? |
1:17.3 | And what is your view on grade inflation more generally |
1:19.8 | and your prescription for mending it |
1:22.0 | if you see it as a problem to be solved? and your |
1:25.0 | here to mending it if you see it as a problem to be solved. |
1:26.0 | I guess I'll venture here to respond to Stan's question. |
... |
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