jjjjjjj wrote:
I think that we should grade at the same level, regardless of the level of the school where we teach, but to do that we'd have to coordinate efforts and get administrative support. The level of student complaining in American universities now is unparalleled, and they are supported by administrations that send threatening emails to department chairs if more than a certain # of students fail. I had a grad student turn in a paper a month late and it was barely at all on the topics and materials of the class. I accepted it but dropped the paper a grade and gave it a B-. On the evaluations for the course, the student reported that I could not be trusted on anything (in person the student said that this was all about the late paper>a 5 was the class rating from that student) and gave me a 2 out of 5, which lowered the average from 4.4 (above average) to 4 (below average). The administrators actually take this stuff seriously. And all they care about is having a high graduation rate and keeping the money coming.
If you do not curve it, you might have 50% of the students getting Fs at lesser schools, which most would not find acceptable. I went to a mid-level college and in a senior/masters level core class I had one prof (the best and brightest) who did not really curve the class. On the mid-term there was a B, seven B- grades, some Cs, some Ds, a non-trivial number of Fs and a non-trivial number of 'not good enough to be an F' grades [40 total]. One A in the class at the end, and one of those B or B- grades got either a D or F for the class. Taught from a book used at Stanford and when I got to grad school I was glad for his rigor, and it was not that hard compared to my harder grad classes at a good, not top, grad school.