{"id":1080,"date":"2010-06-23T21:35:08","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T02:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2010\/06\/23\/retroactive-grade-inflation\/"},"modified":"2010-06-23T21:35:08","modified_gmt":"2010-06-24T02:35:08","slug":"retroactive-grade-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/23\/retroactive-grade-inflation\/","title":{"rendered":"Retroactive Grade Inflation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just to make clear right from the start here, this is not April 1.  And this article is not from the National Enquirer or the Onion, but from the New York Times<\/a>.  Ready?<\/p>\n

\n

One day next month every student at Loyola Law School Los Angeles will awake to a higher grade point average.<\/p>\n

But it’s not because they are all working harder. <\/p>\n

The school is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So a mediocre 3.38 is now an impressive 3.71.  <\/p>\n

It’s retroactive.  And it’s free.  <\/p>\n

Of course, Loyola Law School will now be the laughingstock of every institution of higher education.  Employers won’t be interested in students with fraudulent transcripts.<\/p>\n

Well, not quite:<\/p>\n

\n

In the last two years, at least 10 law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient. These include law schools like New York University and Georgetown, as well as Golden Gate University and Tulane University, which just announced the change this month.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So it’s actually the cool thing to do.  Undoubtedly it makes your students happy, and probably makes recruiting a lot easier, especially with annual tuition north of $40k<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have an idea.  My<\/em> graduate schools should raise my<\/em> grades.  But not by 0.333; if they really want to make me look more attractive in a competitive job market, I need at least a 0.666.  Why not?  I paid a lot of money.  I really tried hard.  And it doesn’t hurt anyone else. <\/p>\n

Or maybe it does.<\/p>\n

\n

These moves can create a vicious cycle like that seen in chief executive pay: if every school in the bottom half of the distribution raises its marks to enter the top half of the distribution, or even just to become average, the average creeps up. This puts pressure on schools to keep raising their grades further.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m just afraid all of this is going to make it harder to find an honest lawyer.<\/p>\n

You can read the entire article right here<\/a>.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just to make clear right from the start here, this is not April 1.  And this article is not from the National Enquirer or the Onion, but from the New York Times.  Ready? One day next month every student at Loyola Law School Los Angeles will awake to a higher grade point average. But it’s\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}