Blowing the Curve

It’s not enough to win. Others must fail.

This seemingly innocuous article on a classroom motivational technique with a moral is, turn out, a mini-abomination. In it the author details his efforts to get his students to think differently about grading and classroom achievement by demonstrating the folly of giving all the participants in an in-class long jump competition gold medals for trying their best. The effort to counteract the "I worked hard, I deserve an A" mindset is, ceteris paribus, laudable (n.b. all else is never equal.). But comparing the evaluation goals of the college classroom to those of a track and field competition is reductive, misguided and facile.

I’m all for avoiding the ol’ “soft bigotry of low expectations”. In higher ed, grade inflation seems to be the low expectation bugbear of choice, and at least on its face with good reason. But before a rational discussion of grade inflation can occur one needs to come to terms with a stark fact about grading: grades are arbitrary, made up things under any circumstances. This is an essence of grading, not an artifact of grade inflation or any other grading norm or practice. As the kids say, get over it.

How do we grade?

Options are inherently limited. One can grade students against objective standards (criteria-based grading) or against one another (norm-based grading). In practice a blend of the two is perspectives is almost unavoidable. (Frighteningly, a third alternative has been suggested, explicitly by one of my own professors in grad school and I suspect in unspoken practice by several others: grading a student relative to the extent to which she is living up to her “potential”. How nauseatingly presumptuous [and typical] to think that you’d have some window into a student’s innate wherewithal! Make no mistake, though; it happens ).

Grade inflation can be eliminated altogether with scrupulous norm-based grading, but at high hurtful cost. The institutional prescription is simple: Mandate curve-based grading; require a mean grade of C. Problem solved. I've had some first-hand experience with grading of this sort as and its unseemly consequences. The large majority of my undergraduate classes were curve-graded. It’s a pretty weird scene. The only letter grade I ever saw was the one we all got at after the class was over. Everything else was just raw score, class mean and standard deviation. Score the mean and you knew you were on the cusp between C+ and B- (evidence itself of grade inflation I suppose). One standard deviation above separated B+ from A-, and so forth. Grade inflation was constrained ex ante. The supply of A’s is limited, reserved for the statistically deserving.

Great, right? Motivational, certainly, in the way that only needless, heartless competition can be. Fair? Depends on your definition. Before every test I’d sit sweaty-palmed contemplating the fact that no matter how well I knew the material, no matter the extent of my mastery, unless I did better than the majority of my peers, my grade would be disappointing. Struck me as unjust or at least awfully harsh at the time. Some doubtless delight in the indiscriminate Darwinian justice of it all.

These days I’m more worried about the impact of such a grading scheme on the learning environment. The side effects were not lost on me back in the day either. I never ran up against key articles being torn from journals to preclude their use by others (of course I wasn’t in law school either, and such sabotage certainly wouldn’t have surprised me anyway). You wouldn’t have believed, though, the lengths we’d all go to convince one another we didn’t give a crap about a given class, about how little we intended to prepare, about how unimportant the class or studying in general was to us. This was clotted nonsense, of course, but any posture that might move classmates to ease off on their own studies was worth a shot. If I pretend to blow it off, maybe they’ll blow it off a bit themselves, thereby lowering the mean and increasing my standing. Probably not, of course, but however unattractive, the effort involved was minimal. In sum, the dumber and less motivated you presented yourself to others, the better. In this world my classmates’ success only interferes with my own. Participation in a study group is critical to ones survival, but in your advantage only if you are among the least capable students in the group. So that made for some pretty weird and unseemly maneuvering as well.

These pressures are not good. This style of competition is entirely out of step with how the modern world works. Collaboration is more critical to success than ever before. The popular press has spelled it out: Wikinomics lays out the growing economic necessity of collaboration, Born Digital the compelling desire of digital natives to work together, A Whole New Mind the growing importance of cooperation and empathy. Maybe this enthusiasm is a passing fad; getting along with others remains a crucial component of success as an employee and as a citizen.

Whither grades?

Some (non-mutually exclusive) possibilities:

· To motivate

Students are driven by grades. In class they focus on that which is graded. Many students are motivated primarily (exclusively?) by grades. Most know enough not to ask “Is this going to be on the test,” but pretty much everyone wonders. We may decry the fact, but grading is a powerful motivator.

· To measure student learning

To what extent did the students learn what they were supposed to? This role is so important as to go without saying. Grades provide the transparency the whole system depends on, keeps students and teachers alike informed about the extent to which they are doing their respective jobs and when it’s time to cut bait. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and so forth.

· To measure student aptitude

Educators are likely loath to endorse the effort, but employers, parents, students themselves and pretty much everyone else find a good GPA a convenient and compelling hallmark of academic and intellectual wherewithal.

So which grading approach works best for each of these criteria? Motivation is a tough call. While no doubt there are those who find norm-based competition invigorating, likely just as many are demoralized. Criteria grading is a cinch for measuring learning; likewise norm-based for ability. So shall we call it a wash?

Best we not. The classroom is not a zero sum game. Rank ordering students is a distraction of little more use than affording students bragging rights and grad schools and employers misguidedly appealing, facile measures. No doubt it sounds Pollyanna-ish, but working together is among the most vital skills of the coming age. If grade inflation is the fee for avoiding the hyper-competitive individualism of norm-based assessment, let me get my wallet.

Making (Up) the Grade

Grades are thoroughly arbitrary. And that's OK. Or is it?

Hand wringing over grade inflation appears to continue unabated. I'm of at least two minds on the issue personally. If grade inflation brings with it erosion of standards and the expectation we place on students then I'm staunchly opposed. But does it really in most cases? At a minimum it must make the most marginal students somehow less aware of their marginality, and that could be bad. But not all institutions' marginal students are created equal of course. If even the most marginal students in a given class at a given institution are capable and competent, then what difference does it make if the mean is a C or a B+? Aren't we putting on too fine a point? Aren't we squarely in narcissism of small differences territory?

But the trouble is it's a slippery slope. There was a time I daresay when, say, Harvard students were consistently the sons of Harvard students and the sons of magnates, barons and captains of industry. Their GPAs were of precious little consequence; their future prosperity beyond reproach. And their mean GPAs undoubtedly hovered steadfast in 2.0 territory. But things are different now. Talented students of very modest means are counting on their GPAs to grant them access to those white shoe investment banking jobs. GPA becomes deal-breakingly important. So why not give your students a smidgen of a break, particularly relative to their peers at other schools, by easing off grade-wise. This pressure alone seems sufficient to grease inflationary gears.

But what, if anything, is the cost of this inflation? It's easy enough to cluck our tongues, but what are the actual consequences? In Econ 101 I learned that the costs associated with most inflation are really modest, manageable "shoe leather" costs (although mind you I took it 20 odd years ago).

If, however, like me you find yourself in an open enrollment institution, grade inflation starts to matter, starts to sting. The least capable students in an open enrollment context fall, frankly, far short of any reasonable minimum standard of competency one might hold out for college graduates. And as a consequence of grade inflation the least capable increasingly are making it to graduation, not because they are getting the remediation and gaining the skills they need, but because grade inflation causes our tenuous standards levees to break. The system begins to stink of decay. The value of a bachelor's degree is made dubious, which leads to costly credential inflation. Guileless students spend years and make enormous sacrifices studying in good faith, in the process graduating many tens of thousands of dollars in debt and no more capable of getting or keeping a job than when they began. This problem is real, this problem is getting worse and this problem is driven by grade inflation. How for-profit colleges and universities can possibly keep the issue at all in check is beyond my fathoming. Perhaps they don't.

There exists a straightforward but entirely unpalatable remedy to rampant grade inflation, but I'll save that fairly wide ranging discussion for another post.

FPCUs: New Players, Different Game, Unequal Playing Field

Title 22 § 31.24 of the Pennsylvania Code mandates that "full-time faculty members shall constitute a majority of the total number of full-time-equivalent faculty employed by the institution". Thus the need for a majority full-time faculty appears to be the settled law of the land. Nonetheless, Phoenix, Strayer and several other members of the for-profit colleges and university (FPCU) gang operate in Pennsylvania entirely sans full-time faculty.

I've oft wondered how this is possible. I'm not sure how close to parity most PA schools come, but the model here is FT free by design. How does that fly? Apparently FPCUs' status as foreign corporations affords them exemption. Whether this is by accident/loophole or design is unclear. I'd like more details here, and maybe I'll find them in the law of higher education class I hope to take.

FPCUs are poorly understood, their ascendancy is unprecedented and they are way different than anyone else. Myth, ideology and FUD surround them. Not long ago I read New Players, Different Game, the pathologically evenhanded, data-dense work by Tierny and Hentske, and finished feeling pretty good that a) FPCUs have a valid role to play and b) that federal legislation keeps their less noble tendencies more or less in check.

This Pennsylvania FT/FTE equivalent disparity leaves me much more skeptical. I've known about other bits of sketchiness, for example first-hand accounts of how Phoenix skirts the prohibition against commission-based compensation for admission reps by adjusting a rep's salary several times a year through performance reviews. One's salary can be adjusted dramatically up or down based on one's sales performance, closely approximating commission. I'm hopeful this practice will in time catch up with them and others who engage. But the FT/FTE disparity smacks of complicity (or maybe just an unfortunate loophole, I'm still not sure) and that's troubling.

So much enthusiasm for FPCUs reeks of ideological boosterism - hooray for free markets and the profit motive. The free hand will cure educations ills. Frighteningly, Maggie Spellings and the gang looks to fall squarely in this camp. And so much opposition is smug out-of-hand dismissiveness. I'm largely undecided. I'm impressed by the looks of things at Neumont University, for example, but most of the rest of the time I'm troubled. The real clincher will be how the employment market comes to view credentials from FPCUs.


Maybe I'll sign up for a course or two, in the name of science, and see for myself what the experience is like. Prolly not though.

For Most People, Charles Murray is a Waste of Time

I actually don't hate Charles Murray. I have a wide libertarian streak and liked his What it means... I even thought the Bell Curve had moments of lucid insight (but for the love of god don't tell anyone). But as a student of higher education I found his recent rant in the Wall Street Journal on traditional higher ed to be, well, a complete waste of time.

His thesis is a traditional bachelor's degree is useless, although he rails particularly against everyone's favorite bugbear, liberal arts education. He proposes replacing degrees of any sort with (wait for it) ....standardized certification examinations. While mounting evidence continues to prove standardized examinations to be Panaceatown, USA, the universal solvent of all of life's ills, I just can't see Murray's proposal as anything short of simpleminded.

His model and inspiration is the CPA exam:

The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough -- four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you're a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.

Now, I think the CPA is swell.Heck, m y wife is a (nonpracticing) CPA. The CPA/public accounting model IS a good model. HOWEVER, having passed the CPA certification exam is but one part of the public accounting holy trinity. In addition one needs the requisite work experience in accounting and, um, a bachelors degree! So maybe Charlie thinks the certification test is sufficient, but the fine people at the AICPA think it's only part of the equation.

I agree that the CPA model is excellent. There's a corpus of objective know-how (the exam), general higher-order thinking skills (the degree) and experience in the profession. Very sensible, very robust, very much not an indictment of our current system of higher education.

Murray's fond of the casual, broad assertion untroubled by fact or rationale: "Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance." Huh? Which particular sciences pass murray-muster I wonder. Physical chemistry and particle physics? Combinatorial genomics perhaps? Base ideological cheerleading plain & simple.

Higher ed and education in general is debased by this notion that its essence is building up objective knowledge and practical skills. Objective knowledge and practical skills are necessary but not nearly sufficient (the fact that they are indeed necessary is itself often lost on the pathologically testing-averse among us). Education is the essential means by which our culture is perpetuated, fer chrissakes. It cannot be reduced to scantron-graded exams, as convenient as it would be. We need the acculturation that takes place on campuses. It allows our prosperity, our democracy, our way of life to endure.

Which is in no way to say the higher ed state of practice is not a mess. Inefficiency, insufficient transparency, elitism, moral hazard, skyrocketing cost, middling results and institutional indifference thereto, mission creep, moral turpitude and general shamefulness. Verily. Any hint of sarcasm is entirely unintentional (really!). I'm with Murray on these general concerns and on two other specific points:

• That the U.S. is increasingly class-riven is problematic. Preach on, Brother Murray. Higher ed is not a root cause here of course. Can it be part of a solution? Sure thing: access is the thing, need-based financial aid, affirmative action, etc. Would it really help to eliminate the system as we know it? Ah, no.
• That "everyone in every occupation starts as an apprentice". Yes, absolutely, you betcha, yes. Once again, though, here in the modern world apprenticeship is no less necessary but is ever increasingly insufficient. Might (might) be sufficient for, say, plumbers, but just isn't going to cut it for software engineers, actuaries, geneticists, and such & such. (N.B. to Chuck: smart folks who spend their entire careers thinking hard about the nature of education are fully aware of the importance of apprenticeship).

We don't need to eliminate the BA itself to eliminate the "stigma of not having a BA". For that matter, it's not obvious we'd benefit socially or economically from eliminating that particular stigma in the first place. Admittedly I'm of two minds myself about the "bachelor's degrees for all" movement and I'm squeamish too about higher ed's credentialing role. One thing does seem self-evident: we need more post-secondary education now and still more in the future.

Identification, Authentication, Nonrepudiation, Oh My

I think we're asking more of the digital than we are of its analog, um, analog. Section 496 of HR 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2008 that amends and reauthorizes the Higher Education Act of 1965 mandates that an "[accrediting] agency or association requires an institution that offers distance education or correspondence education to have processes through which the institution establishes that the student who registers in a distance education or correspondence education course or program is the same student who participates in and completes the program and receives the academic credit".

Seems reasonable enough on its face (although by no measure a simple matter in any case), but it brought about a realization: As far as I can figure, IHEs in fact do no such thing for good ol' fashioned face-to-face students. (Do they?) Who's to say that the person that shows up to get his or her picture ID card and then attends 120 credits worth of classes is actually the person indicated on the original application? Do students have to identify themselves when they are getting their ID cards? At Temple all I had to do was provide my Temple ID number.

As a teacher I'm proud to say I've never asked a student to show proof of identification. Perhaps my classes are filled with impostors! (Good work if you can get it as far as I'm concerned).

That distance education courses are still predominantly asynchronous (at least for the moment) presents a particular problem here. Synchronous tests are easy enough, if expensive and inconvenient: send folks to a testing center or make them turn a webcam on themselves for remote monitoring. A hassle, but doable. Any distance education that relies predominantly on timed, synchronous testing is bad distance education, period.

With asynchronous activities, how is this authentication possible? When a "user" (student) is complicit with his or her impersonator, traditional means of authentication (a token or password) are no use. Even biometrics seems impotent: I swipe my print and sit back and drink beers until my wife/friend/scholar-mercenary finishes my work for me.

Am I missing something here? Is there a mechanism for the assurance sought by this soon-to-be law to be achieved in asynchronous distance ed? I'm having a "Is it me?...It's *him*, isn't it?" moment here.

Degrees, credentials, skills and jobs

I'm wholeheartedly down with the lets-get-our-citizens-degrees efforts of Graduate! Philadelphia (although I'm not nuts about their exclamation point - strikes me as somehow disingenuous) and other organizations and initiatives seeking to boost the percentage of folks either locally or nationally that have a college degree. As a teaching perfesser I'd be stupid not to, right? Naked self-interest aside, even, the push is exciting and the policy sound. Of course, of course, college opens doors economically, makes people better citizens even (dare to dream).

Nevertheless, I was struck recently by a series of inordinate and ultimately unsuccessful struggles to get a variety of folks from the construction trades to so much as return my calls, to exhibit even a glimmer of interest in the fairly big jobs I'd have them do, for good money if need be. I've dunned, nagged, pleaded & begged. I can only conclude that times are purdy good in the construction trades, in spite of the fact that they certainly should be among the hardest hit in the mortgage crisis-driven sour times we're in.

I've no sense how much education the trades require. Shame on me; I aim to do something about that. I've had a roofer (pretty simple, albeit dangerous work) with a master's in mechanical engineering from Drexel and an HVAC contractor performing, from what I could glean by shoulder surfing before he insisted I let him be, pretty complicated calculations and dealing with all sorts of (flaky, unpredictable) computerized equipment, with no post-secondary education at all (the HVAC guy, that is; the equipment had I think a master's in cultural anthropology). Now, I've read SL:LPP and all, and I know that apprenticeship is a major factor here. I think that may further my disquiet. I know this must be silly and/or naive, but given that improved economic prospects is driving this push, shouldn't we see to it that more folks have access to jobs in the skilled trades -- electricians, plumbers, etc. -- maybe even before we undertake to get everyone a degree?

In high school I saw several friends who struggled in school pushed by their parents into the college preparatory track. I also saw two who did well in school drop jaws everywhere by insisting on the vocational-technical track. I lost track of one of the latter, but the other is a way successful general contractor. Of the former, WalMart (literally, although I am happy to report he's a manager now) for one, administrative assistant type positions for several others. It's always troubled me. Probably related to my unease with higher ed's role as a credentialing service.

Community colleges seem an important part of the equation here. So glad I'm taking "The Two-Year College" at Temple in the fall. Should be revelatory. In the meantime, go Graduate!Philadelphia go! (But feel free to lose the exclamation mark).

The False Dichotomy of Money v Mission

In multiple of my education courses at Temple it has been suggested that some organizations are driven by their mission and others by fiscal concerns. Like much I've run up against in those classes to date, I find this to be a gross and counterproductive oversimplification. In truth, money is the means, mission the ends. Not-for-profit status notwithstanding, the mission will never be done if the money does not flow. That's not to say that organizations can't lose sight of their missions entirely and continue to endure -- they can and do -- but those most sincere and efficient in carrying out their missions are just as bottom-line focused as any.

The categorical imperative of for-profits to maximize their value to their owners grants a purity to profit seeking organizations that NFPs lack. We have neither owners nor profits. Nevertheless, there's no reason not to frame strategic, tactical and even operational decisions in terms of maximizing the value of the organization as a means to effect its mission. And there's no reason to think that such a frame would not require scrupulous, disciplined attention to spending, revenue and the bottom line.

Bless and keep guidestar.org for providing ready online access to the wealth of data in the form 990 informational tax return required of nonprofits. A clearer understanding of how and where your (or any) NFP is spending its money, and particularly the extent to which it's spending its money on its mission as opposed to administrative overhead, is a few clicks away.