UWO sociology profs James Cote and Anton Allahar in Ivory Tower Blues warn that Canadian universities are fast turning into credential marts where disengaged students customers, who may or may not have the skills and smarts to graduate, spend more time with Facebook than their textbooks and expect beseiged profs to give higher and higher marks for less and less effort (in return, grade inflating profs get inflated student satisfaction scores so everyone wins in the short term but loses in the long term).
A must read for anyone who's headed to university, parents who are about to pick up the tab and employers who are looking to hire grads.
As a UWO grad in the early 1990s, I may well have benefited from grade inflation. Yet the best profs were also the toughest who refused to lower the bar and had zero tolerance for unprepared, unmotivated students with a sense of entitlement.
Check out what Princeton University is doing to curb grade inflation, where a C is no longer than new B+.
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