But you’re missing the point, these are minor distinctions. You still have the same have competition for jobs within the middle class of university students. There is still a need to justify inequality and hierarchy under the rubric of “meritocracy”, sometimes correct, other times not. The truth is some of the issues are not able to be parsed by the establishment without severe bias in their own favor.

I think the obsession with rating people is problematic to begin with, especially if it’s going to count against someone’s future earning power. I think universities should have a way to hide grades/keep private from employers, and double blind studies need to be done on “average students” vs “expert students” in whether they are better workers or not, I’d really like to see long term studies on that personally.

In my own school days over half the teachers teaching were unqualified and deserved to be fired, BUT the system itself is broken and mired in backward thinking. The way to teach students is not to bore them to death in prison like institutions like we have today. This is no longer the manufacturing/industrial age for most north americans.

It’s the age of the internet and McJobs, we could be doing a lot more for a lot less money and put more emphasis on autodidactism and making classes relevant and interesting and working things children need to know into their interests.

I think this man is right on the mark in many ways:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG3HPX0D2mU

I think the next generation has a lot of good ideas and many of the old guard have some valid complaints but are too generationally removed from the younger to see the potential of their ideas and their criticisms of the current system.

In the end all this comes back to political economy, marx would simply love what is happening in the universities right now with bourgeois pressure for money and status. Money and social status are highly connected. This is the end goal here, lets not lose sight of that. Grades = status = lifestyle = recognition. It’s obvious why it is so rampant.

Grades are a part of social status and political economic basis and no one wants to be low status so that drives grades to become more homogenized.

Universities were never truly just “havens of learning” to begin with, they were by and large status markers for justifying hierarchy and inequality under sometimes correct and sometimes tenuous if not erroneous (according to science) enlightenment principles.

In the meantime, I think you might be confusing “credential infation” with grade inflation. Credential inflation is to the detriment of those who cannot afford further and higher educations because it requires them to gain additional education to access jobs that can be performed with lower levels of education.

Grade inflation, on the other hand, is more of a micro issue reflecting what is going on “on the ground,” involving a number of factors like parental pressures, ego massaging, and the like. Ignoring it actually works against those from less affluent backgrounds because it makes it difficult for those who are more academically inclined and able to stand out, net of family background and parental affluence. In addition, in reducing standards, it diminshes the quality of the further and higher education now required of those from less affluent backgrounds.

So, I don’t quite get what would be acoomplished by ignoring grade inflation, as you imply. Addressing it is another way of making sure that education is a level playing field for those from all backgrounds, and does not involve denying that the playing field in general is unequal.

All of this has an political economic basis, I wish you’d do a post on it as well. Otherwise you’re in denial.

The Society for Quality Education has been a strong supporter of maintaining academic standards. This no-fail policy will only fail the students in the long run and is a huge insult to the professional integrity of teachers.

In fact, I wrote about this topic the other day and just re-posted it. It can be viewed at this link:

http://www.sandracruxblog.com/2009/06/05/how-ontario-mcguinty-govt-failing-students/

Thanks to a regular reader of mine (Ann), now that I have discovered your blog, I will definitely stop by on a regular basis.

In the meantime, I have added your URL to my sidebar blogroll, as well as my header page for “Ed Resources.”

Thank you for the link to you blog. Very interesting and I appreciate you spreading the word.

Best wishes, Jim

I visited St. FX in November 2007 to give the Bronfman Lecture: http://www.stfx.ca/news/index.php/2007/11/20/dr-james-cote-delivers-stfxs-annual-bronfman-lecture/

I was very impressed with the school, and its administrators, professors, and students. Your President is sincerely interested in maintaining a high quality of education (of the talks I’ve given across the country, he was the only President to show a genuine interest by treating me to dinner before the lecture, attending the lecture, and speaking further with me after the lecture). Your Dean of Arts is also an impressive person, who shows a great passion for academic excellence.

Best wishes, Jim