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Re: Concerned about grades

Wow!

If I'd gone to NAU, my phys. career may have ended. Furthermore, though I graduated "with honor", I had to do well on the GRE to gain admission to UCSB grad. school. (Too many C's in phys. and
maths.)

I suppose your (DLM) experience is a good example of the law of unintended consequences, and, what Garrett Hardin called the first law of Bio., "you get what you select for." (Note the terminal
preposition.) Don't worry, capitalism (the market) will fix it. Eventually with the dearth of Physical Science teachers, the pay will rise to the point where it will attract those who previously
became computer engineers, etc.

bc

P.s. That's already happening (at least as campaign rhetoric).

"Daniel L. MacIsaac" wrote:

One could point out that at many grad schools in the US, one is required to
have 3.00 GPA for graduation, which makes a C grade somewhat tantamount to
a
failing grade (at least if you get too many of them.) I've seen a few grad
programs where not only was the 3.00, but the total number of C's allowed
was limited; the one that specifically comes to memory was a program that
allowed no more than three C's in the Ph.D. program.

We have this for our UNDERGRAD Physics majors at NAU as well (no more than
1 C in the major core). By sticking to our strict standards we have
legislated grade inflation for majors in Upper Division courses. However,
we savage our lower division nonmajors for the good of our dept grades
overall :^(

Recently we have been trying to get the teacher's ed pgm admissions to allow an
intro science grade average across two lab sciences of less than 3.0; this
means 99% of our future elementary teachers are taking BIO100 and ENV101
and not physics or chemistry or even geology. Tough courses taken
together with legislated requirements that 'average just isn't satisfactory'
means no students hereabouts...

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu http://purcell.phy.nau.edu PHYS-L list owner