The Reality-Based Community

I don't know it encourages competitiveness to the point that cooperation is discouraged. Considering the size of the classes involved, the benefit you get from cooperating with two or three other students outweighs in most cases the detriment from similarly assisting those two or three others. In fact, if most other students are cooperating, it could hurt a student's chances to go solo (assuming that's not that student's preferred study method anyway). In this way, the curve (at least in law school) might cause survival of the most cooperative, since the jerks won't find people to work with and will suffer for it.

Grading on the curve is OK as long as it is based on the half-wit scale. The top score defines a perfect result as it is acheived by the student with the most wits. Half that score is an F - suitable for half-wits.

Personally, I would argue that all grading systems are inherently conter-productive (I am heading to grad school in math this fall, so I am not merely someone who is bitter over academic failure). It is extraordinarily difficult to design any form of testing system that rewards understanding of the material and not merely recitation--this has become a rather large problem in mathematics and physics. Not to merely complain, I would argue that a better system would be similar to the British system of recitations. It is much easier for a recitation instructor to probe a student's understanding by asking questions that may be unfamiliar to the student and seeing how that student is able to think through the problem (much like oral examinations are done in American graduate programs) than it is to write a fair test. However, the great drawback in this proposal would be instituting it on a large scale (vis. large lecture classes at research institutions).

And don't forget to notice that any of these schemes are more rational than the mandated No Child Left Behind.

The best argument, in my view, is that norm-referencing has been tried on a large scale with skin in the game, and it was called Enron's personnel policy ("Rank & Yank")

Further to that, the stupidity factor. A few idiots are enough to drag down the average, and hence the mark required to get a top grade. Equally, the occasional genius will have the opposite effect.

1. The nasty hens are not the avian analogue of pre-meds; they are the analogue of Republicans. Some pre-meds are caring, cooperative people.

2. Imagine if Olympic events were scored on a curve. Someone would HAVE to get a ten, even if all the performers had spills, errors, etc. And most performers would HAVE to get fives. Of course, in the Real World, people would never stand for this. Grading on the curve is silly, but easy. It happens when the instructor cannot define and recognize clearly the standards of competence. I second Daniel's comment above about recitations. Italian universities use a similar approach.

In my world, Olympic events *are* graded on a curve - the highest scoring individual in a trial wins that trial.

June and Barry,

You're both right in a way. The Olympics are scored on a curve (for example, the lowest time wins), but there are minimum acceptable standards for Olympic qualification.

I can remember being pressured by my peers to drop a class because I was going to "destroy" the curve.

"The friendship of students and of beauties is for the most part equally sincere, and equally durable: as both depend for happiness on the regard of others, on that which the value arises merely from comparison, they are both exposed to perpetual jealousies, and both incessantly employed in schemes to intercept the praises of each other."

-Samuel Johnson

Having received both a M.P.A. and a J.D. from the same university, my experience is that Plan A is the Law School and Plan B is the Public Policy/Admin program. (Sure it is a generalization.)

As to Prof. Kleiman's comment that: "using a grading structure with perverse incentives built in seems like both a bad idea in itself and a bad example to set for students who will, if they wind up running anything, face the problem of how to design a reward system." He should see how law firms (particularly large law firms) that have resisted hiring non lawyer managers with real authority are run.

Personally, I feel that grading on a curve does not trully discourage competition. Most students quickly realise that there is more to gain from sharing information than hiding it.

Appetite comes with eating... Gregory

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