[jerf]

We do it differently. In a traditional bribery situation, one bribes the official to get a specific "exception" through. In the US, we declare that we aren't paying umpty-thousand dollars a year so that Johnny can get an F and that our contributions to the college will be going down if this continues, and in the spirit of American egalitarianism and fraternity, we lower the standards for everyone. Basically, we've collectively bargained the bribery rather than doing it on a per-student basis.

I'm not entirely clear myself on the exact breakdown of truth vs. sarcasm in the preceding paragraph.

[Tycho]

Maybe you should stop trying to be sarcastic, then?

Please don't take that the wrong way, I've got nothing against you personally (I've read some good posts from you, IIRC), or even with that particular post - it's just the straw that broke the camel's back. I just read a large thread on programmers.stackexchange asking whether IT job requirements are customarily exxagerated, and the answers were distressing. Firstly because most replies painted a bleak picture of HR practices, but secondly because most had a jaded, cynical tone which made it impossible to guage the sincerity. Or whether all the upvotes were from genuine empathy/agreement, or just amusement at the sarcasm. It gets really unclear.

It's like having two angels on your shoulders, one saying 'these sagacious persons have just offered a terrific insight, you must act upon it,' and the other saying 'these people are just trying to sound cool, of course the real world doesn't work like that - ignore them.'

/rant

[jerf]

Unfortunately, I do seriously think the truth percentage is quite significant or I actually wouldn't have posted it. Grade inflation at lower levels of education have different forces in play, but at the higher end it is my serious opinion that it is mostly the colleges/universities giving the customers what they want. Calling it bribery is a bit sarcastic, but even ten years ago I could see professors on low-level classes struggling against grading fairly vs. the knowledge that if they did they would actually be overruled by higher levels of the organization over concerns about monetary implications. (On the positive, I did see one mass-flunking for cheating on a computer science 101 course, though, and it stood.)