[Projectiboga]

I majored in Statistics and Probability. By the mid 1980s, departments were starting to look at the distribution of grades. This lead to teachers giving really difficult tests and then having a large 'curve'. The problem with matching a grade distribution to the Normal Curve, is that by definition the Normal Curve is the absolute wrong goal for grades distribution. A normal distribution requires multiple inputs where none is deterministic. That is the opposite of how a class with a standardized curriculum should fall. Yes there should be variation but the use of the Normal Curve with needlessly difficult tests has caused many departments to be proud of their burn rate with incoming freshmen. In engineering then they routinely pushed out nearly half the freshmen, and had the burn continue into second year. The issue is these engineering students were also part of several 'colleges' who at the time had different policies about grades. One college didn't allow any redos, if you took a class a second time you'd get the two grades. Where another college would allow retaking the class and erasing the old grade. That school eventually merged the colleges and standardized the grading policies but I'm not sure they have any kind of redress to the engineering throwaways. These departments who have high facilities and equipment costs are what I saw pulled that the most often, they used those students whom they were actively harming more than half to subsidize their academic department. Advice I got when I was in the search for college, "Go to the best school you can get the best grades in".

[trod123]

Unfortunately, the best school doesn't advertise, and like the elusive unicorn doesn't seem to exist because the incentives only seem to promote perverse incentives.

Bad options have crowded out good options, eventually like any lawn that has plastic sheeting blacking it out, the organisms underneath die leaving barren soil.

That may just be my personal geography I did try every college in my area in a 200 mile radius aside from the private ones which I couldn't afford, and the ones that wouldn't let me in, so this wasn't a lack of trying.

That burn rate continues churning forever on the blood of past students that were told lies with no other choice, and the tests are scheduled just after the full refund deadline.

I'd taken physics 9 times by the time I gave up on Aerospace Engineering. They used to do a lab contest among the colleges (same college district) in my area for physics and I directing my group repeatedly won.

Kind of farcical when your students flunk the course repeatedly but are the only ones in the contest to complete a proper egg drop with limited material selection from 6 stories where the egg survives without a crack.

I'm 90% sure they stopped the contest because it looked bad.