‘A’ is for Average: Grade Inflation in America

by Walter Brasch About 1.8 million students will graduate from college this year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At least one-third of them will graduate with honors. In some colleges, about half will be honor graduates. It’s not that the current crop is that bright, it’s that honors is determined by grade point average. Because of runaway grade inflation, the average grade in college is now an “A.” About 43 percent of all college grades are “A”s, according to a recent study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, and published in the prestigious Teachers College Record.  About three-fourths of all grades are “A”s or “B”s. Throw out the universal curve that applies to everything from height to … Continue reading

I Feel Like A Number

And in an appropriately blacked-out Super Bowl, featuring a Mercedes Benz commercial wherein a fellow is tempted to sell his soul for a new, cheap Mercedes (featuring the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” — forever stained by Altamont Race track), one could not escape the feeling that I am no longer a member of an American Middle Class, but, rather, a sad anachronism in a new age of corporate feudalism. Continue reading

America’s Uncivil Phone Manners

Wednesday, I called the newsrooms of Pennsylvania’s two largest newspapers. All I got were disembodied voices telling me no one was available and to leave a message. It was 11 a.m., and I thought someone—anyone!—should have answered their phones. But, with publishers doing their best to “maximize profits” by cutting news coverage and reporters, I figured they either didn’t have anyone capable of answering a phone or figured no one would be calling with any news that day. So I left a message. It was a routine question, specific for each newspaper and related to verifying information from their papers for a book I was completing. I left another message the next day. I would have called individual assignment reporters, … Continue reading