Georgetown's Academic Culture

[reformation]

Interesting article in The Hoya re: the follow up to the study 10 years ago which slammed Gtwns academic culture
www.thehoya.com/news/083107/news1.cfm

The follow up seems to conclude that Gtwn has not really addressed it's shortcomings outlined 10 years ago, i.e., grade inflation, lack of rigor in course offerings, lack of student intellectual engagement, lack of recognition by outside constituencies of the quality of Gtwn's academic enterprise etc....

It seems like the university admin has focused on foolish attempts to curb drinking as a response to these issues, which does not seem to have much of an impact--The univ admin, I think, should have the professors take the students seriously and hold the students to much higher standards--Unfortunately I sense that the faculty really don't have incentives to do this.

I'm curious to seewhat other people think about the report/follow up and what to do about it

[Nevada Hoya]

Probably an honest assessment, but not having been on campus for years, I cannot say for sure if the criticism is merited. What I can do is compare when I was at Georgetown, which is probably not valid. Getting into GU is much more difficult than when I was there, so the background is certainly there to make it a very academically oriented place. But I would have to say that I spent much more than 16 hours per week on homework. Especially, sophomore year (which always seems the worst year for studies), as I was probably spending 16 hours a week on math alone, plus I have organic chemistry and physics, along with theology and philosophy. Also, I don't think we had the grade inflation that is indicated now. I did fairly well in English in HS, but I even got a C or C plus from "easy A" Harmon. Of course, the students today probably do not have to study as hard as I did, because they are probably better prepared.

The 12% science majors seems a bit low, but you have to consider that there are probably not many science majors in the business or foreign service schools. I would like to know what percentage of college students are science majors. That being said, I think GU has to improve the sciences to stay competitive with other elite academic institutions. The new science building is a start, but I don't know if that will help much.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

I think that if you want students to take your seriously you need to hold them to account. They aren't dumb - if they don't need to do the reading then they won't. If they don't have to put a great deal of time into a paper to succeed then they won't. My impression of Georgetown was that if you wanted to get B+'s its not that hard. If you want to get an A- its a little tougher, but A's in some classes are impossible.

My view of the relation of drinking to this is that academic rigor impacts drinking and drinking does not impact academic rigor. If you want students in the library on saturday nights instead of Village A, start treating them like its U of Chicago.

[HoyaSinceBirth]

nevada the 12% science majors is misleading that's how many accepted sutdents said they planned on being science majors, i.e. they alreayd new what major they wanted and that major was a science one. The majority of students are undecided when they come in. Also there are many of students who take a lot of science courses liek pre meds who don't necessaril major in science. Also i does that include nursing students. they don't major in biology or somethign like that, but the majority of their classes are sciences.

I really haven't seen the grade inflation that they talk about. Most of my classes have had very few A's. They make a point that upper level courses have too many A's. To me that makes sense. if you're taking an upper level course, it's in your fiield of interest and you've had many classes that have prepared you for it, you might even have had that teacher before and know what to expect. I would almost expect that grades would be higher.

[strummer8526]

A lot of professors are downright terrible, and they're lazy. It's easier to dole out B+'s than to defend yourself for C's and D's. If you don't teach seriously and lay down strict expectations, you can't give a very difficult final or grade it harshly. None of these things happen.

The odd thing is that I was talking with a friend about my two majors: Government and English. I thought the Government classes were generally more difficult and graded more harshly. But I feel like I learned more in the English classes and that the English professors were MUCH more engaged. I don't really know the conclusion to draw from that, but it seems sort of backwards to me.

[reformation]

A govt prof told me last yr that 55% of the grades given by his dept were A- or better--I don't know if this is true or not though I can say at least anecdotally that both the profs at gtwn and grad schools at other top univ's believe that Gtwn suffers from more grade inflation than most of the schools that it would consider peers(and a few that it students consider a notch below GU).--note that the grade inflation could be the result of either or both of easier grading/lower standards or students simply taking less challenging courses on average.

[DFW HOYA]

If Georgetown really wants to change the culture, change the scoring.

At the graduate school I attended, A's were restricted to the top 10% of any course, regardless of the work submitted. The top third of the class got no better than a B+, with a top half finish earning no less than a B. A grade of a B, therefore, was truly "above average".

Now before you say "that's not fair", realize that the biggest opponents to such a system are usually faculty, because the real issue of academic "culture" isn't the students' fault at all, but those faculty who use the "gentlemen's B+" as a collegiate form of social promotion.

[hoyaLS05]

strummer85 said:

A lot of professors are downright terrible, and they're lazy. It's easier to dole out B+'s than to defend yourself for C's and D's. If you don't teach seriously and lay down strict expectations, you can't give a very difficult final or grade it harshly. None of these things happen.

The odd thing is that I was talking with a friend about my two majors: Government and English. I thought the Government classes were generally more difficult and graded more harshly. But I feel like I learned more in the English classes and that the English professors were MUCH more engaged. I don't really know the conclusion to draw from that, but it seems sort of backwards to me.

I am also an English/Gov't double major (there are a lot of us) and feel the same way, for what its worth.

[Gold Hoya]

U of C's MBA program (not sure about the rest of the U of C programs) forces a maximum 3.25 average in a system without +/- -- A=4.0, B=3.0 and so on.

In practice, this usually meant approximately 30% A, 75% B, 5% C.

Of course, we also had grade non-disclosure, but nobody ever accused the MBA of being the most academic of programs anyway.

[The Stig]

I don't think that putting a cap on grades is the way to go. If a teacher really loves something that a student has written, they shouldn't have to give it a lower grade because they've already used their quota of A's.

I had a class last semester where the only assignment was one big research paper at the end. The teacher was extremely passionate about the course, and was great at passing that passion on to the students. The result was that the students put a lot of time and effort into making our papers as good as we could make them. The professor said that the day the papers were due was like Christmas for him, since he absolutely loved reading what we had written. So it really comes as no surprise that he gave very high grades.

As a matter of fact, this professor gave out so many A's that he routinely got in trouble for it. His response was to go in front of those who were criticizing him with a stack of all the papers that he had given A's to and challenge them to identify one paper that didn't deserve an A. The challenge was never accepted. He knew he was treading on a lot of toes, but he refused to change his grading policy. As he expected, the department eventaully cut the class.

Now I understand wanting to stop the scenario that strummer85 described, where a professor simply gives out B+ and higher grades because it's the easy thing to do. But I don't think it's right to stop a professor from giving high grades when he believes in the grades he gives so strongly that he's willing to put his job at risk just to defend them. The important thing isn't the grades themselves, but the reason for giving them.

[Bahstin]

goldhoya said:

U of C's MBA program (not sure about the rest of the U of C programs) forces a maximum 3.25 average in a system without +/- -- A=4.0, B=3.0 and so on.

In practice, this usually meant approximately 30% A, 75% B, 5% C.

Of course, we also had grade non-disclosure, but nobody ever accused the MBA of being the most academic of programs anyway.

That post is way funny.

[09hoyaky]

hmm...as a current student I honestly cannot see the grade inflation. Especially with respect to schools like Harvard and Columbia that give out A's like hot cakes. I'm a government and philosophy double major and it seems like I have to almost kill myself to get an A. There will always be classes that Fr. Schall's Elements of Political theory (which I think should be a requirement for ALL students) in which all students get A-'s.....but thats with any school. If anything...I think the profs at Gtown grade harder than most schools.

[TBird41]

09hoyaky said:

hmm...as a current student I honestly cannot see the grade inflation. Especially with respect to schools like Harvard and Columbia that give out A's like hot cakes. I'm a government and philosophy double major and it seems like I have to almost kill myself to get an A. There will always be classes that Fr. Schall's Elements of Political theory (which I think should be a requirement for ALL students) in which all students get A-'s.....but thats with any school. If anything...I think the profs at Gtown grade harder than most schools.

That's not true. I know people who got B's and B+'s in Fr. Schall's class. The kid who got a B had to miss a bunch of class because he was on the golf team, and the kid who got a B+ was so hung over he puked during the final.

And I agree--Fr. Schall's class was awesome, both because it was easy and because it was very interesting.

[PDRHoya99]

goldhoya said:

In practice, this usually meant approximately 30% A, 75% B, 5% C.

Guess there weren't many stats courses at UChicago. Either that or your profs were giving 110%!

[reformation]

Two points

Regarding grade inflation the real issue is both whether outside constituencies like top grad students believe it exists--I can assure those on the board that unfortunately many top institutions belive that it is not that hard to get good grades at Gtwn--This negative perception(whether correct or not) affects the relative value of your degree. The University admin + profs know this is an issue but have done nothing to address it at least according to the university's own report.

A related and perhaps more important isue is that many Gtwn profs and grad schools believe that the actual content of Gtwn's academic courses and programs is not up to par with other elite universities(this may be part of the reason that there are a lot of A's given out)_-I would bet a majority of Gtwn prof's though not administrators like DiGioia believe this also to be true. I suspect that the fact that the people like DiGioia are not focused on this(probably because of lack of outside Gtwn experience) even though many faculty believe a change is warranted is the reason that little has been done in the last 10 years to address this issue.

[DFW HOYA]

reformation said:

This negative perception(whether correct or not) affects the relative value of your degree.

There are some jobs where the value of a Georgetown degree makes a difference, but others where it matters very little, if at all. Maybe that's just considerable personal experience, but plenty of companies simply don't care where you went.

[SFHoya99]

I think it is funny that anyone thinks changing grades is going to change the "academic culture."

Less lecturing, more discussion, more hands on work, less repetitive papers of things that have been said before...

[reformation]

I think its actually pretty easy to fix a big part of this problem without a lot of committee's, useless high sounding programs etc. The admin, provost, deans etc should just make each department check what the top undergrad programs in its discipline are doing and make sure that they structure both their courses and overall program to the highest standard. This doesn't mean that Gtwn can't have unique offerings but it at least challenges the faculty to justify what they are doing in comparison to other top schools.

Most top universities require their faculty/depts to do this(its really just common sense if you really care about offering a top flight program and is pretty easy to research with the net)--Gtwn definitely does not require its depts to do this--which is really pretty shocking + silly--the students deserve better for their $.

[dsd25]

reformation said:

I think its actually pretty easy to fix a big part of this problem without a lot of committee's, useless high sounding programs etc. The admin, provost, deans etc should just make each department check what the top undergrad programs in its discipline are doing and make sure that they structure both their courses and overall program to the highest standard. This doesn't mean that Gtwn can't have unique offerings but it at least challenges the faculty to justify what they are doing in comparison to other top schools.

Most top universities require their faculty/depts to do this(its really just common sense if you really care about offering a top flight program and is pretty easy to research with the net)--Gtwn definitely does not require its depts to do this--which is really pretty shocking + silly--the students deserve better for their $.

From a school that has difficulty even getting syllabi online for students before we have to choose classes, for some reason, I find it difficult to believe that GTown is too concerned about what we get for our dollars, sometimes.

I completely agree too, it's unbelievable that this type of stuff isn't completely monitored on a regular basis.

[CWS]

Periodically, every department in Georgetown College undergoes an external review (I imagine the other schools do something similar). When my department went through it, we had three scholars: one each from Dartmouth, Boston College, and Yale review us (we did fine, though, of course, there were various recommendations).

I would be surprised if any department at Gtown was uninformed about the programs at peer institutions. I know of at least two departments (again in the College) that have had undergraduate committees who did the kind of research into peer programs which the posts above advocated. I've sat on the College Curriculum Committee which reviews changes to undergraduate programs. One of the items often included in a department's proposal is a comparison of what other institutions are doing. Finally, most scholars go to conferences where they compare notes with their friends and peers about courses and programs.

Re. syllabus online: procrastinating faculty, like yours truly, are more fairly blamed than the administration. Every semester during pre-registration we get notes from the registrar and/or the provost encouraging us to post our syllabus online.

One other note to keep in mind: the kind of prestige and academic elitism bestowed on school by various college rankings does NOT necessarily translate into quality undergrad programs. Uber-respected, highly prolific professors help establish a university elite status, but, if those scholars are given bare minimum teaching loads (as they often are), undergrads don't benefit. Harvard just published a study of its undergrad program which highlighted some serious problems (notably, the lack of close interaction b/w scholars and their students).

www.fas.harvard.edu/~secfas/General_Education_Final_Report.pdf

Here's an article on it in the Boston Globe:
www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/03/29/student_life_at_harvard_lags_peer_schools_poll_finds/

I had to laugh at this comment:

On the social front, students complain that Harvard lacks places where students can socialize and has so many rules that it is difficult to hold a party on-campus, where almost all undergraduates live.
The Harvard administration has also been working hard in the last few years to improve social life. The school has been experimenting with popular ''pub nights" on some Fridays, and has allowed campus parties to stay open an hour later, until 2 a.m. They have tried other novelty programs from dodge ball tournaments to speed dating, and doubled the amount of athletic equipment in the main gym used by undergraduates.