Comment by lordCarbonFiber | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lordCarbonFiber | Hacker News Reader

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lordCarbonFiber

This is so ignorant to the advancements in pedagogy over the past several decades as to be insulting. Part of, if maybe not the biggest or only factor, the increase in grades is we are just hugely better at teaching than we were 30 or 40 years ago. Teaching for mastery, the idea of reversing the role of homework vs tests (in terms of relative difficulty and exposure to new information) to better facilitate self learning, formalized programs to act as tutoring and support systems, all of these are increasing student performance by design.

Not only that but as far as higher education goes how are you even trying to compare to "what used to be B or C knowledge"? What in the 70s was graduate level transistor research is basic undergrad course studies, for example. Introduction to programming would have been on punch cards in the 80s, today's students are using python. Are you surprised that they do better given the advances in tooling?

The "kids these days" argument is so, so tired and honestly every time I see it Im not surprised so many of the old guard (rich off of just being in the industry during the dot com boom) think they're being targeted for "age discrimination".

I used that argument back in 4th grade to my parents: “Math is harder for me since there have been more advancements since you were kids”.

I can only speak for electrical engineering, but the basics have not changed in 100 years. Crack open a text book from 100 years ago and you’ll find the same control theory, circuit analysis, electromagnetics, etc. The difference may be vacuum tubes vs. transistors, but the analysis is them same. Many things are a lot easier to do now with computers, and I’ll wager a student of 100 years ago had better analytical skills.

It’s not just grade inflation either, but degree inflation. The PhD is the new MS, etc down the line.

That's patently false, and your example is a straw man. Sure your grade school arithmetic hasn't increased much, but I'd assure you university maths have.

As far as EE goes, I mean sure macro-electronic theory is pretty much the same, but micro-electronics didn't even exist 100 years ago. This is now a standard required class. Digital signal processing again, didn't even exist 100 years ago, now we teach it to sophomores. The foundations that were the same have persisted and the field has done nothing but expand; this trend is replicated across most disciplines.

The data doesn't support your assessment of declining analytical skills. The ability for abstract thought has been monotonically increasing for the past 100 years.[0] I understand the appeal, oh kids these days aren't disrupting anything, my job is safe. The issue is, there's not much data to support the platitude. Globalization means you're competing with billions more people, education achievement has to increase to match; or be left behind.

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_...

Interestingly enough, IQs are now decreasing in the western world and have been since around the mid 90s. There were numerous studies showing this quite clearly in 2013 (when that talk was given) but now it seems every study is corroborating it. Perhaps we can assume he simply felt it required more research as an explanation for why he would give such an ostensibly misleading talk.

Linking to another comment chain here [1] on this topic as this is something multiple people have also brought up as an argument against grade inflation. Unfortunately, it makes the inflation look even more absurd.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447692

I think maths is relatively unique in that it is a really old subject that mostly doesn't depend on hardware. Sure computers have moved maths forward, but there's a lot you can do without.

High school maths is pretty much Antiquity level, though much more formal. First couple of uni years are mostly 17-18th centuries maths. Last 2 undergraduate years is 19th and early 20th centuries.

A few areas have changed though, particularly statistics I think, also computer science if you consider it part of mathematics, but have a look at a textbook from a 100 year ago, and you'll feel right at home except for the style.

Thank you for saving me from needing to write the exact same thing!

I think you're assuming those advances in theory are universally available in practice.

They are not. My experience as a public school student was far worse than when my parents went to school - double or worse class sizes, no teaching assistants, and occasionally the same textbooks my parents used. "Experienced" teachers were the worst - it often seemed like the only thing they changed over the years was to stop corporal punishment.

My parents required unreasonable numbers of As, so I regularly got undeserved grades just by acting like I'd make a big deal about it... teachers were too overwhelmed to pay attention even if they cared. Some of my peers had helicopter parents that called in arguing their kid deserved an A simply for studying all night, even though that "sudying" was often was just online RPGs.

The trend followed in college for non-major classes. Professors simply didn't care unless a student would be advancing to another class in their department - then they cared enough to fail students, but the grade curve was still logistic. Not the expected "C = passing knowledge".

Even then, I still never saw pedagogical advances outside of brand new assistant professors in liberal arts classes.

I mean YMMV applies, instruction quality is certainly going to be dependent on the institution; but that's certainly the opposite of my experience at a public (though well ranked) public university.

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