A study says that black students take easier courses than white students at Duke University. Abigail Wilson has the story at The College Fix:
Although black and white students enter college with similar academic interests, 68 percent of black students eventually chose to study humanities and social sciences. According to the study, this is because “natural science, engineering, and economics courses are more difficult, associated with higher study times, and are more harshly graded than their humanities and social science counterparts.”
Poor retention in STEM fields of study is not a racial problem, it is true for student across the board. According to the National Science Foundation, about one in 10 incoming freshman say they expect to major in engineering, but only half of them actually complete degrees in the field.
STEM retention should be a critical goal for educators. Focusing on affirmative action seems to be a needless distraction from that goal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs Thomas Sowell has said, racial preferences simply put perfectly well qualified college students into more difficult programs. Whites with exactly the same capabilities (generally) enter programs better suited to their preparation level.
In the end there's not a dimes' worth of difference between anti-black racists and anti-white racists.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt doesn't help, I'm sure, that there are African American Studies, seemingly tailor-made just for African Americans in the Humanities.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDirty secret in academia - libveral arts courses VASTLY inflate grades. Having a BS in chemistry, an MPA, and a PhD in health policy and economics, I've observed it firsthand...and had an old-school colleague in an English department decry her departmental colleagues who avoid grading work by simply giving every student an A (which shows u in MY classes as students who learned NOTHING in their comp class).
When I did my MPA, I was admitted on probation because of a 2.4 undergrad GPA from a top ranked chemistry program, despite 1400+ on the GRE verbal/quant AND a perfect GRE analytical score. When I completed the 12 cr probationary period, I had the top GPA in the program and ended up graduating with honors. The probation was largely due to faculty seeing transcripts primarily from liberal arts degrees, where every grade was an A or a B in the major courses. My GPA was largely due to lack of study skills as a result of "cruising" through high school, including my Advanced Placement courses - I had never needed the discipline to study.
In my own teaching, I have noticed, and colleagues support, that our best students in undergrad classes tend to be those who take the courses as electives rather than our own majors. Our undergrad majors was shaped by historically (until last year) being stuck in a liberal arts college, with a chairman from outside our area who objected to tough grading (I put up with a lot of harassment after giving an F to one of his grad students in a grad class!). Most of the outside students took a lot of hard science courses, and thus were better prepared to expect a demand to work hard. Exceptions exist - I recently wrote a grad school recommendation for one of our majors who truly shines - but in general the rule holds. Students will rise to a demand, if demanding expectations are made - but they need to be consistent throughout their education.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you really want to complain about other people being stupid, MeMyselfandI, don't write sentences such as this one:
"Our undergrad majors was shaped by historically...until last year) being stuck in a liberal arts college, with a chairman from outside our area who objected to tough grading (I put up with a lot of harassment after giving an F to one of his grad students in a grad class!)."
Does that collection of words actually have a known meaning.
Amazing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLiberal arts courses are easier than 'hard science' courses, because hard science courses are more harshly graded? Because students in those courses have to .. study harder? Because there are, in fact, *wrong* answers in science and engineering?
The whole black v. white dynamic doesn't interest me at all. I'm just amused that it took a study to figure out what most sophomores in most colleges figure out: liberal arts = easy A's.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's not so much that the natural sciences, engineering, and economics are "more harshly graded" than the humanities and social sciences. Rather, it is that success in the former is measured by more objective criteria. In other words, it is more difficult to BS your way through a quantitative subject.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExcellent. When they graduate, they'll be in competition with my own daughter. The less qualified they are in the least useful field, the better chances of her getting and keeping a good job.
Jesse Jackson, Al (Tarawa Brawley) Sharpton? Where are you? Time to blast this report with both barrels, lest they do something to change it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA quick google search reveals that one of the co-authors of the original study was singing a different tune back in 2002 with respect to the core assumption of the relative difficulty of Social Sciences:
Duke's Sociology Department chairman Ken Spenner bristles, "Is Sociology a puff program at Duke? We don't think so."
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/101227/
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't know why anyone should be surprised by this. The brilliant William F. Buckley remarked at the passage of the Martin Luther King national holiday "it rankles that we should be asked to take the day off to remember a man whose career was built on leisure."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse