„What’s the Point of a Professor?“

The New York Times online pubished an opinion piece by Mark Bauerlein, Professor of English Literature at Emory University in Atlanta, on May 9, 2015, entitled „What’s the Point of a Professor?“

In it Bauerlein – clearly an American of German descent – writes: „In 1960, only 15 percent of grades were in the A range, but now the rate is 43 percent, making A the most common grade by far.“

The auther further states that faculty members’ attitudes are kindly, too. In one national survey, 61 percent of students said that professors frequently treated them „like a colleague/peer,“ while only 8 percent heard frequent „negative feedback about their academic work.“ 

According to the survey more than half leave the graduation ceremony believing that they are „well prepared“ in speaking, writing, critical thinking and decision-making.“

„You can’t become a moral authority“, writes Bauerlein, „if you rarely challenge students in class and engage them beyond it. If we professors do not do that, the course is not an induction of eager minds into an enlarging vision. When it comes to students, we shall have only one authority: the grades we give. We become not a fearsome mind or a moral light, a role model or inspiration. We become accreditors.“

“A work of art”

Penguin. An American publishing house (a part of Random House, which was acquired by Bertelsmann). A flyer tucked into one of their books purchased via Amazon. Quotes by reviewers about some of those other Penguin books: 

“A work of art. One of the greatest political biographies ever written.”; “How non-fiction should be written.”; “Magnificent. I finished it with a sense of exaltation.”; “One of the world’s most original and provocative thinkers.”; “A mind-altering book.”; “The most important book on the Second world War in decades.”; “When you read it, you feel like you can topple giants.”

Scoring System

Superlative: Of, relating to, or constituting the degree of grammatical comparison that denotes an extreme or unsurpassed level or extent; surpassing all others, supreme; of very high quality, excellent; excessive, exaggerated. The superlative form of nice is nicest, bad is worst, of interesting is most interesting.

The American academic system – high school, university respectively – uses the following scoring: A excellent (high school), 4.0 (university); B good, 3.0; C satisfactory, 2.0; D pass, 1.0; F fail, no credit.

Grade inflation occurs when higher grades are assigned for work that would have received lower grades in the past. The American academic community has attempted time and again to address the problem of grade inflation, but have yet to establish workable standards.

Grade inflation

It is getting more and more competitive to get into a prestigious university. One must be a straight A student with a high SAT score to even get into a prestigious public university, such as the University of Washington.

In 2012 the Seattle Times published an article which stated that the average GPA of incoming freshman at the University of Washington in fall 2011 was 3.75. This points out an interesting problem, which is the inflation of grades.

If students need to get better and better grades to get accepted to college, it will eventually devalue the GPA. Furthermore, it could create added stress for young students if they receive a grade that is not an A, such as an B or C. This type of grade inflation could influence the grading scale in a negative way.

Food portions

It is well known that the United States is the land of plenty. According to the American Journal of Public Health, food portions have increased significantly since the 1970s. Additionally, research conducted by New York University shows that American food portions are much larger than those in Europe.

The more food consumed the larger the energy supply created. This larger energy supply can lead to obesity, a serious problem facing many Americans. However, since many studies analyze their data as correlations it is hard to make any judgments about the causation of the relationship of food portion size and obesity.

Popup surveys

A Call Center sends an email to a customer they just served, asking for quick feedback on that service. Websites have popups which give users a chance to respond immediately to what they like and don‘t like. Social networking sites like Facebook have their little thumbs up and down symbols on every page.

Political parties, as well as companies, are constantly asking voters, or consumers, what they like, don‘t like, how they feel, what‘s good bad, up down, right wrong, left right. Marketing in America is too a large degree understood as finding out what people want.

Americans selling something – products, services, political messages – want to know as much as they can about their target groups. Target. It‘s a sign of American customer-orientation. Or, from the perspective of other cultures, customer overorientation.

It is also a sign for the very strong inclination of Americans to quantify human behavior, to use statistics and measurements in order to understand it. Finally, it is a sign of how much Americans value, or take seriously, unreflected impressions and opinions given just after someone has experienced a product, service or an interaction.

„Excellent!”

In sports, positive feedback from your coach regarding your performance can be an important confidence booster. For professional athletes in the U.S. the way the media describes and pictures you can be almost as important to your career as your coach’s approval.

When listening to the commentator of a NBA game one will rarely hears an athlete’s performance described as fine or okay.  Some people may think that this is an inflation of words such as excellent and great.

However, the use of such words may simply reflect the quality of the league. It is unclear were the cut off is when using superlatives and if the inflationary use of words such as great, amazing, or terrific has a negative effect on the American viewer of the game. The inflationary use of superlatives might also just be a way to express more optimistic and positive views of the world for which the Americans are known for.

“We want negative feedback”

Statement made by a German working in the U.S.: “It bothers us Germans when our American bosses give is inflated feedback, meaning too positive. Negative feedback keeps us oriented on avoiding mistakes, and it sharpens our ability to remain self-critical.

How is someone supposed to remain clear-headed and self-critical if all they ever hear is great and super. Performance which is clearly suboptimal should not be sugar-coated. Management loses credibility that way.

And feedback loses its key purpose, which is to address primarily things that aren’t working well. At some point this will hurt us. The quality of our work will suffer.”

Almost everyone gets an A

A comment by a German with extensive experience at the university level in the U.S.: “I think the real issue here is not how grades are officially classified but that there is a much stronger tendency of grade inflation in the US. 

Almost everyone gets an A, whereas a B already feels like a failure even though it’s officially considered “good”. 

Germans – at least at university level – are much more likely to give a student a C and think that she/he did a good job. When professors give a B they think the student’s paper is great. A basically means a professor could have written this.

Feedback frequency

German teams maintain long lines of communication. Feedback takes place in a formal setting, once or twice a year, according to the company‘s official internal process. Seldom do German team leads give team members spontaneous, informal feedback. Germans focus on the details of their work and less so on where they stand individually in the team at any given time.