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from the this-will-not-be-controversial-oh-no-sir dept.
GungnirSniper writes:
"Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post has 'A message to the nation's women: Stop trying to be straight-A students.'
In her analysis of others' findings, she writes of a discouragement gradient that pushes women out of harder college degrees, including economics and other STEM degrees. Men do not seem to have a similar discouragement gradient, so they stay in harder degree programs and ultimately earn more. Data suggests that women might also value high grades more than men do and sort themselves into fields where grading curves are more lenient.
'Maybe women just don't want to get things wrong,' Goldin hypothesized. 'They don't want to walk around being a B-minus student in something. They want to find something they can be an A student in. They want something where the professor will pat them on the back and say "You're doing so well!"'
'Guys,' she added, 'don't seem to give two damns.'
Why are women in college moving away from harder degrees?"
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13 2014, @12:24AM
Large community college in a major city here. I was in a seminar a week ago, and one of the humanities organizers suggested such things as (a) entirely removing required reading from a course, and (b) following her lead and grading 70% on attendance alone (i.e., get at least a "C" by just showing up with no work or evidence of learning at all). So from what I can tell it's the STEM classes which are standing against the tide of insane grade inflation under the "everyone can haz college diploma" push.