This is being treated as a big issue over there in the US for a while now. It is, shall we say, purely of academic interest to most of us here in India.
In any case, here are the links: Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber, and Janice McCabe and Brian Powell in Inside Higher Ed.
In particular, the McCabe and Powell article says a lot about professors as individuals, and about how they are not really immune from some of the 'self-enhancing' tendencies -- as the authors call them -- that they would be the first to blame others of.
professors are human beings, and it's a basic human nature to attribute failure on others and take credit for success.
ReplyDeleteSV, since professors have (at least, on paper!) a somewhat better formal training, one expects them to avoid logical pitfalls, such as the Wobegon-type beliefs. The McCabe and Powell article is interesting -- and very humbling! -- precisely because it tells us that, on the grade inflation issue, academics are no better than the residents of Lake Wobegon!
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