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Originally Posted by sciguy125
Are the low grades just an inherent part of a hard subject or are people just not learning what they need to be? You've also got the professors that curve to the point that a 40 is passing. Is this alright? Are they letting bad engineers by, or are they making it possible to produce engineers at all? Lastly, is this common everywhere, or is there just something wrong with my school?
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The low grades are produced by many factors. I've seen this happen way too many times in my courses and know exactly what you're talking about. They typically happen in the tougher courses that try to bring together multiply topics, like Gdeaver mentioned. Thermo, Diff Eq's, upper level engineering design courses, and hardcore CAD classes are typical of this trend. Way too much information is thrown at the students in a short period of time. Also, a lot of professors tend to forget that their students are taking "other classes" and have other work to do besides theirs. This combined creates an environment where it is hard to adequately absorb the information, process it mentally, and then learn it well enough that you can apply it to your work.
While the low numerical grades being translated into higher letter grades will pass the class more successfully, it is only a band-aid covering up a problem with the curriculum, teaching skills, or the students learning capacities. I know at WPI, the courses (undergrad, atleast) are 7 weeks. If you miss one class, you end up being behind for days while you try to catch up. If you're trying to do this while having massive amounts of info crammed into your brain, it's a good chance that you'll learn it well enough to pass your next exam, but you'll forget it shortly afterwards.
I don't feel there's an easy solution to this issue, but it would be nice to see school's heading in the right direction in solving the problem. Some possibilities would be: more classes for each course to lower the prof-student ratio, increase the length of the course, make the hw more like grad courses (less problems, but more in-depth problems that require real world thinking), etc.
my $1/50