The course I am teaching this semester is cross-coded for three levels of students: first-years, later years, and postgrads. They have separate tutorials and after this first assignment that I am currently marking, their assessment diverges too. But up until now they have covered the same material, had the same readings, same in-class work, and the same assessment.
I have just finished marking the first assignment, and the median and mean for the first years is much higher than that of the later-years (think: 80-ish for first-years, 60-ish for later-years), and just about all my fails are postgrads.
The only possible conclusion is that the more years of university study you do, the dumber you get.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Actually, I can think of other explanations, but they are all depressing
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4 Comments:
Yeah, I can agree with that on the personal level - reading back over past work, I was really hot stuff in 1993-1994, Ok when I started my PhD, and mediocre when I finished it. I blame my discovery of a social life, binge drinking and sex. (Ie: When I was a teetotal geek with no girlfriend, I wrote well and studied hard...)
I actually felt myself getting dumber my first year of grad school. After that I suppose I wasn't bright enough to notice the rest of the decline.
I definitely did best in my first year, it started to slide from there on in...
So what you're saying is I finally have a solid reason to stop this torture that is grad school?
Talk to me! (You know you want to!)