Sunday, April 20, 2008

Actually, I can think of other explanations, but they are all depressing

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.

4 Comments:

Weekend_Viking said...

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...)

Inside the Philosophy Factory said...

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.

Unknown said...

I definitely did best in my first year, it started to slide from there on in...

Psycgirl said...

So what you're saying is I finally have a solid reason to stop this torture that is grad school?