Grade inflation

Certainly not what anyone wants to hear as they finish finals, but Harvard University has joined the ranks of critics who see student GPAs as inflated beyond reality on campus. A recent report by the dean of the faculty for arts and sciences reveals that half of grades given to undergraduates in the last several years have been A or A–. Last June 91 percent of the graduating class received honors. In a forthcoming book, Valen Johnson, a statistics professor at Duke University, contends that recent trends towards high grades, especially in humanities, has pulled people away from the “hard sciences” in favor of the easy “A”.

—New York Times, December 19, 2001.

Grades over Sex

According to a report by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, American high school students feel more pressure to get good grades in school and get to college than to “look cool, do drugs, or have sex.” Asked to rank the various pressures in their lives, 26 percent said the push for good grades was a major problem, and a further 36 percent said it was a minor problem. In comparison, looks, finances, getting along with parents, drugs and drinking, and sex were each considered a major problem by 10–15 percent of the respondents. Most students say they take their studies seriously, with 95 percent saying that college plays a role in their future plans. Eighty-four percent say that a college degree is critical or very important to future success.

—Reuters News Service, August 7, 2001.

Record Minority Admissions

The University of California schools report sending a record number of acceptance letters to Latinos this year and admitted more African Americans than 1997, the year the state banned its affirmative action policy. While the university system would like to like to explain the growth as a result of their intentional outreach efforts, the answer may lie in the state’s shifting demographics. The increase in Latinos tracks very closely to the sharp increase in Latino population over the last decade.

—University Business Daily email report, April 4, 2001.

Left Behind? Not in Britain!

From N. T. Wright, canon theologian of Westminster Abbey: “The American obsession with the Second Coming of Jesus—especially distorted perceptions of it—continues unabated. Seen from my side of the Atlantic, the phenomenal success of the Left Behind books appears puzzling, even bizarre. Few in the U.K. hold the belief on which the popular series of novels is based: that there will be a literal ‘rapture’ in which believers will be snatched up to heaven, leaving empty cars crashing on freeways and kids coming home from school only to find that their parents have been taken to be with Jesus while they have been ‘left behind.’ This pseudo-theological version of Home Alone has reportedly frightened many children into some kind of distorted faith. . . .

“This dramatic end-time scenario is based wrongly on Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians [4:16–17]. . . . Paul’s description of Jesus’ reappearance in 1 Thessalonians 4 is a brightly colored version of what he says in two other passages, 1 Corinthians 15:51–54 and Philippians 3:20–21: At Jesus’ ‘coming’ or ‘appearing,’ those who are still alive will be ‘changed’ or ‘transformed’ so that their mortal bodies will become incorruptible. . . . Paul’s mixed metaphors of trumpets blowing and the living being snatched into heaven to meet the Lord are not to be understood as literal truth, as the Left Behind series suggests, but as a vivid and biblically allusive description of the great transformation of the present world of which he speaks elsewhere. . . .”

“Paul’s misunderstood metaphors present a challenge for us: How can we reuse biblical imagery, including Paul’s, so as to clarify the truth, not distort it. And how can we do so, as he did, in such a way as to subvert the political imagery of the dominant and dehumanizing empires of our world?”

—Quoted by Martin Marty in Context, March 1, 2002.

Resident Evil

“We must remember that evil does not wear a turban, and tunic, a yarmulke or a cross. Evil wears the garment of a human heart woven from the threads of hate and fear.”

—Nathan Baxter, dean of Washington National Cathedral, quoted in Christian Century, December 19, 2001.

Classes Address Terrorism

History, social science and political science classes related to terrorism are appearing in course catalogs at colleges and universities around the country. For example, Georgetown University in Washington, DC, has added nine such courses, including “Homeland Security” and “The U.S., the Middle East, and the War on Terrorism.” Terrorism-related courses are also appearing in other disciplines, including the fine arts: for instance, the University of California–Berkeley’s music department has added “Come Woeful Orpheus: Music’s Voice in a Violent World” and “Poetry and Loss.”

—National On-Campus Report, February 1, 2002.

The Benefits students want most

Flexible hours continues to lead the list of job benefits sought by college students and recent graduates with 42 percent listing it as a top desire—up seven percent over last year. More vacation time and better health benefits also gained a couple of percent over 2000. Reflecting a shift in the market, stock options lost seven percent over the previous year’s survey. The ability to telecommute also lost importance this time around.

—Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2001.

Numbers on Giving

Here’s an interesting look at percentage of income given to charity:

Average contributor              2.1%

College graduates                2.0%

Income below $10,000         5.3%

Income below $100,000       2.2%

Churchgoers                          2.3%

Non-churchgoers                   2.3%

Retirees                                 2.5%

—Source: Readers’ Digest, November 2001.

Harrius Potterus

In an effort to increase interest in the Classics, Bloomsbury, publisher for Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, reports it will publish the tales of the boy wizard in Latin and Ancient Greek. Peter Needham, who taught Latin at England’s Eton College for over 30 years, has begun work on the first of the Potter books.

—New York Times, December 9, 2001, quoted in The Ivy Jungle.