It’s graduation time once again and I wonder how many kids will be walking tall just because they’d be graduating cum laude or its higher variants.
This might be a bit of sourgraping but it seems that it’s just so easy to get honors these days. The Revised Genereal Education Program (RGEP) has been the subject of controversy over the past few years.
Ever since students have had the “freedom” to choose the general education subjects, grade inflation has appeared to be a problem. We’ve seen it all over the Internet. What was once a Peyups.com phenomenon can be seen over many a social network – fora that discuss the recommended classes and professors mostly based on the “petiks” workload and “unoability.”
I’ve had my fare share inside the classroom and I’m pretty sure that my previous students would classify me (based on today’s grading standards) as “kuripot.” I can still count with my fingers the students to whom I’ve given the grade of 1.0. Barely scrape by in my class and you get a 3.0. Do a good job, 2.0.
I belong to a generation of the “old” GE program where you plainly had to go through NatSci 1 and STS, both of which are simply not “unoable” bny mere mortals. Not unless you’re some kind of intellectual demigod (or demigoddess).
Still, I graduated with a pretty decent grade average and even with that, I feel that I too have benefitted from grade inflation.
When I hear my mentors reminisce about the rigors of their undergraduate work, I really feel like my honors aren’t justified. Many of them graduated “mere” cum laudes but I am willing to bet that if they studied in today’s environment, they’d probably score off the charts.
But with today’s choices of unoable professors and courses, it appears like luck would be more than enough to get you honors.