MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING AND AMWAY AT YALE?

Campus Reform associate editor Alessia Degraeve files "Yale College Republicans President explains how rampant grade inflation is an institutional strategy."

Manu Anpalagan, the Yale undergraduate who spearheaded a revival of the Yale College Republicans chapter, argues that grade inflation at Yale University is not an accident, but a conscious institutional strategy.

Grade inflation at Yale is often described as a cultural drift or a lingering side effect of the COVID-19 era policies. But Anpalagan argues those disparities persist because they serve the university’s institutional incentives.

“I believe this rampant grade inflation and decline in coursework rigor is a calculated decision by university officials,” Anpalagan told Campus Reform. “Administrators know that highly motivated students will seek to continue their education by going to law school, medical school, and other graduate programs.”

Within graduate school admissions, even marginal GPA differences can determine outcomes. Inflated grades make Yale students more competitive on paper—and, in turn, make Yale itself look more successful.

“Every additional tenth or even hundredth of a point in your GPA can really help,” Anpalagan said. “So if the university makes it easier for students to get better grades, and that in turn helps their chances of getting into graduate school, it ultimately reflects well on the undergraduate institution as well.”

Higher graduate school placement rates feed directly into the metrics universities use to advertise success: alumni outcomes, post-graduation salaries, and national rankings. In that environment, Anpalagan argues, grade inflation functions as a reputational tool rather than an educational one.

What effect those higher departmental rankings in Yale's evergreen disciplines has on the life prospects of Yale graduates who go on to advanced work in those evergreen disciplines might be another matter.  The Campus Reform article focuses on the distorted signals that accompany inflated grades.

We were calling attention to the likely diminished life prospects of those honors graduates nine years ago.

"Like many colleges and universities, Yale relies on graduate students and other low-paid contingent faculty members, like adjunct professors, to teach much of its coursework."  Yes, and Professor Klein's essay reveals another dynamic at work, higher education as multi-level marketing with more earnest pitchmen.

We've also noted the likely diminution of creativity as students do what gets them the good grades and continued funding, rather than beavering away at the frontiers of knowledge to identify anomalies: and there is no shortage of anomalies, let alone of interesting questions.

Yes, and the graduate students so trained on the taxpayer dime learn the arts of grantsmanship, and, should they be fortunate enough to land a tenure-line job, they can then write grants and recruit and develop the next generation of Amway representatives researchers.  Whether the work so funded is better than the work professors develop on their own initiative remains to be seen.

That "fortunate enough to land a tenure-line job," dear reader, is not throw-away carping by an admittedly jaded onetime academician.

Perhaps when Amway comes to Yale, that will concentrate minds.

Reality dawns on Rebecca Gordon.  "Is Higher Education a Pyramid Scheme?"

Yes, yes, it is, and we told you so a long time ago.  (So long ago, in fact, that the links have expired at that old post.)  It wasn't just a pyramid scheme at the lower levels of the academic food chain, even then.

How are those Yale graduates doing with their academic placements, whether they continued at an Ivy or accepted financial aid from solid departments that might not "look as successful" in sending their baccalaureate graduates on to graduate or professional schools?