PASSHE Institutions Merging

[ctrabs74]

Emporia is in Kansas.

Emporia, PA is the Cameron County seat.

[ctrabs74]

Pennsylvania Sh*t Show of Higher Education

https://triblive.com/local/regional/...-yet-to-begin/

West Chester attempting to poach an interim president from another PASSHE institution... yeah, that kinda shows where the power is in PASSHE at the moment.

[IUPNation]

Ironically, an emporium is a place where they have anything you'd want to buy. I guess they did in the logging days. Also, ironically, I knew an African-American woman from Philly who married a white guy from a small community near Emporium, They eventually moved to that small town. I looked up the Census statistics for the town and on the ethnicity pie chart there was a thin line for African-American. I told her that I could see her on the graph.

HA!!

[IUPNation]

My wife is from Emporium! So is your favorite D2 conference commissioner. My wife too had never conversed with a Black person until she arrived at Edinboro and met the former president & his wife.

I couldn’t understand that at all when that girl said it. She wasn’t being ignorant or anything I just found it incredulous.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

I'm sure you weren't alone in socializing. As "Animal House" brought out, socializing in college has a long tradition. I will say that most guys in my day tried to keep their GPA above a certain minimum as those who flunked out were liable to find themselves the recipient of an expenses-paid trip to Southeast Asis, courtesy of the Army. I think straight numbers for grades work well for classes such as math or science. They probably work less well in something such as a writing class. For example, is the essay worth an 83 or an 85? That's often a rather subjective call.

Going to hang out with Charlie should have been pretty good motivation to attend class.

[Fightingscot82]

Emporium!

Where I briefly met a girl at IUP who was from there who told me they never saw a black person until they came to IUP.

Needlessly to say I wasn't impressed but because of that statement...I have remembered that town actually still exists.

My wife is from Emporium! So is your favorite D2 conference commissioner. My wife too had never conversed with a Black person until she arrived at Edinboro and met the former president & his wife.

[Ship69]

The one thing I had a hard time with grade wise going from 12 years in the School System of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to IUP...was how they calculated your averages. In Catholic School when i went...it was straight numbers 1-100. Then IUP is was letters and GPA. I liked the Catholic School way better. My final grade average in high school was 87.5. I think my IUP GPA was 2.86 or something....I was way worse a student in college because I socialized far too much instead of actually studying. I must have winged half of those classes...

I'm sure you weren't alone in socializing. As "Animal House" brought out, socializing in college has a long tradition. I will say that most guys in my day tried to keep their GPA above a certain minimum as those who flunked out were liable to find themselves the recipient of an expenses-paid trip to Southeast Asis, courtesy of the Army. I think straight numbers for grades work well for classes such as math or science. They probably work less well in something such as a writing class. For example, is the essay worth an 83 or an 85? That's often a rather subjective call.

[IUPNation]

Grade inflation has basically been under way for the past 40-50 years, and some of the factors you mention come into play. As far as a different grading scale, I had a world history teacher my sophomore year in high school who used 90 for an "A" grade. Your problem was getting the 90. Probably one of the high points of my academic career in high school was being the only student in my section of 35 kids to get an "A" on his term paper. That paper was extensively researched and 40 typewritten pages (no computers in the '60s). In ninth grade, we had two honors rolls, a high honor roll requiring a 3.5 average (basically two "As" and two "Bs" and a "B" honor roll. I have an old newspaper clipping my mother kept because I made the "B" honor roll one term. Out of my freshman class of about 750 students, six made the high honor roll that term. Remember, I'm talking about a 3.5 honor roll, not an all-A honor roll. Lest you think we had a bunch of dummies in that class, I had several friends who were eventually admitted to Harvard and other prestigious schools who did not make the high honor roll that term. Can you imagine grading like that in today's climate? The teachers would be crucified.

At Ship, I was in the top five percent of my graduating class with a 3.4 average, which is a basically a B-plus average. On the basis of that, I was admitted to Northwestern for graduate school. Now we have entire athletic teams at the school that carry a 3.5 average. I'm not throwing dirt at the dedication of those kids, and I think we do have some impressive young students at Ship, but really?

As you point out, a lot of parents talk the talk about a good education these days, but if their kids actually are exposed to the type of academic rigor it takes to get there, they'll have a fit. It doesn't help that most kids spend hours on the interweb, almost all have jobs (have to pay for those cars) and have gotten used to getting by with the minimum in many cases. I considered it a light night when I had less than 90 minutes of homework in high school — see much of that today?

There's a reason most of the doctors at my local hospital are either immigrants from Asia or have parents from there. Those folks still hit the books. There's nothing mysterious about it.

The one thing I had a hard time with grade wise going from 12 years in the School System of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to IUP...was how they calculated your averages. In Catholic School when i went...it was straight numbers 1-100. Then IUP is was letters and GPA. I liked the Catholic School way better. My final grade average in high school was 87.5. I think my IUP GPA was 2.86 or something....I was way worse a student in college because I socialized far too much instead of actually studying. I must have winged half of those classes...

[Ship69]

Grade inflation is because of a few factors

1)A lot of high schools that used run a grading scale of A= 100-93, B- 92-85, C-84-74 ect have moved to the 90A, 80B 70C model.

2) Back in the day schools were limited in the amount of AP course (bonus gpa points) they could offer/ students could actually take. Now with virtual options and travel kids can access more AP courses then in years past. Same things with college level/dual credit courses. Heck is some high schools are able to come to agreements that allow kids to earn their associates degree along with their high school diploma. Those courses typically carry the bonus gpa point that drives up the gpa.

3) Helicopter parents will make a teachers life miserable if little Johnny gets a B and Admin have so many other issues to deal with they aren’t providing the support to back up, so the teachers are just giving in. I’m in my late 30s now and growing up if my grades were bad my parents said it was my fault not the teachers, now a days it reversed and parents blame teachers over their kids.

4) On the other end due to ties to federal funding states in order to get their graduation rates up so schools are doing all sorts of crazy things to keep kids from failing which as others have mentioned giving a kid that has never turned anything a 50% then making them use a platform online for a few hours where they google the answers and get a passing grade.

There are other factors but those would be the main ones.

Grade inflation has basically been under way for the past 40-50 years, and some of the factors you mention come into play. As far as a different grading scale, I had a world history teacher my sophomore year in high school who used 90 for an "A" grade. Your problem was getting the 90. Probably one of the high points of my academic career in high school was being the only student in my section of 35 kids to get an "A" on his term paper. That paper was extensively researched and 40 typewritten pages (no computers in the '60s). In ninth grade, we had two honors rolls, a high honor roll requiring a 3.5 average (basically two "As" and two "Bs" and a "B" honor roll. I have an old newspaper clipping my mother kept because I made the "B" honor roll one term. Out of my freshman class of about 750 students, six made the high honor roll that term. Remember, I'm talking about a 3.5 honor roll, not an all-A honor roll. Lest you think we had a bunch of dummies in that class, I had several friends who were eventually admitted to Harvard and other prestigious schools who did not make the high honor roll that term. Can you imagine grading like that in today's climate? The teachers would be crucified.

At Ship, I was in the top five percent of my graduating class with a 3.4 average, which is a basically a B-plus average. On the basis of that, I was admitted to Northwestern for graduate school. Now we have entire athletic teams at the school that carry a 3.5 average. I'm not throwing dirt at the dedication of those kids, and I think we do have some impressive young students at Ship, but really?

As you point out, a lot of parents talk the talk about a good education these days, but if their kids actually are exposed to the type of academic rigor it takes to get there, they'll have a fit. It doesn't help that most kids spend hours on the interweb, almost all have jobs (have to pay for those cars) and have gotten used to getting by with the minimum in many cases. I considered it a light night when I had less than 90 minutes of homework in high school — see much of that today?

There's a reason most of the doctors at my local hospital are either immigrants from Asia or have parents from there. Those folks still hit the books. There's nothing mysterious about it.

[iupgroundhog]

Emporium!

Where I briefly met a girl at IUP who was from there who told me they never saw a black person until they came to IUP.

Needlessly to say I wasn't impressed but because of that statement...I have remembered that town actually still exists.

Ironically, an emporium is a place where they have anything you'd want to buy. I guess they did in the logging days. Also, ironically, I knew an African-American woman from Philly who married a white guy from a small community near Emporium, They eventually moved to that small town. I looked up the Census statistics for the town and on the ethnicity pie chart there was a thin line for African-American. I told her that I could see her on the graph.

[Ship69]

That number even seems low. If you can spell your name and your check clears ... right now that should be the only requirement.

Ship had probably gotten close to 90 percent at one point, but has cut back somewhat on that. They were getting too many kids who just couldn't handle the work and dropped out. That doesn't do wonders for your retention rate. And you're not helping kids by putting them in debt for an education they're likely not going to finish.

[Ship69]

Admitting 70-80 percent of applicants...isn't that what a public university should be doing? Isn't that really the mission of the State System? To be where the tax paying public can send their kids for a college education?

I'm not arguing that. The previous poster's implication was that our schools were somehow elitist and neglecting juco and online students. Might have been true at one time, but certainly not now. My grandson currently takes online courses at Ship, and we have signed agreements with most of the area jucos to allow easy transfer of credits.

[IUPNation]

Those are interesting numbers and there is nothing wrong with open admissions. Leading state systems e.g. California, Texas, have had a relatively open admissions system for many decades, going all the way back to the baby boomer surge in public higher education in the '60's. Most of our schools have always had a relatively open admissions policy so it's not that much different. I will say that when I went to IUP way back when, they had a low acceptance rate for a public school, although they were able to finagle the numbers by excluding students accepted at the branch campuses and provisionally accepted students (Summer/Jans. in IUP lingo). But that is ancient history. For many years, WCU was also able to finagle their numbers, I believe, by excluding students from underperforming schools, etc. As I understand it, those types of loopholes have been closed when it comes to reporting.

In general, the difference above between Commonwealth's 97% and Ship and WCU's 88% isn't statistically significant. It's all open admissions, basically. SRU's # is interesting. If accurate, kudos to them for achieving that level of competitiveness in the process. There are other factors that can skew the results, e.g. number of part-time commuters who might legitimately not factor into the calculation.

Ultimately, I'm fine with the open admissions. I agree with what others have said regarding fulfilling the central educational mission of the system.

I was a Summer/Jan student. It came down to I was not good at the SAT tests. I just didn't understand how not answering a question was better than answering it and getting it wrong. My high school grades were a solid B+...I was in the top third of my high school class. I still jhave my final report card from high school. I have my college transcripts too.

I could have chosen to go to Punxsutawney or Kittanning if I wanted to do a normal fall/spring freshman year. Thank God I did not do that. If I was dropped off in Punxsy I would have transferred to Millersville...where I did get accepted to start in the fall.

[IUPNation]

Grade inflation is because of a few factors

1)A lot of high schools that used run a grading scale of A= 100-93, B- 92-85, C-84-74 ect have moved to the 90A, 80B 70C model.

2) Back in the day schools were limited in the amount of AP course (bonus gpa points) they could offer/ students could actually take. Now with virtual options and travel kids can access more AP courses then in years past. Same things with college level/dual credit courses. Heck is some high schools are able to come to agreements that allow kids to earn their associates degree along with their high school diploma. Those courses typically carry the bonus gpa point that drives up the gpa.

3) Helicopter parents will make a teachers life miserable if little Johnny gets a B and Admin have so many other issues to deal with they aren’t providing the support to back up, so the teachers are just giving in. I’m in my late 30s now and growing up if my grades were bad my parents said it was my fault not the teachers, now a days it reversed and parents blame teachers over their kids.

4) On the other end due to ties to federal funding states in order to get their graduation rates up so schools are doing all sorts of crazy things to keep kids from failing which as others have mentioned giving a kid that has never turned anything a 50% then making them use a platform online for a few hours where they google the answers and get a passing grade.

There are other factors but those would be the main ones.

UGH.

The same parents who want books banned and think they are educational experts on what and how things should be taught.

The Karens should just teach their own kids then...they seem to be "doing their research" on everything. Keep little Kevin and Kaitlin at home...and when they can't get a job because they are too stupid to do anything...it's all on the Karens to pay for their upkeep as useless adults.

My mom never blamed a teacher. It was always my fault.

[IUPNation]

Emporia is in Kansas.

Emporium!

Where I briefly met a girl at IUP who was from there who told me they never saw a black person until they came to IUP.

Needlessly to say I wasn't impressed but because of that statement...I have remembered that town actually still exists.