In regard to your 'assertion' that employers don't have grounds to consider state college graduates less capable than private college graduates ...
from
http://www.thefamuanonline.com/opini...eges-1.2342800
(snip)"The state's co-flagship and very high research-oriented universities are guilty of lowering academic standards to inflate the average GPA of their students by nearly two grade points. From fall 1997 to the spring 2009, the average GPA of students at the University of Florida rose from 3.0 to 3.3. At Florida State, average GPAs rose from 2.78 to 3.05 in Fall 2008.
Both schools tout competitive admission criteria for first-time-in-college students. The vast majority, 86 percent of the University of Florida's class of 2014, had a GPA of 4.0 or above, according to its admissions office. The class of 2014 at Florida State has an average GPA of 3.5 and above.
While both schools use these numbers for funding from the state, research entities and, ironically, to build their academic reputations, their admissions committees forget that the same prominence-building ploys used at the university level play out in grades K-12 as well.
Since 1990, the percentage of high school students receiving A's has increased while students receiving a C grade or lower has decreased substantially, according Laurence Bunin, senior vice president of college connection and success at College Board.
This trend should be alarming to taxpayers, because two of our state's most prominent universities are producing graduates who will not be an asset to the Florida's plan to transform he state's economy."(snip)
from
http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/....html?page=all
(snip)"It’s no secret that students admitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are bright, but academicians are beginning to question whether 82 percent of them are either A or B scholars.
That was the percentage of grades given out by UNC professors and instructors in the fall 2008 semester that were either an A or a B, meaning just 18 percent of grades were C, D or F. That, in the opinion of many, is a manifestation of what’s called grade inflation – the gradual rise over the years of grades, not only at UNC but at universities across the nation.
“There is a grade inflation and compression issue going on,” says Andrew Perrin, an associate professor of sociology at UNC. “An A is definitely not an A.”
The phenomenon is so ingrained that a student who earned a C on a course in 1990 might get a B today, according to research conducted by Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University professor who tracks grade inflation. He’s found that the collective grade point average, or GPA, of students at U.S. public universities has increased by 0.16 to an average of 3.01 over the past 20 years."(snip)
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