Academic standards are the benchmarks of quality and excellence in education such as the rigour of curricula and the difficulty of examinations.[1] The creation of universal academic standards requires agreement on rubrics, criteria or other systems of coding academic achievement.[2] At colleges and universities, faculty are under increasing pressure from administrators to award students good marks and grades without regard for those students' actual abilities, both to keep those students in school paying tuition and to boost the schools' graduation rates. Students often use course evaluations to criticize any instructor who they feel has been making the course too difficult, even if an objective evaluation would show that the course has been too easy.[3][4][5] It is very difficult to find a direct correlation between the quality of the course and the outcome of the course evaluations.[6]
- ^ Philip Adey, Michael Shayer (1994), Really raising standards, Routledge, ISBN 9780415101455
- ^ Sadler, D. Royce (2014). "The futility of attempting to codify academic achievement standards". Higher Education. 67 (3): 273–288. doi:10.1007/s10734-013-9649-1.
- ^ Alderman, Geoffrey (10 March 2010). "Why university standards have fallen". Guardian. Retrieved 30 June 2015.
- ^ Brandon, Craig (2010). The Five-Year Party: How Colleges Have Given Up on Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It. BenBella Books. pp. 236. ISBN 978-1935251804.
- ^ Paton, Graeme (23 October 2014). "Education standards 'in decline' at overcrowded universities". Telegraph. Retrieved 30 June 2015.
- ^ Berrett, Dan (May 9, 2017). "The Chronicle of Higher Education". chronicle.com.