Inflate STEM grades to attract women: study

[Metaphor]

https://www.insidehighered.com/news...standardize-their-grading-curves-boost-womens

Harsher grading policies in science, technology, engineering and math courses disproportionately affect women -- because women value good grades significantly more than men do, according to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

What to do? The study’s authors suggest restricting grading policies that equalize average grades across classes, such as curving all courses around a B grade. Beyond helping close STEM’s gender gap, they wrote, such a policy change would boost overall enrollment in STEM classes.

Using administrative data coupled with thousands of students’ course evaluations from the University of Kentucky from the fall of 2012, the study’s authors determined that students spent one hour more per week studying for a STEM course than for a non-STEM course, on average. At the same time, they earned lower grades in STEM courses.
The STEM classes in the sample were almost twice as large as their non-STEM counterparts and associated with grades that were 0.3 points lower. They were also associated with a 40 percent more study time.
Women in the sample had higher grades in both STEM and non-STEM courses than men. But they were significantly underrepresented in STEM.
Trying to explain that lack of representation, the authors created a demand-side model of course choice, in which students selected classes and exerted effort based on their disciplinary preferences, perceived “costs” of studying and expected grades.
The study examined supply-side issues in STEM enrollment as well, and posits that professors give lower grades, in part, to prevent overenrollment (which is costly to them, in terms of time). But based their supply-side model, the authors found that requiring the same mean grade across classes led to a substantial increase in the number of STEM classes taken by women.
The authors note that many factors contribute to the STEM gender gap, not just grades. But it is a major factor, they argue -- and one that is arguably easier to do something about than other cultural issues.
Noting that professors generally all have different grading policies, the study proposes that curving all courses around a B grade would increase overall STEM participation by 7.2 percent overall and women’s participation, in particular, by 11.3 percent.

Grading along a curve -- any curve -- is itself a controversial idea. Some professors say it's bad pedagogical practice. And it’s hard to see how to get professors across fields to agree on a grading scheme without an administrative directive to do so. That, in turn, would likely spark concerns about academic freedom, as teaching, including grading, is widely understood to be the domain of the faculty.

Yet attracting more women to STEM by standardizing grading is relatively straightforward and affordable, the study says, as compared to longer-term cultural and curricular efforts.
Enrolling more women in STEM this way could also lead to other changes that make the natural sciences “more hospitable to women,” the study says, “creating a positive feedback loop.”
Co-author Thomas Ahn, assistant professor of manpower and economics at the Naval Postgraduate School, said that the paper is fundamentally about how colleges and universities can encourage more women -- and men -- to take STEM courses. Among the reasons that they should, he said, is that STEM careers tend to be more lucrative than non-STEM careers, and so have implications for the gender wage gap.

Echoing the paper, Ahn said that compared to other efforts on this front, “tweaks” to grading curves can be done at the school or department level “quickly, without the need for federal or state-level intervention.” Faculty members already alter their grading standards from year to year, he added.
“If we’re worried about the overall deficit in graduating skilled workers in STEM and the gender gap,” he said, academe shouldn’t “wait and hope for a big, comprehensive, expensive fix. We have the ability to effect change now.” Ahn's co-authors are Peter Arcidiacono, Amy Hopson and James R. Thomas.

This should pair well with lowering the entry standard for women in engineering. Why should academic standards not be compromised in order to corral more women into STEM? That's right, complete silence as a rebuttal from the misogynist manbabies.

 

[Metaphor]

My browser is playing silly buggers and won't allow me to edit the above post, but the 'entry standard' sentence was meant to have this link:

https://www.smh.com.au/education/a-...ring-entry-bar-for-women-20190828-p52lpp.html

(I hope this is implemented as desired.)

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I applaud Metaphor's vigilance in the field of sociology and education. They definitely show a steadfast dedication to the field is undoubtable, as the post on that blog came out yesterday and Metaphor was all over it, having read it, the source info, and followed it with a thorough analysis.

The quoted text indicates that women in the STEM courses did better than men. But there were fewer women. One major reason was the additional work in conjunction with potentially lower grades. This is sociology and science. Whether it is a good idea to curve scores to increase attendance is definitely worthy of debate, as just doing it comes with risks, as the quoted text indicates.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Grading on a curve is a bad and unjust practice. It discriminates against people based on who else happens to be in their class with them. If nobody in the class gets the material, all should fail. If everybody in the class excels on the material, they should all get As. How well your classmates do should have no bearing on your own grades. This is academic testing, not competitive interviews.

And trying to coerce or manipulate women into STEM against their own preference is downright misogyny.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, that makes no sense. Tests can have different designs. Tests can be designed to fail all, they can be designed to be rigorous but 100 is possible. Some can be designed to make 100s much easier.

Grading on curves is to determine mastery of concepts and the testing to determine this has an impact on the final grade of a test.

What is being proposed isn’t exactly grading a curve but setting a higher grade as the basement to entice people to be willing to enroll in a harder course which will require putting more effort into a class.

Pros and cons exist for this. And it’d be better for instructors to look into those rather than people with agendas.

 

[laughing dog]

Grading on a curve is a bad and unjust practice.It discriminates against people based on who else happens to be in their class with them. If nobody in the class gets the material, all should fail. If everybody in the class excels on the material, they should all get As. How well your classmates do should have no bearing on your own grades. This is academic testing, not competitive interviews.

While I do not grade on a complete curve, adjusting the cutoffs is not necessarily unfair or discriminatory. For example, suppose that in a class of 40 students, the average and median on a test is 65% with a standard deviation of 9 percentage points. Two students get 85% and 87%. Is it unfair that those two get As? Or that the 65%ers get Cs?

And trying to coerce or manipulate women into STEM against their own preference is downright misogyny.

The authors of the cited study are not trying to do that - they are advocating making STEM more attractive based on their preferences. And before you respond with that is somehow unfair, remember that the STEM fields have a long history of being essentially run and organized based on male preferences.

 

[SimpleDon]

I think that I can claim some better an average authority on the subject of women in engineering. I was a professional engineer, (I lost the ability to call myself one because I failed to keep up with the continuing education requirement of professional engineers when I became disabled.) I married a professional engineer who is a woman and I raised a daughter who is one of the only women in the US with a Ph.D. and a SE in forensic structural engineering.

When my wife told her academic advisor that she wanted to study engineering in the early 1970s he recommended her to drop out of college and become a secretary. I would like to say that things dramatically improved for my daughter, but I can't. It was better for her in college, about 25% of the undergraduates with an engineering degree from Georgia Tech are women even though the women are clustered in specific disciplines like industrial engineering, i.e. efficiency experts, robotics, computer, and bioengineering. But the higher she went in her academic studies the fewer women went with her. When she went to work she met an interesting mix of responses from her male co-workers. The older ones were very much in the "women don't belong in engineering" category while the younger ones were very much afraid of her because they understand the combination of qualities she possesses to do what she has accomplished. (In the latter's defense they would have been afraid of a man who accomplished what she did.)

I am all for anything that gets more people interested in engineering. There is only a limited kind of person who can be an engineer. This sounds a little sketchy, but if it works so be it.

That is if we want to build anything in this country. With our policymakers and our conservatives' concern with advancing and preserving the Chinese Communist Party by shipping our industries and the jobs that go with them to China increasingly including our engineering jobs, in the name of neoliberalism and free trade, then we will no longer require any engineers here.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

My girlfriend in college was a Valedictorian candidate, a double major in Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering. She was told by one of the best civil engineering instructors we had that she wasn't built for engineering. I was taken aback when she told me he had said as such. It was one of the most ridiculous things I had heard. She was extremely intelligent.

 

[SimpleDon]

My girlfriend in college was a Valedictorian candidate, a double major in Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering. She was told by one of the best civil engineering instructors we had that she wasn't built for engineering. I was taken aback when she told me he had said as such. It was one of the most ridiculous things I had heard. She was extremely intelligent.

I don't think that our fellow freethought'rs who constantly post threads on the horrors of reverse discrimination against heterosexual white males don't realize how much bias still exists against women, foreigners, and minorities. There has to be a reason for this. If I could only put my finger on it.

 

[ronburgundy]

The problem with the proposal is NOT the one's being complained about.

The thread title is bogus. They are not proposing grade inflation but rather grade standardization, which could actually reduce the grade inflation going on in non STEM courses. The problem they've identified is that if you take the same group of people who all take the same STEM and non-STEM classes and study equally for each class, most students will get lower grades in the STEM than non-STEM classes. Males don't care as much about this difference, so it doesn't motivate them to avoid STEM classes, but females do.

The different grades could (and I would bet are) at least partially due to non STEM instructors engaging in grade inflation and giving easy As and willing to not give any students below a C or even below a B. So, the proposed grade standardization across classes would actually reduce grade inflation in non STEM courses and force those instructors to give lower grades and as many Cs as As, etc..
Granted, it might also increase grades in some STEM courses where the exams are created to extremely difficult so few people currently get As. But overall across all courses, there would be as much lowering of current grades as increases. In fact, it all comes down to what the standardized average is set at. If they set it at the current avg GPA, then there would be no overall change but merely the easiest courses would see grade lowering the hardest would see grade increases. In fact, if grade inflation in non STEM is deemed the major source of the problem, then they could just set the standardized average to be closer to the avg GPA in STEM, thereby forcing the non-STEM to lower their grades and use more of the full scale while keeping STEM grades largely the same. If females can't increase their GPA just by taking more non-STEM courses, then they will choose more STEM courses, even though they are just as hard as they always were.

As for grade curves being unjust, that is silly. The raw score you get on a test is not some objective measure of how much you know. All course exams have an arbitrary level of difficulty depending on how hard the test was designed to be. Virtually no exam measures everything it's possible to have learned in a course. Thus, curving grades actually makes the grades far more interpretable and meaningful. It means that every grade reflects your level of understanding relative to other students rather than relative to the completely arbitrary and unknown test difficulty determined by that instructor for that one test.

The real problem with the proposal is that progressive, sequential courses within a discipline should increase in difficulty, thus the same students should not do as well and some students that got a C in Intro X should fail the next class otherwise there is no weeding out of the students who lack the ability to actually really learn at the next level. By the time you get to the senior level capstone courses, you'd have students who got Cs in the easiest intro classes still getting passing grades of a C but who can't actually grasp hardly anything they are being taught in the advanced courses and should not be given a degree in that discipline.

So, at minimum, even if you start out with standardized grades across fields for the intro courses there would need to be a reduction in the standardized average grade as the courses get more advanced within a field. That way the students who got a C is the Intro class would need to improve relative to their peers to avoid failing out of the more advanced courses. But that could prove implausible given how different disciplines vary greatly in the degree to which there really is an increase in the difficulty of sequential courses.

 

[Metaphor]

The problem with the proposal is NOT the one's being complained about.

The thread title is bogus. They are not proposing grade inflation but rather grade standardization, which could actually reduce the grade inflation going on in non STEM courses. The problem they've identified is that if you take the same group of people who all take the same STEM and non-STEM classes and study equally for each class, most students will get lower grades in the STEM than non-STEM classes. Males don't care as much about this difference, so it doesn't motivate them to avoid STEM classes, but females do.

The different grades could (and I would bet are) at least partially due to non STEM instructors engaging in grade inflation and giving easy As and willing to not give any students below a C or even below a B. So, the proposed grade standardization across classes would actually reduce grade inflation in non STEM courses and force those instructors to give lower grades and as many Cs as As, etc..
Granted, it might also increase grades in some STEM courses where the exams are created to extremely difficult so few people currently get As. But overall across all courses, there would be as much lowering of current grades as increases. In fact, it all comes down to what the standardized average is set at. If they set it at the current avg GPA, then there would be no overall change but merely the easiest courses would see grade lowering the hardest would see grade increases. In fact, if grade inflation in non STEM is deemed the major source of the problem, then they could just set the standardized average to be closer to the avg GPA in STEM, thereby forcing the non-STEM to lower their grades and use more of the full scale while keeping STEM grades largely the same. If females can't increase their GPA just by taking more non-STEM courses, then they will choose more STEM courses, even though they are just as hard as they always were.

As for grade curves being unjust, that is silly. The raw score you get on a test is not some objective measure of how much you know. All course exams have an arbitrary level of difficulty depending on how hard the test was designed to be. Virtually no exam measures everything it's possible to have learned in a course. Thus, curving grades actually makes the grades far more interpretable and meaningful. It means that every grade reflects your level of understanding relative to other students rather than relative to the completely arbitrary and unknown test difficulty determined by that instructor for that one test.

The real problem with the proposal is that progressive, sequential courses within a discipline should increase in difficulty, thus the same students should not do as well and some students that got a C in Intro X should fail the next class otherwise there is no weeding out of the students who lack the ability to actually really learn at the next level. By the time you get to the senior level capstone courses, you'd have students who got Cs in the easiest intro classes still getting passing grades of a C but who can't actually grasp hardly anything they are being taught in the advanced courses and should not be given a degree in that discipline.

So, at minimum, even if you start out with standardized grades across fields for the intro courses there would need to be a reduction in the standardized average grade as the courses get more advanced within a field. That way the students who got a C is the Intro class would need to improve relative to their peers to avoid failing out of the more advanced courses. But that could prove implausible given how different disciplines vary greatly in the degree to which there really is an increase in the difficulty of sequential courses.

My browser lost my previous reply which I don't have the patience to type again, but you are wrong that this isn't grade inflation. They are proposing increasing the grades in STEM courses without any underlying increase in knowledge or ability displayed by students. When price increases without any underlying change in the quality or volume of a product that is called price inflation.

And the proposal doesn't target all the other non-engineering faculty (which would be necessary for standardisation). Engineering giving out more 'A's won't prevent gender studies from giving out 'A's.

 

[laughing dog]

The problem with the proposal is NOT the one's being complained about.

The thread title is bogus. They are not proposing grade inflation but rather grade standardization, which could actually reduce the grade inflation going on in non STEM courses. The problem they've identified is that if you take the same group of people who all take the same STEM and non-STEM classes and study equally for each class, most students will get lower grades in the STEM than non-STEM classes. Males don't care as much about this difference, so it doesn't motivate them to avoid STEM classes, but females do.

The different grades could (and I would bet are) at least partially due to non STEM instructors engaging in grade inflation and giving easy As and willing to not give any students below a C or even below a B. So, the proposed grade standardization across classes would actually reduce grade inflation in non STEM courses and force those instructors to give lower grades and as many Cs as As, etc..
Granted, it might also increase grades in some STEM courses where the exams are created to extremely difficult so few people currently get As. But overall across all courses, there would be as much lowering of current grades as increases. In fact, it all comes down to what the standardized average is set at. If they set it at the current avg GPA, then there would be no overall change but merely the easiest courses would see grade lowering the hardest would see grade increases. In fact, if grade inflation in non STEM is deemed the major source of the problem, then they could just set the standardized average to be closer to the avg GPA in STEM, thereby forcing the non-STEM to lower their grades and use more of the full scale while keeping STEM grades largely the same. If females can't increase their GPA just by taking more non-STEM courses, then they will choose more STEM courses, even though they are just as hard as they always were.

As for grade curves being unjust, that is silly. The raw score you get on a test is not some objective measure of how much you know. All course exams have an arbitrary level of difficulty depending on how hard the test was designed to be. Virtually no exam measures everything it's possible to have learned in a course. Thus, curving grades actually makes the grades far more interpretable and meaningful. It means that every grade reflects your level of understanding relative to other students rather than relative to the completely arbitrary and unknown test difficulty determined by that instructor for that one test.

The real problem with the proposal is that progressive, sequential courses within a discipline should increase in difficulty, thus the same students should not do as well and some students that got a C in Intro X should fail the next class otherwise there is no weeding out of the students who lack the ability to actually really learn at the next level. By the time you get to the senior level capstone courses, you'd have students who got Cs in the easiest intro classes still getting passing grades of a C but who can't actually grasp hardly anything they are being taught in the advanced courses and should not be given a degree in that discipline.

So, at minimum, even if you start out with standardized grades across fields for the intro courses there would need to be a reduction in the standardized average grade as the courses get more advanced within a field. That way the students who got a C is the Intro class would need to improve relative to their peers to avoid failing out of the more advanced courses. But that could prove implausible given how different disciplines vary greatly in the degree to which there really is an increase in the difficulty of sequential courses.

My browser lost my previous reply which I don't have the patience to type again, but you are wrong that this isn't grade inflation. They are proposing increasing the grades in STEM courses without any underlying increase in knowledge or ability displayed by students. When price increases without any underlying change in the quality or volume of a product that is called price inflation.

And the proposal doesn't target all the other non-engineering faculty (which would be necessary for standardisation). Engineering giving out more 'A's won't prevent gender studies from giving out 'A's.

From your OP - "Noting that professors generally all have different grading policies, the study proposes that curving all courses around a B grade would increase overall STEM participation by 7.2 percent overall and women’s participation, in particular, by 11.3 percent. " so it is not clear that
1) it refers to only STEM courses, and
2) it would result in grade inflation if this proposal brought down the average grades in non-STEM courses.

 

[Metaphor]

It necessarily must result in grade inflation in STEM courses, unless STEM courses already have the grade distribution that they want for other courses and its the other courses that will be revised downwards.

I don't particularly care if a university decided to give standardised distributions of grades across courses. The public isn't idiotic; it knows that an 'A' in gender studies is different from, and easier to achieve, than an 'A' in medicine or mathematics. What I find idiotic is doing it for the reasons stated (to attract more of the favoured group to the course).

When 'pick up artists' use known or imagined facts about women's psychology to seduce them, the outrage among feminists is palpable. When universities use known or imagined facts about women's psychology to serve specific social goals, the fact is celebrated.

 

[laughing dog]

It necessarily must result in grade inflation in STEM courses, unless STEM courses already have the grade distribution that they want for other courses and its the other courses that will be revised downwards.

I don't particularly care if a university decided to give standardised distributions of grades across courses. The public isn't idiotic; it knows that an 'A' in gender studies is different from, and easier to achieve, than an 'A' in medicine or mathematics.

I don't know what the public knows or if it is idiotic, but I know that what determines an A in course depends most on the instructor and not in the subject.

 

[Metaphor]

It necessarily must result in grade inflation in STEM courses, unless STEM courses already have the grade distribution that they want for other courses and its the other courses that will be revised downwards.

I don't particularly care if a university decided to give standardised distributions of grades across courses. The public isn't idiotic; it knows that an 'A' in gender studies is different from, and easier to achieve, than an 'A' in medicine or mathematics.

I don't know what the public knows or if it is idiotic, but I know that what determines an A in course depends most on the instructor and not in the subject.

Maybe that's the typical case in America. In my university experience (as a casual academic), grades were standardised according to the quality of the students in the course, as indicated by previously achieved grades in common courses (e.g. a third year psychology subject being scaled by the marks achieved in compulsory first year psychology courses which all third year students must have completed).

 

[ronburgundy]

It necessarily must result in grade inflation in STEM courses, unless STEM courses already have the grade distribution that they want for other courses and its the other courses that will be revised downwards.

IOW, you're wrong. It does not inherently or necessarily entail grade inflation in STEM, and very likely does not entail grade inflation overall. Plenty of non STEM courses tend to have averages that are higher than a B and give few Cs and virtually no D or Fs unless the student simply fails to take the exams of do most assignments. Thus, the proposal would almost certainly entail some non STEM courses having their grades revised downwards which would have the intended effect of increasing the relative appeal of taking STEM courses to those highly concerned about their GPA.

The proposal affects all faculty, which is what "all courses" means. The study was done on courses within and outside of STEM, and the results and proposal are entirely about the relative differences between STEM and non STEM and the eliminating the variation in the averages, but not the variation within courses and disciplines, and in fact increasing that variation, which is the only variation that matters for any rational evaluation of what the grades reflect. It is a standardization of the grading distribution across disciplines.

Also, note that the studies showed evidence that some STEM instructors were deflating grades just to discourage enrollment to make their jobs easier. Thus, even if those courses saw an increase in grades due to the standardizing that would not reflect "grade inflation" but rather just an elimination of artificial grade deflation.
As a byproduct, this would also eliminate a major contributor to systematic error in grades that make them less meaningful, the fact that different instructors of the same course vary in how hard or easy they design the course. Contrary to your mythical fantasy, existing test scores do not reflect any kind of valid estimate of degree of knowledge in the field. They reflect the arbitrary choices of each instructor in how the construct and grade their test. Thus, person 1 who got a C in Bio 101 with Instructor X can have learned twice as much as person 2 who got a B in Bio 101 with Instructor Y. Is one "inflating" their grades or is the other "deflating" their grades? That has no relevance. What matters is that they aren't using the same scale, the variation between their grades does not reflect what grades are supposed to measure. This proposal would eliminate this source of variance due to arbitrary instructor choices in scaling and thereby make grade variation within a discipline more valid as a measure of intellectual competence.

But clearly you don't care about how valid grade variation is, you just don't want more yucky girls choosing STEM courses, even it's b/c they no longer can inflate their GPA by sticking to non STEM courses taught by unscrupulous instructors who give easy A to inflate their student ratings.

When 'pick up artists' use known or imagined facts about women's psychology to seduce them, the outrage among feminists is palpable. When universities use known or imagined facts about women's psychology to serve specific social goals, the fact is celebrated.

IOW, you see no difference between lying to women to get them give something of value up and to do something potentially harmful to themselves as identical to eliminating arbitrary variations that reward one choice over the other so that women can make their choice purely on real differences between the fields related to their interests. How sadly unsurprising.

 

[ronburgundy]

It necessarily must result in grade inflation in STEM courses, unless STEM courses already have the grade distribution that they want for other courses and its the other courses that will be revised downwards.

I don't particularly care if a university decided to give standardised distributions of grades across courses. The public isn't idiotic; it knows that an 'A' in gender studies is different from, and easier to achieve, than an 'A' in medicine or mathematics.

I don't know what the public knows or if it is idiotic, but I know that what determines an A in course depends most on the instructor and not in the subject.

Maybe that's the typical case in America. In my university experience (as a casual academic), grades were standardised according to the quality of the students in the course, as indicated by previously achieved grades in common courses (e.g. a third year psychology subject being scaled by the marks achieved in compulsory first year psychology courses which all third year students must have completed).

Nothing like that happens in the US. Each instructor creates their own curriculum, tests, and grading rules. And they are free to modify any of these semester to semester. Your grade in third year Bio depends heavily on which instructor you happened to choose and what their arbitrary evaluation and grading decisions were at that time. Also, even if instructors didn't have this much control and influence and each course used a specific standardized test graded a standardized way, grades would still be directly dependent upon the arbitrary level of difficulty that test was set to b/c there is no magical thing like a true and objective measure of everything you could learn in a course. Memory for words may have a finite limit, but comprehension and ability to apply complex interrelated concepts does not.

Test makers must always just choose some arbitrary level of difficulty for each question and for the total set of questions. If the arbitrary level tends to systematically differ between disciplines, then you get different average grades. The proposal seeks to eliminate this source of variation and thereby eliminate students' ability to inflate their grades by choosing course with a lower arbitrary level of difficulty. Variation within courses and within a discipline will not be eliminated and likely will increase, and that within-course relative variation is the only valid metric of performance anyway.

 

[Metaphor]

They reflect the arbitrary choices of each instructor in how the construct and grade their test. Thus, person 1 who got a C in Bio 101 with Instructor X can have learned twice as much as person 2 who got a B in Bio 101 with Instructor Y.

Are you talking about the same course run by the same academic? I don't understand what you mean by 'instructor'.

In Australia, an academic is responsible for a particular course (in that role they are the 'course convenor'). The classes in the course are staffed by casual academics (usually PhD students) or the academic herself if its a small class/course. The academic co-ordinates the marking and all the students do the same final exam. Students grades are an internally consistent list of achievement.

But clearly you don't care about how valid grade variation is, you just don't want more yucky girls choosing STEM courses, even it's b/c they no longer can inflate their GPA by sticking to non STEM courses taught by unscrupulous instructors who give easy A to inflate their student ratings.

Yeah, that's my motivation

IOW, you see no difference between lying to women

Pick up artists don't have to lie to women, though they might.

to get them give something of value up and to do something potentially harmful to themselves as identical to

One day on the internet, did everyone become incapable of understanding analogies? The things compared in an analogy are not 'identical' to each other. If they were identical you wouldn't need an analogy.

eliminating arbitrary variations that reward one choice over the other so that women can make their choice purely on real differences between the fields related to their interests. How sadly unsurprising.

I can tell you anybody who would have had an interest in engineering, but avoided it because they didn't want low-looking grades on their transcript, probably is the kind of marginal engineering student you don't want.

You also appear to believe that grade distributions between courses at university are 'arbitrary'. I don't think they are, but in any case I don't object to grade distributions being standardised. Engineering and other STEM academics didn't choose their grading distribution in order to scare away the womenfolk.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Grading on a curve is a bad and unjust practice. It discriminates against people based on who else happens to be in their class with them. If nobody in the class gets the material, all should fail. If everybody in the class excels on the material, they should all get As. How well your classmates do should have no bearing on your own grades. This is academic testing, not competitive interviews.

And trying to coerce or manipulate women into STEM against their own preference is downright misogyny.

It sounds to me like a heavy-handed attempt to get more honest grading.