She can wonder all she wants. We will respond to it however we choose to.

She's not the first to ask that type of question (educational achievement is a hot topic in the black community, among educators, and big in NPHC orgs) but how the question gets answered often depends on the asker and how the question is phrased. I don't like how the topic was framed

Well, let's say you were from a campus where the chapters of the NPC groups all had bad GPAs and one in particular was below a 2.0, so you felt pretty sure that no national org. was going to be cool with that. (When it's above a 2.0 it could just be difference in group cut standards.)

And yet, the groups all seems to be participating in all the activities that your group might shut down if the chapter's grades were too low. (To tell you the truth, I have no idea what happens if you don't meet the GPA requirements of you organization and your campus, but I'm assuming there would be social penalties, maybe?) So if the NPCs basically just seemed to be skating along, wouldn't you be a little curious about what was up with that?

And if you had an outlet to ask this question without saying it face to face, might you not give it a whirl?

You know why that question is hard for me to answer (even though you didn't necessarily ask me but my soror DSTChaos)?

Because I wouldn't even know what the GPAs of those other groups are because I wouldn't care enough about those things to find out.

Well, some campuses print out grade reports that have every chapter listed by GPA. Sometimes they are done by council or conference and sometimes it includes every GLO on campus. It seems like the OP's school puts everyone on the same list.

That wasn't the OP's question. The OP never said anything about NPHC orgs not being on social probation and carrying on business as usual eventhough they have fallen below the GPA minimum. Instead, the OP doesn't know what's going on, beyond some stats, and expects us to chime in.

To answer your question, I wouldn't care at a philosophical level because I had a yard to run and the NPC and IFC orgs just weren't part of that equation (except for the 1 fraternity that we did joint programs with).

When I was an undergrad, I wouldn't have been curious unless I knew that these groups were violating some rules that the SCHOOL has set forth and they were getting consideration that the NPHC orgs weren't. And if the OP knows that some SCHOOL rules are being violated, her/his questions would be answered. And she'd know that SCHOOL rules often trump organizational rules when it comes to things like academic performance.

To assist the OP:

Since the OP has access to the stats of her/his school, she/he can also get access to the university criteria for active status for all GLOs.

Also, numerous colleges and universities provide grade info to the councils and also place them on websites.

U of Md is one such school: http://www.greek.umd.edu/Grades.htm

They have a PDF link with the chapter breakdowns. :) They discuss an emphasis on academics and codes of conduct on another link. Maybe they provide details on the site about how members and chapters can get on probation or suspension with the university.

This is a question that I've asked for 10 years now. I think a lot of it has to do with chapter size, as well as the slightly elevated age of NPHC chapter members. If a pledge class of 50 pulls a 3.5 in their lower division classes, that could offset the 3.0 average of a senior class. Since NPHC chapters are smaller, that doesn't average out to be the same. Also, the vast majority of NPHC members I know are engineers, pre-med, and pre-dental. Their GPAs aren't going to be as high as the NPC chapter with a ton of art history, interior design, or education majors.

I agree with what you've said about the NPHC topic generally, but. . .

Was it really your experience that the average NPC had a ton of art history, interior design, and education majors?

It wasn't the case in mine, and I wouldn't say there was a big difference in majors between NPCs and NPHCs members in my limited experience.

I also feel the need to defend art history and interior design, at least at UGA. Art history was a rigorous as regular history, FWIW, which I realize isn't the same as being a hard science major. And interior design, if you took it through the school of art, was actually a very highly selective and rigorous program.

Now, I'm not saying that they were as hard as physics or engineering, but they were nowhere near as easy as education classes of which I've taken a few.

If you feel the need to defend, knock yourself out. I was an Architecture major who minored in Art History and Italian, so, I think I know of what I speak. Art History was by far one of the most popular majors in my sorority, and it was as well for the other NPC on my campus. I knew more NPHC sorority members--not just at my school, but in my family--taking engineering and hard sciences. Those classes can do a number on your GPA that Intro to the Renaissance just can't.

I had to take an engineering class to fill one of my Structures requirements, and I can totally vouch for the fact that the class was one of the hardest ones I've taken. Art history isn't a total walk in the park, but I'd take 10 of those classes any day over engineering.

I completely agree that Art History is easier than engineering. But if you were looking for easy classes at UGA, it didn't top the list, maybe just because we had easier stuff (remember that intro to basketball final that made the news with Jim Herrick Jr?).

It's not that I think Art History is super-hard; there's just no way, in my experience, that it's in the same league as education. And AH didn't seem to be a particularly Greek major at my school when I was there.

Some of it has to do with the student's academic strengths and weaknesses. For me, the calculus, OR, and other higher-level number-crunching problem sets were much easier than writing interminable papers.

Because anecdotes totally make it true.:rolleyes:

Thanks for all the responses, they were very informative.

DSTChaos: sorry if I phrased the question poorly. I was simply trying to explain why I was wondering, and thank you for being civil and instructive.

sigh, unfortunately. i should be doing my duty and putting the fire out, but its more fun to just add more lighter fluid.

... endscene.

You want to conduct an informal greek survey to see how campus specific it is? Everyone with access could post the grade reports, and we could see what the trends were, if there were any.

I kind of doubt we'll get much participation though.

Hey, no need for the snark. I just related my experiences as a member of an NPC chapter where there were a lot of Art History majors. The workload my sisters and I had wasn't nearly as intense as some of my NPHC friends and family members, who for whatever reason, decided to focus on different fields of study.

It's also true that NPCs tend to have much higher member numbers than NPHCs - of course we will have more marketing and communications majors. We have more members. I would be interested to see percentage-wise how that goes, though. My chapter has quite a lot of science majors or pre-med, which are very difficult and time consuming.

Thank you - this has always been my experience. What is an easy class for you might not be for someone else - I've had plenty of engineering and science students struggle in the English courses I've taught.

Oh completely, individual strengths play in.

But, I think that there are more people who have the background skill, aptitude, and interest to be competent English majors than can pull the same grades in engineering. Some of it may be the way the disciplines typically approach grading and instruction.

ETA: or that students typically get better preparation for the skills in English than they do in higher level math and science before they get to college.

Oh, for sure. At my high school, 4 years of English were required..but only 2 of science and math. That's through basic algebra, and with only 2 years of science, you only hit half of the basic four - chemistry, biology, physics and earth science/geology.

Terrible.

OH how I wish that were true!!!:rolleyes: You would not believe some of the papers I have received from students who assure me they were A or B students in high school. . . the "B" must have been for breathing!

Understandably so.

Universities and other entities do these types of comparisons for a reason. You all typically do them because you need a hobby. ;)

No doubt. And this is probably worse in states where the lowest level of English is labeled "college prep," like a lot of Georgia systems.

I'm sure that some of the kids are unprepared in English, but is there evidence that they are competent in science and math and not in English?

I just haven't seen that many kids who could do advanced math and science who couldn't also write clearly if they applied themselves.

(Not that it was fun for them, but just that if you have logical structure and empirical evidence down, AND you are willing to revise and edit, well, it's not rocket science. So if you really are a rocket scientist. . . Sure it's "hard" compared to what comes naturally to them, but not nearly as "hard" as it would be for the average English major to pop over to Fluid Dynamics. )

Doesn't the free market compensation for English majors vs. hard science majors or engineers kind of bear this out too?

Completely anecdotal but I always found the kids who went to independent prep schools and selective parochial schools were almost always excellent writers. I don't know if that was because the student-teacher ration was much smaller and the prep teachers really focus on students writing well vs just trying to prep the class for the state NCLB, the SAT, or the AP exams. My daughter went to a decent public high school and always took AP and Honors for every subject possible. However she usually had 25-30 classmates, even in AP. When she went to the Page School as a junior, her smallest class had 6 students, her largest had 16. Despite the condensed schedule of the Page School (they had shortened classes when Congress was in session), the teachers were much more demanding and seemed to expect more. Her writing vastly improved.

I think it's really hard to teach writing if the teacher is carrying a large total student load simply because of the time it takes to assess each piece.

If you only have a few kids, you can assign more, grade more, and the students get more opportunities to improve the skill.

ETA: I also think that if every kid in the class is a pretty good writer, so you don't have to devote time to instruction about errors, you can work on writing that is actually good as opposed to writing that's just free from horrible errors or passages of gibberish. What do you think, SWTXBelle?

I don't know about class size or student to teacher ratios, but I do think that I have an answer regarding better writers.

I went to Catholic school from K-12. My high school was a College Prep school. You needed to pass a test to get in. Anyway, we had 4 levels - "college prep", Honors 1 and Honors 2, and AP (seniors only). I was in Honors 1 and 2 classes. In terms of students' writing skills - the honors students were required to do much more writing than the "college prep" kids. We even took a special Study Skills class the first quarter (which helped immensely, and I think that everyone should have benefitted from it).

Anyway, in our English class alone, we had to read and write a paper on one required book a week. We also had mini-term papers every three weeks, a half-term paper, and and a full-term paper. All our tests were written tests, and sometimes we wrote for entire class periods. We also had to write papers every quarter in our science, history, religion, etc., classes.

It was really just practicing. You do it enough, a lot of things become habit (esp. spelling and grammar). Parents can encourage kids to do this at home if the schools aren't requiring it.

Yep, you are on to something here. To see that there is a severe problem with many college students and their preparation for college English classes, you need only look at the number of remedial and freshman English classes that are offered at colleges and universities. The resources being devoted to getting students "up to speed" is amazing, and has turned into a problem for many schools. You would think that as high school graduates who have had to pass certain tests and take certain classes they would be prepared, but you'd be wrong.

It's also worth noting that while all high schools seem to require 4 years of English, upper level math and science courses are usually optional. That does not, however, mean that simply passing 4 years of high school English means you are a good reader or writer. I always got a bit of a chuckle out of native Spanish speakers who took college Spanish thinking it would be an easy "A", not realizing that their native language was not the same as the textbook Spanish they would be studying. I'm sure you know native speakers of English who can't put together a grammatically correct sentence to save their life, or who have difficulty writing well.

As pointed out by other posters, in order to teach writing effectively you have to give the students a chance to write - and rewrite. To develop good literary analysis skills you have to have a chance to engage in discussion, and be given the opportunity to write critically. That's tough to do if you have too many students (which many of my public school counterparts do.) or if you are more worried about teaching the skills to pass some NCLB test - and I realize we are going a bit off topic, but it is interesting.

I think teaching to the NCLB test is vastly overstated as a problem. If you were teaching a good solid curriculum with good methods, the chances that you'd have to teach to the test instead are less likely than a lot of people would have you believe, particularly if kids were on grade level when you got them. (Special education and ESL/ESOL are probably exceptions to this generalization.)

And, if your state chose tests that weren't good measure of the actual curriculum, you have only your state to blame because the states wrote their own NCLB plans. As much as state and local officials like to blame NCLB for everything, a lot of the things that teachers are required to do in the name of NCLB actually aren't required by NCLB. It's just easier for the local guys to blame the feds.

I think the best way to solve the college remediation issue is for most colleges to quit offering remedial services and only actually accept and enroll students who are ready to do the work. Acceptance could be contingent on acceptable placement test results.

Having remedial classes harms the instructional level at the college and maybe surprisingly at the high school level too. It's really hard to have high standards for passing a high school class if colleges in your area routinely accept students who don't meet those standards.

I'm in favor of junior colleges/community colleges for remediation or for additional remedial services offered by high schools to graduates who flunk college placement tests. But letting kids who aren't qualified in and then complaining about it, (I don't mean you SWTXBelle, I mean colleges in Georgia) seems disingenuous when you have the data to know in advance that the kid isn't likely to be college ready.

Seriously? There are colleges that have to offer remedial English classes? We certainly didn't have any of the sort...

I bet your campus does now. It's pretty standard to offer 090 level English and math classes.

Yeah, but your college is HIGHLY selective.

Many schools have writing centers for their undergraduates including all of the highly selective Ivies:
http://www.brown.edu/Student_Services/Writing_Center/
http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/classes/writing.php
http://lsc.sas.cornell.edu/
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/se..._student.shtml
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/
http://writing.upenn.edu/critical/help/
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/writi...er/WCAbout.htm
http://www.yale.edu/bass/AbouttheWritingCenter.html


I would expect to see a writing center at an engineering school but an Ivy?

But I don't think Writing Center necessarily equals a remedial program, does it?

I think Writing Centers just got to be really trendy and they are probably a way of keeping professors from having to read undergraduate drafts but making sure someone is available to read them.

ETA: if you look at the topics for programs offered at the first link, they don't really look remedial. The Cornell link doesn't even seem to offer writing help. It may just be the way I think of remedial programs. The schools I was thinking of require students to take non-credit but tuition classes before they are eligible to take the first credit course in the sequence.

whether its Harvard or Sally Sue School of Suckarse Writers, every school's students have its share of student that cant write for crap. or better yet, can write, but could use the help here and there. Or, are great at creative writing but couldnt do a research paper for their lives.

Its freaking undergrad, not a PHD program. And a college SHOULD supplement student writing skills versus having full on classes. Theres a difference between, "i can write a paper but would like a second set of eyes to check it out" and "i write like i speak on AIM, and rarely use commas, periods and quote marks."

I cant imagine an 18 year old's writing would be perfection upon entering college. They simply havent had the exposure to the style and the works that reflect the style. Even if you HAVE gone to the best schools growing up.

Yeah, but there's currently a big gap between the lack of perfection I think you have in mind and the level that a lot of kids are at at the end of high school.

But I think it shows up in kids' verbal SAT scores too, not to mention the "writing" section which is one third essay and two thirds questions about writing. And I think the colleges just choose to ignore how bad off the kids may be when they admit them.

fair enough - even the student who needs the most help at an Ivy/highly selective school would be doing better with their writing than the best student at a less selective/community college.

i know these classes we are speaking of. my brother attends a community college that has these remedial classes, that are supposed to cover all those things he shouldve learned in HS.

it would be unfair for him to be in a regular four-year institution and fail an intro writing class knowing from the beginning that he couldnt do it. maybe this is the thinking of colleges that offer these remedial/non-credit courses serving to play catch-up.

and schools also offer remedial math courses to catch students up on HS math (hell, even middle school math, like percentages, basic trig and geometry). to pass calculus, you need to know this stuff cold and i bet even average students could benefit from this.

i think this shows that colleges are aware of that gap.

The private school at which I taught had a very comprehensive English program. The junior year incorporated a great deal of what I taught in college English 1301, and the senior year incorporated what I taught in 1302 (I even used college texts). Most of them went on to be exempted from freshmen English classes by virtue of the AP or their verbal score - and this is at schools ranging from U of Chicago, Yale, Penn, Stanford, you get the picture. Many of them got extra money helping students in their dorms with their papers!
But we had the luxury of designing our own curriculum - here in Texas you have to use "approved" texts for public schools, and the selection process can be very political. Even the most brilliant of public school teachers will have their hands tied by various curriculm and administrative requirements. That doesn't mean that there isn't quality instruction going on - it just means it can be difficult to jump through the hoops.
Another factor, I feel, is that when I graduated with a B.A. in English I had TWICE as many English credits as someone who graduated with an Education degree with an English emphasis.
There are a multitude of reasons why many public school students do not graduate with what I would consider acceptable reading and writing skills. One of my former students reported back from Baylor that when asked what their favorite novel they had read in high school was, all of the Houston ISD students reported that they had not read any - just short stories. Teachers with crushing class loads are simply not going to be able to require the kind of work most students need to hone their skills.
I do think the situation may be getting better - I have three 1302 courses to teach in the fall, so I'll let you know. The essay portions of the ACT and SAT should, at the very least, let colleges know which students are weaker.
If I had my druthers, I'd require students who were weak in English skills to take remedial classes at their local community/junior classes the summer before their freshman year.

eta - My alma mater has a Writing Center to help with "Writing across the Curriculum" - a program that incorporates writing in ALL academic disciplines. The idea is that any graduate of Texas State will be a competent writer.

I went to two of the writing centers you linked to so the counselors could look at my honors and masters' theses. Basically, I was so sick of reading them by the time they were due that I wanted another set of eyes on them. Also, I wanted to make sure I had Chicago Style down, since most of my papers in college were MLA; both theses had to be Chicago Style. It worked out really well, since both have been published since I graduated and it cut down on the amount of editing I had to do in order to send them to the journals.

A writing center is not the same thing as a remedial class.

Nope. :) Just checked the English Department's website. They still have the introductory classes based on whether you're in the sciences or the humanities, but no remedials! :D

The State University campus I went to didn't have remedial math or english when I started 11 years ago and they don't have it now.

Remedial courses are offered in the system, but students have to enroll in Community College for them.

Munchkin, I'd be :eek: if Brown offered remedial courses.