During the online “Overtime” segment of Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker stated that standards for college students have declined while, at Harvard, “grades keep getting higher and higher.”
Host Bill Maher asked, “Professor, have standards for college students changed in recent years? Do they have trouble keeping up with the amount of reading that used to be required?”
Pinker answered, “The answer is yes, they have declined. And I can see it in my own class, which I’ve taught for 22 years. So, we had a meeting with the dean at Harvard, because grades keep getting higher and higher. … I’ve been giving kind of the same exam for 22 years, and it’s multiple choice, so it’s objective. So, it’s a constant benchmark, and performance has been going down, at least in my class, about 10 percentage points from 2004 to now. So, the standards have been going down. Students do read less. I think they spend more time on extracurriculars than on classwork” and also spend a lot of time on their phones.
He added that there are many intelligent and hardworking Harvard students, but there are also many “for whom it’s kind of a luxury cruise and academics is just one of the activities.”
Pinker further stated that Harvard has made some adjustments to deal with this.
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