STEMming The Grades Of Female Students

A quartet of professors suggest that women in STEM fields should perhaps literally get an A for effort. “Four Otterbein University professors suggest that women may be averse to STEM fields because they feel they work harder than male students without earning higher grades,” Toni Airaksinen reports on the Campus Reform site maintained by the Leadership Institute. “After conducting a study of 828 students in STEM classes, the professors discovered that while women felt they put more effort into their classes than men, they received approximately equivalent grades, which ‘indicates that women’s higher perceived effort levels are not rewarded.'”

“‘This, in turn, returns us to questions of grading practices,’ the professors write. ‘Does a course grade primarily reward conceptual understanding and problem-solving ability, or does it primarily reward hard work, reflected in course attendance, submission of assignments on time, etc., or some mixture of the two?'”

And here’s another question, would you feel safe driving over a bridge based on the “higher perceived effort” that went into designing it?

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