>>11759189We had a chem thermo II course curved from a 16% average to a 60%. A fully accredited course, the professor got his PhD from MIT and he taught us in the same style he was taught there.
The thing is, before grade inflation, this was entirely normal. Exam questions were very difficult and there was not this thing with 60% of questions that are essentially modified tutorial and textbook problems. Sometimes a problem just doesn't click for you. For example also at MIT there was a thermo postgrad course the same professor took which was 3 questions, 4 hours long and fully open book. More than half the students handed in a blank page at the end. One student managed to click on all 3 and pass with full marks.
This is the way engineer is supposed to be taught. You develop engineering skill by applying principles on entirely novel problems. What's especially important is the these problems do not have zero degrees of freedom (i.e. not formula plugging). The grades have to be adjusted now because the labour market has become increasingly competitive and many schools (including top ones) offer ridiculously easy exams.
The way that exams are currently done at many top US schools is actually not the way ABET envisioned it, it actually moved in that direction due to Chinese influence (in some cases involving embassy requests to a Governors to force professors to change the course to represent the formula plugging that their students are used to).
