We do it differently. In a traditional bribery situation, one bribes the official to get a specific "exception" through. In the US, we declare that we aren't paying umpty-thousand dollars a year so that Johnny can get an F and that our contributions to the college will be going down if this continues, and in the spirit of American egalitarianism and fraternity, we lower the standards for everyone. Basically, we've collectively bargained the bribery rather than doing it on a per-student basis.

I'm not entirely clear myself on the exact breakdown of truth vs. sarcasm in the preceding paragraph.

Maybe you should stop trying to be sarcastic, then?

Please don't take that the wrong way, I've got nothing against you personally (I've read some good posts from you, IIRC), or even with that particular post - it's just the straw that broke the camel's back. I just read a large thread on programmers.stackexchange asking whether IT job requirements are customarily exxagerated, and the answers were distressing. Firstly because most replies painted a bleak picture of HR practices, but secondly because most had a jaded, cynical tone which made it impossible to guage the sincerity. Or whether all the upvotes were from genuine empathy/agreement, or just amusement at the sarcasm. It gets really unclear.

It's like having two angels on your shoulders, one saying 'these sagacious persons have just offered a terrific insight, you must act upon it,' and the other saying 'these people are just trying to sound cool, of course the real world doesn't work like that - ignore them.'

/rant

Unfortunately, I do seriously think the truth percentage is quite significant or I actually wouldn't have posted it. Grade inflation at lower levels of education have different forces in play, but at the higher end it is my serious opinion that it is mostly the colleges/universities giving the customers what they want. Calling it bribery is a bit sarcastic, but even ten years ago I could see professors on low-level classes struggling against grading fairly vs. the knowledge that if they did they would actually be overruled by higher levels of the organization over concerns about monetary implications. (On the positive, I did see one mass-flunking for cheating on a computer science 101 course, though, and it stood.)

I teach college in the US. I have never been offered a bribe. In fact, I've never heard of anyone even attempting to offer a bribe.

However, I did wimp out once when a student begged me to increase their grade from a D to a C because they needed a minimum GPA to play football. My thought at the time was, "This guy is a prick, but he has absolutely no future in the life of the mind, and college football is probably his only chance at success in life." It was something of a split-second decision, and I still regret it. Upon further reflection I realized it was completely unfair to the other students in the class, and swore never to do it again under any circumstances.

I used a mechanism that was outlined in the syllabus. My understanding is that the syllabus is a legally binding contract, so no.

I'm not going into any more detail than that. I'm sure you didn't mean any harm by it, but it creeps me out a little when internet strangers start asking for information about how I could hypothetically be sued. I'm not a lawyer, and I'd rather not be surprised to discover there was some wacky clause of a law I wasn't aware of.

Its included in the tution! http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/court-battle-o... Note: Story is about Canada not the US. Frankly I think its rather hard to fail in a US university course.

Anecdotal evidence: My brother was doing a PhD at Yale and was a TA for a 1st year chemistry class. He was marking papers and gave a few of them an 'F' because they were terribly done. The professor told him to re-mark them because the school motto is "You don't fail at Yale"

I had a professor once who had did something vaguely similar, but actually helpful: if you did badly on a paper, he wouldn't mark the grade on it. Instead he would write "Please see me after class."

After class, the (usually slightly terrified) student would go and talk to him -- and this guy, bless his heart, would do his best to figure out what the problem was, and how to get that student back on track. It worked, too. For a lot of students who get demoralized and let their studies slip, it's enough just to know that someone in charge cares about them, personally.

Ever since then, I've always thought that was how it should be. Grade adjustment is a pretty sad substitute.

Hah. I failed a course at the U of M. For the record, it was completely my fault; I was an idiot and easily distracted by shiny things.

Think about that question for a few moments, and tell me the last time you ran across something in this world that was not negotiable.

Well cheating was pretty rampant where I studied computer engineering, and I would guess that it isn't much different elsewhere. More important, though is that kids in America aren't learning any more that kids in India, albeit there are probably more students in technical degrees in India. Look here, though: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_la...

I imagine this can happen anywhere, US or otherwise.

Just because something can happen anywhere does not mean that they happen to the same degree. India has a corruption perception index of 3.3 (out of 10) in 2010. Below even countries like China and Columbia. The effect on education is just one ramification of corruption. It is overly dismissive to make the claim that 'well corruption happens everywhere'