[Goose]

[rant]I do remember a time when the "average" grade was much closer to a 2.0 than a 3.X. Stanford "decided" that since it was so hard to get in to Stanford that by definition everybody admitted was WAY above average and their grades needed to reflect that. One justification for this was that "everybody else is doing it". Of course, the corollary of this determination was that would be redundant to verify these outstanding students actually know the material so it isn't really necessary to verify their mastery by giving hard closed book tests to make them prove it.
 
OK, the above may be considered somewhat of an exaggeration. I am sure there are pockets of  "old school" education at Stanford. It is also true that there are (at least in engineering) lots of mechanical skills that have been greatly revised by the advent of design software. You don't really need a class in mechanical drawing anymore. The more important question is the actual quality of education most graduates possess. When I left in 1973 the consensus was that "Stanford engineers KNOW a lot. However, they don't know how to DO anything." Stanford engineering took up that challenge and started turning out engineers that were much more "job ready". They could actually do many more things right "out of the box". Unfortunately (from hiring experience) what the actually know declined in parallel. IMO that hasn't been a great tradeoff. The angst that CS majors are feeling about AI reflects this reality. Too many of them see themselves as coders, not  actually "Computer Scientists". Unfortunately many of them are correct. [/rant]

[Goose]

[rant]I do remember a time when the "average" grade was much closer to a 2.0 than a 3.X. Stanford "decided" that since it was so hard to get in to Stanford that by definition everybody admitted was WAY above average and their grades needed to reflect that. One justification for this was that "everybody else is doing it". Of course, the corollary of this determination was that would be redundant to verify these outstanding students actually know the material so it isn't really necessary to verify their mastery by giving hard closed book tests to make them prove it.
 
OK, the above may be considered somewhat of an exaggeration. I am sure there are pockets of  "old school" education at Stanford. It is also true that there are (at least in engineering) lots of mechanical skills that have been greatly revised by the advent of design software. You don't really need a class in mechanical drawing anymore. The more important question is the actual quality of education most graduates possess. When I left in 1973 the consensus was that "Stanford engineers KNOW a lot. However, they don't know how to DO anything." Stanford engineering took up that challenge and started turning out engineers that were much more "job ready". They could actually do many more things right "out of the box". Unfortunately (from hiring experience) what the actually know declined in parallel. IMO that hasn't been a great tradeoff. The angst that CS majors are feeling about AI reflects this reality. Too many of them see themselves as coders, not  actually "Computer Scientists". Unfortunately many of them are correct. [/rant]