Matching Ability with Achievement

A N ATTEMPT to provide an environment which will stimulate students to efforts in the mastery of their academic work more nearly commensurate with their innate capacities than obtains generally at present is under way at Iowa State College. The essential principle of the program is the establishment of a new standard of achievement. In the past, a student's record was compared with some arbitrarily set mark, which was the same for all students regardless of differences in innate ability. As long as a student met this requirement, no question was raised and only sporadic attempts were made to stimulate students to higher achievement. Little account was taken of the fact that these very differences in ability, which are known to be great in any student body, made it extremely difficult for some students and easy for others to make passing marks, since the tendency is to adjust the work to the students of average ability. Most of us believe that it is strengthening to a person's character and personality to do one's best, to bring to each and every serious task the best one has in him. Dull students have to do this continually in their academic work in order to meet minimum requirements, and doubtless the personal traits thus developed are responsible for the success which so often attends such students in their business and professional careers. It is equally true that the failure to work consistently up to one's capacity is demoralizing to character or personality, besides being a great source of waste of human energy. Much is being said and written nowadays about the conservation of our natural resources, and rightly so, for we have been criminally wasteful with our land, our forests, our oil and mineral deposits. Future generations will probably rise up to curse rather than to bless us because of our wasteful exploitation of their heritage. But human energy is a much more valuable resource than our land, forests, and minerals, and the waste of it through nonuse or misuse is more deplorable, and should be a matter of greater concern to us. At Iowa State College we are concerned with the waste of human energy and talent which occurs among college students because of the failure of so many, especially of the more

Academic achievement · Big Five personality traits · Character (mathematics · Management · Matching (statistics · Mathematics education · Order (exchange · Pedagogy · Personality · Set (abstract data type · Task (project management · Work (physics · Career Development and Diversity · Computer Science · Diverse Education and Engineering Focus · Engineering · Engineering Education and Pedagogy · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Factors affecting college grades

  Diane Harris•Psychological Bulletin•1940

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• Factors Contributing to Attrition in College Populations

  Virginia Staudt Sexton•The Journal of General Psychology•1965

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