>False. There is no requirement that the course be made easier, nor that the non-selective school refrain from creating a much harsher curve to reflect a like-achiever performing similarly to like-achiever at a different school.

>They absolutely can, and in fact most of the courses I took REQUIRE the teacher to fail everyone who fails to achieve certain ABET designated criteria, regardless of what percent fails to master the material. Although in practical case, this means the non-selective school just fails a lot more people than the selective school at freshman/sophomore level.

Of course no official requirement exists. But all schools must do this. Failing an entire class or most of the class is grounds for a lawsuit. It's also extremely bad for business as schools are basically businesses.

The only thing schools can do is grade on a curve and this curve must let a percentage of people through. The quality of that percentage depends 100% on the quality of the group that is in that class. Thus selectivity effects difficulty. If every student scored 99%, then 99% is now a C grade. See the logic? Selectivity is causative to difficulty in classes with a curve AND that is a quantitative inductive conclusion which is incredibly hard to counter with qualitative anecdotes.

I also don't know why you're bringing up ABET when we agreed it's trash and irrelevant.

>Only on the basis of the fallacy that curves cannot vary from school to school.

Curves are different, so are the students going in. But when you look at the whole, by the law of large numbers (aka basic probability) a pattern emerges. Selective schools have smarter people and are therefore harder overall because of these curves. The generality is true despite exceptions that may exist. You can say on average, what I say is more likely to be true.

>How the top 10% or whatever n% performs doesn't say anything about how the bottom 100-N% perform, (other than the top performed better). It merely provides a maximum, which in your example was 50% passing. We've been over this fallacious assertion many times now.

It already does. The top 10% indicates that the bottom 90% failed to perform at the level of the top 10%. That is something right there. Failure to perform. If you fail to be part of the top 10% then you're more likely to fail at other things INCLUDING an engineering curriculum. Correlation and probability. Your assumption which imo is much more far fetched is stating that this correlation DOESN'T exist. Think about it. It's much more logical to assume high performers in high school are more likely to be high performers in university.

>Selectivity DOESN'T CONFER DIFFICULTY. Say that in your head 10 more times.

Say it as much as you want. I am literally telling you that IT DOES.

I said two things that by induction leads to higher difficulty. Literally. Selectivity leads to higher performers in a class. Higher performers effect the intrinsic curve EVERY school has. THEREFORE difficulty increases. As I stated before this hinges on the correlation between performance before entering the university with actual performance at the university in an engineering curriculum. That's the basis of my thesis right there. It is unreasonable to deny that correlation.

>I see no reason why person A and B alike couldn't be held to similar standards regardless as whether they went to a selective vs non selective school.

You hold the standard too high, then nobody passes the course. A certain percentage has to pass, therefore, for a non-selective school the curve MUST be lowered for more people to pass. As I stated before, although there's no official rule stating that schools can't fail everyone, it's pretty stupid for a school to fail everyone. Bad for business and various other things.

Thus by this logic a non-selective school MUST lower the bar or too many people will fail. Keep in mind, selective schools also have high attrition rates, so we can do the math on this if you have statistics about your school. I'm guessing something like Georgia Tech which is like 40% percent dropout rate (could very well be a BS statistic as I've only heard people regurgitate what the dean says) and 75% acceptance, versus my school which is 11 percent acceptance and dropout is 10% (highly inaccurate as this is the overall dropout rate of the entire school... Engineering is MUCH higher).

This leaves Georgia Tech with 45% and my school with 10% of the initial group of people that applied. Assuming that both schools have the same distribution of talented people applying, there's no logic that can justify Georgia Tech being easier than my school. More people of the same level of talent out of this distribution make it through Georgia Tech than they do at my school. Therefore my school is harder.

Of course it should also be noted that my school is prestigious enough that most mediocre students don't bother to apply. So my school weighted towards a group with greater talent.

I don't know which school you went to but Georgia Tech is the only top 10 CS school that I know of that has a reputation for letting "anyone with a pulse" into their online masters program, so I'm using that as my model.

>Your selective program is not more difficult on that basis alone.

Certainly there are exceptions aka Anomalies, but the generality is impossible not to be true. It's an axiom of probability. You could very well be a genius of unparalleled talent that came out of a non-selective program.

In fact by probability, it is actually highly unlikely for anomalies not to exist. Somebody eventually gets struck by lightning.