If Princeton administrators get their way, students there and at universities across the nation could soon find it a lot harder to earn an A.
Faculty at the Ivy League school could vote as soon as Monday on a proposal by College Dean Nancy Weiss Malkiel to restrict marks in the A-range to no more than 35 percent of all grades. But members of the Northwestern community are questioning the benefits of the system for students at NU.
“Professors are in charge of deciding on grades, not the university,” said Stephen Carr, an associate dean of McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “The professors will give grades according to the methods they have announced in the beginning of class, and the students will earn whatever they will earn.”
There is also skepticism about whether the system would work for all types of classes.
“I think enforcement would be difficult for any university to do,” said NU history Prof. Michael Sherry. “A given professor might understandably say, ’35 percent is fine for one class I’m teaching but too much for another class and too little for still another class.'”
Sherry also said the proposal unfairly shifts blame on professors only.
“That solution assumes that grade inflation has occurred only because faculty has become more lax in their standards,” Sherry said. “I think faculty have come under more pressure from students and families than they used to be to grade more leniently.”
This pressure is particularly strong in the humanities and social sciences, where grading is often subjective, said Lois Trautvetter, a lecturer in NU’s School of Education and Social Policy who also serves as coordinator of higher education administration and policy.
She also pointed to professor-student relations as another factor driving-up grades.
“When you establish a rapport with students, that sometimes causes faculty to grade leniently,” Trautvetter said.
The issue of grade inflation at colleges and universities has gained salience during the last several decades partly through the proliferation of teaching evaluations, such as NU’s CTEC survey, Trautvetter said. Professors might assign higher grades to receive positive comments on the evaluations that administrators could later use to analyze faculty performance and subsequently award salary raises or tenured positions.
“Research has shown, even though a lot of people think this is a myth, that faculty assessment has to be closely linked to student achievement,” Trautvetter said.
Matt Clark, a third-year student in the School of Continuing Studies, said grade inflation is a problem but disagrees with Princeton’s proposal.
“I don’t think (grade inflation) is good at all,” Clark said. “Although at the same time, if half the class deserves an A, they should give the class A’s.”
While Princeton’s proposal is a drastic measure, other universities have implemented different solutions. For instance, transcripts from Columbia and Indiana universities and Dartmouth College include individual course grading methods, Trautvetter said.
“The news out there is that everyone is very aware that there’s grade inflation and it’s not going to stop on its own,” Trautvetter said.
