<p>Hi, I’m a student at U of M and I recently took a class where at the end of the course the professor only curved some students’ grades depending on how “hard” the GSIs were. Is that even fair? What if there were students who didn’t work as hard in the “hard” GSIs class. I’m just wondering if this professor can even do this? Is it “legal”? </p>
<p>Well, of course it’s legal. Is it fair? Well, it depends. The professor may know something that you don’t - maybe he realized that one of the GSIs didn’t understand the grading requirements of the course, or noticed that one GSI was consistently giving lower grades and scores to students in his section than the other GSIs in other sections for the same work. In that case, sure, it’s fair. The students were being unfairly penalized not by anything they were doing, but the way that their GSI graded their papers - and thus their grades were being dragged below the rest of the class. The professor simply added an adjustment to bring them in line with the rest of the class. It doesn’t matter if there were students who didn’t work as hard in the hard GSI’s class, as long as the adjustment be provided 1) was provided equally across the GSI’s class and 2) was only enough to bring them equal to the students in the other GSIs’ classes. In other words, maybe you would’ve earned a C if you took a different GSI, but because you got Hard GSI you were struggling to earn a D. Professor’s adjustment gives you a C. It’d be unfair if the adjustment gave you a B, though.</p>
<p>Professors have an enormous amount of control over their grading and the way they run their classes, so yeah, he can do that. I’ve worked for professors who curve grades unequally. For example, one had an “effort factor” - if a student had a borderline grade and was reported by the TA to be a hard worker and put in above-average effort, he’d often bump them to the next grade level. I’ve worked for professors who were sloppy with keeping up with student work and so their grades were arbitrary sometimes. I’ve had a professor tell me not to give out grades below a certain level, even when I felt a student deserved it (and her peers clearly worked harder and turned in better quality work than her).</p>
<p>But the larger issue here is - why does it matter to you? One thing you will learn is that life isn’t fair, and advantages are not applied equally across people. You may have a boss one day who really likes your lazy coworker because she sucks up, while you’re a harder worker but you don’t. You may get rejected from a grad program while the chair’s less qualified daughter is accepted. Someone you perceive as less qualified than you will get a promotion or a job you really wanted. In time, you’ll learn not to care about these things and just to care about your own grades and work. There’s always someone out there with an advantage you don’t have, but you likely have advantages someone else doesn’t have.</p>
<p>Oh my gosh I know exactly how you feel. My college physics class is curved on a nonlinear curve. And people who get close to perfect only get like 1 point added to their score (and these are the people who actually studied hard), while other people who get like 80s get 8-10 points added to their score, and they end up with an A (or close to an A) anyway! It’s totally not fair, but that’s just life.</p>
<p>Curving will always result in perceived injustice (unless the curve is linear, and everyone gets added the exact same number of points, which of course doesn’t usually happen because professors usually like to baby the students who don’t study and get 50s).</p>
<p>I digress. You just have to accept it and deal with it, I guess. Like I have (for the most part).</p>
<p>Put yourself on the other side of this scenario. The Prof has 3 GSIs. Two have averages of 78%, but the third class (that you’re in) has an average of 65%. Wouldn’t you be saying THAT was unfair, that you were penalized by being graded harder than the other classes? Adjusting by curve is never going to be perfect, and yes, some kids who don’t deserve it may see slight benefit, but if someone wasn’t working hard in the low average class, their grade is likely to be proportionately lower anyway.</p>
<p>I know professors who have normalized grade distributions to take into account differences among the TAs. Many of the students who were in a section with an easy TA were annoyed by this because it raised the cutoff for an A (needing to get a 95% to get an A, instead of a 90%, for instance). This was meant to account for some TAs being really easy graders (where nearly everyone was given an A by the TA), while other TAs were very difficult graders (where no one was given an A by the TA) even when the quality of the work was the same.</p>
<p>So I would say, be grateful all of the sections weren’t curved because that would mean that students who were in the “easier” section would likely have the cutoff for an A raised above 90%. That’s theoretically how the class should be curved, but many professors don’t like to curve in a way that makes it more difficult to get an A. I don’t understand how anyone loses in this situation, unless you did poorly in the section with the “easy” GSI.</p>
<p>There’s always someone who’s upset with grading. You can’t please everyone.</p>
<p>@singer223 : That’s a fairly common practice, especially in science labs (and I know that, unfortunately in lectures, some courses are run by instructors that will take the easier sections and shift their cutoffs upward some so as to normalize the A/B grades across sections, especially in cases where it’s obvious that one or 2 instructors were giving easier assessments and assignments). </p>
<p>@absentions :It seems unfair (and at the extremes, it is), but when you actually think about it, those numbers translate to a 4.0 system. If the instructors is trying to yield a special course GPA let’s say, 2.6-2.8, (a B- at most institutions and a fairly common curved distribution at many selective privates and publics), and a student has a 92, and the mean is a 65-70. You don’t need to give the student with a 92 more than a single point to get them from 3.7 to 4.0 (the “A” is particularly wide with 7 points, where as all others have like a 2-3 point bracket). When the mean is that low, the others who occupy other brackets while of course have to be shifted upwards more numerically to achieve the desired distribution on a 4.0 scale. It’s pretty hard to shift what essentially a D/D+ to a B- without adding the most points to the those with the median or below. I would say that below the brackets that obviously belong to those who will get an A, things like standard deviations play a role in terms of who will land where. Again, it’s essentially curved vs. the 4.0 scale, not the numerical scale (you know, kind of like AP. In classes with low averages, usually the course is challenging enough such that 100% is not common and scores in the traditional A range, 90+ are not also that plentiful, so they just apply some statistical curve). In addition, we live in the landscape of grade inflation and a society that puts lots of emphasis on graduating and retaining students (I have mixed opinions about it) such that it looks bad for schools, especially somewhat selective ones to challenge the students to the point that they actually get bad grades for being average (which is what anything below even a B is now). The curves in science are only meant to be fair in terms of societal norms and attitudes about college (achievement, it’s purpose, whatever). </p>
<p>Everyone (colleges, employers, grad/professional schools) has just become numb to and has accepted inflation (I mean the fact that we are getting smarter and smarter and thus should never fail or come up short even in the most challenging environments. If the smart people can’t do it perfectly, then it is too challenging! And these smart people, even with an average performance cannot receive a C) and have adjusted their policies and ways of gauging achievement accordingly. I guess it’s all good. College grading basically reflects the consumer driven model of college today I think. It won’t be going away, because we know we love it lol. If you are a good student, you don’t want to have to fight for a B in a difficult course when you can just simply be in what today is likely the top quintile, quartile, or even 1/3 and get an A (you know, because 1/3 of the class actually got 90 and above. In difficult courses with low means between 60-75, I know for a fact that the top 1/3 or even quartile can include students in the 70s, perhaps not even high 70s if it’s more like 65). We like relatively high grades. We would not want to attend Harvard and Yale back in the 50s for example. </p>
<p>I had a teacher in sixth grade do this to me. She said “Everyone did poorly on this test, except AUGirl. AUGirl, you don’t need your test curved.” And then she set the curve so remarkably high that the student who came in second actually got curved one point ahead of me. (The teacher didn’t like me.)</p>
<p>It’s stayed with me to this day. So, no, I don’t think it’s fair. If you curve one student’s grade, you should curve them all.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’m really happy that in the US, the university doesn’t go back and recurve grades. My French university does this. It doesn’t matter what the teacher gives you, the university goes back and sets it to a curve anyways. So one class, I got a 15.5/20 from the teacher, but it got lowered to a 14.5/20 by the university. (10 is passing. A 16 is basically the equivalent of an A). At least in the US, teachers have more power and if you go to them, you can usually work something out about a better grade. And if you can’t, then no one else can either.</p>
<p>@AUGirl Yeah, but other countries believe in actual rigor and rigorous grading practices. The US doesn’t. For example, if the administration at most schools had to take a look at grades and then institute a curve, they would keep it the same if it’s already inflated and would increase it more if it’s not inflated enough. However, in general, the grading by US instructors and the willingness to “bargain” and “argue” over grades already reflects institutional culture/demands and how the administration at such schools is pretty much satisfied when the students are satisfied, and the students primarily just want high grades. If you grade much lower than the norms for a discipline, then higherups (either in dept. or at school) will start looking at you, as opposed to people investigating an instructor that has little demands or grades too easily. US has a “superficial” success culture that values the inflationary trend. Even if most schools gave low"ish" grades, students today (basically the last 30-40 years lol) would still gripe due to HS being so easy (especially for those attending selective colleges). Harsh grading in college will lead to very damaged egos and fear, especially among high achievers. We want our grades to reinforce that we are high achievers whether we deserve them or not or regardless of our competition increasing in college, so the general trend is for selective schools to grade higher. In some cases, like humanities and social sciences, they are likely just smarter, but in science and math, even when averages are low at “smarter” schools (especially when private), the curve is set to a higher mean/median than less selective schools (or even selective public schools). When discussing selective private vs. public, often you are paying extra for smaller classes and a grade bump that privates give because “we’re all so smart”. What always surprises me is when instructors will say: “There is no inflation, our students get smarter and smarter”. I kind of think, well, “shouldn’t you teach your class differently so that it is more stimulating and challenging to the new, smarter crowd”. Nope, can’t be.</p>
<p>@bernie212 I used to believe in that sentiment too. And then I came to France where I attend one of their ‘most prestigious’ schools. (Think: The past four French presidents have all gone here.) American students actually aim for a good grade. They work hard to get their 90%. In France, at least in my experience and (many of my fellow exchange students have experienced the same), I’ve seen that most of the kids here aim for a 10/20 (a passing grade). It’s impossible to get a 19 or 20 (like the teachers just don’t give 19’s and 20’s). A 12 is a decent grade.</p>
<p>For subjective testing like essays and presentations, that system makes sense. If the highest grade the professor is giving out is a 17 or 18, the average is a 14… then a 12 isn’t so bad.</p>
<p>But the problem comes in when you have really straightforward objective exams that are multiple choice, true/false, etc. Even on those, French kids are happy to get a 12/20! American kids would beat themselves up over this and study harder or go see a professor to get help understanding how they can study better, because the equivalent is a 60%… barely passing in most cases.</p>
<p>I just personally think that most of the students I knew in the states worked harder than most of the students that I’ve encountered in France. This, of course, is a generalization. There are some who are lazy in both countries and some who are really hardworking in both. But, in my overall experience, I felt like American students worked harder.</p>
<p>Basically, my theory is that, because an A is attainable, and it seems like an obtainable goal for someone who actually puts in the work, then students are encouraged to put in the work and actually get the A. Students who see that it’s impossible to get an A just settle for the lower grades and put in less work, because what’s the point in trying if you’re not going to actually get any better of a grade anyways?</p>
<p>They can do whatever they want.</p>
<p>Most classes here either have no curve, just huge weights (50% midterm) or the class average is curved to 65ish.</p>
<p>The scenario mentioned by the OP is very common and, most prof’s would argue, necessary. Ultimately, the professor wants to control grades in their class. A scenario where TA’s grade differently takes control away from the professor. It is very common for them to make adjustments so that the mix of grades is as they like it.</p>