<p>I don’t necessarily think they should have a set standard or need to. That’s my point. I don’t think a standard exists now. There is no generally accepted way to curve a course anymore than there are standards across the 3,500 classes.</p>
<p>I think the obsession with grades is misplaced and grades are misused, that’s my whole point. Some places run closer to my model than others. In fact, while some Brown professors complained about inflation in a recent article in the Brown Daily Herald, many professors had responses similar to mine.</p>
<p>Grades are assessments of students by professors for work done in a specific class-- they’re not designed for cross-institutional comparison or sweeping generalizations, etc. Hell, GPAs are no more standardized in high school than they are in college but you don’t hear people complaining about that. I think people who view this as an “issue” are part of a growing group of people of a particular mindset that have attempted to transform the use of measures beyond what they’re designed for and beyond what they can do well.</p>