<p>Article in the NYT: Can Tough Grades Be Fair Grades?
focuses on BU’s go-it-alone tough grading policy.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/education/07education.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/education/07education.html</a></p>
<p>I knew BU spent a lot of time looking across the river at H, but who wudda thought BU would listen to Larry Summer’s exhortations about grade inflation while H ignored them?</p>
<p>Go figure.</p>
<p>Based on the data in the NYT’s article, the average gpa at BU is about 3.12. This assumes 39%-A’s, 40%-B’s, 18%-C’s and 3%-F’s. While certainly lower than most elite colleges, it seems to be a reasonable average gpa given the relative calibre of students compared to the highly selective colleges like the ones across the river.</p>
<p>My complaint about grade inflation is that it can demean outstanding scholarship within the context of an individual college. And it can demean a student’s sense of genuine accomplishment.</p>
<p>In a class where 75%+ grades are A, how can one distinguish those few students who displayed outstanding understanding of the subject and who explored it beyond the scope of the syllabus.</p>
<p>Concerning the sense of accomplishment I will use my son’s experience as an example. He attends Rensselaer where the average gpa was 3.04 last year. One of the most difficult courses offered there is a compsci course, Data Structures and Algorithms which he took second semester frosh year. The course consisted of one midterm(25%), a final(45%) and 6 projects(30%). He studied over the course of 2 weeks for the midterm exam, thought he did reasonably well but received a disappointing D which happened to coincide with Parents Weekend. But he had gotten near perfect scores on his first 2 projects so all was not lost. While the possibility of an A was remote at best, the midterm exam made him more determined and he redoubled his effort, did extraordinarily well on the final and remaining projects and received one of 5 A’s in the course of 37 students. The lessons he learned went far beyond the DSA subject matter. </p>
<p>He learned that he just gets compsci and is one of the most accomplished students in his department.</p>
<p>He learned to never give up in the face of disappointment.</p>
<p>He learned to work incredibly hard to achieve a goal and that it sometimes pays off.</p>
<p>His professor(a CalTech PhD) sent him a personal email congratulating him on his performance in light of the poor midterm exam.</p>
<p>He would have learned none of these things if the average grade in the class were B+/A- and he had gotten a C+/B- on that midterm exam and we periodically recall this accomplishment a year later.</p>
<p>Yes, the transcript objectively notes an A in DSA that spring semester but he knows that it represents so much more than that.</p>
<p>It would be wonderful if more students had an opportunity to experinece this sort of challenge and success. Heck, I vividly remember my first A which did not happen freshman year BTW.</p>
<p>Originaloog:</p>
<p>Your S is to be highly commended! I have a query about grading practices, though. When a score counts for 25% of the grade, it seems to me impossible for someone with a D to earn an A if the grade is computed totally mechanically and no A+s are given. Even if he got As throughout the rest of the course (75%), the D would lower his final course grade. So it would appear that the prof used some flexibility in grading and took into account the upward trend. Which is what I would do. But I know of many instances where the grade is computed in wholly mechanical fashion.</p>
<p>There are many issues involved in adopting a single grading practice. Curving does not take into account different student populations. The same class may have a very strong group of students one year and a weaker one the following year. The B student from the previous year will be significantly stronger than the B student from the following year but curving will not allow profs to distinguish between the two types of students.</p>
<p>The biggest problem is actually not grade inflation but grade compression. As you note, how to distinguish between students when most of them are graded on a scale that essentially ranges from A to B-?</p>
<p>But I don’t necessarily buy the argument that the As at Harvard denote smarter students. than at BU We don’t know enough about the types of courses, the types of students, the grading practices of individual profs to make such blanket statements.</p>
<p>Marite, the CompSci department at RPI does not typically use a curve to determine grades. Most courses use the 70, 80, 90 composite grade to determine C, B, and A respectively. To the best of my recollection in the DSA class his grades were 68, 102, 96 for the midterm, projects and final respectively. By my math this comes out to 90.8. And yep, he always spent the extra several hours to do the extra credit component on each project assignment which he said took 20-40 hours to complete.</p>
<p>Since I find grades themselves to approach meaningless, I find it difficult to lose any sleep over “grade inflation”. Since many colleges have experienced compression of the academic preparation of their students, compression of the grades is to be expected. If grades mean little to begin with, and grades are highly compressed, then grades lose any ability to sort among students. All true. the problem is that grades had little valid basis for sorting among students anyway. In the illustration provided, the final course grade reflected the weight placed on the various assignments. Since other professors might, arbitrarily, weight the assignments differently, the identical performance, and identical mastery of the subject, could lead to widely different grades. Which leads back to meaninglessness of grades. If you want to get depressed, read some of the data on the validity of college grades. It is pathetic.</p>
<p>I just got D grades from Reed
They basically said she passed- I have no idea what they really are- but since she graduated- should I even worry?</p>
<p>All I can remember from back in the dark ages is that I almost inevitably learned the most in courses in which I got the lowest grades.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not sure where this assertion comes from. Certainly, for some types of discrimination, grades have been shown to be the only thing that correlates with an outcome.</p>
<p>I do recall research that claimed to find that grades do not correlate with workplace success. No surprise here, as there are so many confounding variables at play.</p>
<p>Originaloog:</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification.</p>
<p>Afan:</p>
<p>You are right about different grading practices. S had problem sets, midterms and finals and they were given different weights than Originaloog’s S’s. But this begs the question about the different levels of challenge of the different assignments in these two different classes.</p>
<p>Grades meaningless? Tell that to any potential grad or professional school or any on-campus recruiter! Now after the books are closed that is another matter. I dont recall asking my dentist, doctor or lawyer what their grades were. It is only performance which counts which is as it should be.</p>
<p>There is much consternation about grade inflation a Harvard in some circles and the college has taken some steps in response. However given the calibre of its student body, why shouldn’t there be grade “inflation”. I suspect that an overwhelming %age of Harvard College students work very hard, learn much and are evaluated appropriately.</p>
<p>However(and there is always an anecdotal however), a colleague’s son attends JHU, a university reknowned for its rigorous academics. A pre-med major, he had a 4.0 gpa his freshman year, one which included the dreaded o-chem. He earned his first B in Physics 1 which he took at the state university summer term. Hummmmm?</p>
<p>My experience is quite different from mini’s. I struggled in chemistry, from intro thru o-chem and the C’s I received accurately reflect the little I remember today. However the A’s I got in engineering mechanics, determinant structures, medieval/Rennaisance music(mixolydian mode anyone?), and social cybernation accurately reflect subject matter I truely learned and retain to this day.</p>
<p>I do not dismiss grades as meaningless evils of education, something I have devoted my life to. They help me to better assist and instruct students. They also help students to better identify their individual strengths and weaknesses. I shudder to imagine my life as a chemical engineer if I had been given an undeserved B by Dr Schram in Intro Chemistry.</p>
<p>As a transfer to Harvard, I have found the grade-inflation claims to be greatly overrated. GPAs declined across much of the transfer class, compared to performance at past schools.</p>
<p>Transfer:
That is a very useful bit of information. Not many students are able to compare grading practices at different schools!</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Perhaps that isn’t so odd… Presumably, most transfers to Harvard compiled truly outstanding academic records at colleges with a much less selective student body. So, a decline from 3.9 to 3.6 might be quite normal even if Harvard is quite grade inflated.</p>
<p>Now if many transfers are coming in with 3.9s and ending up with 1.9s after a semester or two, that would be an indication of some real rigor in the grading scheme. I doubt if that happens much.</p>
<p>I guess the C-centered bell curve has vanished from the undergrad world… Even 3.12 sounds like a pretty high average GPA for a school where people are complaining about grade deflation.</p>
<p>“So it would appear that the prof used some flexibility in grading and took into account the upward trend. Which is what I would do. But I know of many instances where the grade is computed in wholly mechanical fashion.”</p>
<p>I remember vividly getting a C (maybe even a C+) on a midterm 3 As on a paper and an A on the final. I questioned the B - because it did seem to me there was no redeeming yourself - I figured out what kind of detail I was going to need to know for the final, and did the requisiste studying. I must have been persuasive because the grade got changed to an A-.</p>
<p>I’ve got mixed feelings on grade inflation - on the one hand 75% As seems ridiculous - on the other hand - if all the students in a class have mastered the material why shouldn’t they get all As? I don’t think you should be forced to make a course harder just to get a curve. Some courses, think math for example, have a set amount of material to be covered. Unless you actually choose an entering class where a certain portion of the class is happy to be slackers (think of those reputed “happy Cs” at Harvard) maybe everyone deserves the grades they’re getting.</p>
<p>Oh, and speaking of grades - Architecture grad school at Columbia was strictly pass/fail. It was very interesting to me (and a little scary) how much less hard I worked in some courses (ie structures) compared to the studio knowing that I only had to pass. But the fact is no one except the German government (when half the firm got laid off and we were going on the dole) has asked to see my Columbia transcript. Clients care about your designs and assume you’ll build something safe.</p>
<p>Roger:</p>
<p>I don’t agree with your reasoning. It is harder to transfer from one college to another than to apply as a freshman. And the accepting college must be confident that the student will be doing well once admitted. If Harvard has grade inflation whereby the overwhelming majority of students have B or above, then I doubt it would accept students who are likely to only receive GPAs of 1.9.</p>
<p>how about people that aren’t students just be quiet about grade inflation/deflation.</p>
<p>you guys say grades don’t matter, yet you think we don’t work hard for our grades. why should I get an A if I know the material?</p>
<p>and why should I pay $200,000 to get a C when I could get a free ride at a state school to get an A.</p>
<p>Mathmom:
The 75% is misleading. I think that it is more like 50% (with the majority getting A-s). When Harvard started sounding alarm bells over grade inflation, it turned out that its grading practices were not out of line with its peer institutions (some of which had slightly higher percentages of As and A-s). What was out of whack was the percentage graduating with honors. Raise the qualifying GPA and voila, the problem disappears.
This is not to say that there is no grade inflation. But it’s not significantly greater than at other schools. Princeton took a fairly draconian step to combat it by instituting percentages for the awarding of As. BU seems to have adopted a similar policy but with less publicity. Harvard has not done so. I was told that every time the faculty debates grade inflation, grades rise rather than lower!</p>
<p>actually many state schools have more difficult grading systems because they are looking to weed people out-</p>