Grading
continued from page 1A
the highest number of students
this spring — including English,
history, journalism and economics
— are handing out more A’s and
fewer B’s and C’s than they have in
the past seven years.
At the same time, grades in ma
jor departments such as psychology
and mathematics have remained
fairly constant.
The Office of the Registrar only
computes statistical reports of
grade point averages for fall term
of each year.
Registrar Herb Chereck said the
improvement in grades could be
happening because the University
is “admitting brighter students” or
because — he hopes — students
are studying more.
“Many faculty members are
afraid to give appropriate
grades, since they fear it
would puttheirstudentsata
competitive disadvantage
and lower their own
teaching evaluations. ”
Richard Kamber
philosophy professor,
College of New Jersey
Chereck added that the number
of petitions from students wanting
to change from a graded option in
a class to the pass/no pass option
has remained consistent through
out each school year.
Buch speculated that grade in
flation may be occurring because
incoming freshmen have stronger
GPAs and test scores than they did
five years ago.
He also suggested grade inflation
could be occurring in high schools,
even before students come to the
University.
“I don’t think there is a simple
single answer,” Buch said.
History of grade inflation
Nationwide, more than 30 per
cent of 30,000 college freshmen
studied in 1996 reported a high
school grade average of A- or above,
compared with 22 percent a decade
earlier, according to a UCLA study.
Grade inflation has been affect
ing colleges and universities both
locally and nationwide since the
1960s, College of New Jersey phi
losophy Professor Richard Kamber
said. Kamber, in an e-mail inter
view, said many colleges and uni
versities have failed to maintain
consistent grading standards.
“As a result, grades have be
come cheapened in the eyes of
graduate schools, professional
schools and employers,” he said.
“Many faculty members are
afraid to give appropriate grades,
since they fear it would put their
students at a competitive disad
vantage and lower their own
teaching evaluations.”
Kamber said institutions that try
to excuse grade inflation by saying
their students are better or are
working harder “miss the point.”
He added that an A at Harvard
University will always carry more
weight than an A at a school like
the University.
“If grades are to have any coher
ent meaning, they need to represent
a relative degree of success in meet
ing or surpassing the requirements
of courses at a particular college or
university,” Kamber said.
Solutions to the problem
A recent American Academy of
Art and Sciences report endorsed a
number of conventional sugges
tions for dealing with grade infla
tion at the institutional level, such
as sharing grade distribution data
within departments and schools,
establishing curves for large class
es and including mean class grades
on transcripts.
Currently at the University,
grade statistics are compiled by
the Office of the Registrar, but
those statistics are not examined
at a total school level. Some de
partments such as English evalu
ate grade inflation and grade pat
terns, but others such as the
Department of History don’t con
sider it a major concern. The
process is not uniform from one
major subject to the next.
John Gage, professor and head of
the Department of English, sqid he
and his staff haven’t found a defin
itive answer in the three years they
have studied the grade inflation
phenomenon.
Une issue tor us is that many
of our sections are taught by grad
uate teaching fellows who find it
harder to give tougher grades,”
Gage said.
But the steps the English depart
ment has taken to remedy the
problem don’t include trying to
impose certain quotas on faculty
grades, he said. Instead, the depart
ment anonymously distributes stu
dent grades to all faculty members
so they can compare their grades
to others’.
Daniel Pope, head of the Depart
ment of History, said his depart
ment has never done anything col
lectively to evaluate grade inflation.
“We have the realization that
different people have different
grading standards,” he said.
Pope, who has been teaching at
the University since 1975, said he
isn’t convinced that there has been
a big change in the number of A’s
being given over the past five years
at the University.
“I’m not all that convinced it’s an
acute, current problem,” he said.
He said more students exceed
in specific courses because they
are taking subjects they chose to
study such as African American
History.
Buch said grade inflation makes
a difference when it comes to who
receives scholarships and who
doesn’t. Grades also help to deter
mine whether degrees are award
ed, or if a student is accepted to
medical or law school.
However, outside of the col
lege environment, he said, GPAs
don’t carry that much weight for
everyone.
“But five or two years after grad
uation, does it really make a differ
ence if you had a (GPA of) 3.1 or a
3.32?” he said.
E-mail features reporter Lisa Toth
at lisatoth@dailyemerald.com.
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