Postcard From the Ivy League #2
Prepping for my Monday Uncommon Knowledge interview with Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, I discovered just now that Princeton figured out how to bring grade inflation to an end once and for all. In 2004, Princeton enacted a simple rule: no department could award A’s to more than 35 percent of its students. Why did such a rule prove necessary? According to one report:
Grade inflation, well documented at many schools, is most pronounced in the Ivy League, according to an American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2002 study. For example, in 1966, 22% of all grades given to Harvard undergraduates were A's. That grew to 46% in 1996, the study found.
As I say, Princeton enacted its rule six years ago. How many of the seven other Ivy League institutions have followed Princeton’s example?
Not one.
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May '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
Ah, another reason that my 15-year-old is aiming for Princeton. She wants to EARN her grades.
Jun '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
I suppose given the nature of the Ivy League it would be impossible to tell if this rule has affected enrolment. Perhaps, the numbers on admissions applications might suggest a conclusion. Does anyone know?
May '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
I had a professor of Government -- "Public Opinion and Political Psychology" -- announce on the first day he'd award 10 percent A's and 10 percent F's, with other grades comprising 20 percent each. Brutal, but effective. One of my few A's, it turned out. Nice explanation of and rebuttal to Adorno, by the way.
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
Peter, the Air Force had a real problem with rating inflation on its enlisted performance reports around the 1987 time frame, and also put a cap on the percentage of people who could get top ratings, etc.
At around that time, I had a banner year, winning all kinds of awards, helping develop the regulations for wartime historical coverage and getting a promotion in the bargain. When the time came for my performance report, it was less than stellar. I asked the colonel what specifically I should do to improve my rating, and he answered that my performance was fine, ...they had simply already met their quota of top ratings so I had to take what was left.
Lesson learned: Ratings, like grades, depend on the integrity of the rater, which in turn demands integrity from other raters across the board. No system, no quota, can substitute for a lack of integrity.
Aug '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
My Ivy had a long -- and apparently deserved -- reputation for tough grading (one of the reasons I went), but it too has felt grade inflation lately. It has decided, therefore, instead of limiting the proportion of As any department can give out, to start including the median course grade next to the student's grade on the transcript.
That way, professors still feel free to grade as they see fit, but the person reading a student's transcript is free to judge whether to be more impressed by an A in a course where the median course grade is an A or by a B in a course where the median course grade is a C, etc.
We'll see how it works, I guess.
May '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
This Priceton system is flawed in that it assumes that every class is equivalent. I would imagine that certain classes are blessed with an inordinate number of (or cursed with a dearth of) Yoo's, and therefore deserve more (or fewer) A's. As Dave says, there's no substitute for integrity.
Maybe the Ivy's need to get to work on a 2000 page utopian scheme to solve their problem, and leave the rest of us alone.
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
Dave, Andrew Sullivan--with whom I disagree on nearly everything, but who is manifestly a high practitioner of the art of prose--liked your "Miles to Go" post so much that he reproduced a long passage on his own website. In other words, Andrew gave you, in effect, an A+.
Just thought I'd mention that if you're still a little sore about that lousy grade back in 1987.
Aug '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
Scott Reusser: This Priceton system is flawed in that it assumes that every class is equivalent. I would imagine that certain classes are blessed with an inordinate number of (or cursed with a dearth of) Yoo's, and therefore deserve more (or fewer) A's. Aug 8 at 7:56pm
I did notice that my honors math and physics courses -- which attracted brighter, more motivated students and had more challenging work than the non-honors courses -- graded "easier" in the sense that their average class grade was higher than in the non-honors courses on the same subject.
In one sense, this is grade inflation. After all, the course says "honors" in the title, so people should expect a C in an honors course to be worth much more than a C in a non-honors course on the same subject.
In another sense, though... it's nice when the whole classroom's greater mastery -- including yours, if you keep up -- is reflected in a higher grade. Also, it encourages students to stretch themselves by lessening the grade-penalty that might otherwise result from choosing an honors course rather than non-honors. Or am I just rationalizing because I benefited?
May '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
This would be politically untenable, but I'd like to see a system where ONLY ONE student gets A in any class. After all, only one person gets to be #1 in any race.
Aug '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
outstripp: This would be politically untenable, but I'd like to see a system where ONLY ONE student gets A in any class. After all, only one person gets to be #1 in any race. · Aug 8 at 9:30pm
Not only politically untenable, but likely to reinforce an idea already too common in academia: that competition is a zero-sum game where one person's success necessarily leaves everybody else worse off.
Does the market make a rule that there can be only one billionaire, or does it allow as many people to be billionaires as can make it?
Why should a stupid, lazy person in a class full of even stupider, lazier people get an A by default when a much smarter and harder-working person in another class is passed over because his class contains one person who did marginally better than he did? Is this how competition works in the real world?
Or in the real world, is competition a positive-sum game, and rank less important than absolute success?
Scholarships, awards, etc, already fulfill the need for exclusive academic prizes. And really competitive students already keep track of whose A is higher, anyhow.
May '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
Oooh, that zero-sum point is a good one, since from that one basic misconception by the left (re the economy) flows so much of their nonsense. Clear up that flaw in their thinking, and their entire worldview would change.
Jun '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
This A through F nonsense is typical of narrow-minded, linear, patriarchal thinking. The hieroglyphic system of grading is much more fluid and egalitarian. Children will be awarded one of five grades: sand cranes, crocodiles, frogs, hippos or jackals. At the end of the year we invite parents to a school-wide assembly. First up is Muffy who offers an interpretive dance on what it means to earn a sand crane in geography. Next is little Moonbeam who recites a poem about her feelings after receiving a crocodile in math. Aquarius and Rainbow perform a duet on recorders called the Frog and the Jackal. Because all animals are equal, right? I mean who's to say that a hippo is worth more than a sand crane? Then we have group hugs, and everyone goes home happy! :P
Aug '10
Re: Postcard From the Ivy League #2
Scott Reusser: ...Clear up that flaw in their thinking, and their entire worldview would change. · Aug 9 at 6:19
This reminds me of something I think Mark Steyn said. That one reason showbiz types tend left might be that showbiz is more of a zero-sum game that the economy in general. In showbiz, "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."
Academia -- even with inflated grades -- is like showbiz in that respect. There is only that one departmental honor, that one prestigious fellowship, and what matters isn't whether you're good enough to deserve it, but whether everyone else is worse than you. Could this be another reason academics tend left?
Grade inflation actually worsens this mentality. A good grade is traditionally a mark of distinction open to everybody who makes the cut, so that it's enough just to succeed without having others fail. But when grades cease to mean much, the only way to distinguish yourself becomes to beat others whose qualifications are nearly identical to yours to that one prestigious award or appointment. Often who gets it is arbitrary.
Academia obsesses over rank. The market is more generous with its rewards.