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E-PrinceOn April 26, 2004, the University faculty voted 156-84 to institute a bold policy to curb rising grades. Five years later, no peer institutions have followed Princeton’s lead, despite Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel’s repeated attempts to ...(back to the article)
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campus academic culture has been lowered to illogical, nonsense, chaos. Great Job Malkiel
I too have envisioned this University as Billie Joe Armstrong, bright-eyed crusader for all that is right
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ4DPIz5OHQ)
Did you people come here for an education, or for grades? Just be happy with what you have and stop focusing all this ridiculous effort on worrying about grade inflation. I know it's hard now to face that B (which you probably deserved anyway), but in the long run it really doesn't matter. Really. It doesn't.
I mean, above 50% As? That really is ridiculous.
Why is it ridiculous if Princeton is/was the most selective school in the country? I can assure you that more than 50% of students worked their asses to the bone in high school, so why would some of them just stop doing that here?
A's aren't cookies or rewards, they are "This student understands 90% of the material of this class"--Not a hard task for workaholic students who worked hard learning to get here.
then surely you won't mind sacking up and taking all those B-'s.
"This student understands 90% of the material of this class"
Grading standards are hardly that objective. It has arbitrarily become culturally accepted that 90% is an A in most high schools in America (although, this isn't true in many other countries).
But any professor can make tests of varying difficulties - and so even the reachability of that 90% standard is entirely dependent on the professor.
Just look at University of Georgia's basketball team, which had questions like "how many points is a three point basket worth" (every student in that class got an A... http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?A...).
Grade deflation is good for students at the top of the curve, because it makes their accomplishments worth something. And good for employers and grad schools because they can better determine the quality of candidates. Its bad for students at the middle of the curve because it no longer over-inflates their achievements, so they don't have as strong (if unwarranted) credentials. It doesn't effect folks at the bottom of the curve because they wouldn't be getting A's anyway.
As an alum who has reviewed over 2000 Princeton resumes for top-tier banks, here are some of my thoughts:
1) Like diving, each academic course of study has both a degree of difficulty and a degree of accomplishment.
I do not want to hire people who can do really well in easy courses (e.g. nailing the front dive each time). This doesn't show real learning; it shows intense study skills, and does not predict good job performance.
2) It is useful for all of us to be able to distinguish between the students who really tried and learned a lot and the students who are truly brilliant or have tremendous passion. This doesn't mean we won't hire the former -- they often make better workers than the latter.
3) I don't have time to read (and compute) transcripts with normed grades. Many of the interesting and intensive courses only have a few students anyway, so the norms aren't particularly stable.
4) We know which courses (and majors) are difficult, and (from experience) know common tricks for padding GPAs or transcripts. We're much more interested in students who try hard and learn a lot (without being the best) than students who take easy classes and have to have the ego beaten out of them at their first job.
So overall, I'm HIGHLY supportive of the grade deflation policy -- the grades provide much more information than they used to. Whereas I used to reject most 'soft' majors outright, now I can roughly equlibrate the learning accomplished by a student in soft and hard majors.
I don't think the real issue is lower grades. I think it is grades that are based on statistics, rather than performances. grading is such an arbitrary system anyway and not always reflective of work/understanding/creativity ... so why create a policy that divorces the grade even FARTHER from the work? it makes the whole system feel kind of ridiculous.
Nancy Malkiel is the George W. Bush of Higher Education, plowing ahead in policies that are clearly failing, insisting that history will bear her out irrespective of evidence in the present that she is wrong.
She is akin to Will Ferrell's "Frank the Tank" from Old School who drunkenly sets out to go streaking, insisting that others will follow him to those who express incredulity at this claim. Frank, however, at least has the excuse of being black-out drunk.
Nancy: some people are leading a streaking movement and some people are running, alone and naked, down the street. Please put some clothes on.