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E-PrinceToday’s majority concedes that the grading policy is designed to reflect the quality of one individual’s work relative to the Princeton student body as a whole. There is no objective definition of an A; there is an arbitrary ...
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HA! my security word was "sense." This editorial makes none. Thanks a lot, traitors!
Is it bad of me to find it hilarious that Shivani is an Anscomber and Grade Deflation supporter? Anscombers = Malkiel tools, or Malkiel = Anscomber? Hmm...
So if 35 percent isn't meant to be a quota, you have the same problem that you criticize. Harsh professors will interpret 35 percent as a quota and have less than or equal to 35 percent of students in a class getting A level grades while lenient professors will have more than 35 percent of students getting As.
I guess if you don't see this as a problem, then you should have argued that, but it is disingenuous to suggest that this problem is unique to non-grade deflation.
I think grade deflation is a good idea ... the problem is that OTHER PEER UNIVERSITIES are not enacting this policy too. So until it is more widespread, you cannot deny that grade deflation has a negative impact on Princeton kids both in school and after graduation.
Actually, the university just released a report showing that grade deflation hasn't hurt Princeton students in getting into top 10 law or medical schools. Sure, not all students go to law or med schools, but it does provide some evidence that grade deflation may not have a negative impact in aggregate.
I'm sure it hurts some people and helps others. Folks who were in hard majors now look comparatively better. Folks who were taking gut courses are now revealed as not being as strong as their GPA had suggested. My guess (supported by all the evidence that's been collected so far - which is a fair amount) is that its not changing how many people get into top programs and get top jobs, it just changes which students are getting them.
It's not wrong, just nonsensical. What's hilarious about two unconnected stances?
Right but actual humans cannot be expected to miraculously line up with those numbers, can't you see that?
While you allege that the scale has made it easier for grades to carry "meaning", this is in fact the failed logic of some sort of inept, inhuman nerd. In fact, the grades carry less meaning because the ratio's are imposed completely ARBITRARILY rendering grades ARBITRARY.
What are the chances that only x% of students in a classroom (and a princeton classroom at that) will understand and work with 90% of the material presented in class? We are at Princeton, most of us got a's in high school, and for most of us Princeton is, sorry to say, easier than high school. The classes are difficult, but we can focus on fewer at a time and classes we are interested in, so people can really give it their all and work even harder at producing great papers etc than in high school. grade deflation is illogical.
that is poor logic and a dumb personal attack. I couldn't disagree more with this opinion, but I respect the dissenters' right to state it without assuming anything about their personal motivations.
Re: "the university just released a report showing that grade deflation hasn't hurt Princeton students" Where is this report? Where was it "released"? Have you read it? Does it have objective, statistical data? My impression from what I've heard about it is that it contains little more than wishful thinking and proves nothing.
Below are some of the various problems I see with the article.
First, it claims that the main editorial concedes that grades are meant to measure relative performance. I think this is a poor reading of the editorial. Indeed, it nowhere says this, and instead says we need some appropriate "method for defining rigorous work" and argues that a percentage (are there non-quantitative ones, by the way?) is decidedly not such a method.
Further, the dissent claims that this system creates uniformity, but wants to maintain that the interpretation of this policy as a quota is mistaken. I do not believe that you can have it both ways. Indeed, a percentage higher than 35% As is taken as evidence of failure to comply with the policy, not as evidence of professors applying the policy uniformly and finding the particular batch of students they graded to be qualified. The policy ultimately must reduce to approximately a quota or lose any meaning at all.
Additionally, the dissent claims the majority needs to demonstrate why uniformity is inessential or suggest how uniformity might be achieved in the absence of grade deflation.
First, I would argue that grade deflation reduces, as opposed to promotes, uniformity, if we take the relevant uniformity to be the rigor and quality of work. Here's an example to illustrate. A below-median student in, say, Complex Analysis, is likely doing much more rigorous work (universally speaking) than an above-median one in, say, Introductory Micro. To claim that the former CANNOT receive an A, but the latter can, is to precisely establish non-uniformity in the standard of rigor, replacing a truly uniform standard of rigor with one of course-relative rigor. Problematically, then, such a system will necessarily incentivize taking courses where a student believes themselves to be better than the average student. For instance, a student might take chem quantum instead of physics quantum, even though they would learn more quantum in the latter, because of fear of a worse grade in the latter. In what system should a person who is better at quantum mechanics than someone else get a worse grade than them in quantum mechanics? In precisely a system where percentages internal to a course replace a true understanding of rigor.
Hence, uniformness, if it is an ideal, is better achieved by having a detailed, persistent, discussion on what constitutes A-quality work, and awarding that grade to all students who do that work, rather than to those students who happened to be better than the particular batch of students they competed with. Quintile rankings, etc., convey enough information about relative location in class; grades would convey no new information by taking on this role. Stripping them of the information they convey about course mastery to replace it with redundant ranking information can serve no useful purpose.
The proposed standard, that "A-level work is produced by the top 35 percent of the student body," is truly untenable because an A from year-to-year then loses its uniformity, whereas a system that defines it on the actual quality of the work does not. Hence, in my opinion, uniformity in grading would also mean that a 3.7 from the class of 2009 mean the same as 3.7 from the class of 2015. This would not allow that. As noted, rankings are useful for telling us who the top-35% of the student body are. Grades, to be actually uniform, should do something quite different.
I could go on, but I think I've said enough.