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New precepts for precepts?

I found out what a precept was the day before classes were supposed to begin my freshman year. It was during a meeting with my academic adviser, finalizing courses, that the word first went into my ear. I had no idea what it meant. I sought and received an explanation, which focused on differentiating the system from its counterparts elsewhere. It seemed as flimsy that day as it does today.

In truth, precepts are not much different from "sections" or "tutorials" at most other colleges, and preceptors are not an upgrade over teaching assistants or assistant instructors. There seems to be a sense of pride and academic superiority attached with the notion of precepts, which, as with most such cases at the University, is not as valid as we think it is. An institution such as ours, with a sterling reputation for its “undergraduate focus” —a term thrown around lazily and extensively —needs a revamp of the precept system, which pervades most large courses and almost all classes in the humanities and social sciences.

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Why so? There are a number of issues with precepts in their current state. First, graduate students lead an overwhelming majority of them. An obvious implication is that some of them are led by the professor of the class. This creates a great disparity between precept experiences. A student taking the same class as another student in the same semester may have a completely different experience of the class. This is because precepts form a core part of this experience: It is where you get to discuss the lecture, posit questions, engage with other students and really get involved in the course materials. It’s bad enough the professor in charge of the class cannot lead a majority of these discussions, which are instead handled by graduate students without the same level of expertise in the material. What makes it worse is that this reality is only true for some students and not for others.

While the obvious solution to this problem would be to increase the number of precepts led by professors (ideally, all of them), it is not feasible. Instead, there should be a rotating system with the professor holding different precepts, evening out his time among them. The same should apply to other preceptors so that the quality of teaching is spread out more evenly among students. Moreover, it would keep students more engaged, as a regular change of preceptors would likely keep students on their toes.

The second problem with the precept system is its systematic bias. This arises because many preceptors are also graders, and bias generated from class discussion performance can creep into the grading process, especially for papers and other written assignments. That sounds intuitively wrong. But there’s more: Class performance already makes up a percentage portion of the grade for a variety of classes and is factored in as such. Bias factors in twice, once regularly and then again while grading. Moreover, there seems to be disparity in grading harshness across precepts. How a person grades, especially on assignments for courses without set, scientific answers, depends on a variety of factors, and these can —and do —vary greatly from person to person. Like it or not, grading is a huge part of any educational experience (just refer to the debate on grade deflation and the nearly unanimous cry of support for the report that suggests that it be repealed). It seems unjust that two works of similar quality may possibly be graded differently.

A solution to the problems of both bias and grading standard differentials could be anonymous, rotational grading. What this entails is that papers or assignments are submitted anonymously so that different preceptors grade different assignments by the same student over the course of the semester. A version of this already exists for some courses in the philosophy department, and there is little to suggest that it isn’t feasible to expand it to other departments. This still wouldn’t fix the problem of disparity, as some assignments would be worth more than others, but it would still reduce the scale of the problem.

The third and more general issue is a lack of transparency about how preceptors are appointed and judged. Students are required to file reviews at the end of the year, but there seems to be little information about how seriously that is taken. Or, in another case, how certain graduate students are chosen over others to lead precepts. While I agree that this part of the process lies with the administration of the University, students should still be in the loop, especially with their feedback, because it is their time at Princeton that is ultimately affected most by precepts and preceptors.

For better or for worse, precepts are here to stay. If we are to truly differentiate ourselves as a superior institution, geared toward undergraduate study, academic change must not be limited to a discussion on the grade deflation policy. There are other things, too, that require a rethink.

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Ali Akram Hayat is a philosophy major from Lahore, Pakistan. He can be reached at ahayat@princeton.edu.

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