Nearly two years after the faculty voted to accept a proposal aimed at combatting grade inflation, the 'Prince' examines the plan's implementation and its effects.
Grade Deflated
At two, grading policy confronts growing pains
Correction appendedSoon after electrical engineering professor Ed Zschau '61 submitted final grades for his fall semester course, he wrote an email to his class explaining why he hadn't been able to give all the students the grades he thought they deserved."I think that the overall performance of your class was ...
Departments key to policy's success
When the University leadership decided it was time to combat the problem of grade inflation, it faced a fundamental problem: nobody wanted to take the leap first. The solution, administrators and some department chairs reasoned, had to be collective action."Because no single department has any incentive to act unilaterally to ...
On job trail, seniors sweat deflated GPAs
As seniors receive acceptance and rejection letters from employers, fellowships and graduate schools this spring, many wonder what role their GPAs have played in the process.Some students fear that the University's new grading policy, which seeks to limit the number of A-range grades awarded, has weakened their chances of securing ...
Peer schools tackle inflation in own way
When the faculty voted in April 2004 to curb grade inflation, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel penned an article for the undergraduate parents' newsletter, in which she wrote that the University would stand at the vanguard of grading reform nationwide.The question then, as now, is whether any peer institutions ...
USG works to define role in grading policy reform
In April 2004, Whig-Clio hosted a forum at which Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel answered questions from an anxious student body about the proposed grading policy. But Alex Lenahan '07, then a freshman, wrote an email to Whig-Clio officers telling them he didn't have any questions to ask."I read ...
