Faculty gives Malkiel's grade inflation proposal mixed reviews

Nearly a week after the University released a set of proposals aimed at reducing grade inflation, the faculty has begun to discuss the proposals within their departments in preparation for the April 26 faculty meeting.

Despite the strong support the proposals seem to have garnered from department chairs, other faculty members remain divided in their opinions.

Many professors expressed skepticism over whether the proposals will actually benefit students and be successfully implemented.

"I haven't really developed a strong reaction yet, but I think the main concern for me and the faculty I've talked to is whether the 35 percent [limit for A-range grades given by a department] recommendation is going to be workable," religion professor Jeffrey Stout said. "I have always tried to grade each student's work on an individual basis and to be worrying about distributions, rather than a fair appraisal of the work in front of me, is a concern."

The 35 percent limit will most likely affect large introductory classes rather than small, upper-level seminars composed largely of highly motivated and self-selected majors, Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel said last week. But the 35 percent limit is not a completely inflexible figure.

However, as chemistry professor Kevin Lehmann pointed out, departments without many large introductory classes may be more aversely affected than departments like chemistry, which has many students in entry-level classes.

Other professors, like Stuart Schwartz of the electrical engineering department, suggested the 55 percent limit on A-range grades for independent work could potentially be unfair to students because close collaboration with faculty mentors allows students to produce high quality work.

"I am very uncomfortable with the 55 percent limit because in classes you can always grade on a curve but with independent work I iterate with my students until their work is A-quality," Schwartz said. "If students are working hard enough, it is natural for them to achieve A grades."

Despite faculty concerns, the department chairs, who met regularly with Malkiel over the past few months to discuss the proposals' development, have shown strong support for the proposals.

A few department chairs, including Gene Grossman of the economics department, say their faculty members have also supported the proposals nearly unanimously.

"Many of the chairs were concerned when this issue was first brought up to us," Susan Naquin, chair of the East Asian Studies Department, said. "But we've had time to really offer suggestions and input to Dean Malkiel and I believe she has persuaded a lot of the chairs."

Many students share the faculty's concerns about the proposals, with attention centering on issues of student competition and impact on students' postgraduate opportunities, USG president Matt Margolin said.

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Margolin has received approximately 250 to 300 student emails about the proposals, the majority of which are against them. This Thursday, the USG will sponsor a Whig-Clio debate with Malkiel and student meeting to compose a letter to administration, faculty and students.

If the proposals are approved at the April 26 faculty meeting, each department will be allowed to formulate its own method for meeting the prescribed requirements, which will depend partly on the level of inflation within the department.

According to the materials released with the proposals last week, departments in the humanities have the most inflated grades as 50.5 percent of the students received A-range grades between 1997 and 2002.

Engineering grades followed closely with 49.8 percent; the social sciences with 41.9 percent; and the natural sciences with 36.8 percent.

During the same period, 76.4 percent of senior theses and senior independent work in the engineering departments were awarded A-range grades. Natural sciences awarded 68.3 percent; humanities gave 65.1 percent; and the social sciences awarded 58.7 percent.

Data on individual departments' grade distributions have not yet been released to the departments or the public, Malkiel said.