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 would truly follow the University's lead.

Grade inflation is considered a national problem by the broader academic community. A 2002 report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences examined students' performance over the past four decades and found "the marked rise in GPA's across disciplines, combined with relatively stable student achievement, indicate an inflationary trend."

Over the past 10 years, Malkiel said she has regularly discussed ways to combat grade inflation with other Ivy League faculty. And though no other school has taken the same step as Princeton — specifically set a target for the number of A-range grades to be awarded — they are now looking to the University's policy as a model for themselves, Malkiel said.

"A number of schools said, 'we could essentially adapt [the policy] for our faculty,' " she said in a recent interview, adding that multiple Ivy Group schools are working towards implementing similar policies.

But Malkiel emphasized that the University's solution may not work for everyone.

"Each institution has to work through its own faculty and in its own context," she said. "That is a long and laborious process."

But that explanation may not be enough for some Princeton students, who remain frustrated that other schools have not taken aggressive action to tackle the grade inflation problem.

"As far as I see it, Princeton is leading a modern day Picket's charge and no one is following," Powell Fraser '06 said.

"The very idea that we're going to disadvantage our students going into the workforce ... because we want to take the lead on a policy and some sort of moral high ground is intolerable," Fraser, who is also a columnist for The Daily Princetonian, added.

Malkiel said that some of her peers had told her they had an "admiration for our courage," but that they had to adopt a wait-and-see approach before making any decisions of their own about how to combat grade inflation.

Princeton faculty members, who continue to back the policy, strongly support efforts to convince other Ivy League schools to adopt policies that seek to reduce the number of A-range grades awarded.

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A survey conducted by the 'Prince' in early March showed that 62.7 percent of the faculty believes that other Ivy League universities should establish guidelines for the percentage of A-grades awarded. Sixteen percent of the faculty said other schools should not follow Princeton's lead, while 21.3 percent had no opinion. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus seven percentage points and a sample size of 162.

In an effort to provide information about the University's grading policy, Malkiel said she has delivered numerous speeches at peer institutions and prepared a document for their review.

Malkiel holds out hope that others will eventually follow Princeton's example. "I would not be the least bit surprised to see some of our Ivy peers follow in their own way, but it is necessarily on a schedule that is slower than Princeton students would reasonably prefer."

Columbia took a preliminary step to awaken students and faculty to the problem of grade inflation in the 1990s by changing the format of student transcripts. In addition to grades, transcripts there show the percentage of the class who received an A.

Harvard took its first steps against grade inflation in 2002, after a Boston Globe study found that the percentage of students receiving honors rose from 32 to 91 between 1946 and 2001. After the release of that report, Harvard faculty voted to cap honors to 60 percent of undergraduates.

Harvard's newest plan to fight inflation is to add pluses and minuses to the A-range grades. Lawrence Summers, the outgoing president of the university, has previously indicated a need to distinguish the special achievements of the top five or 10 percent of academic achievers.

But with Summers set to resign in June under pressure from the Harvard faculty, it remains unclear whether the school will enact any specific measures to curb grade inflation in the near future.

At Brown, A grades are up by more than seven percent in the last decade, the Brown Daily Herald reported. The university's College Curriculum Council suggested adding pluses and minuses to the grading system this year. Dean of the College Anne Armstrong was quoted in the Herald as saying pluses and minuses would give "faculty free reign in evaluating students."

In tomorrow's paper: The USG and reform of the new grading policy.