Job search unaffected by deflation, report says

Though fewer students have earned A-range grades over the past two years, the new grading policy has not harmed students' post-graduation endeavors, according to a report released yesterday by The Faculty Committee on Grading.

While the implementation of the grading policy is "heading in the right direction, and we are encouraged by the progress made thus far," the committee said it plans to continue collecting data and pushing grades towards the target.

"We will monitor our students for their wellbeing," Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel, the principal architect of the policy, said in an interview. "We don't expect [the students] to be adversely affected; the data shows that they have not been adversely affected. If we run into problems, of course we'll be looking into them."

The report comes two years after the faculty voted to implement a grading policy requiring that no more than 35 percent of students in undergraduate courses receive an A-range grade. The policy also stipulates that no more than 55 percent of students receive A grades in undergraduate independent work.

Since the faculty voted to adopt the new grading policy in April 2004, the number of A-range grades received by students decreased from 47 to 41 percent.

Each academic department is evaluated based on the average number of A-range grades given in the past three years, and departmental compliance has not been uniform thus far.

In the past two years, humanities courses saw the number of A's decrease from 56.6 to 46.6 percent. In the social sciences, A's accounted for 37.9 percent of all grades, down from 43.7 percent. In the natural sciences, where A's were already at a comparatively low 36.3 percent prior to the policy, numbers still dropped slightly to 35.8 percent. In engineering, 42.7 percent of students received A's after the adoption of the policy, down from the previous level of 50.1 percent.

Though USG president Alex Lenahan '07 praised the administration for making the information available, he said he still has concerns about the merits of the policy.

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"There are multiple justifications for the policy, and the fact that grades have been lowered is not a justification," Lenahan said in an interview. "I think that the more information we have on hand, the better. It's good to pay attention to how this policy has affected grades, but I wouldn't consider this a measure of success."

Lenahan said he remains concerned about other issues, such as whether the policy has "encouraged students to be less adventurous in taking challenging classes, if they are becoming more competitive, whether there's more stress on campus and whether professors feel constrained."

A USG survey conducted during the summer on students' opinions about the grading policy will be released in about a month, Lenahan said, in addition to other information about the policy's effect.

In the meantime, Lenahan said he encourages students to talk to their professors about grading policy. "People who have the ultimate vote are the faculty," he said. "They really do think about the best interest of learning and education at Princeton, so the best thing for students is to start conversation with the professors and ask, 'Is this something we want, if this is what we see at Princeton 30, 40 years from now.' "

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"The policy is in no way set in stone," Lenahan added. "It should be, like any other policy, continued to be thought about."

Effects after graduation

The faculty committee's report also compared data and trends collected from the Office of Career Services.

The data showed that the percentage of seniors with full-time jobs after graduation increased from 29.4 percent in 2004 to 35 percent in 2006, and the percentage of seniors still seeking employment after graduation decreased from 23.4 percent to 18.5 percent.

The committee notes throughout the report, however, that the data doesn't allow for any conclusions about policy and its effects on employment prospects, since many other factors could have influenced the results, such as the state of the national economy.

The report also included a count of how many students accepted full-time jobs at 16 prominent investment banks and consulting firms, the rationale being that these firms "employ significant numbers of new Princeton graduates."

This year, 152 students took job offers at firms which included the Boston Consulting Group, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. This is up from 115 in 2004. Similarly, the number of students accepted at 23 top graduate school programs rose from 44 to 54 since the policy was adopted.

Lenahan noted that "a lot of this depends on which companies you include, which schools you include. That can make a big difference."

"It's good to pay attention to how seniors are doing post-graduation," he said, but students should also pay attention to "how good of a job Princeton is doing in educating students and fostering students' intellectual inquiry."