“All the data we have for the last period of time since the grading policy went into effect tell us that there are no negative, worrying results in terms of fortunes of Princeton students in the post-graduate world in which people wish to pursue opportunities,” she said.
She noted, “medical school [acceptance] rates went up slightly” since the policy was implemented. Likewise, this year the University had three Rhodes scholarship winners, and Michael Solis ’07 won one of the 12 George J. Mitchell scholarships, she added.
“These are students who have gone through Princeton under the new grading policy, and this is, I think it’s fair to say, our best year ever,” she said.
She added that organizations such as Teach For America are “fully aware of grading policy at Princeton [and take] that fully into account when making their selections.”
Malkiel did note that she did not have data from peer schools for any sort of comparison.
Malkiel acknowledged there are a few departments that have not caught up with the grading policy, and, due to the small enrollment of these departments, there is an insignificant effect in terms of overall fairness in grading for students.
The Faculty Committee on Grading is “keenly aware of which departments are doing just fine, which departments have made huge progress and have little distance to go and, very small in number, the departments that just don’t get it yet,” she said.
A second academic issue raised at the meeting was the pass/D/fail policy. U-Councilor Jacob Candelaria ’09 asked Malkiel whether the policy, designed to encourage students to explore classes outside their comfort zone, instead provides students with incentive to choose easier classes.
Malkiel said she does not have proof that the grading policy is leading students to take easier courses. “There are certainly some students who are doing that, but did students make decisions like that before the policy changed? They certainly did,” she said.
U-Councilor Liz Rosen ’10 asked about the possibility of pushing back the deadline to elect to P/D/F a course and giving up the option to rescind the decision.
Malkiel noted that the faculty, which would have to approve such a change in policy, discussed such a change last year and was “not much persuaded that there was a good intellectual, pedagogical argument” for leaving the option to sign up for P/D/F till the ninth week in a semester.
She noted that since the rescind option was added to facilitate intellectual interchange, asking the faculty to remove the option would possibly “make them more skeptical that [the change] is anything but grade management.”

Class senator Bruce Halperin ’09 raised the issue of academic calendar reform. Halperin plans to survey undergraduate preferences on changing the calendar.
Malkiel said that the University has so far failed to make progress on this issue. “We found no credible way to get traction on the calendar reform and so decided to table it,” she explained, adding that the University received input from both students and faculty members.
The administration solicited opinions from undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and administrators and determined in November 2007 that, in the absence of a consensus, no revisions can currently be implemented. The proposal has been tabled.
Malkiel said she would be willing to work with the USG to present a proposal to the faculty if the survey produced significant results. “ ‘More power to you’ would be my response [to a USG push for calendar reform],” she said.
U-Councilor Brian No ’10 asked Malkiel if the University plans to improve upperclass housing given its efforts for four-year colleges.
“We have an ambitious capital plan for the next decade,” Malkiel said. “[Given] the financial crisis in which we find ourselves ... we will have to slow down parts of that capital plan. Forecasting new initiatives, desirable as they may be, is just not realistic.”
No said it was unclear to students whether the University had long-term plans to address upperclass housing before the economic crisis.
Malkiel said in response that, given the expansion of the undergraduate student body and survey and anecdotal data, which showed that some juniors and seniors want the option of a four-year college, “we decided that [creating the four-year college system with the facilities to support it] would be our priority. We chose a very expensive priority.”
After Malkiel had finished her question-and-answer session, the USG reviewed its reformed election policies. In response to budgeting mix-ups during this semester’s freshman class elections, the USG has made changes to try to bring more clarity to the process.
Candidates will now be required to submit a preliminary budget and as a result will be able to better ensure that they are not overspending on their campaigns, senior elections manager Braeden Kepner-Kraus ’10 said.