Posted on 01/22/2005 1:27:28 PM PST by foolscap
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) - For students at Princeton University, final exams are even more stressful this year: The Ivy League school decided to make it harder to earn an A. The crackdown on high grades, part of a national battle against grade inflation at elite schools, has increased anxiety, and in some cases, made friendly students wonder whether they should offer study help to their competitors, er, classmates.
"Sometimes, your old high school mentality comes back to haunt you," said Monica Saumoy, recalling the cutthroat competition to get the grades she needed to get into Princeton.
As she studied for an organic chemistry exam in a coffee shop last week, the sophomore and aspiring doctor said she's doing her best to remain cooperative with her peers as they all aim for high grades. "You don't want to stop helping people," she said.
But they all know those A's aren't going to be as plentiful.
In a move students protested last year, Princeton became the first elite college to cap the number of A's that can be awarded.
Previously, there was no official limit to the number of A's handed out, and nearly half the grades in an average Princeton class have been A-pluses, A's or A-minuses. Now, each department can give A's to no more than 35 percent of its students each semester.
Princeton's effort is being monitored closely by other hallowed halls, and some expect to see a ripple effect in coming years.
At other Ivy League schools, the percentages of A's in undergraduates courses ranges from 44 percent to 55 percent, according to Princeton's Web site. At Harvard University, 91 percent of seniors graduated with some kind of honors in 2001.
If the reaction of Princeton students is any indication, limiting honors may mean sharper elbows. Princeton students - never exactly slackers - have been studying even harder this semester, said Tom Brown, executive secretary of the student government.
"You do feel you might be one of the ones they just cut off," said Natasha Gopaul, a senior at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Grade inflation seems to date to the Vietnam War era, when many professors were reluctant to flunk students and consign them to the draft. Other factors made it snowball, including tuition increases that have convinced some students and parents that good grades are an entitlement.
The problem tends to feed on itself; if one department or school is doing it, others are under pressure to follow, or risk putting their students at a disadvantage.
Several schools have made efforts to rein in ballooning grade point averages. Starting this year, Harvard will limit the number of students who can graduate with honors. Northwestern University set up a committee to study grade inflation at its journalism school.
In 1997, Duke flirted with adopting a complex class-ranking system formula that would have made an A in a class taught by a professor who gives a lot of A's worth less than one in a class taught by a stingier faculty member.
Valen E. Johnson, the Duke professor who designed that system and went on to write the 2003 book, "Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education," doesn't like Princeton's new system.
"There's a danger that they're going to drive students away from classes perceived as being competitive," said Johnson, now a professor at the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Students are particularly worried about having fewer A's given out in upper-level classes.
"Especially if there are only five people in a class," said Jon Epstein, a junior computer science major from Cleveland, "It will create more competition to get A's."
Princeton officials will send letters to about 3,000 graduate schools and employers to explain the new grading standards - helping assuage students' fears about losing out to students at other elite schools where grades aren't being held in check.
Saumoy, the pre-med student, remains nervous. "I've heard that med schools don't really care what school you came from," she said.
I tutor some kids from my church. Some of the high school material is incedibly dumb, and I can see why 30% of Fullerton State University (CA) students have to take remedial English.
On the other hand, a couple of my kids are in the International Baccleureate program at their high school. They are taking AP Art History classes in 10th grade, that are the equal of the Intro To Art History course that I took in college. They are also taking AP calculus in 11th grade. I think that today there is a much greater gap between the bright motivated students and the plodders in high school than when I went to high school in the late 60s. Two of my Sunday School students went to Berekeley last Fall. They are VERY bright kids who have godly, education-oriented Korean parents.
It depends on what you think the purpose of the grading should be (and hence, the purpose of the "A").
Presumably, even at Princeton, there is a rank order of effort and ability, from low to high. If the purpose of the grades is to rank the students from highest to lowest (within the universe that is Princeton), then giving them all "A"s defeats that purpose.
These exams at Princeton are not qualifying exams, like medical boards or a bar exam. It should be possible, if the examiners know the material, to rank every student, by letter grade, from #1 to n.
Sorry if you took the comment I made about us both misspelling the same word in different ways as mocking.
It was not intended that way at all. I can spell but can't type. Did you notice that I also misspelled funny in that same paragaph? Frankly I think it's hysterical would hope in the light of this explanation you get at least a smile.
In the college I taught in there were departmental exams, and the grades from those were averaged in with the class exams. There was also some kind of weighting factor (something like departmental exam = 2 class exams)
I did not enter the phrase "top student" and don't know how it got there. I'm pretty new so maybe someone could tell me how to prevent it. I wasn't a top student except in my major and miinors.
I dispute that this premise will necessarily occur, especially the higher and higher you get. I believe it is possible to get a group of hard-working students of roughly equal ability who want to learn.
What's wrong with 90-100 = A; 80-89 = B; 70-79 = C; 60-69 = D and the rest is an "F?"
The Ivy League is such a mess.
I agree 100%.
A lot of grad classes are like that.
I think there may be some confusion between A level mastery of the material and average of grades on exams. A curve has the potential of making a student with 95% mastery a C student in a high achieving class.
There is no reason why we can not, or should not, each be able to get an "A."
In real life 5% of the people earn 80 to 90% of the money. In real life they are getting A's.
As long as higher education lives in a cocoon, I have no problem with 35% of the class getting A's. Hell, make it 40%, or even 50% getting A's.
If the schools want to prepare the students for real life (and the evidence is that isn't even on the list) they would limit A's to some reasonable percentage closer to 5%.
You're not all gonna get A's after you leave the school cocoon. Count on it.
I didn't in undergrad either.
In a math class? You can't grade on a curve on that.
They either get the Questions right or not. It is very possible for an entire class to ace every test, with a very good teacher.
I read that to mean that a large percentage of the class should be able to get A's.
My mistake.
I agree. The criteria should be whether you are fit to do the job for which you are credentialed.
Wouldn't a very good teacher design the course so that the best students would be 'raised' above the average students?
Keep in mind that Ivy League grads are already the top (some small) percent of the population.
And there is no quota system on, say, millionaires.
Both are good points.
What can you say or do as a teacher?
You present factual material to a group of people. You explain it in such a manner they can grasp it and apply it. You test to see if they grasped it.
What, you want to the teacher to be obtuse on purpose?
The other reason for grade inflation which they don't mention, which started about the same time as grade inflation, is "student evaluations." When the instructor is going to be seen as a poor teacher if his scores aren't high enough, and perhaps be fired (if not tenured), that can lead him to grade more leniently. Student evaluations are the weapon students have to punish a professor who tries to make them work hard for a grade.
When posters begin to editorialize my comments I realize I've won the argument.
You know, and I know, and everyone reading this knows that that isn't what I meant.
Why did you find it necessary to twist what I said from something with constructive potential into something destructive?
"...When posters begin to editorialize my comments I realize I've won the argument.
You know, and I know, and everyone reading this knows that that isn't what I meant...."
Yup. That's how I know when I've won, too.
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