Princeton students are receiving fewer A's than ever before - and the university could not be prouder.
Three years after its implementation, Princeton's policy to curb grade inflation has succeeded in streamlining grading standards and reducing the number of A's students receive.
At a Sept. 17 faculty meeting, Princeton Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel issued a statement hailing the policy as a success. The statement declared, "The Princeton faculty has now demonstrated conclusively that with clear intent and concerted effort, a university faculty can bring down the inflated grades that - left uncontrolled - devalue the educational achievements of American college students."
The policy, implemented in April 2004, established the standard that A's constitute less than 35 percent of grades for undergraduate courses and less than 55 percent of grades for junior and senior independent work. Since the policy's introduction, the share of A's for undergraduate courses dropped by 6.4 percent to 40.6 percent, marking a halfway point to its achieving the 35 percent benchmark.
"One of the problems with Princeton grade inflation was that students were being bunched up at the top of the grade level," said Mark Rose, a professor of molecular biology and a member of the committee that helped bring about the change.
For the Princeton faculty committee on grading, the number of students receiving A's raised concerns about the university's ability to challenge students. "If it was the case that all students in a course met all of the things we ask of them at the beginning, we have to ask ourselves, are we really giving them an opportunity to excel?" Rose said.
In addition to evaluating learning outcomes, Princeton's policy also aims to encourage students to take courses or major in departments that traditionally award fewer A's. "Different departments were awarding A's very differently across the university, which in principal could have been affecting the individual free choice of choosing majors," said Rose."When students would join the natural sciences, they'd be taking a calculated risk because they had lower grades than those in the humanities."
According to Rose, one of the concerns of the program is that students might become more competitive than they have been in the past, now that there are fewer A's to go around. However, Rose said this effect has not shown itself as a result of the policy.
Among Princeton students, one concern is that the policy might hinder their ability to find jobs and gain acceptance into graduate and professional schools due to lower grade point averages.
Princeton junior Ruth Schwab said some of her friends were excluded from applying to jobs with Google because the company requires that its applicants have a certain minimum GPA.
"I have friends who are very smart who took challenging classes, who may have done good work, but here, it doesn't count as an A," she said. "You can't suddenly change A-work to being B-work. I understand why Princeton implemented the policy, I just don't think it's doing what they want it to do right now."
To address this issue, the university sent letters to graduate schools and prospective employers to inform them of the policy in 2004, according to a 2005 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"I think people know what Princeton is doing and have a sufficiently sophisticated view that the grades might be a little bit lower," Rose said. "The students are still the same."
Grade inflation at the national level is a smaller concern for the Princeton committee, though Rose said the committee believes there is a social obligation among universities to evaluate the impact of grade inflation at their own institutions. "We would hope that our colleagues join us on the national level," Rose said. "We just happened to be somewhat ahead of the curve in doing something about it."
University officials have raised the topic of grade inflation was raised as recently as late last spring. At one meeting, administrators proposed forming a committee of department chairs to examine the topic of grade inflation by collecting data within departments on how to best measure learning outcomes.
According to the Office of Institutional Research, the number of A's Brown has awarded in undergraduate courses has steadily risen in the past decade. In the 2006-07 academic year, A's constituted 49.5 percent of grades, up by nearly nine percentage points since 1996.
Last year's discussion on the introduction of pluses and minuses to the grading system at Brown highlighted the need for a better way of evaluating students.
"We have to ask ourselves, how do we measure success in learning outcomes?" said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron.
In response to Princeton's statement that inflated grades "devalue the educational achievements of American college students," Bergeron said, "What inflation 'devalues' is what we think we know about learning outcomes."
For Brown, where the open curriculum was designed to shift emphasis away from grading and toward learning, "grading may not be the best measurement," Bergeron said.
According to Bergeron, the University recognizes there is a need to be concerned about large courses in which a high percentage of students receive A's. "But first we have to think about what we value and how to express those values institutionally," she said.
