The Herald reported last week that students' grades have been improving steadily in recent years, and that last year 54.4 percent of all grades were A's. While this trend is worth keeping an eye on, we certainly wouldn't support a Princeton-like policy in response.
In 2005, Princeton issued guidelines stating that A's should not be awarded to more than 35 percent of any class. The rationale behind the policy, according to Princeton's grading policy booklet, was to allow students in different departments to be compared on a more objective scale, and to also encourage professors to differentiate between merely good work and a student's best work.
Though Princeton does say that its policy gives "expectations" and not "hard-and-fast rules," Brown should still stay away from this kind of school-wide approach. Grade inflation is simply an indication that students are meeting and exceeding professors' expectations, and it's not a serious threat to graduate schools and employers' ability to evaluate applicants. Even if grade inflation were to spiral out of control at some point in the future, we feel the implementation of a grading quota would not be the best solution.
As The Herald noted, grade inflation has impacted departments differently, with the physical sciences showing little to no change in grade distribution in the past few years. For this reason, if any action were to be taken to curb grade inflation, it would best be done on the departmental level.
If departments or specific professors wish to limit the number of A's awarded — which many professors already do — they're always free to change their individual grading standards. But as far as we know, employers or graduate schools are not reporting that Brown graduates with good grades are underperforming. So we see no reason to implement a quota that would only offer marginally more information about a student's abilities.
Consider the marked differences between a 10-person seminar and a 200-person lecture class, even within the same department. In small classes graded based on a single research paper, higher grades are likely the result of students' heightened motivation and engagement with the material. A large lecture class with tests is far better suited to statistical analyses of grading distributions. Unless outsiders truly delve into a course's assessment methods and the characteristics of other students in the course, grade quotas only offer slightly more insight into students' relative abilities.
This additional bit of insight comes at a high cost. It is likely to put undue pressure on students by constantly drawing attention to grades and competition. The purpose of grades isn't solely to give companies or graduate programs an objective scale to compare students. Rather, grades should primarily serve to provide students with motivation to work hard and feedback so they can improve.
Moreover, strict grading policies may also make students more individually focused and competitive. One thing that makes Brown special is that students feel very comfortable asking other students for help. We can only wonder about how things are at Princeton.
Ultimately, as long as Brown's admissions process remains highly selective and its faculty remains among the best in the world, there's absolutely no reason to do anything radical.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
