Members of top-tier universities like Brown often cite grade inflation as a major problem. But diagnosing grade inflation as the problem is an archaic way to approach college academics. Grade inflation is not the problem — grades are. In actuality, grade inflation is a part of the solution. It reduces the senseless competition that turns education into a contest rather than a lifelong process of self-improvement.
The existence of grades at all creates an academic environment that grants Pavlovian rewards of satisfaction for As while punishing those who seek knowledge over an easy A. This breeds hyper-competitive students who get stuck seeking arbitrary stamps of approval that indicate superiority over their peers. Students who want that should go to Princeton. At Brown, we should pursue knowledge for its own sake.
The fact of the matter is that at Brown, and at similar institutions of higher education, the distribution of grades is skewed heavily toward As. In the 2012-2013 academic year, the majority of grades at Brown were As. And the proportion of As is increasing too — from 39.1 percent a decade ago to 53.4 percent last year.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In reality, there’s good reason to believe those As were all earned. Especially at Ivy League universities, the preponderance of As can be explained by sampling bias. It should not be surprising that Ivy League students are generally exceptional students who strive to succeed in their classes. Why should there be arbitrary limits on the proportion of As if most students are producing A-worthy material?
The intuition that pushes back against grade inflation says grades should act as a feedback mechanism that ranks students against their peers. Supposedly, this prepares us to join a competitive workforce. But that is precisely why grades are counterproductive to the goals of higher education. Universities should focus their aim on the intrinsic value of knowledge, not its instrumental value. Knowledge is the end of education. It should not simply be a means to a high-paying job. An emphasis on grades reinforces the latter conception. Thus, grades act as an impediment to education and should be abolished.
Feedback is not contingent on grades — reducing student performance to a mere letter is the real obstacle to feedback. Brown’s grading paradigm forces professors to limit their feedback to four options: A, B, C or no credit. Perhaps this is why a shocking 82 percent of faculty members in 2003 supported including pluses and minuses in the grading system. Pluses and minuses give professors more room to provide accurate feedback, but dropping grades altogether would expand those options infinitely more.
Such a program is not unprecedented. New College of Florida — along with a handful of other progressive colleges — employs a grade-less system that utilizes narrative evaluations instead of letter grades. Those written evaluations give professors the ability to provide more nuanced feedback by detailing exactly what a student did well, and what he or she can improve on in the future. This allows for a truer barometer of student performance.
Furthermore, narrative evaluations foster a closer relationship between professors and students, since professors are more likely to pay attention to students’ individual performances and students are more likely to take the evaluations to heart. As much as we’ve come to love the rush of getting a big shiny A, a glowing report from a beloved professor would be valued far more.
Finally, grades are often justified as markers of intelligence and work ethic to future employers and graduate schools. But professor recommendations can better serve the same function. Written evaluations are significantly more accurate and informative than a GPA. That GPA can be skewed by a guileful student who takes only easy-A courses. Likewise, the passionate student who takes difficult courses out of genuine interest is hurt by a GPA. It’s far easier to cheat the system when you have only numbers to worry about, while it’s also much easier to be rewarded for actual learning when detailed professor evaluations are the standard of measurement.
For those worried about the lack of hard data in such a system, rest assured that graduate schools can still look at your GRE score. Moreover, a grade-less system hasn’t been shown to inhibit a student’s ability to get into prestigious graduate programs. In fact, quite the opposite is true. At New College of Florida, the class of 2010 had an 86 percent acceptance rate into PhD programs, and an incredible 100 percent acceptance rate into law schools. All without any grades to speak of.
Granted, a grade-less system at Brown is utopian. In reality, I cannot see Brown or any of its peers instituting such an impractical system in the near future, if for no other reason than to maintain appearances. But idealizing should not concern itself with pesky considerations of feasibility. Rather, in the given circumstances where the ideal is impossible or unlikely, we should try to come as close as possible to the model system.
Grade inflation represents the best alternative. It places the emphasis on learning and academic freedom over the counterproductive force of competition. As such, grade inflation is in line with Brown’s open curriculum. Students should not be forced to take courses they have no interest in, nor should they be punished for taking difficult courses in the pursuit of knowledge.
Though Brown’s grading policy is not perfect, it embodies many of the same desiderata as the ideal system. Therefore, any push to fight grade inflation is misguided and destructive to Brown’s mission. Unlike many of our rival universities, Brown is fundamentally about academic freedom and the non-instrumental nature of education. The greater the emphasis on grades, the more Brown’s core values are undermined.
Sam Hillestad ’15 is tired of seeing intelligent, hard-working Brown students view their education as a means to an end. He can be reached at samuel_hillestad@brown.edu.
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