Hitting the Books: Whether beefing up their transcripts or to make mom and dad proud, students worry about school _ their grades, their classes, their workloads. The Daily will investigate academic life during the next three weeks, examining grade inflation, cheating, and academic motivation on campus.
For all the stress college students waste on worrying about grades, getting that 4.0 GPA may be easier than it seems. Recent studies show that the most elite US colleges and universities have fallen victim to grade inflation and Tufts, though far from the worst offender, is among them.Interestingly, it appears this trend is most rampant in the Ivy League. Yale University, for example, reports that 80 percent of its student grades are As or Bs. And at Harvard, one professor has become so outraged by grade inflation that he assigns two grades to each student in his government class _ the grade that the student deserves, and a higher grade to be recorded on his or her transcript, which he bases on Harvard's grade inflation system.
Here at Tufts, the presence of grade inflation is less traceable. While administrators report that grade inflation does occur, a number of professors deny it is a problem. In addition, some students claim that grade inflation is more prevalent in the humanities departments, where grading depends less on right or wrong, and more on the professor's evaluation of the completed work.
Drama Department Chair Downing Cless says that grade inflation is not a problem in his department. He argues that grading in departments like drama, where there are typically no right answers, is not subjective and is no more prone to grade inflation than any other subject area.
"In my mind [our grading system] is still objective grading, even though it's not based on right or wrong answers," Cless said.
However, Charles Inouye, Dean of the Colleges for Undergraduate Education, paints a different picture of Tufts' grading system. Inouye believes that grade inflation is indeed a problem here, just as at virtually every prestigious institution. According to Inouye, the average GPA of last year's graduating class was 3.38, just under the 3.40 cut-off for cum laude. Of last year's seniors, 25.5 percent graduated with honors, either cum laude, summa, or otherwise.
"Some of us in the honors committee think that's a high number," Inouye said.
Inouye further explained that, on one hand, inflating grades may encourage to students to enroll in courses taught by professors known for inflation, thereby minimizing the campus' intellectual atmosphere.
"If students become too grade conscious, they might be tempted to become less intellectually curious," he said.
On the other hand, there would still be a problem if Tufts abolished grade inflation while other top universities failed to do so.
"I think we might not be able to win the battle of grade inflation. We would put our students at a disadvantage with [students from other universities]," Inouye said.
"So maybe a better way to proceed would be to keep our focus on the quality of the experience and also admit that our potential is greater than before."
It may be easier to get an A than before, but some educators say that more students receiving As simply means that today, more students deserve As. In most classes, students do not compete against each other but rather hold the same goal of earning a good grade. This means, technically, that each student should be able to receive an A and that professors should feel gratified that all of their students are successful
Regardless, an abundance of high grades can have a negative impact because students no longer stand out academically among their peers. This could play a role in graduate school admissions, for example: if all Tufts students applying to graduate or professional school have As and Bs, it may become difficult for those schools to decide who should be accepted.
To end the problem of grade inflation, Bradford P. Wilson, Executive Director of the National Association of Scholars, recommends that universities tighten their curricula so that it becomes more difficult for students to choose what he calls "academically inferior courses and programs." In addition, Wilson recommends that colleges limit the number of students who receive academic honors to the top ten percent of the class, as opposed to Tufts' 25.5 percent last year, or Harvard, where it was a whopping 82 percent of the graduating class.
As Dean of the Colleges, Inouye has made attempts to reform Tufts' system of grade inflation. In the past, he said that his office sent forms to departments displaying the average grade they distributed. It was Inouye's hope that these forms would encourage the departments who gave out the highest grades to examine their grading process and perhaps adjust their standards.
While that didn't prove effective, Inouye maintains that making Tufts courses more rigorous would intensify the intellectual atmosphere and combat grade inflation at the same time. He also encourages professors to urge students to pursue areas of study on a deeper level by giving out more research-oriented assignments and independent projects so that students really earn their As.
