“The solution cannot come from departments because there is a wide divergence between the different parts of undergraduate education—the deans must decide,” he says.
Possible Solutions
Pedersen and the EPC have already raised several options for University Hall-directed reform this year.
The Faculty have seen one of these proposals before.
Five years ago the EPC considered instituting an enhanced transcript—in which the median grade for the course would be printed next to the grade the student earned. But the proposal never made it to a full vote in the Faculty, after the Faculty Council decided the plan lacked broad support among professors.
“When an individual [professor’s] mean grade becomes public knowledge, it might be incentive to prevent that average from becoming too high,” said Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of the Classics Mark J. Schiefsky.
But Pedersen says she sees some faults with the system.
“Although the system of median grades may make it easier to differentiate among students, it doesn’t help us internally [to solve grade inflation],” she says.
Such a transcript was instituted at Dartmouth starting with the Class of 1998—hence its nickname, “the Dartmouth transcript.”
Among Pedersen’s recent suggestions, Faculty members were most opposed to imposing a University-wide curve or quota for the number of A-range grades—potential solutions that would pose the greatest threat to their autonomy.
Faculty said they would oppose such proposals, arguing that a uniform solution makes little sense give the variety of classes offered.
“In a class of six people it isn’t rare to have three students with A’s,” says Shattuck Professor of Irish Studies Tomas O. Cathasaigh.
And other professors say they oppose the entire philosophy behind curving grades.
“I would not be in favor of any situation in which there would be a curve and the grade students would receive would not accurately reflect what they had learned” says Christine M. Korsgaard, Porter professor of philosophy and chair of the department.
Ultimately, Pedersen says she feels the most likely results of the ongoing conversation on grade inflation will be to better define what each grade means—allowing students to better understand the quality of their work.
“It is more useful to define what we mean by work at difference levels than to say your course should have this distribution,” she says. “The complexity of the problem comes from the fact that we desire this to be a science and it’s not a science.”
—Kate L. Rakoczy contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Jessica E. Vascellaro can be reached at vascell@fas.harvard.edu.