PrincetonUniversity

TO: Members of the Faculty

FROM: Nancy Weiss Malkiel, for the Faculty Committee on Examinations and Standing

SUBJECT: Grading Proposals

This memo introduces a set of grading proposals that will come before the faculty at the April 26 faculty meeting. The proposals have two main purposes:

To establish a common grading standard across the University;

To provide clear guidelines for faculty and students about the meaning of letter grades.

These proposals are designed to assist the faculty in bringing grade inflation under reasonable control. By adopting them, the faculty will be better able to give students the carefully calibrated assessment they deserve of the quality of their course work and independent work. The proposed grading standard responds to the desire of the department chairs that all departments be asked to meet common expectations. It responds to the desire of students for evenhandedness in grading across the departments. And it positions Princeton to take national leadership in tackling what has seemed an intractable national problem.

Princeton has been working on grading, in a focused and public fashion, for more than six years. We have made some headway as a faculty in making ourselves more aware, collectively and individually, of how we grade our students. University-wide, divisional, and departmental grading data are now distributed annually to the faculty; in addition, each member of the faculty receives a cumulative report showing his or her own grading data in the context of departmental and University-wide patterns. Every grading sheet now carries a grid where the course head is asked to record the number of final grades awarded in each of the letter grade categories. The Committee on Examinations and Standing has encouraged collective discussion and action by academic departments with respect to grading practices and standards, an area that was previously regarded as a private, individual preserve. Departments have responded constructively to the Committee's request to take stock of their own grading patterns, make changes where appropriate, and establish written standards and practices for grading to share among faculty, graduate student assistants-in-instruction, and undergraduates. The best advice from the departments about approaches to responsible grading has been incorporated in the pamphlet Guide to Good Grading Practices, which is now distributed routinely to faculty and AIs. The new policy on the A+, instituted in 2000, which requires faculty members to explain the unusual distinction of the work being evaluated, has begun to have a modest effect in moderating grade inflation, and it seems to have encouraged a more clear-eyed assessment of academic perfection.

All of those gains notwithstanding, the historical patterns of grade inflation and grade compression continue. Despite our best efforts to the contrary, grades have continued to go up since we began our work. (The best claim one can make is that the rate of increase in mean GPA has slowed - modestly in undergraduate courses, more significantly in independent work.) Sixty-five percent of graduating seniors in the Class of 2002 had grade point averages of B+ or better, 30 percent had averages between B+ and B-, and fewer than 5 percent fell below B-. As we reported to the faculty in February 2003, a straight B average put a student below the midpoint of the ninth decile of the graduating class. A student with a straight C average stood second to last among all graduating seniors.

Curbing grade inflation will require more aggressive steps than we have taken. These proposals are designed to serve that purpose. They grow out of an explicit mandate from the department chairs to develop a grading standard that applies across the institution. Because no single department has any incentive to act unilaterally to address grade inflation, the chairs reasoned, the provision of a University-wide grading standard that all departments must observe will make it possible for all departments to cooperate. The Committee has developed these proposals in very close consultation with the chairs.

The grading proposals address both the process by which an institutional grading standard would be managed and the grading limits we would set in order to bring grade inflation under better control. With respect to process, the proposals are grounded in four basic operating principles:

The institutional grading standard should be as simple as possible (thus we address only the percentage of A grades and assume that once those are controlled, other grades will fall into line);

Departments as a whole, not individual faculty members, should be asked to meet the institutional grading standard;

Departments should have maximum flexibility to determine how to meet the grading standard, taking account in each case of the range, size, and level of difficulty of the department's courses;

Greater transparency, wider publicity, and moral suasion will help to foster the broadest cooperation in meeting the institutional grading standard.

The grading limits proposed here are less than 35 percent A's for undergraduate courses and less than 55 percent A's for independent work. They would return Princeton grades to the levels of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some departments already grade within or close to these limits. Others will need to work hard to meet them. The members of the Committee and the department chairs believe strongly that the effort is well worth making, and we urge the faculty to adopt these proposals.

The Committee recognizes that the materials circulated with this memo are quite extensive, and we urge members of the faculty to take the time to read them carefully. In particular, the document "Grading Questions and Answers" lays out in detail the reasoning of the Committee and the department chairs and explains the process through which we arrived at our recommendations. We explain why we are trying to do something about grading, describe as carefully as we can how the proposed plan would work, and address the important questions of the practicality and achievability of the proposed plan and its likely effect on our students. We address the strongly-held concern among chairs and committee members that in taking action against grade inflation, we not compromise the fortunes of Princeton students. We report on extensive discussions with professional schools, national fellowship competitions, and employers about the likely impact of altered grading at Princeton on our students' chances for acceptance, awards, and job offers. And we make clear why we believe that Princeton's leadership in acting to curb grade inflation will work to the advantage of Princeton students.

The attachments to this memo are:

Grading Proposals (2 pp.)

Grading Definitions (1 p.)

Grading Questions and Answers (14 pp.)

Distribution of Grades in 100-400 Level Courses (1 p.)

Distribution of Junior Independent Work Grades (1 p.)

Distribution of Senior Thesis/Independent Work Grades (1 p.)

Summary of Grading Initiatives, 1998-2003 (2 pp.)

 
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