New theories renew grade-inflation debate

"In 1968, I occupied the passenger seat of Vincent Scully's parked car while Yale's most popular professor sat at the wheel, face cupped in his hands, and cried over the Tet Offensive," Jacques Leslie, BR '68, said, remembering his professor's grief during the Vietnam War.

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Many argue that moments such as this marked an ideological shift in the culture and practices of American academic institutions. Such a transition, inspired by the counter-culture that engulfed the youth of this country during the late '60s and early '70s, had a profound impact on many aspects of academia—of which the most startling was grades.

Because Yale professors personified the elite of an age gone by, students, empowered by the revolutionary sentiment, pressured faculty to discard their conservative traditions. "If I'm part of the system, and the system has failed, then the system is immoral. Therefore I have no credibility," Robert Wyman, Mollecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology professor, said recalling the internal conflict that plagued many of his colleagues shortly after he began teaching at Yale in 1966.

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Grade inflation was rampant in the years after Vietnam and has shown no signs of relenting. In 1969, 25 percent of college students received C's or below, with only seven percent earning marks of A-minus or higher. Today, those numbers have reversed themselves; according to When Hope and Fear Collide, a 1998 book by Arthur Levine, a quarter of students score in the A-range, while a mere nine out of 100 fall below C-plus.

`B' is for bad  

This overhaul of the educational system's evaluative schema has prompted much debate. Some, such as Wyman, point to the lack of credibility in academia's yardstick for measuring its students. This resulted from the "old people's colluding in the slaughter [in Vietnam]," Wyman said. With "America's morality going down the tubes," doubt was cast both on governmental and academic institutions as credible entities. "If tradition has gone wrong [as it did in the 1960s]," Wyman asserted, "you don't know what to change. All aspects of authority become questionable."

The professors' crisis of conscience was two-fold: doubt in their ability to define excellent work, along with the knowledge that a failing grade could nullify a student's draft deferment—asylum that gave immunity from combat to young men who were "active in study."

"The advent of the Vietnam War draft institution," as Donald Green, political science and psychology professor, called it, "was among the litany of causes" contributing to grade inflation in the post-war era. Green also points to the bridging of a "social gulf" that had separated students and their professors, thus preventing collaborative dialogue. This new rapport created the "possibility of appealing grades," causing professors to inflate grades preemptively in order to "avoid such confrontations."

Shelly Kagan, professor of philosophy, begins each semester with a warning to his students: "A `B' means good, not bad." Self-described as "anomalous" in his grading regime, Kagan remains frustrated with the lowered standards of professors in evaluating their students' work. According to Kagan, the letter grade itself is merely a "squiggle." If that squiggle does not have a meaningful story behind it, he believes the value of the grade to the student as a communicative device is severely impaired. The question hinges on whether to evaluate a student's relative performance or absolute achievement.

Kagan thinks that a factor contributing to the problem was the post-war crisis of faith in the objective evaluation of many humanities disciplines. "To talk about masterpieces versus schlock art is difficult without objective standards," Kagan said. He added that inflation in the humanities has certainly outpaced that of the hard sciences. This disparity, he feels, can most likely be attributed to the relative objectivity within the sciences, where there is less "room for fudging."

Harvey C. Mansfield, a Harvard professor of government, similarly resents the present lack of rigor in the grading process. Mansfield recently announced a plan to give his students two grades: an inflated grade to appear on the transcript and another to be privately disclosed to the student as an "honest indicator" of the student's performance. Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, calls this practice a "foolish idea."

An issue of race?

In addition to his proposal, Mansfield offers a wildly controversial explanation for grade inflation. Mansfield cites, along with the Vietnam War hypothesis, "the influx of black students in the 70s" as an explanation of grade inflation. "There were a lot of white professors who were reluctant to give C's to black students," he said. "This, in turn, affected the grades of white students as well."

Mansfield's comments regarding the cause of inflation have incited an uproar at Harvard from students, professors and deans alike. On Tues., Feb 7 the Boston Globe ran a front-page article on grade inflation which gave the enraged students a national voice—a total of three stories followed within a week.

Aaliyah Williams, president of the Black Students Association at Harvard, chastised Mansfield, an outspoken critic of affirmative action, for his "disgusting and offensive statements." Williams dismissed Mansfield's comments as merely a "publicity stunt."

On Tues., Feb. 13, approximately 100 students packed the aisles of Mansfield's lecture class in silent protest of his comments. All eyes are currently on Harvard officials, anticipating a formal censure of Mansfield.

Mansfield himself admits that there is no empirical evidence to substantiate his claims. Nevertheless, he cites anecdotal evidence from his personal experience during the '70s to support his argument: "I was here at the time when they [black students] came in, and I saw a lot of white professors give breaks to black students." Mansfield describes this phenomenon as "wh-ite guilt."

He points to Harvard's "withholding of evidence" in response to his critics. "Harvard should be a place where you can debate anything," he said. "But unfortunately the debate is narrowed since there are certain things you cannot say [regarding race]."

Professors at Yale criticized Mansfield for his lack of intellectual responsibility in the procurement of evidence to support his inflammatory claims. "The burden of proof is on people who advance hypotheses," Green noted.

Are students getting smarter?

Increases in student intelligence cannot be the sole culprit of grade inflation. While GRE and SAT scores have foundered in past years, GPA's have risen. However, stagnant scores do not bar the possibility of an increase in the "quality of students' work," as Brodhead maintained. He cites the advent of coeducation in 1969 as one of many reasons that encouraged students to "take their work more seriously." Student evaluations, an integral component of the educational process today, were one of the many innovations produced by the radicalism of the 1960s. Structural changes followed more subtle practices that embedded themselves in academic culture. These changes emphasized the student-teacher dialogue, exemplifing concern for student self-esteem.

The self-perpetuating problem of grade inflation is not just an Ivy League phenomenon. Rather, the numbers show that the nation as a whole is grappling with a narrower spectrum of grades confined increasingly to the upper echelons of the curve—spots traditionally reserved for truly excellent work. In a 1998 report, Yale officially dubbed this phenomenon, "upward grade homogenization."

Harvard itself is an exceptional example of the effects of grade inflation: 82 percent of seniors now receive academic honors upon graduation—honors that have traditionally been reserved for a small fraction of any given class.

Good grades, bad future?

A self-aggrandizing GPA certainly soothes a student's self-esteem, but does inflationary grading really have an tangible effect on the job market? Philip Jones, director of Undergraduate Career Services, says "no."

Regarding employment after graduation, Jones chuckles at the thought that Yale students are disadvantaged in the job market as a result of alleged grade inflation. "Grades are not inflated here at Yale," Jones said. He called students' doubts about their abilities to compete "poorly founded anxieties." In a conference he attended a few months ago consisting of various deans from the most esteemed law schools in the country, the question of grade inflation came up. According to Jones, one dean said, "We know that a 3.5 from Yale is equivalent to a 4.0 from another very prestigious school."

Susan Hockfield, the Dean of Yale Graduate School, who is intimately involved with the admissions process, stressed that graduate schools around the country evaluate students within their specific context. Hockfield added that in the admissions process, not only are different institutions' standards taken into account, but even the standards "of different programs within a single institution" are considered.

But for those seeking to reform grading, change may prove difficult to come by, as it would require a wide-spread consensus. Wyman, who supported draft resistance in the late '60s, respects the power that students have when they organize as a collective unit. As Wyman said, "[Grade inflation] started with the students, and will only end with pressure from the students."

Dartmouth, however, has instituted a top-down method of reform by publishing on the transcript the median grade for any given course and the number of students in that class alongside the student's mark. As to the prospect of a comparable system at Yale, Brodhead sees "no significant faculty interest" in such a project.

On the other hand, Kagan said, "I think that [the Dartmouth method] would be a fine thing to do." It remains unclear whether Yale professors in general share Kagan's view that "many works called excellent nowadays would not have been called excellent in days of yore."

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