Lancet Jades
04-27-2004, 11:14 PM
Princeton faculty approves grade-rationing plan
Tuesday April 27, 2004
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) Princeton University faculty has approved a plan to combat rising grades by limiting the number of A's it awards to undergraduates.
The faculty on Monday voted 156 to 84 to implement the plan. Princeton is the first college or university to formally buck a nationwide trend of grade inflation by rationing A's, said Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel, who authored the plan.
Under the guidelines, which go into effect in the fall for Princeton's 4,600 undergraduates, faculty are expected to restrict the number of A's to 35 percent in undergraduate courses; for junior and senior independent work, the percentage receiving A's will be capped at 55 percent.
A's have been awarded 46 percent of the time in recent years at Princeton, up from 31 percent in the mid-1970s. Since 1998, the New Jersey school has encouraged its faculty to crack down, but grades continued to rise. Finally, Princeton administrators decided the only solution was to ration top grades.
At other Ivy League schools, the percentage of A grades in undergraduate courses ranges from 44 percent to 55 percent, according to Princeton's Web site.
``The percentages stipulated would return our grading practices to the level we saw up until the early 1990s,'' Malkiel said. ``This is how we were grading as a faculty.''
The percentages mirror grading patterns at Princeton from 1987 to 1992.
Very few students supported the change, said student body president Matthew Margolin. Of the hundreds of undergraduates Margolin said he talked to or heard from via e-mail, most were far less concerned with their own grade-point averages than they were with other issues, such as the ability of friends or roommates to compete for scholarships with peers being graded more liberally at other schools.
Margolin also said media attention put Princeton faculty in the awkward position of either approving the proposal or announcing to the country that the school has a problem it doesn't know how to fix.
Malkiel said the proposal followed six years of work on grading issues, during which grades continued to rise. Academic department heads said that no single discipline would grade more rigorously unless all departments did so.
There are many reasons for grade inflation. David Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, has said it may date from the Vietnam War era, when professors were reluctant to flunk students and consign them to the draft.
While Princeton suddenly finds itself in a national leadership position on the issue, Malkiel said her real aim was ensuring academic integrity at Princeton.
``By adopting (these proposals), 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,'' Malkiel wrote in her cover memo to the proposals, which were disseminated to the faculty earlier this month.
Tuesday April 27, 2004
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) Princeton University faculty has approved a plan to combat rising grades by limiting the number of A's it awards to undergraduates.
The faculty on Monday voted 156 to 84 to implement the plan. Princeton is the first college or university to formally buck a nationwide trend of grade inflation by rationing A's, said Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel, who authored the plan.
Under the guidelines, which go into effect in the fall for Princeton's 4,600 undergraduates, faculty are expected to restrict the number of A's to 35 percent in undergraduate courses; for junior and senior independent work, the percentage receiving A's will be capped at 55 percent.
A's have been awarded 46 percent of the time in recent years at Princeton, up from 31 percent in the mid-1970s. Since 1998, the New Jersey school has encouraged its faculty to crack down, but grades continued to rise. Finally, Princeton administrators decided the only solution was to ration top grades.
At other Ivy League schools, the percentage of A grades in undergraduate courses ranges from 44 percent to 55 percent, according to Princeton's Web site.
``The percentages stipulated would return our grading practices to the level we saw up until the early 1990s,'' Malkiel said. ``This is how we were grading as a faculty.''
The percentages mirror grading patterns at Princeton from 1987 to 1992.
Very few students supported the change, said student body president Matthew Margolin. Of the hundreds of undergraduates Margolin said he talked to or heard from via e-mail, most were far less concerned with their own grade-point averages than they were with other issues, such as the ability of friends or roommates to compete for scholarships with peers being graded more liberally at other schools.
Margolin also said media attention put Princeton faculty in the awkward position of either approving the proposal or announcing to the country that the school has a problem it doesn't know how to fix.
Malkiel said the proposal followed six years of work on grading issues, during which grades continued to rise. Academic department heads said that no single discipline would grade more rigorously unless all departments did so.
There are many reasons for grade inflation. David Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, has said it may date from the Vietnam War era, when professors were reluctant to flunk students and consign them to the draft.
While Princeton suddenly finds itself in a national leadership position on the issue, Malkiel said her real aim was ensuring academic integrity at Princeton.
``By adopting (these proposals), 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,'' Malkiel wrote in her cover memo to the proposals, which were disseminated to the faculty earlier this month.