The University of Chicago's department of philosophy maintains an informal policy of periodically reviewing the work of its graduate teaching assistants. For a long time Chicago stood in he minority among research universities since it opposed the use of teaching assistants altogether. Although ultimately forced by the marketplace to abandon this position, Chicago to this day uses teaching assistants only in limited capacities and keeps a fairly close watch on their performance. So, when the professor I was assisting in 1995 (at that time the chairman of the philosophy department), asked to review the grades I had given to my portion of the students in his class, I believed his request reflected the university's and department's commitment to maintaining rigorous standards for undergraduate education, and I happily complied.
I was assisting a course on "History of Modern Philosophy," my field of expertise. I was anxious about my professor's reviewing my grading, because I wished to prove to him I knew my stuff. As the chairman of my department, a holder of one of its most respected endowed chairs, an internationally known scholar in the field, and the director of my dissertation committee, the professor was someone whose judgment of me and my work would crucially influence my chances of success in beginning a career. After he had completed his review, we set a time to meet. I prepared for the worst possibility: his saying he didn't think I knew the material well enough. While I am happy to report that's not what he said I was wholly unprepared for what he did tell me.
He stated the grades I had given averaged out to a B-minus, which, he told me, was unacceptable. My first thought was that I had been too easy on the students; of course, my average should have been a C. Although my better judgment had told me otherwise, it was difficult not to give students credit for trying, even when they did not succeed. But the professor went on to point out in dismay that my grades included a few D's and even one F, which, again, was unacceptable. While at first I was unsure what he was driving at, his point became clearer as he continued. Students at the University of Chicago, he said, never get F's, or even D's. If they were such bad students, they would not be here. He informed me that the average grade the department hands out is slightly better than a B-plus, that it is rare for the department to issue a grade lower than a B-minus, and that he personally had no qualms at all about giving everyone in his classes A's.
He told me and the other teaching assistant for his course (also present at the time), that he believes in an "absolute standard" for grading, and that if every student reaches the top of this standard, then every student should get an A. Students' papers were not to be compared to each other, but rather only to this absolute standard. When I asked him to describe this standard, he told us that an A-level paper should display (I am quoting from my notes now) a "basic understanding" of the material and should contain "something interesting" besides. A B-level paper would also display a "basic understanding" of the material, but rather than containing anything interesting or novel it would make only the "basic points." Finally, a C-level paper would reveal that the student was "missing something important." He gave us no guidelines for D or F-level papers. My professor told me that while it was clear to him that I was an "extremely tough grader," he was still willing to work with me. Nevertheless, only so much leeway could be allowed. He told me to re-examine the grades I had given so that I could find instances in which I had been too hard on students and revise these grades accordingly. He could see his way clear to a B-plus average, or even a B average, but not a B-minus one. Unless I could demonstrate extraordinary incompetence--his example was the case of a student's not handing in any required papers--no student should get less than a C-minus. An F was out of the question.
Unprepared, as I have said, for this criticism of my grading, I agreed to review the grades, while doubting I would make any significant changes. I have always been a critic of the practice of giving everyone good grades, and I had steadfastly resisted it throughout my short teaching career. But since I could not afford to offend the professor, the only response I mustered in his office was the meek suggestion that having such a high average for a whole class might be unfair to the best students--perhaps they deserved, I suggested, the reward not only of getting high grades, but also of being the only ones to do so. My teacher agreed with me that good students should get special recognition. But he argued that the range between an A and a B-minus was sufficient to provide these degrees of merit: good students get A's, mediocre students, A-minuses or B-pluses, and bad students B's or B-minuses.
I won't give details of all the haggling that went on in subsequent discussions between my professor and me except to say that he kept wanting me to raise my grades while I kept wanting to let them stand. The result was that the average grade I handed out was an even B; I gave out no F's, and only one D which I gave to a student who turned in only three of the required five papers, each of which was poor. Yet I still had to campaign vigorously to give this student a D. My professor admitted that might have been the first D he had ever given in his over twenty-year career at Chicago.
During the course of our grade negotiations, my professor made an argument I believe bears repeating. I had brought to his attention the phenomenon of grade inflation, regularly repeating my suggestion that this practice did not allow professors (or teaching assistants) to properly discriminate among different levels of student performance. I suggested moreover that the practice dissuaded students from doing their best: why should a mediocre or bad student make the effort necessary to get an A, when he was virtually guaranteed to get a B with almost no effort at all? My professor conceded there was some merit to these points, but remained convinced by the following argument. Everyone at Chicago inflates grades; indeed, everyone at all of the top research universities, against whom Chicago competes, inflates grades. Due to this widespread practice, students develop certain expectations about grades, viewing anything below a B-minus as failure, a B or B-plus as average, an A-minus as good, and an A as excellent. Given, then, rampant grade inflation on the one hand, and student expectations on the other, if a professor (or teaching assistant) were to fancy himself, as he put it, a "John Wayne," and maintain the traditional five-letter-grade range with C as average, the result would be that he would unfairly punish his students. If a student who managed an average performance got a C from the John Wayne teacher, but would have gotten a B or B-plus from any other one, is it the student's fault he got stuck with John Wayne? In addition, the professors who review applications to graduate school, law school, medical school, and business school, and even the companies that interview prospective employees, all know that nowadays everyone gets A's and B's. If, then, the hapless student who got John Wayne comes along with his C, he will be judged against the prevailing standard, by which a C indicates failure, instead of being judged by John Wayne's idiosyncratic standard, whereby a C is average. Since one teacher cannot change this industry-wide practice all by himself, the only thing the John Wayne teacher will accomplish is punishing students for taking his class.
I have come to find this is a plausible argument, though I did not at the time. After all, isn't the difference between the A through F scale and the A through B-minus scale arbitrary? If one matches up the grades in the two scales, they amount to the same thing: an A on the former scale equals an A on the latter, a B on the former equals an A-minus on the latter, a C on the former equals a B-plus on the latter, a D on the former equals a B on the latter, and an F on the former equals a B-minus on the latter. Since the two offer the same number of grade levels, they can provide precisely the same number of distinctions among student performances. This method of grade translation was, I concluded, what my professor had wanted me to do. My surmise was later proved right when a memo from my department's director of graduate studies stated that henceforth (as of 26 March 1995), "The satisfactory grades for graduate work in philosophy are A, A-, B+, and B. Faculty members whose primary appointment is in philosophy use those grades with the following significance: A: with distinction; A-: high pass; B+: pass; B: low pass." Grades below B now constitute failure.
But a nagging question persists: if the two grading scales are functionally equivalent, why bother to change from one to the other? Here, I think, we have the crux of the issue. The two scales may be functionally equivalent, but they are certainly not substantively equivalent. The rest of the world is still working on the old system. People outside academia--parents and donors in particular--still believe that C means average, D means passing, and F means failure; no one has informed them of the new grading scale now employed. So, when their children get As and B's, they mistakenly believe their children are performing at a superior level--superior, that is, to all those students they assume are getting C's, D's, and F's. And I suspect that it is not just those outside academia who operate with some semblance of the old system still in mind. I imagine many of those in the university still consider the old system the true one, but employ the new system in practice, in order to keep up with the times, as well as avoid complaints from, or even confrontations with, disgruntled students.
It is precisely because so many assume the old grading scale is still in place that the quiet process of translation continues. By informing no one of the new grading scale, academics accomplish several goals at once: they bolster the self-esteem of students, while significantly reducing the number of complaints about grades; they greatly lighten their own work load by relieving themselves of the onerous task of carefully evaluating the work of each student; and they placate parents, who thus continue to spend a Lexus a year to send their children to elite private institutions. It seems an arrangement where everyone gets what he wants! Which is why, I think, grade inflation has grown so common place it now seems hardly worth mentioning.
But the real crime is, that the process of grade translation has taken place under a veil of dissemblance. By deliberately maintaining a purposeful ambiguity about which grading scale is used academics can continue to claim they're adhering to rigorous standards--which to the rest of the world, means that many students receive D's and F's. I think most academics know how others define "rigorous standards." They seem to believe, however, that as long as they don't openly claim to maintain the old standards, they are not lying. But this is clearly a duplicitous practice that must be stopped at once. It amounts to defrauding parents and lying to students, who are led to believe their work is of better quality than it actually is.
I should stress I have no quarrel with grade translation as such. I agree that the system of symbols that one uses to evaluate students is, in itself, arbitrary. When I studied in Innsbruck, Austria, the grading scale was 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, with I being highest and 5 meaning failure; I had no trouble equating these numbers with the American system. My complaint is rather against duplicity. So, let me make the following suggestion. If some professors, institutions, or even entire academic communities think the prevailing system of grading is unsatisfactory, for whatever reasons, then they certainly should change it. But both moral and academic integrity require that, if they decide to do so, they should announce it publicly and clarify to all involved just what it amounts to. The memorandum that circulates among the faculty and graduate teaching assistants in my department should be made available to the public--which means giving it not just to other professors, but also to students, parents, donors, even the public at large.
Admittedly I may be wrong about the motives of professors who have adopted the new system. I am willing to grant they may have not done so not to avoid student confrontations, placate parents, and lighten their work loads, but that, on the contrary, they have good reason to believe the new system is the better one. In fact, I am inclined to think this is true of my professor in particular, who could hardly be considered lazy or uninterested in students. In that case, I think we ought, as a community, to stand up bravely, declare our intentions, and then face whatever criticism might ensue. Then there would be no need for the John Wayne teacher who fights the prevailing system from behind the scenes, and, so the objection goes, manages only to punish students. Instead there could be a public debate which openly settles the issue. Then, at least, whatever system of grading were ultimately adopted it would be uniform. Students would know how well they were performing, parents would know how well their children were doing, and teachers would know that, whatever failings the grading system might have, they would not have to lie or adhere to a system that was anything other than an honest evaluation of student work.