Michael Bradley, Executive Editor

Administrators at Notre Dame are taking measures to address and combat grade inflation.

Dean John McGreevy of the College of Arts and Letters, one administrator leading the effort, has convened a semester-long review the results – and therefore implications – of which will be released at semester’s end. According to a recent USA Today article, McGreevy has said that “I’m a believer in differentiation. We should be holding out A’s for the most exceptional students.” The article further cites McGreevy as saying “there’s a concern that grades have been generally high over the last decade.”

In response to such concerns, McGreevy has proposed that professors make an effort to scale down their generous grading in order to return to an average class grade of between 3.0 and 3.5. The average class grade last spring was 3.563, according to a study done by Notre Dame’s Office of Strategic Planning and Institutional Research.

The findings of the review will impact both professors and students in concrete ways. In light of these developments, the Rover asked professors to weigh in on grade inflation in response to questions such as: Is it really a problem? How can inflation be combated? Are professors challenging students enough?

Patrick Deneen,  Professor of Political Science

Given the existence of real suffering in the world today, the issue of grade inflation might seem to be one of those risible “first-world problems,” but every student knows that much rides on minute gradations that can spell the difference between an A- or an B+, magna or summa, law school or sleeping in your parent’s basement.  Grade inflation – in part the pressure that students and their parents exert on institutions to which they pay considerable sums, often in the expectation of good “customer service” – is a deeper reflection of the outsized role that a credential from a university now plays in our brutal game of meritocratic roulette.  To the extent that institutions promote themselves as routes to economic success – and, let’s admit, they all do – we should expect such pressure.

Frankness also requires that we admit that grade inflation seems to be good for everyone, students and faculty alike.  Given these immense pressures, it is far easier for faculty to award inflated grades – it makes for fewer unhappy students and less time away from research productivity.  It is not only students who apparently benefit from grade inflation – faculty are relieved of the burden of making difficult and sometimes painful judgments.  It frees up our time to publish more books and articles, the source of academic prestige.  Academics do not receive raises or promotions through a reputation for being a tough grader.

Still, institutions should rightly wish to make distinctions between excellent, good, average and mediocre work.  Society deserves to know of such distinctions – after all, who wants to undergo surgery by a doctor whose performance should have prevented him from entering medical school or drive over a bridge constructed by a poor engineer who benefitted from inflated grades?

Most importantly, institutions such as Notre Dame should buck these pressures and insist that a university degree is more than a credential in the service of career success.  We should actively promote virtues of thoughtfulness, reflection, creativity, articulateness, hard work, honesty and fairness, among others. The awarding of grades that differentiate between excellent, good, average and poor performances is a legitimate form of responding to the efforts of our students – as crude, but necessary forms of reward, encouragement, correction and judgment.   The ability to differentiate performance through grades is finally a requirement of the “queen of the virtues” – justice.  We would betray the duty to act on behalf of virtue if we acceded to society’s utilitarian pressures, and were, through our own example, to teach students that through injustice lies the path to worldly success.

Jamie O’Brien, Assistant Chair, Department of Accountancy

To “B” or not to “B.”  That truly is the question when grappling with grade inflation.  I have observed that some, although not too many, students will drop a class rather than risk earning a “B.”  Perhaps this is due to the focused and driven nature of Notre Dame undergraduate students and perhaps it is due to the perceived fear that a “B” will put them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their classmates in the specific class, in their class as a whole, and even in broader “competitions” such as that of graduate school and the job market.

To combat the reality, and to a great extent perception, of grade inflation, most undergraduate business courses have a target GPA range.  For instance the undergraduate business law course that I teach has a target GPA range of 3.0 to 3.2 – meaning that all of the professors who teach the 20 annual sections of undergraduate business law (a required course for all undergraduate business students, by the way) will have a grade distribution within that range for their business law students.  This range has applied for several years with very few exceptions. It affords students with some level of comfort that they will not be at a “disadvantage” with any particular professor or section of the course – their roommate can’t possibly be in a different section with “Easy A O’Brien” where every student earns an A or an A-.

The grade range varies a bit with upper-level required courses and takes into account the possibility of very small class sizes.  But overall it appears that future employers of many business students have come to recognize this battle against grade inflation, as I have heard from former accounting students that they now regularly provide their overall GPA and their “major” GPA when interviewing.  That is, the interviewers often expect the student to disclose her GPA associated only with accounting courses separate from her overall GPA.  The conclusion being that with an average or mean grade closer to a “B,”  a “B” is not such a bad grade after all.

Cathy Pieronek, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs in Engineering

I’m not sure whether we should be talking about grade inflation in and of itself.  While I do believe that in some courses/disciplines the mean/median grades are too high, I also know that in some they are too low.  And when bunched at either the top or the bottom of a grading spectrum, grades ultimately lose their meaning.  Thus, I think the meaning of grades is at issue, and not simply whether grades are too high or inflated.

According to Section 3.3.8 of the Undergraduate Academic Code, a “B” signifies “solid work across the board.”  In my view, this means that every student and faculty member should begin a course with the expectation that “solid” work – work that faculty should have a right to expect from our students – nets a “B.”  More than that earns something higher, less than that, something lower.  Anything other than this sort of an expectation does our students a disservice because both routinely high grades and routinely low grades in individual courses can discourage effort.

I’m certainly not advocating a forced grading curve.  Rather, I’m advocating for a realignment of expectations, which begins with faculty clearly setting out the performance required to achieve a “B.”  If each student in a class then performs to the “truly exceptional” level and thus each student  merits an “A” according to the Code, then each should receive an “A.”  If faculty clearly set out the performance criteria that would yield a “B,” students can decide to whether to meet or exceed those expectations, and the set of grades that results – whether too high or too low – would fairly reflect student achievement.

Phillip Sloan, Professor Emeritus, Program of Liberal Studies

Grade inflation is a complex issue that may have some sources frequently not discussed.  The selection process for entering Notre Dame is sufficiently rigorous that one rarely encounters the “C” student, and students receiving “C” and “D” grades are likely doing so for failure to turn in work or absenteeism.  Students then entering the College of Arts and Letters, where I judge grade inflation is the greatest problem, likely have a B+ average to begin with. This has certainly been true of my own department (PLS).  Making discriminations  within this group  then becomes difficult.  Arts and Letters subjects are not typically assessed on the basis of  “objective” exams that could make simple  quantitative distinctions possible, similar to the way this  might be done in science and engineering. The issue then becomes a matter of assessing essays and essay exams on criteria that may vary widely from department to department and even within departments.

I also consider  the introduction of plus and minus grades to be an important cause. In my own educational experience, it was more typical to assess on the basis of solid letter grades only.  At Notre Dame when I was first a faculty member, we used only minus discriminations. Sometime in the 80s, I believe,  we introduced the plus grade as well.  My conclusion is that this resulted in a much higher number of B+ grades (3.33) and decreased B (3.0) grades.  I suspect that statistical analysis would show a significant shift related to this introduction of the B+ grade, toward averages that run around 3.5.

Michael Bradley is a junior Dillonite studying theology and philosophy and will miss Pope Benedict XVI greatly but is excited for a new chapter in the Church’s life. Contact him at mbradle6@nd.edu.