Libertarian Librarian

My last posts on "grade" inflation in sports and the presence of incredible stupid people in college had some interesting responses. On top of that, comes this email from an English professor here at UW-Parkside:

The Advancement of Learning

The institutional equivalent of grade inflation for students is nomenclature inflation. Our peer institutions, once state teachers colleges, then state colleges, are now state universities. On our own campus, we are so old that we can remember when there was only one vice chancellor and no provost, when there were no institutes or centers with directors and associate directors, when Communication was Speech and the Sports Activities Center only a Physical Education Building.

Reviewing our own program recently with the nearest available dean, we have had pointed out to us that we at the Institute of Institutional Prose are not keeping pace with the institution as a whole. We are therefore proud to announce our intention of changing our name to the Institute for Advanced Institutional Prose, a title which will suggest to all our similarity to the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. As with similar changes, no actual change in function is anticipated. The change will become effective as soon as we have used up the high-grade stationary we ordered with our current title.

Which started me wondering-- where does it end? When everyone is getting As and Bs and a C is considered a poor grade, how do you evaluate who is actually doing well? Ceratinly it isn't hard to tell those that are doing poorly-- they're the ones with the B- or Cs-- how do you tell which of the As are real As and which would've been Bs in years past? Or does it even matter any more?

I was on a search and screen committee for a position here at UWP last year, and I can tell you that the transcripts of the candidates received barely a glance from me-- as long as the candidate wasn't getting Cs or worse and had taken the right sorts of courses, whether they had a 3.3, 3.5, or 3.8 did not matter to me because those scores no longer mean anything. So, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

The bad part of it is that the really good students get lumped together with the pretty good students. There is less reward for students to really excel-- you can get the same A for doing a good job that you can get for doing an outstanding job. This inflation of grades would seem to be leading to the lowering of expectations for our students-- which to me seems to be quite a serious problem.

On the flip side, there could be a certain freedom to grade inflation-- the focus is off of grades as the be all and end all of the process, since nearly everyone is assured of an A or B anyway, so both the teacher and the students can focus more on actual learning. I hope this is what is happening, that without the pressure of "acing" a class, that all of the students are absorbing lots and lots of knowledge. But that would seem to put a lot of faith in human nature to want to excel without any sort of benefit for doing so. How likely is that?

When currency inflates, and it inevitably does unless the issuing country is just in horrible economic shape, you eventually eliminate the smallest denomination (pennies are going to go away sooner or later folks-- they've already disappeared from tax forms) and, if necessary, add a higher denomination. Or print more of that higher denomination. The US could print more Benjamins, for example, and less Washingtons. Of course, with the advent of credit, the whole concept of hard currency is losing relevancy, but you guys get the analogy.

So, maybe we need a new grade? Can't really pick something that comes before A in the English alphabet, so maybe we need to borrow a letter from the Greeks? The new, best grade possible is the Alpha. Given only to the truly outstanding students.

What do you guys think?

Labels: Politics