In a move students protested last year, Princeton became the first elite college to cap the number of A’s that can be awarded.
Previously, there was no official limit to the number of A’s handed out, and nearly half the grades in an average Princeton class have been A-pluses, A’s or A-minuses. Now, each department can give A’s to no more than 35 percent of its students each semester.
Princeton’s effort is being monitored closely by other hallowed halls, and some expect to see a ripple effect in coming years. —Geoff Mulvihill —Princeton Cracks Down on Grade Inflation (AP|MyWay)
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True, Jon... but how difficult do you make the questions? If you walked the class through a bunch of equations using rational numbers or positive numbers, on the final exam, how many questions do you put that ask the student to figure out -- on the spot -- how to do a particular problem with an irrational number or a negative number? Should tests measure a student's grasp of complex theories and underlying concepts, or their ability to observe and duplicate procedures their professor has done on the board?
I don't have the answer, I'm just noting that even in a right/wrong subject, creating the final exam is a subjective process.
Grades are a good motivation factor. It is very demoralizing to get a bad grade when you have put down a lot of work and the result is very good. Just in the name of normalizing the grade scale. The A should be hard to get. A math test should be easy to grade, it is eighter right or wrong. 100% correct should be A.
Hey... quit gucking around on my weblof.
I meant "forms" not "gorms." Give me a G. I mean, F, on that comment.
I think it's crazy. How is a departmental policy on grades enforced? Does this mean some classes can break the rule and some can't? Will all teachers apply this to all classes? It assumes one type of grading -- content-based summative assessment -- which might impinge on some gorms of learning. And from the student side, wouldn't you just change schools once you started getting that "mandated" B grade, when it would be the equivalent of an "A" elsewhere? Anyway, I personally don't think a collegiate statistic should drive what any given teacher does in the classroom like this. Just my opinion.
One of the problems of grade inflation is grade compression... that is, if the average grade is a B+, then there are only two levels above average -- A- and A.
If most people are earning the top-level grade, then it becomes very difficult to determine who is very good, who is excellent, and who is head-and-shoulders-above-everyone-else excellent. And in some engineering or math discipines, when everyone gets the correct answer, then you do in fact have 100 or so people graduating with 4.0 grades. In such a situation, if you have 100 valedictorians, a student who misses a single question can suddenly go from being tied for #1 all the way down to 101. That kind of pressure is just ridiculous, and I can't imagine that it makes it easier to resist the temptation to cheat.
Departments will probably want to give As to their own majors, so this will probably mean that students who take electives will find them more challenging. If your department reaches five times as many non-majors as majors, then you can reduce the percentage of As you give to the general public by a small amount, and proportionally give more As to your small body of majors. This doesn't really help programs that don't have a huge general elective population.
The student who performs just outside of the top third of the Princeton class will still never be as academically accomplished as that top third, regardless of whether the letter on that student's report card is an inflated A or a stingy B+. But if you look at it from another angle, even a B+ from Princeton will still be prestigious.
I don't think the scenario you suggest, in which 65% of a class scores that highly, is likely to happen. In reality, a few will do really well, a few will do really poorly, and the majority will cluster around a certain level.
I'm not sure that more difficult exams is necessarily the answer, since the instructor who creates and marks those exams could just as easily have made more difficult midterms, quizzes, and other homework assignments. Exams are just one part of the picture.
And how do you feel about this? To me, it makes no sense whatsoever. Does this mean that on non-callit exams (i.e., math is right or wrong) a 95 average can conceivably not be an A if there are 65% of the students that have 95.1 through 100?
Wouldn't more difficult exams simply be the answer?