Leopold Stotch (a pseudonymous political science professor), blogging at OTB is angry over Princeton University’s decision to cap A’s at 35% per class–effectively creating an official semi-curve.
Without getting into the issue of grade inflation itself (which is a current bugaboo in the academy)I will echo his general sentiments on one of the major problems with the administration of colleges and universities: most of those who do so haven’t ever taught and a lot of them don’t even have academic bakgrounds of any kind. This creates a substantial “culture gap” where the professoriate and the educracy see the university in radically different ways. So you get silly rules like this one.
Plus, generically speaking as a professor I resent any outside interference in how I teach my class, so a rule like this one would rankle me as well.
Grade Inflation
Several interesting posts yesterday by academics reacting to Princeton’s new policy. Here at Dartmouth, we include the course median grades on the transcript. It’s a good start, but only a start.
Trackback by Vox Baby — Sunday, January 23, 2025 @ 1:55 pm
Obviously, as a student, I don’t want a cap on the number of A’s a Prof. can give. However, as your syllabus points out, an A is supposed to mean excellent, and if 35% of the class is actually excellent, that is quite an accomplishment. As a student who is actually concend about learning something, it is nice to recieve an accurate appraisal of one’s work, and believe me, getting a B or C is a good way to bring an overconfident student back to reality.
Comment by Jan — Monday, January 24, 2025 @ 1:32 pm