ShareThisBy BRITTANY ANAS
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Many educators and university officials nationwide are worried that grades alone are no longer accurate snapshots of how well students perform.
Propelling grade inflation in today's college classrooms could be the popularity of student reviews of faculty members, some higher-education officials and professors say. Administrators use the student feedback in decisions about promotions and raises, and some educators have worried that tough grades could spur student retaliation.
Others say today's students -- many of whom view B's as standing for "bad" -- are more career-focused and take courses complementing their interests and strengths, which could explain the better grades.
But, whatever the contributing factors, the battle of the bulging grade-point averages can be originally traced to the Vietnam War, when professors attempted to keep students from being drafted. Whether that link is exaggerated is up for debate.
The University of Colorado has thrust itself into a debate that includes reforms at some of the nation's most prestigious schools, such as Princeton University, where professors are expected to cap the number of A's they award to 35 percent in undergraduate courses.
A report on measuring academic rigor from the Boulder Faculty Assembly has been provided to CU's regents to help guide the board's ongoing conversation about grade inflation. It says: "Vietnam-era grade inflation, driven by interest among faculty to protect students from the draft, has now become part of the historical record, establishing a new baseline of expectations about grades."
According to the report, 7 percent of all college students in 1969 received grades of A-minus or higher, while 25 percent received C averages or lower. In the next quarter of a century, those proportions had risen to 25 percent A-minus grades and higher, and 9 percent C's and lower.
But tying grade inflation to Vietnam could be a "tenuous connection," said Maurice Isserman, a professor of history at Hamilton College in New York and author of "America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s."
"There were some professors that said, 'I'm not going to fail any of my male students, because I'm not going to hand them over to selective services,' " Isserman said in a telephone interview.
He said he doubts it was a widespread policy, though.
"To leap from that to the notion that it was the cause of grade inflation seems to be hyperbole," Isserman said.
The 1960s were a time of questioning standards and authority, said Michael Poliakoff, CU's vice president for academic affairs and research.
"It would be a mistake to look to a single cause," he said. "I think there are certainly things to be said for the Vietnam era, though."
Academic rigor has been a universitywide discussion and a policy issue that CU's president asked the regents to take up one year ago.
Now, graduates can ask that their class rankings appear on their transcripts, an option that came from the grade-inflation discussions and a regent vote.
An initiative in the College of Arts and Sciences also appears to be paying off. Three years ago, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences began pushing the "Colorado Challenge," which urged professors to be diligent with the A's they award, reserving them for students who do superior work.
By 2004, average GPAs had been gradually crawling up and hit a new high at 2.99 -- which is almost a B average. By last year, that GPA average had been ratcheted back down to 2.94.
(Contact Camera staff writer Brittany Anas at anasb(at)dailycamera.com.)
