Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts
By: Harvey C. Mansfield, Professor of Government at Harvard University
From: The Chronicle Review, 4.6.2001
Exercises: J. Geffen
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1.
This term I decided to experiment with the grading of my political-philosophy
course at Harvard. I am giving each student two grades: one for the registrar and the
public record, and the other in private. The official grades will conform with
Harvard’s inflated distribution, in which one-fourth of all grades given to
undergraduates are now A’s, and another fourth are A-’s. The private grades, from the
course assistants and me, will be less flattering. Those grades will give students a
realistic, useful assessment of how well they did and where they stand in relation to
others.
2.
A longtime critic of grade inflation, I have seen my grades dragged gradually
higher over the years, while still trailing the rising average. I could not ignore the
pressure to meet student expectations that other faculty members have created and
maintained, but I did not want just to go along silently. The two-grade device is a way
to show my contempt for the present system, yet not punish students who take my
course. My intent was to get attention and to provoke some new thinking.
3.
I certainly got attention. I was pleased at the degree of interest from around the
country, both in the news media and from the general public. The grades that faculty
members now give – not only at Harvard but at many other elite universities – deserve
to be a scandal.
4.
People often criticize elementary and secondary schools for demanding too little
of students. In the past presidential race, both candidates spoke frequently of the need
to raise standards. But at Harvard, the supposed pinnacle of American education,
professors are quite satisfied to bestow outlandishly high grades upon students. We
even think those grades reflect well on us; they show how popular we are with bright
students. And so we are quite satisfied with ourselves, too.
5.
There is something inappropriate – almost sick – in the spectacle of mature
adults showering young people with unbelievable praise. We are flattering our
students in our eagerness to get their good opinion. That our students are promising
makes it worse, for promise made complacent is easily spoilt. What’s more,
professors who give easy grades gain just a fleeting popularity, salted with disdain. In
later life, students will forget those professors; they will remember the ones who
posed a challenge.
6.
In a healthy university, it would not be necessary to say what is wrong with
grade inflation. But once the evil becomes routine, people can no longer see it for
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what it is. Even though educators should instinctively understand why grade inflation
is a problem, one has to be explicit about it.
7.
Grade inflation compresses all grades at the top, making it difficult to
discriminate the best from the very good, the very good from the good, the good from
the mediocre. Surely a teacher wants to mark the few best students with a grade that
distinguishes them from all the rest in the top quarter, but at Harvard that’s not
possible. Some of my colleagues say that all you have to do to interpret inflated
grades is to recalibrate them in your mind so that a B+ equals a C, and so forth. But
the compression at the top of the scale does not permit the gradation that you need to
rate students accurately.
8.
Moreover, everyone knows that C is an average grade, whereas a B+ is next to
the top. Mere recalibration does not address the real problem: the raising of grades
way beyond what students deserve.
9.
At Harvard, we have lost the notion of an average student. By that I mean a
Harvard average, not a comparison with the high-school average that enabled our
students to be admitted here. When bright students take a step up and find themselves
with other bright students, they should face a new, higher standard of excellence.
10. The loss of the notion of average shows that professors today do not begin with
their own criteria for the performance of students in their courses. Professors do not
say to themselves, “This is what I can require; anything above that enters into
excellence.” No. With an eye to student course evaluations and confounded by the
realization that they have somehow lost authority, professors begin from what they
think students expect. American colleges used to set their own expectations. Now,
increasingly, they react to student expectations – even though, by contrast to stormy
times in the past, students are very respectful.
11. Thus another evil of grade inflation is the loss of faculty morale that it reveals. It
signifies that professors care less about their teaching. Anyone who cares a lot about
something – for example, a baseball fan – is very critical in making judgments about
it. Far from the opposite of caring, being critical is the very consequence of caring. It
is difficult for students to work hard, or for the professor to get them to work hard,
when they know that their chances of getting an A or A- are 50-50. Students today are
still motivated to get good grades, but if they do not wish to work hard toward that
end, they can always maneuver and bargain.
12. Some say Harvard students are better these days and deserve higher grades. But
if they are in some measures better, the proper response is to raise our standards and
demand more of our students. Cars are better-made now than they used to be. So
when buying a car, would you be satisfied with one that was as good as they used to
be?
13. Besides, the evidence clearly undermines that argument. The Harvard
University Extension School, taught mostly by Harvard faculty members, has about
the same grading distribution as Harvard College, although exact figures on grades are
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difficult to come by. The school holds evening classes open to the public – a mix of
Ph.D.’s, college dropouts, and high-school students – and is not reserved for the
super-smart of America’s youth. Yet the Harvard professors who teach those
admirable, self-improving souls cannot restrain their own – well, it’s not generosity,
because high grades cost professors nothing.
14. Another point calls into question the claim that students are smarter now:
Grades in humanities courses are notably higher than those in the social sciences, and
both are higher than grades in the natural sciences. Yet would anyone say that
Harvard’s best students are in the humanities and its worst in the natural sciences? In
fact, science students regularly do better in non-science courses than non-science
students do in science courses.
15. How did we get into this mess? Perhaps I should be asking how we should get
out of it. But to answer that question, one needs to appreciate the strength of feeling
behind grade inflation.
16. Grade inflation has resulted from the emphasis in American education on the
notion of self-esteem. According to that therapeutic notion, the purpose of education
is to make students feel capable and empowered. So to grade them, or to grade them
strictly, is cruel and dehumanizing. Grading creates stress. It encourages competition
rather than harmony. It is judgmental.
17. A child-development professor recently expressed the spirit of such self-esteem
with rare clarity: “As soon as you get into some of the more complicated things, kids
may experience failure. They may feel like they’re stupid.” This spirit is as rampant in
higher education as it is in elementary and secondary schools. At colleges, self-esteem
often goes hand in hand with multiculturalism or sensitivity to people of diverse races
and ethnicities – meaning that professors must avoid offending the identities (still
another name for self-esteem) of victimized groups.
18. I know what that means. It means that despite all the talk about free speech at
Harvard, you had better watch what you say. And how you grade.
19. When I was interviewed by The Boston Globe about my two-grade policy, one
cause of grade inflation that I cited provoked a fiercely defensive reaction from the
administrators at Harvard. I said that when grade inflation got started, in the late 60’s
and early 70’s, white professors, imbibing the spirit of affirmative action, stopped
giving low or average grades to black students and, to justify or conceal it, stopped
giving those grades to white students as well. Of course, I also mentioned faculty
sympathy with student protesters against the Vietnam War, but it was my talking
about white professors that proved quite intolerable to the Harvard administration.
20. A dean called my remark “groundless and false,” “irresponsible,” and
“divisive.” He accused me of having no evidence, though providing none himself.
Then President Neil L. Rudenstine weighed in, responding to a demand from the
Black Students Association that my statement be censured. Rudenstine, while
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defending free debate, stated ex cathedra that nothing he had seen, read, or heard
would allow him to agree with my point. He, too, offered no evidence.
21. Because I have no access to the figures, I have to rely on what I saw and heard
at the time. Although it is not so now, it was then utterly commonplace for white
professors to overgrade black students. Any professor who did not overgrade black
students either felt the impulse to do so or saw others doing it. From that, I inferred a
motive for overgrading white students, too.
22. Of course, it is better to have facts and figures when one speaks, but I am not
going to be silenced by people who have them but refuse to make them available. I’ve
been on the Harvard faculty since 1962, and in that time I can’t remember any other
professor being honored with an official, factually unsupported “tain’t so” like this.
Somehow it didn’t convince me that I was wrong.
23. Despite the obvious connection between self-esteem and affirmative action,
some might think that I went off on a tangent from the problem of grade inflation. To
me, however, my experience suggests that I got closer to the problem, not farther from
it, and that I learned something about American education today. From top to bottom,
we need to put our standards first.
24. I used to believe that that is what Harvard stands for. I still think it can recover.
25. Remedies for grade inflation are not beyond our ingenuity. What we need above
all is to muster the determination to act. Our leaders need to lead.
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Answer in your own words.
Answer the question below in English.
1.
What particular item of information – paragraph 1 – makes us all wonder how
far the rot has spread?
Answer: _________________________________________________________
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Answer the question below in English.
2.
To what end has the author decided upon two grades for each student?
Answer: _________________________________________________________
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Answer the question below in English.
3.
What is the dilemma facing a lecturer – paragraph 2 – struggling to preserve his
intellectual integrity?
Answer: _________________________________________________________
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Answer the question below in English.
4.
Under what particular misconceptions – paragraphs 4-5 – do most of the faculty
members labour?
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Answer the question below in Hebrew.
5.
Describe the evils caused – paragraph 7 – by grade inflation.
Answer: _________________________________________________________
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Answer the question below in English.
6.
What particular delusion – paragraphs 8-9 – do a good many of the Harvard
lecturers referred to suffer from?
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Answer the question below in English.
7.
What do the facts related thus far suggest about the average professor’s status?
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Answer the question below in Hebrew.
8.
What makes the claim that Harvard students are better these days – paragraph
12 – essentially irrelevant?
Answer: _________________________________________________________
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Answer the question below in English.
9.
How do the average marks received by the students in the natural sciences –
paragraph 14 – reflect upon conditions in the other faculties?
Answer: _________________________________________________________
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Answer the question below in English.
10. Trace the connecting link between grade inflation on the one hand – paragraphs
16-24 – and affirmative action on the other hand.
Answer: _________________________________________________________
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