Inflategate

Biology professor Mark McPeek has spent many years putting Dartmouth’s grading practices under a microscope. His presentation of data at a spring faculty meeting made clear that grade inflation, as is generally the case at other top-tier institutions, has skyrocketed alarmingly, turning an A into an average rather than exceptional achievement. >

The topic—addressed in a DAM cover story 11 years ago—has long been discussed on campus. Students worried about gaining admission to graduate school are reluctant to embrace reform, as are many profs who, McPeek contends, do not want to deal with fallout from students and helicopter parents. A tougher grading system, however, could be viewed as an element of the greater academic rigor being promoted by Moving Dartmouth Forward, in part to improve students’ campus behavior.

There have been attempts elsewhere to quash grade escalation at the departmental level, but neither Princeton, which tried a recently discontinued 35-percent limit on A grades, nor Wellesley, which instituted a B-plus average grade maximum, did it the right way, according to McPeek. Dartmouth can do a better job simply by requiring faculty to understand and adhere to the grading criteria published in the College’s catalog of regulations, which he claims are widely ignored. “It’s simply a matter of students being graded fairly,” he says. “In some classes that might mean a lot of A’s, in others lots of C’s.”

Students, McPeek says, should understand that Dartmouth’s policy of including a course’s median grade and its number of students on transcripts (a practice implemented in 1994 with stipulated exceptions) will serve students well when a downward shift in grades occurs. “A grad school applicant with an A in a course with a median grade of B is going to look a lot better than one with an A where everyone gets an A,” he says. How can Dartmouth measure academic rigor? Student evaluations will play a big part, says McPeek—a prof should be glad to receive varied evaluations that reflect students’ differing abilities rather than strive to win a popularity contest. Ultimately, says McPeek, deans will have to enforce a more demanding system.