Stuart Rojstaczer at the Post writes that he no longer gives C's in his classes, for reasons best represented by him in the essay—go have a look. Here I just have to say that Texas did very poorly on his Grade Inflation survey; apparently in the last decade our mean GPAs have risen a quarter of a point, with no (reliable) corresponding rise in the quality of students.
And yet I don't know of anyone in my department (perhaps there are secret lurkers) who would shy away from giving a student a C, a D, or an F if she deserved it. Perhaps this has to do with teaching a survey, again, rather than an upper-level course. I can't imagine giving someone a B who wasn't doing B-level work, under which I might roughly group things like being able to illustrate major concepts using details from an image (both in class participation and on tests).
We make the system we're working in, and Rojstaczer's argument just sounds lazy or even cowardly to me:
Parents and students want high grades. Given that students are consumers of an educational product for which they pay dearly, I am expected to cater to their desires not just to be educated well but to receive a positive reward for their enrollment. So I don't give C's anymore, and neither do most of my colleagues. And I can easily imagine a time when I'll say the same thing about B's.
Really. Am I just a delusional grad instructor with no clue about the economics of higher ed? Maybe there's some irony in there that I'm reading over.
[As a side note I feel like saying that the students who get low grades in my classes know far in advance of that slip arriving in the mail that their grades are low. No surprises. And if they know this early enough, they have time to drop the class—which might explain why I rarely deal with people who are disgruntled about grades.]
Update: Ok, having slept on it I've decided that for the full-time instructors (tenured and seeking tenure) in my department, giving a wider range of grades, including failing grades, has more pitfalls than it does for me. I'm sure that they're less likely to fail people than I am. I think, for the time being, I'll enjoy the freedom I have.
Posted by Heather at November 19, 2003 06:24 PM
Comments