In my last post, I discussed two examples of how administrators contribute to the problem of grade inflation, either by implementing policies that inadvertently put pressures on professors to assign higher grades, or deliberately, by arbitrarily raising the grades of entire classes to keep specific students happy. In the later case, inflation is complaint-driven as individual administrators try to ‘keep the customers happy,’ by overturning a professor’s grades in a course, thereby interfering with that professor’s attempt to maintain certain standards.
In this post, I discuss two examples that illustrate why it is problematic for administrators to ignore of how grades and standards are related.
The first example was recently reported by insidehighered.com in an article titled ‘Who really failed?’ (April 15, 2010). In this case a biology professor at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge was removed from a course at midterm because students claimed to the dean that it was too hard (read: their marks were too low). After her dismissal, the dean raised students’ grades.
The thing is, this professor has 30 years of teaching experience and believes that “students must achieve mastery of the subject matter, not just achieve more mastery than the worst students in the course.” This is not an instance of someone new to the profession making a mistake about standards; it is a case where the authority of a seasoned professor was nullified by an administration more concerned about ‘customer satisfaction’ than standards.
The professor, Dominique Homberger, gave weekly quizzes and (planned to give) frequent tests, but was removed after the second test, in spite of evidence of success for her strategy of driving the point home that students need to work to earn their grades. This second test included a bonus question asking students to report their biggest ‘AHA experience’ experienced in the course. One student answered as follows:
My biggest AHA‐reaction in this course is that I need to study for this course every night to make a good grade. I must also attend class, take good notes, and have study sessions with others. Usually a little studying can get me by but not with this class which is why it is my AHA‐reaction.
In addition to confirming that Homberger was merely using the rigorous standards that ought to be associated with higher education, this student’s feedback illustrates how intellectually distanced students can be from the actual substance of a course, because the ‘AHA experience’ came, not from the content of the course itself, but from the fact that someone was actually enforcing standards.
Homberger was removed without any advance notice, in spite of gains in grades by students after the ‘shock’ of the first test. The dean had not even bothered to sit in on any of her classes to determine if her teaching competence was at fault. She had no serious issues with students about her grading practices in the past, but it is telling that she hadn’t taught an introductory course in about 15 years, so perhaps did not realize how standards had slipped during that time, and how much lower-level courses had become ‘give-aways’ in which all students did well and no one faced the prospect of failure for lack of effort (see my Feb. 22 post where I provide data from Western’s introductory physics/astronomy course showing that grade distributions have gone from about 40% As and Bs and 14% Fs in the early ‘90s to over 70% As and Bs and about 3% Fs). Following her dismissal, Homberger remarked that “no one has ever questioned whether any of the test questions were unfair or unfairly graded, but that she was told that she may include ‘too many facts’ on her tests.”
This case is an example of grade inflation caused by administrators who are either unaware of grading standards or naively assume that grade inflation does not exist. In this case, the grade inflation at LSU may be ‘hidden’ inflation where old distributions are maintained, but standards are dropped, or it may be the worst form of grade inflation where distributions are raised AND standards are dropped. It is difficult to determine which is the problem at LSU based on the reporting of the incident, but the dean involved issued the following statement through his university’s public relation office stating: “The extreme nature of the grading raised a concern, and we felt it was important to take some action to ensure that our students receive a rigorous, but fair, education.” This dean’s understanding of a ‘rigorous, fair, education’ clearly needs to be closely scrutinized as the American Association of University Professors investigates this case.
Could this sort of thing happen in Canada? Well, yes it could and following the publication of Ivory Tower Blues I received several emails from university teachers who had experienced some form of it. These were mainly sessional instructors who subsequently either gave up on the profession or were forced out. However, a recent report from a colleague in response to my recent posts on grade inflation shows that it is happening in some form, even to seasoned professors.
In this case, prompted by a complaining student, an administrator e-mailed the professor, questioning his standards. The student complained to be doing “20% better in another course” offered by the department, but in spite of studying “as hard as she could” for this professor’s tests could not achieve more than a C. According to the student, this course threatens to “be an impediment” in achieving her career goals, and the blame for this impediment was placed squarely on this professor’s tests, which the students claimed “did not test your knowledge of the material that we learned in class, but of random facts and things that were not emphasized in class or in the text book.”
This administrator admitted to not being sure what should be done, but felt pressured to do something because of the higher grades being given elsewhere for the same course. This professor, with 30+ years experience in undergraduate teaching and multiple teaching awards, was asked to give assurances that his students “were adequately prepared for the content” of his exams.
In response, the professor responded with the following assurances:
[First,] the most often failed (hardest) 50% of test questions came nearly exclusively from material that was presented solely in class. This is not surprising given that up to half of the students were not in attendance on any given [date] and that many of the remainder were answering emails, laughing at a Scrubs download, or playing Spider on their ever-present laptops. Second, the tests means (unadjusted) were in the mid-50s and I adjusted them upwards to the as usual grade inflated mid 70’s, the expected reward at [this institution] for mediocre achievement …
In addition to revealing creeping grade inflation, this second example shows a how much academic disengagement hampers student learning, yet the blame is increasingly placed on professors. It also shows how the belief has spread that effort should be all that is necessary to gain high marks in any university course. Should it really be the case that someone of low to average ability should be able to achieve high marks in any university course of their choosing, even if merely on the basis of effort?
If anyone has similar stories to share, either from their personal experiences or with stories like that reported by insidehighered.com, please do so as a comment or e-mail to me at cote@uwo.ca.
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