Harvard asks faculty to justify grading methods

By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff, 10/23/2001

or the first time, professors at Harvard University have been asked to justify the grades they give students as the university launches its toughest examination yet of grade inflation.

Susan Pedersen, dean of undergraduate education, gave faculty members a January deadline to explain their grading practices in writing. A committee will review the data and recommend whether changes to grading should be considered.

The plan was announced at a private faculty meeting last week, following a Globe study revealing that decades of grade inflation have made it much easier to graduate with honors.

More than half of Harvard's grades last year were A's and A-minuses, and a record 91 percent of students graduated with honors in June. Yale, Princeton, and other Ivy League and nationally ranked universities had far lower rates of honors, the Globe found.

Pedersen did not discuss honors at the faculty meeting, but the new president, Lawrence H. Summers, said through a spokesman afterward that he was ''very concerned about both honors inflation and grade inflation'' and would consult with professors about the issues. He declined to comment further.

The pattern of high grades and near-universal honors indicates that professors are not assessing students as critically or rigorously as the university's elite reputation would suggest, education specialists warned in the Globe study early this month.

Deans have previously warned the faculty about the upward trend in A's. But some professors say Harvard has sent mixed signals about the seriousness of grade inflation. In the past, for example, officials suggested that students receive more leeway in dropping classes, an option students sometimes invoke when the threat of a bad grade looms.

This latest review is the broadest and most explicit attempt in years to rein in grade inflation, Harvard officials and professors say.

''I'm not aware of anything untoward going on in our department, but we're under some pressure now to show it,'' said Oliver Hart, chairman of economics department.

Over the next few weeks, academic departments will receive data on their grading histories and patterns. Professors and graduate-student teaching fellows are expected to describe the ways in which they assess and mark student work, as well as to explain grading trends that may suggest inflation. The Educational Policy Committee, which is made up chiefly of administrators and faculty,will discuss the data in the spring.

Deans would clearly like professors to grade more carefully and rigorously, but the officials cannot impose any new grading standard unless they or Summers want to start a dispute within the faculty. The faculty largely dictates academic policy and has traditionally enjoyed broad independence in how it evaluates students.

Short of challenging this prerogative, the deans and Summers can only direct departments and committees to study the issue, build a case for a proposed policy change, and then use the bully pulpit and private meetings to persuade the faculty to vote for it.

Many professors support the grading review, though they generally add that they think grade inflation is not a major problem. Many also see themselves as fairly tough graders who give high marks only because their students are academically extraordinary. Whether a problem truly exists, and how it might be solved, will become clearer once they see Pedersen's data, they said.

''Dealing with grade inflation requires knowing the extent of it - have your grades risen from C-plus to A-minus, or from B to B-plus? Is it big or small?'' said Roderick MacFarquhar, chairman of the government department.

Like other department leaders, MacFarquhar said it would be inappropriate for him to instruct his faculty members on how to grade their students. ''All you can do is get professors to recognize that this has been delineated, officially, as a problem,'' he said.

Lawrence Buell, who heads the English department and once held Pedersen's job, said his chief concern is that grading practices vary by department, making grade inflation a problem in some classes but not all. He said he believes Harvard should adopt an anti-inflation strategy used by Dartmouth College and some other schools: Students receive transcripts with two grades for each class: the grade earned by the student and the median grade in the class. This way, graduate schools, corporate recruiters, and professors themselves know when an A is a common grade or a rare one.

Harvard professors considered this idea several years ago, but it ultimately died in committee.

The outcome of the new study will depend in large part on Summers, given that deans have failed to solve the problem on their own. Summers says he wants undergraduates to meet high and rigorous academic standards, but whether grades will become part of his agenda is unclear. A data-driven economist and former US treasury secretary who is known for forming his ideas on the basis of evidence and then quietly persuading others to see his point of view, Summers has been reluctant to speak publicly about the issue.

For example, after Pedersen unveiled her plan at the faculty meeting, a professor asked the president for a comment on grade inflation as well as any other academic matters. It was his debut meeting as president, yet rather than make a splash he was characteristically circumspect.

''These are important discussions and right now. I have observations on international relations and grade inflations, but I am going to defer those observations until next time,'' he said, according to an unofficial transcript of the meeting. The next meeting is on Nov. 13.

Patrick Healy can be reached by e-mail at phealy@globe.com.

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 10/23/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.