Reply to Harvard faculty vote to limit A grades to no more than 20% of the class

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Anybody who does A work needs to get an A on their transcript. Doing otherwise means the grades are meaningless.

What grades others get has nothing to do with my grade. [/quote]

Most people do not produce true A work. The average grade should be a 3.0. Only those very much above average should get a 4.0. Grade inflation is bad for everyone [/quote]

What's your evidence for this? Why should an average grade be a 3.0. Clearly your education didn't teach you to make arguments coherently.[/quote]

Because a B grade is historically defined as "above average" and "good" work.  90% of students can't be above average in the real world.[/quote]

Your education didn't teach you the difference between an opinion or a fact either.   Grades can be normative (where students receive grades relative to the performance of their fellow students) or fixed (attainment of some pre-determined learning standards.)

Both grading options have their strengths and weaknesses. Grading on a curve at Harvard is rough.  Brown writes that 47% of its students were valedictorian or salutatorian of their HS class.  It's probably well above that at Harvard.[/quote]

+1 I hate to burst your bubble, but 90% of students at Harvard are academically "above average."  If they've shown mastery of learning standards for the course, there doesn't need to be an artificial curve such that only 20% of them can get As.  They shouldn't be penalized just because they're with a much smarter cohort than the average university.

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90% of college students aren't taking Harvard's classes [/quote]

Even Harvard professors are dumbing down their classes to accommodate what are generally more mediocre students compared to 30 years ago and this generation's expectations of As.

Things are different today compared to what they were in the 90s. Harvard's admitted classes today are academically weaker. And a B is devastating for these students. They've never had one before. Whereas 30 years ago, most Harvard students were pretty smart and a B was a perfectly good grade. I think Harvard and Yale and others are trying to go back to the way things were in the 90s - smart kids in an environment where a B is pretty good and the As are reserved for truly exceptional.

But I can see why professors might not like dictates from above dictating how they grade, especially in the more quantitative majors where there is usually a right answer and a wrong answer. However, grading everywhere has lost the plot in recent years. If everyone is exceptional, no one is. And schools like Harvard and Yale have the influence to restore balance in academic grading. There should be nothing wrong with getting a B. And an A should be regarded as pretty awesome.   [/quote]

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