Matthew Miller
http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- COMPLAINTS that our culture has become debauched usually take aim at Hollywood, but the revelation that 50 percent of the grades given to Harvard students are either A or A-minus suggests it's time for Cambridge to rethink how its standards affect everyone else's.
According to a new study, roughly half of Harvard's undergraduate grades today are in the A range, up from one-third 15 years ago. C's, D's and failing grades account for fewer than 6 percent.
Within this broad upward drift, small classes have higher grades than large classes, and humanities classes are easier than the sciences. Indeed, in small humanities classes, almost two-thirds of the grades are A or A-minus.
Now, I didn't go to Harvard, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me this trend says something disturbing about the standards our premier institution of higher learning ought to be enforcing.
We need elite shops like Harvard to discriminate in the best sense - between work and thought that is good, and work and thought that is truly superior. And I'm sorry, but the notion that they're all geniuses up in Cambridge - so how can we possibly distinguish among them? - just won't wash with anyone who's seen the full range of Harvard grads in action.
The reaction of some students is even more troubling. Ganesh Sitaraman, writing in the student-run Harvard Crimson, was "appalled at the inconsiderate manner" in which the university is addressing the matter.
By publicly admitting a problem, this future leader laments, Harvard is "hurting students," debasing the brand in the eyes of employers and grad schools - not to mention diminishing, however slightly, the power of "dropping the H-bomb in conversation."
It's basically a "spin" problem, he says. Harvard should "change the debate" by showing that grade inflation is rampant at every top school, and position itself as a leader in fixing things.
No doubt that's a "smart" response in terms of personal and institutional self-interest, but if this is the brand of virtue and wisdom they're teaching at Harvard nowadays, count me depressed.
Yet as I learned from my moles on various faculties, grade inflation is one of those issues that raise complex questions about merit, incentives, pedagogy and more.
Some assert controversially that easy grading is a scandal borne of political correctness in the wake of affirmative-action reforms that admit less talented minorities. At Harvard, however, administrators say their statistics show such a "racial guilt" theory to be demonstrably false Others say a habit that began during the Vietnam era - when flunking someone might be tantamount to a death sentence - has mutated over the years into a way of "buying love," as professors and departments seek the popularity, teaching awards and big enrollments that boost their careers and standing.
Still others say it shows that the modern academic seeks to avoid conflict above all else, especially in an era when students and their parents scream, "We're paying $35,000 a year for this degree - how dare you tarnish the credential we're buying!" Says one prof who taught at Stanford for a time: "The grade-grubbing was just unbearable."
Once people get wise to the scam, it creates its own backlash. Stanford reinstated the "D" in the 1980s, when the committees that pick Rhodes scholars told the school it was no longer possible to tell if a student sporting a 3.8 GPA was any good. The law school at UC Berkeley, meanwhile, developed a deflator to "dial down" GPAs from schools known as easy marks, thus giving greater weight to tougher colleges like Swarthmore, where a 3.7 GPA really meant something.
Derek Shearer, a colleague of mine at Occidental College who served as Bill Clinton's ambassador to Finland, insists it's much ado about nothing. "You could abolish grades at Harvard entirely," he says, "and there would be no affect on society." Places like Oxford, he points out, rank students rigorously only once at the end of their tenure, as do most honors programs in America.
I know he's got a point, but when I also know today's Harvard students are proudly slapping their bogus 3.8s on their resumes, it feels to me like a racket. Does the exemplar of American meritocracy really want this to be its ultimate lesson - that once you're in The Club, you're home
JWR contributor Matt Miller is a senior fellow at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Comment by clicking here.
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