CUE Hears Plan to Curb Grade Hike

The Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) yesterday considered a proposal that essentially would combat grade inflation by including with each student's grade on his transcript the number of students enrolled in the course and the median grade.

Francis M. Pipkin, chairman of the committee and assistant dean of the Faculty, yesterday introduced the proposal which he said met with unsympathetic response from faculty and student members of the group.

A letter outlining the proposal sent from Richard Diamond '76 to Dean Rosovsky, provoked the CUE to consider the recommendation.

Diamond said he decided to bring the proposal to the attention of the Harvard administration after discussing it with a dean at the University of California at Berkeley last summer. Berkeley implemented the program this fall.

Pipkin said he has mixed feelings about the program. "Although it never hurts to have more information on a transcript. the recommended changes may be misinterpreted by graduate schools."

Pipkin explained that while the information would be useful in gauging a student's performance in a large course such as Chemistry 20. "Organic Chemistry," the median grade in courses with very few people may not be representative.

"While we hope this could renormalize the grade curve, the information may be overinterpreted by graduate schools," Pipkin said.

Perspective

James Morse, one of the four undergraduate CUE members said he learned toward accepting the proposal because there was a need to put course grades in relative perspective.

"Right now there's no distinction between an A in a course that gives all A's and an A in a course with a C-median. It's generally known that grades are higher in small courses such as tutorials. This difference could be accounted for," Morse said.

Another undergraduate CUE member, Diane L. Sherlock '78, who is a Crimson editor, called the proposal a "step in the right direction but not far enough."

"Obviously there is abuse in the grading system," Sherlock said. "Students choose courses to a certain extent on the basis of grades they can get in them. Unfortunately, the proposal gives no understanding of what went into each grade and how hard a student works to get it."

Stanley H. Hoffman, professor of Government and member of the faculty council who was present at yesterday's CUE meeting, sharply criticized the proposed measure, fearing it would provoke unnecessary competition among the students in a course.

"There's enough grade competition already," he said. "It will just get people worried, and won't have any effect on graduate school admission."

But representatives of the Law and Medical Schools' admissions committees denied Hoffman's claim that such information would be irrelevant in reaching a decision.

Evaluation

F. Sargent Cheever, professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and director of admissions at the Medical School, said the proposal would probably not be helpful in evaluating Harvard undergraduates "because the reputation of an institution and course teacher--with which we are familiar here--are more important than grades."

He went on to say that although Harvard has had a "reasonable amount of grade inflation" compared to most schools, he would like to see the College experiment with the system for a couple of years and then decide whether to continue using it.

Alan A. Stone, professor of Law and Psychiatry at the Law and Medical Schools and head of admissions at the Law School. said yesterday the extra information "might be useful, although we pay less attention than the Medical School to grades in particular courses."

"We know from the application where a student's grade point average is." he said