MURDER BY STATISTICS

That methods of grading examinations should be as many and variable as the several departments is perhaps unavoidable, and be it said that most of these systems are just. Yet there is one which has grown of late into a scourge.

When a professor decides before an examination what percentage of the class he will flunk, what percentage he will pass and what proportion of honor grades he will give, he lays himself open to a charge of gross injustice. To the student who dares complain he replies either that he is held down to the rules by a superior, or that he believes it the only satisfactory system. He can not, or will not, take into account the merit of the individual student. A man who writes an "A" paper thus receives a "B" simply because several other men wrote "A" papers which are called a shade better by some superhuman mathematical genius. Similarly the border-line student goes on probation because, although his paper is in all ways satisfactory, the instructor has decided to give a certain number of "D's".

Equally unjust is the system whereby the grades in a course are averaged; the average, be it 82 or 56 is taken as a "C" medium; and marks are announced which give no indication of individual accomplishment. Fortunately, this second evil seems to be on the ebb. The first; however, is rising steadily, and deserves all the condemnation that can be heaped upon it. The grade must be made to depend not on the relative position of a student in an arbitrary scale, but on his absolute merit as displayed in his work.