B-School Students Favor Policy of Grade Secrecy

Fifty-nine percent of Business School students favor a policy of denying job recruiters access to their grades, according to a recent school-wide referendum.

The referendum, conducted by the school's student government, reflects widespread student criticism of recruiting procedures and student protests that grades are a poor indication of ability and level of learning.

Students also complain that grade pressure cause by the recruiting process creates an unfavorable atmosphere for approaching the B-School's case method of studying.

"The greater the emphasis here is on grades, in our opinion, the less it is on learning," said Troy Haas, chairman of the student government's Education Committee. "The amount of learning and grades simply do not track together," he added.

If 75 percent of the school--a margin set by the student government and school administrators--had supported the policy, the B-School placement office would have asked first year candidates for the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree not to release their grades to recruiters.

"The reason we set the margin so high is that the policy would depend on the voluntary cooperation of all students if it is to work effectively," said Cory O'Conner, a representative of the school's General Affairs Committee.

However, even though approval fell short of 75 percent, the demonstration of strong support for the policy is expected to encourage students not to discuss grades.

"The choice of what to discuss in recruitment meetings is determined partly by the student." Van Sheets, assistant director of MBA placement, said yesterday. "Already some students will not discuss grades," he added.

Haas said that the great majority of the estimated 15,000 recruitment interviews this year will not raise any questions about grades.

The Stanford Business School implemented a policy of grade secrecy three years ago. Although officials there were not available for comment yesterday. Christopher Shinkman, director of Stanford's undergraduate placement office, said recruiters have not opposed the policy.

Evaluations

The Education Committee, in an effort to attack the grade problem at its source, has drafted several changes in the process of evaluating students, but has not settled on an acceptable alternative to the current system, Haas said.

The B-School currently has three grading categories. Twenty percent of every class falls into the first "honors" category, and 10 percent fall in the lowest grouping. The remainder receives the same "acceptable" ranking.

"We object strongly to parts of the grading procedure like the forced curve, but it is very difficult to come up with an alternative which is better," Haas said.

"The case study method of teaching is based on group cooperation. Excessive grade competition defeats the goals of the method," O'Conner said.

Several students said yesterday, however, that the results of the referendum do not indicate shortcomings in the grading procedure, but rather the average student's desire not to be judged on grades.

"Eighty percent of the school receives average or below average grades," said one student who asked to remain anonymous. "Clearly, it is in their best interest not to let recruiters see their grades," he added.

B-School officials emphasized that the referendum was not meant necessarily to resolve problems with the process but to generate discussion on several long-standing concerns.

In addition to the grades question, the referendum included other issues about the shortcomings of the recruitment process.

"Grade concerns and other apprehensions about recruitment meetings are by no means new developments," Sheets said. "We can begin to solve the problems though, only when we focus attention on them," he added.

Seventy-three percent of B-School students favored a resolution to prevent recruiters from scheduling interview sharing class meetings. In the past, students have often been forced to miss classes to interview with recruiters.

And 93 percent of the school supported a move to prevent a recruiters from soliciting information from a student about his classmates.

Judy C. Tisdale, a recruiter for the ROLM corporation of California, said yesterday that recruiters rarely try to discover information about a student from his classmates.

In addition, she said that grades are usually of much less importance as a job qualification than work experience.

O'Conner said the student government is considering holding second referendum on recruiting issues after his spring's recruiting