Princeton Trims A-Range Grades

Princeton University is halfway to its goal of curbing grade inflation, according to a statement released by Princeton College Dean Nancy W. Malkiel last Monday.

During the 2004-2005 school year, the percentage of A-range grades issued by Princeton undergraduate faculty fell from 46 percent to 40.9 percent, and the percentage of A-range grades given for junior and senior theses fell from 59.5 percent to 57.9 percent.

Following a proposal passed in April 2004 by the Princeton Faculty Committee on Grading, Princeton implemented a set of grading standards aimed at limiting A-range grades to only 35 percent of total grades given in undergraduate courses, and 55 percent of grades given for junior and senior independent work.

“We are impressed by the seriousness with which members of the faculty have taken on the challenge of bringing grades under better control,” said Malkiel, on behalf of the Grading Committee, in the press release. “After so many years of steady grade inflation, we have actually been able to move the needle in the other direction, in a remarkably short period of time.”

Malkiel was unavailable for further comment yesterday.

The grade deflation policy was met with considerable controversy when it was announced in 2004, with students citing concerns about the possible impact of deflated grades on graduate school enrollment and post-collegiate job placement. A year and a half later, some students still harbor reservations about the policy.

“I think in general the student body is pretty reasonable and we recognize that grade inflation is an issue that many Universities have to deal with, including ours,” Undergraduate Student Government President Leslie-Bernard Joseph wrote in an e-mail. “What concerns students most are those instances where we feel we are graded down, especially unfairly, in the name of grade deflation.”

Joseph noted that some students particularly take issue with the possibility that professors may see the 35 percent number as a rule rather than a recommendation.

“To our understanding, the new grading policy is supposed to set guidelines and goals for professors, not hard-line quotas that only 35 percent of each precept can receive A’s,” Joseph said. “We don’t have a problem not getting A’s we don’t deserve. But it is intensely frustrating to work hard all semester, for an A, only to get a B+ be all semester, for an A, only to get a B+ because some professors believe the guidelines to, in fact, be a quota system.”

Princeton’s new policy was implemented in part as a response to outside pressure placed on elite institutions to curb grade inflation—pressure not limited to its campus. In 2001, Harvard came under similar public scrutiny when the Boston Globe published an article revealing that 91 percent of seniors that year had graduated with honors.

Since then, the percentage of A-range grades at Harvard has not changed significantly.

Strategies to control grade inflation varied among academic departments, according to a Princeton statement.

The Economics Department agreed on target A-range grade percentages depending on course type and difficulty. In contrast, the English Department allowed their faculty to make their own grading decisions while simply keeping the grading guidelines in mind.

The Grading Committee plans to study effective departmental approaches in an effort to assist other departments in implementing inflation control policies.

As for the results in specific departments, the percentage of A-range grades in the humanities went down most significantly, from 56.2 percent to 45.5 percent. A-range grades in the social sciences were cut from 42.5 percent to 38.4 percent. In engineering, A’s accounted for 36.4 percent of grades, down from 48.0 percent. In the natural sciences, the proportion of A’s remained the same as that of the year before, at 36.4 percent.