Grading the Grading

Each semester follows a natural progression from shopping week to midterms to final exams. Grades submitted at the end of each semester thus deliver not only academic feedback but also a sense of resolution to each learning experience. This year—the second year after reforming the academic calendar to place exams before winter break—the administration delayed the official deadline for submitting grades. The grade deadline changed from four days after the final examination to Jan. 3 for all classes. Despite this definite date, grades for some classes trickled in well past the deadline.

This decision to allow professors to submit grades up through the second business day after winter break—an unofficial policy last year—was ultimately short-sighted and unfair. Most importantly, students applying for fellowships, jobs, grad programs, and internships should be able to submit as complete an account of their grades as possible with their application, for the sake of everyone involved.

We sympathize with the fact that the original policy forced professors of classes with later exams to grade during the holiday season, a time that they may wish to spend with their families. That said, grades should be due four business days after the final exam in a class or after classes end in a class without exams—even if the Registrar is closed between exams and the beginning of the new academic year.

As employees of the college, professors are obligated to return grades on time, and, frankly, there should be more accountability from the faculty side of things. Just as students are required to return essays in a timely manner—barring emergencies—the teaching staff of each course should also be required to provide the courtesy of academic feedback. After all, students struggled with compressed schedules under the new calendar, bearing the load without accommodations from the administration, and professors should do the same.

Additionally, there should also be a proper incentive structure with regard to the Q Guide. Certain irregularities—such as students receiving their grades who did not fill out the Q in time or those who did not receiving their grades any earlier—should be ironed out. Without a standardized method of motivation to fill out course evaluations, the university loses credibility and unintentionally encourages people to boycott the Q Guide, a mutually advantageous resource for professors and potential students alike.

Also, insufficient coordination with the Registrar has presumably compounded the problem. As students attempted to the access their grades on the deadline for grades and long afterwards, the Online Student Record Tool was down for extended periods. We believe that in order to properly handle the situation, I.T. should have had more manpower dedicated to the registrar’s I.T. system.

In general, professors should be more conscientious about returning academic work. While a punctual final grade may be the most visible, direct method of academic feedback, the end of a course necessitates full academic disclosure. When considering the educational impact of a semester’s worth of learning, just a transcript grade pales in comparison to actually viewing your corrected exam or your final with comments. Although of course some professors readily meet with students from the previous semester to discuss the final exam, term paper, or final project, this should not be left up to a particular professor’s discretion. Indeed, there should be formally instituted procedure that sets deadlines for emailing out comments and responses on a course’s final assessments as well as a more general academic deadline.

At a base level, Harvard is an institution of higher learning. According to its stated institutional goals, “education at Harvard should liberate students to explore, to create, to challenge, and to lead.” Although less romantic, such lofty aspirations can only be realized through proper closure to the academic experience from both sides of the classroom.