Grade Inflation and Vanity Honors - Harvard Looking to Revise Grading, Honors Policy

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Lerner, Aug 27, 2006.

Loading...
  1. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    Grade Inflation and Vanity Honors - Harvard Looking to Revise Grading, Honors Policy

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    http://www-tech.mit.edu/V122/N04/4harvard.04n.html

    Harvard Looking to Revise Grading, Honors Policy
    By Brian Loux
    NEWS EDITOR

    In the film With Honors, a Harvard student works his tail off in hopes of getting a Harvard diploma "with honors," but in the end, he falls short of his goal.

    Of course, life is never like the movies. In reality, he would have almost certainly received his Harvard degree with honors, along with 91 percent of his fellow classmates.

    National media scrutiny over this fact has pushed the Harvard community to make a panicked rush for grade reform. Harvard administrators and faculty are hoping to alter the school's grading policy to stop what has widely been termed as an inflation of student grades.

    Today, all departments of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard will submit grading practice summaries to the Educational Policy Committee, who will use them to determine how to make grades less skewed towards higher letters. The committee is expected to form policies by the end of Harvard's spring term.

    ----------------

    Vanity Honors

    'A's Still Abound 4.0 Years Later

    Despite a cap on honor designations, efforts to combat grade inflation have been all but dropped

    Published On Thursday, June 09, 2005 12:00 AM

    By ROBIN M. PEGUERO

    Crimson Staff Writer

    When the members of this year's graduating class were still high school seniors, their college of choice was being dubbed "the laughingstock of the Ivy League" by the national media for handing out an exorbitant amount of A-range grades and awarding over 90 percent of its graduates Latin honors. The Harvard ?B+' was the new ?gentlemen's C,' it seemed, which detractors said undercut the very value of the Harvard transcript.

    The College reacted to the flurry of media criticism in 2001 by instituting a Latin honors cutoff of 60 percent and switching from its old 15-point scale to the more conventional 4.0 scale.

    But four years later, nearly half of Harvard grades are still within the A-range. And unlike before, when the College faced both national and in-house scrutiny for grade inflation, no one seems to be talking about it.

    This year's contentious discussion of University President Lawrence H. Summers' leadership and the ongoing Harvard College Curricular Review have preoccupied the Faculty, pushing a once hot-button issue to the back burner.

    http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=508107
     
  2. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    So Harvard has been cooking the books. Sounds a bit millish doesn't it?

    Will NE regional accreditor even blink?

    And what are the members of the board of trusties doing, to busy to running their own affairs.
     
  3. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    How so? no. Why should they? Irrelevant.
     
  4. Neoplato

    Neoplato New Member

    The trend started a long time ago:

    A Harvard perspective:

     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 29, 2006
  5. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    And why do people keep getting their undies up in a bunch about so-called grade inflation at Harvard? Just to get into Harvard, one must be the creme de la creme. Then, once in Harvard, one has the privilige of associating with some of the most intelligent people in the world for four years. With that being their baseline, why should anyone be surprised that so many are maintaining A's and graduating with honours? What would surprise me would be if an open-admissions school (i.e., those that let educated derelicts who durn near dropped out of high school in, provided that they did eventually get that high school diploma) started producing a bunch of graduates with 4.0 GPA's and honours degrees.
     
  6. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    I was under impression that Harvard was embarrassed and this is why they are making changes, because of the way they grant Honors it became somewhat unethical.
    Am I missing the point?
     
  7. Neoplato

    Neoplato New Member

    That point is noteworthy. I can imagine an employer being more impressed than he should be about a prospective employee who graduated with honors.

    (However, since I've never knowingly met a Harvard graduate in my life, it all seems very remote and unimportant. If I was on an academic hiring committee, I'm sure it would seem more relevant.)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 29, 2006
  8. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    My point is that if you only let the creme de la creme in, you shouldn't be surprised if many of those people get honours. What would be surprising, to me, anyway, would be if large portions of the students at an open admissions school were graduating with honours.
     

Share This Page