Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2002/03/01/grades_at_dartmouth_on_the_rise.php
Friday, March 1, 2002
'Rumors come from Hanover that the 'profs' are getting stricter and stricter in their marking. It is feared that more than one patriotic freshman may not survive the mid-year 'exams,'' declared the Journal of Boston in 1913 under the heading 'Nervous Freshman.' It would seem that students of Dartmouth would not have much to worry about these days, as a rise in average GPA's has drastically reduced the probability of failing out of the College on the Hill. Over a 50-year period the College's grades have inexorably risen over one point in the last half-century, from a mean of 2.2 in 1958-59 to 3.31 in 1998-99. This rise in average GPA's may not even have yet run its full course, and has sparked a persistent debate on and off college campuses about addressing the issue of grade inflation.
One would be remiss to conclude that the debate about grades and their meaning is a recent development: since its inception, the College has struggled to create a fair, consistent and viable methodology for the distribution of grades. A report submitted to the faculty of the College by the Committee on Instruction dated February of 1915 details the shift from a numeric grading system to a letter based system. 'What is needed to remedy the situation is... a system of grading in which every grade is objectively defined in such a way that all instructors, whatever their department, will attach to each grade the same meaning,' the report declares.
To accomplish this objective, the report proposed a stern adherence to a median-based grading system spread out over the whole class. While one particular course might be made up of honors students and may thus earn several A's, and another course may be made up of 'repeaters' and receive more F's than would be average, over the course of the entire body of students in a particular class, a normal probability curve should be adhered to. As the report intones, 'The system cannot be applied mechanically, without violating the spirit in which it was conceived... For, very few of the sections in College are representative classes.'
That the spirit of this report was to create a median-based grading system, however, is not contestable. Another communication delivered the next year from the same Committee reiterates the Colleges commitment to a new and fair system. 'The essential difference lies in the fact that under the old system you were asked to give a quantitative measure of a student's accomplishment, whereas under the new system you are asked merely to estimate his rank in a representative class,' says the report. 'This means, for example, that when you report a student as of grade C, you are stating in effect that the quality of this student's work would, in your judgment, place him in the middle half of the representative class to which he belongs.'
This system was applied with a remarkable degree of success. The Class of 1918, in its freshman year, received 5.8% A's, 18.6% B's, 51.9% C's, 15.0% D's, and 8.7% E's. While in particular courses these students excelled (around 70% of Dartmouth men achieved commendable grades of A's or B's in Biblical History class), on the whole, the 'representative class' fell along a fairly normal probability curve.
This system of grading was dismantled, and the campus returned to a grading system of numerical averages and faculty perceptions reestablished in 1973, according to a Report on Grades from the Committee on Grading. 'The criteria for each grade moves away from descriptions based on 'average,' 'national averages' and statistical measures. The new criteria becomes faculty judgments regarding the students' performance,' the report stated. At that time, the grading system was changed to its current incarnation, outlined in the ORC. An A represents 'excellent mastery of course material,' 'a very high degree of originality, creativity or both,' 'excellent performance in analysis, synthesis, and critical expression, oral or written,' and 'student works independently with unusual effectiveness.' According to this outline, B represents 'good mastery,' C represents 'acceptable mastery,' while D and E represent 'deficient' and 'seriously deficient' mastery of coursework.
By this time, however, the curved standard had long been in decline, evidenced by the precipitous rise in grades over the prior two decades. In academic year 1931-32, average GPA's stood at 2.33. Twenty-seven years later, in 1959, average GPA's had remained relatively stable at 2.2. But only ten years later, in 1969, they had risen to 2.7, then again in the next decade to 3.125 by 1979. By 1989, they stood at 3.21, and by the 98-99 academic year, 3.31 was the average student's grade point average. To put this into clearer perspective, while the aforementioned freshman of the Class of 1918 received 5.8% A's and 18.6% B's, Dartmouth students sixty years later in the 1988 school year achieved 37% A's and 49% B's in courses.
Since the early 90's, administrators have claimed to be hoping for a solution to grade inflation without proposing any practical steps. Then registrar Thomas Bickell told the Daily Dartmouth, 'We are hoping that some departments tighten up... The ideal would be to have small fluctuations each year.' Another ten years later, and GPA's have continued their upward trend unabated.
Though the rise in GPA's is not confined to the humanities, math and science departments have not experienced as much movement. Horst Richter, the Department Chair of Engineering, said of the inflation, 'I see that it's essentially in all the departments, the sciences have it a little better under control.'
One of the oft-stated reasons for higher GPA's is the argument that Dartmouth admits students of far greater caliber than it did in the past, and that it would be unfair to penalize these young virtuosos with bad grades. As Mary Hudson, Department Co-Chair for Physics and Astronomy, put this popular opinion, 'Are we getting a more outstanding pool of students compared with 20 to 30 years ago? Yes, I think the caliber of students has gone up.'
Certainly, over the last century the college has become more selective, but whether this is truly the reason behind grade inflation is highly questionable. Dartmouth has long been a highly-selective college. In an exposé in the Sunday Herald of Boston dated September 25, 1921, the paper headline read, ''Dartmouth, 'Mother of Men,' is Turning Men Away.'' 1500 applicants that year were turned away, and many more applications would have been received, the article exclaimed, 'if it had not been generally known all over the country that the chances of entering the New Hampshire institution, unless there was some exceptional reason, were practically nil.' Then, there was a 28% admissions rate. For the Class of 1963, 825 men were accepted out of a pool of 2800 applications — 29%. This year, according to The Princeton Review, the admissions rate stands at 23%. So, as grades have risen approximately 43% (using the 1931-32 figure), admissions selectivity has dropped 5% since the early 1920's. One could argue that a smaller, less diverse pool of applicants applied to Dartmouth at that time, but these students were presumably the best educated in the country during that period, comparable to those at any other college. It does not seem possible that this great improvement in grades could be because of a small drop in admissions selectivity.
Dana Williams, Department Chair of Math, noted that the problem of grade inflation is 'a problem everywhere.' Thus, he believes, 'You cannot unilaterally attempt to do something about this,' since to do so 'would put Dartmouth students at a distinct disadvantage.' Williams believes that the College policy of publishing class median grades—adopted in 1994 over some student objections—on grade reports was 'a big step.' Whether the College will ever return to its curved grading policy, or outline and entrench its current system, part numeric and part subjective, remains to be seen. What is clear is that the grading specifications outlined in the ORC are not those being followed by the College.