Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Grade Inflation Rant, Issue One. From the Tuba-Playing Prof.

The comments to Hiram’s recent posting are especially disappointing to me. I like to fantasize that on other campuses, college is still noble, pure, true, virtuous, etc. And one day soon, we will replace the bastards in charge here, with champions from elsewhere—who will arrive one day here to purify the place…….. So when I read that fellow CMers share my misery, I fear that we will hire more of the same bastards—just with more power and at higher salaries.

We feel intensifying pressure to address grade inflation. The admins tell us that grades are too high. Then we get emails with press releases that mostly go unnoticed that our standards are ever increasing and thus our students are better than ever. Better students than we had before means that………the grades must go down? I am too dense to understand the logic.

What I do understand is as the faculty is expected to be challenging, tough, demanding, etc, the admins are getting soft.


Here, a student may “retake” a class s/he has failed, and the first grade is “excluded.” As in removed, gone, erased. Like hitting the reset button on a video game, one may simply start over. And now the admins are considering “academic bankruptcy.” Can one “clear” a record? Clearing the record isn’t a true record, is it?

Yet I sense that we’re already on our way.

Just last week I received an e-mail message from the Registrar’s Office that a grade that I assigned—a final grade of F for a student who failed the essays and the exams—“has been revised to a grade of W.” By whom, I wondered. Quickly I looked up the student’s online transcript to find that all of her grades from three semesters were now grades of W. With those three semesters of failing grades gone, the student now has a GPA high enough for her to apply for graduation next semester. I must mention that two weeks before I received the change in grade email students applied for Spring 2013 graduation, so I assume that some one noticed that with all those grades of F changed to W. . . .

A second student—who was one of my successful students in a special freshman section of Brass Instruments One in Fall 2009--failed my section of Tuba Playing One in the Fall 2010 semester for simply not attending classes and handing in assignments. As her academic advisor, I noted with regret that she had failed all of her Fall 2010 classes; talking with a colleague, I learned that she hadn’t attended that class either. However, when I prepared for the advising appointment she made but didn’t keep, I discovered that her entire Fall 2010 semester was gone. No grades, no record—as in removed, gone, erased. She signed up for full loads in the Spring 2011 semester and in the Fall 2011 semester, and once more she failed all of her classes.

A third student who is a veteran has not passed a single class in two years. Her advisor in student services contacted me about the “F” she received for Tuba Playing One; I explained that the grade reflected her attending class once—late in September, the last day of attendance that we are strictly required to record for all failing grades. The advisor replied by challenging my records. Was I sure that the student hadn’t attended classes? For the student assured the advisor that she had indeed attended all classes and turned in all assignments. I had to confirm my records because they didn’t correspond to a student who hasn’t earned a passing grade in two years. I suspected that she was going to be dismissed, yet she is currently enrolled for five classes and scheduled to take five classes in the Spring, including my Tuba Playing Two course. I guess once we “re-record” all of her grades to W, she’ll be okay.

By the way, as a good Turtle should, I have mentioned these cases to my senator who has bought them to the senate. We still await a reply.

So a new misery for me: My class, my preparation, my diligence, my care, my attention, my observation, my work, my standards, my tests, my comments, my help, my assignments, my assessment, my expertise, my determination, my duty, my professional measure--but I now never have the absolute FINAL say about the final final grade.

Are we teaching our students that the most “appealing” students (at least two definitions apply) are the students we retain and graduate? Is the ability to convince a person making a huge salary of one’s sincerity and suffering with the plea “my bad, so give me a do-over” a key skill to develop?

Doesn’t replacing a grade of F with a W or simply wiping out an entire semester of grades inflate students’ GPA?

Is someone, anywhere, instead of researching grades and student evaluations researching grade changes, retention rates, graduation rates, and scores in the (often bonus) college rankings in connection to administrative salaries and promotions?

17 comments:


  1. Not sure how someone can change a grade for someone else unless there is evidence of manifest unfairness or incompetence on the part of the instructor.

    In which case there should be much more discussion on the matter than a simple information notice via email.

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  2. "Was I sure that the student hadn’t attended classes? For the student assured the advisor that she had indeed attended all classes and turned in all assignments." <-- This is why I have a sign-in sheet for all class hours. Signature = attendance, which I try to verify with a head count every class. I also have them submit every written assignment on the CMS so that the paper trail is entirely virtual -- and date-stamped, and password-protected, and accessible online even after the end of the course.

    Obviously, your subject seems to preclude a lot of online submission, but do you have a system for keeping track of student attendance? I had to keep meticulous records of attendance when teaching comp a few years back, and it's a habit I hang onto as part of my general CYA policy vis-a-vis adminiflakes.

    As to your final point, do NOT get me started on those tea-partying rankings (especially today, but that's for another post). Literally everything we do as faculty at Across the Seas U is measured by its impact on the Almighty List, with little regard to how well the measurements reflect scholarly or educational achievement in every field. The rankings that spark obsessions over here never seem to take into account the mechanics of education, but they take a (deeply flawed) snapshot of research productivity and declare it rankable. The US rankings are little better.

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  3. How does changing all their grades to W not then require them to take those classes over again? Or does W stand for something other than Withdraw?

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    1. The student in question had to retake required courses, and as I stated, her second grades replace the first. The issue for me is that the courses for which she received failing grades that aren't required no longer factor in her overall GPA, that is, her GPA is higher.

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    2. Ah, okay. I read it wrong/too fast. I'd thought that they'd wiped out practically ALL of her grades and that she was going to graduate NOW, which didn't make any sense in my head.

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  4. Hmmmm... some of my colleagues would have thought that I had written the above. Our institution allows pretty flexible use of the "W" for students who know how to work the system and, recently, we encountered a case where administrators had changed a F to a W before giving us time to respond (Like 4 hrs. On a Friday. In the Summer.).

    However, some of this is related to financial aid. Apparently, if a student gets a F or a WF, then they may not be able to continue receiving the aid (or, most probably, loans) that they're living on. And yeah... there's a huge disconnect between Financial Aid, the Departments, and Student Services. I don't understand it either, but some with Ws get to stay in school and return (again and again), although they're woefully lacking in ability and, with the loans, are building a debt they'll never pay off.

    This is just a TINY portion of student, but the amount of time they consume is massive. In fact, the % is so small, it'd just "noise" IF they didn't take so much of our GDMFing time.

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    1. Ah ha! your point about FA is interesting: the officers in FA aren't helping students in the long run. Thanks for your comment.

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  5. I'm not so incensed about the ability to replace a grade by retaking the class (though I think a notation of how many times the student took the class to achieve the grade on the transcript might be appropriate, and fair to other students who took it once), or even by the idea of academic bankruptcy, but I *am* puzzled, disturbed, etc. by the idea of letting a student fail semester after semester, and come right back and do it all over again. In my day (says she, raising a palsied finger), failing a semester led to at least another semester, and usually a year, away from school to deal with whatever underlying problems were contributing to the academic problems (this was, admittedly, in a very selective institution, so general academic ability wasn't usually in question, though appropriate choice of major sometimes was. Even in less selective institutions, wholesale failure usually indicates that something beyond academic difficulty is in the mix). I suppose the argument is that if you suspend them from one school, they'll just go to another, but I still think it would worthwhile for the institution to say "why don't you take a break and think about why you're in school and what you want to get out of it, and come back when you have some answers?" If they and/or their parents choose to ignore the question (and the underlying problem), fair enough; at least the college tried.

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    1. In 2001, the policy at our local state school was academic probation after one failing semester and mandatory time-off (a year, I think) after two. The student could petition to apply before the year was up if they could present evidence of substantial improvement (not sure how often these were granted; my guess is not often).

      Students could retake a course at least once (maybe more), but all grades stayed on the transcript. I believe they were all factored in the GPA, so if the student earned a D in Chem I and then an A next semester, both grades counted for their GPA.

      Note that this was a fourth tier regional campus of the main state university. I think they had a reasonable policy, and like others pointed out above, we are actively harming students who continue to take out loans en route to a degree they have no chance to complete.

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  7. I'm hesitant to completely disallow retroactive W grades, because sometimes, shit happens.

    That being said, real true stinking horseshit doesn't happen nearly as often as the W grades are issued, and at least some of the time, those students who get a giant pile dumped on them manage to pass anyway.

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    1. And, as noted above, mounting loan debt can constitute a growing pile all its own. Allowing/inviting them to borrow semester after failed semester, on the presumed assumption that doing so will eventually help them financially, strikes me as something close to malpractice. Someone who is borrowing for school (and that's the majority these days, I'm pretty sure) needs to be especially focused and ready to make that investment potentially worthwhile. No, the financial angle isn't the only or perhaps even the most important goal of college, but one shouldn't borrow, or encourage others to borrow, with no idea of how one will repay the loan (especially when the loan can't even be discharged in bankruptcy).

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  8. At my small SLAC, withdrawal from classes for academic purposes was only allowed for first-semester freshmen. After that, you were stuck with your classes, for better or worse. The only other time you could get a W was for medical reasons--and to do that you had to withdraw from the university entirely. Basically, there was no such thing as flaking out of a class because your grade was going to suck.

    Imagine my surprise when I came to Big Dick State for grad school and discovered that students could withdraw willy-nilly at just about any time, and for any reason whatsoever. And retroactively, too. I've heard from the administrators that having to pay for a class over again is punishment enough. I don't think anyone really gives a shit about the continuing devaluation of a class or runaway grade inflation as long as the tuition keeps getting paid.

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  9. At my school, the current associate dean has no spine and will approve a late withdrawal petition for any student that comes with a sob story. Of course, there is always a sob story. A student took the same class from me two semesters in a row and failed both times, but was allowed to withdraw after both Fs were assigned. We aren't notified when this happens, I just noticed that he was no longer on the old roster online.

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  10. Our school let's the little snowflakes drop on the last day of classes. This probably won't surprise you, but the people who are guaranteed to fail still don't drop the class. They pray the magical bell-curve fairy will save their smarmy asses.

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    1. Our W policy is similar (up to last day of class), but there is a cap on the maximum number of Ws a student can get over the course of hir degree -- it's four or five, I'm not sure exactly, but countable on one hand anyhow.

      Thanks to the limit, anyone flakey enough to pull a retroactive W (or even an on-time W) will no doubt wind up with at least as many Fs on the transcript when all is said and done. In practice, this limit seems to provide a nice counterbalance to the extra-liberal withdrawal date policy.

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