Is it ever fair for 95 percent of a class to receive A’s?
Here’s what the senior job scramble looks like. That inspired the following post.
In fall 2007 and spring 2009, the course International Politics—which typically seats ~200 students—was taught by professors Kimberly Marten and Robert Jervis respectively. For the 2009 version of the course, 14 percent of the class received A’s, a pittance relative to the 34 percent who earned A’s in Marten’s 2007 class. Is that fair?
In 2010, for a section in African Civilization—a Global Core class that’s capped at around 20 students—95 percent of the class got A’s. Is that fair?
For elementary/intermediate language classes (note: class sizes are small), of the limited data I have (gathered from kind souls voluntarily sending their transcripts), routinely over 70 percent of the class received A’s. A second-year Russian class was the lone exception in the data, with the professor giving “just” 64 percent of the class A’s.
Econ classes though, appear to consistently hover around or below the 40 percent mark. Econometrics with Arkonac in spring 2009 was at 38 percent, Economic Development with Findlay in spring 2009 gave 36 percent, and Xavier’s fall 2010 Intermediate Macroecon class gave 43 percent. Is it fair to compare the grade distribution of a 3xxx-level or 4xxx-level class in economics against an elementary language class’s distribution?
First, how do you define “fair” especially when comparing between different classes?
Is it how much the student learns? Is it how much a student learns relative to another student? Should the difficulty of getting an A vary between departments and classes? Is fairness even measurable?
Second, what’s the best way to enforce fairness?
Should all departments give a fixed percentage of A’s? Perhaps, but what if 60 percent of the class spends 5,000 hours studying—should only the top 40 percent get A’s? Probably not.
For a small class where it’s statistically plausible to have vastly different caliber of students, a curve doesn’t make sense either. For example, UWriting is capped at 14 students. Say Section A has 14 idiots and Section B has 14 Hemingway’s. Should 8 idiots in Section A get A’s while 6 Hemingways in Section B get B’s? Clearly not.
But of course curves exist for a reason. Assuming professors Marten and Jervis in the first example taught the same material equally well, and the students in both 200-person classes were of equal intelligence, to me it’s ridiculous that Jervis grades that much harder.
So what does this writer think?
I’ve intentionally left this topic open-ended but since this is an Opinion post, here’s my opinion in three really long sentences.
Fairness should be a function of how much someone learns in the class as well as how well someone performs relative to other students. The best way to implement this version of fairness is through a sort of dual grading scheme—if you demonstrate that you’ve learned X, Y, and Z through essays, tests, or whatever OR if you’re one of the top 20 percent in the class, you get a good grade. The amount of content learned to achieve an A/B/C should be consistent in all classes of the same level irrespective of department, and there should be a council of expert head honchos to look over the syllabi of all classes to ensure classes of the same level have equivalent amounts of workload.
Along with the chatter about rethinking the Gateway curriculum, changing FroSci, and tweaking the Global Core, I think this is a discussion Columbia has to (transparently!) have.
Mikey Zhong is a Spectrum opinion blogger and former Spectrum Editor. He, perhaps foolishly, has not abused this data for personal use.
An A is an indicator of one’s ability to master course material. I currently take Chinese and many in the class get grades from A- to A. The fact is we all deserve those grades because we learned the material and accomplished the goals put forth by our teacher. If a teacher determines that you have mastered the material, you have earned that grade.
Thats nice in theory however different teachers can have VASTLY different standards on what’s considered mastering the material.
Honestly the real problem is not the one you wrote about in the article, but the one indicated by the graph at the top. Namely, that employers (also grad schools, law schools, medical schools, etc.) use grades as a measure of both absolute and relative competence even when it is a poor measure of both. The difficulty of achieving certain grades varies greatly across classes, schools, majors, etc. Obviously, if it is a large class with two sections taught by different teachers as in your example it doesn’t make sense for there to be such a disparity in the grade distribution. Other cases are more complicated. It isn’t really possible for the university to allocate all grades “fairly” (because who can say what is fair or not?), but companies should look at a candidate’s actual qualifications (through tech interviews, writing samples, work experience, etc.) rather than rely on a rough and often shoddy heuristic (grades and GPA).
This is why nationwide people generally major in bogus majors to get A’s and avoid science, engineering, math, that give much fewer A’s. However, I think grad schools and jobs realize this, and skew GPA’s according to major and difficulty of school.
Which is why I think everyone who goes to Columbia should get straight A’s automatically. This is a good idea believe me I know I am really good at coming up with good ideas and this is yet another one of the good ideas which I have had. Are you listening, PREZBO? A’s for everyone!
Nothing fairer than that.
This is why we have CULPA and other course information. Anything is fair as long as the professor sets forth the goals. Many classes are graded on curves, like most science and math classes, but many classes are graded on mastery of material, participation, and/or writing papers. There is no reason why if everyone in the class was attentive and mastered what was set forth, that they shouldn’t all earn A’s. What science classes do is much less fair, grading you against how other students did no matter what you know, that is much less fair and random.
students should earn their grades. period.
Can you clarify what you mean by A’s? Specifically, are you including A-/A/A+ or just the grade of A?
Yep, A-/A/A+’s all are under the category of A.
Mikey, did you hand in your problem set due at 6 on time?
Also, interesting post, have not yet formed a substantive opinion.
Hi Mikey, I’ve heard that on Columbia and Barnard “official” transcripts, next to each grade is the percentage of people in the class who received A’s. I’m not 100% sure this is true, since I haven’t yet requested an official transcript from the registrar, but if it is, could that be a good way to make grading more fair in terms of outside eyes? Should Columbia encourage potential employers and graduate schools to make sure to consider the A-percentage? Just a thought.
–Amanda
It is indeed true.