Concern about grade inflation and discrepancies between the grading levels in different academic departments has prompted the Committee on Instruction to consider a new method of reporting students' grades on College transcripts.
The proposed transcript format would include not only the grade a student earned in a course, but also the average grade given in that course and the number of students enrolled.
"The spirit is just to allow a more interpretable transcript so a student, a prospective employer, or a faculty member writing a recommendation for graduate school ... can evaluate what a student has actually done," Chair of the COI Gary Johnson said of the proposal.
Johnson sent a letter to the Dean and Associate Deans of the Faculty, the departmental chairs, the Student Assembly and The Dartmouth, outlining the proposal and requesting comments and suggestions from the College community.
If the proposed transcript format is approved, "students would be able to see how they stand relative to their classmates, and they will more clearly perceive that, for example, a B+ earned in one class may be above the class average while in another it may represent below-average work," the letter stated.
The recommendations the COI receives in response to the preliminary proposal may be incorporated into a formal proposal to the Faculty during Spring term, Johnson said.
"The whole intent is that we wanted to toss the thing out and get some feedback," Johnson said. "We're sort of on a fact-finding mission at this point, soliciting opinions."
Johnson said the proposal does not seek to change the way in which grades are assigned.
"We're not creating a new system of grading. This may just be a way to ease that difficulty of interpretation," Johnson said.
The letter stated that the overall grade point average at the College for the 1992-1993 academic year was 3.23, as compared to an average GPA of 3.06 in 1976-77.
The proposal aims to combat this continuing grade inflation as well as more accurately represent the rank of a student in his or her classes.
"Faculty members who now give high grades may be willing to grade by stricter standards when they know that grades given in courses with high class averages will not look as strong as they previously did when comparison with the class average was not available," the letter stated.
Discrepancies also exist in grading standards among the different academic departments and divisions.
In 1992-1993, average grades in the Humanities division of courses were 3.36 as compared to an average of 3.09 in the Sciences division, according to the COI letter.
Johnson said the proposed transcript system would hopefully provide added incentives for students to take courses in which the average grade is relatively low.
"It may encourage people to experiment in courses thought to be difficult or to be graded difficulty," Johnson said.
The COI has been closely examining the issue of grade inflation since the fall of 1990, when a member of the Executive Committee issued a proposal for a modified transcript and a mandate to consider the issue of grading at the College.
"It is hoped that this system may address the problem of continued grade inflation by reducing incentive for faculty to continue to increase their grades and thus blur the distinction between the good, the excellent and the exceptional, which is now the case," the letter stated.
