In order to combat what he views as "a grievous decline in academic standards at American colleges," Professor Harvey C. Mansfield of Harvard University is implementing a new grading system this semester in his government class, "The History of Modern Political Philosophy."
The new policy assigns two grades, one of which appears on the student transcript and is directly correlated to the average grade distribution of all Harvard undergraduates.
The other grade, which remains unpublished, represents what Mansfield views as a "more realistic and less flattering" judgment of the student's performance.
Mansfield was inspired to make the change due to an increasingly large discrepancy between his grades and the average grades given to students at Harvard.
In order to resist the pull of grade inflation, Mansfield was, in his own words, "a hard grader," earning the nickname of "Professor C-Minus."
However, he came to feel that he was punishing the students by giving them grades that were much lower than they expected. He hopes to solve the problem by publishing grades that are in line with the average -- if inflated -- Harvard grading scale.
Mansfield also hopes that this change in grading will make a statement about what he calls the "dangerous" trend of grade inflation.
He says he feels lower grades inspire harder work, as well as give students more appreciation for their own abilities.
He also hopes to combat the "rampant bad idea that ... the purpose of education is to make students feel good about themselves," by trying to emphasize teaching and accurate evaluation instead.
The student reaction to the change in Prof. Mansfield's classes has been positive. He reports a doubling of enrollment in his "History of Political Philosophy" class, where the experiment is first being implemented.
Handing students overly harsh grades, Harvard sophomore Katherine Crawford told The Dartmouth, "only creates stress and encourages students to be bookworms rather than real people."
She says she supports Mansfield's new policy because the more severe grade will be known only privately between the instructor and the student.
