I wholeheartedly agree with Julian Sarkar '13 that Dartmouth has long suffered from inflated grades ("Over the Median," May 12). In fact, Sarkar's article is only one in a long history of appeals for reform. A cursory search of The Dartmouth's archives provides substantial evidence. An article published almost three years ago laments the fact that more than half of Dartmouth courses award A's or A minuses to at least half of their students ("Inflating to Make the Grade," August 17, 2007). Dartmouth and Harvard professors say that good grades and high honors have "become meaningless" because the chances of earning them are "50-50." That number is actually an understatement for students in Harvard's Class of 2006, 91 percent of whom graduated with honors. If Dartmouth's median grades continue to hike upwards, it is not difficult to imagine a Harvard-like situation in which nobody really graduates with honors because nearly everyone does. Considering that graduate schools and employers use GPAs as the cardinal indicator of student performance, grade inflation is a clear problem. If an A is the median, how can anyone manage to perform above the average or graduate in the "top half" of a class?
However, the bigger issue is that we are hiding this problem. None of these facts, figures and arguments are being discussed publicly, because we are not openly admitting the problem. Faculty members have expressed their frustration with grade inflation but have been giving the same grades. We students sometimes opt for the easier As at the expense of more interesting but more difficult courses, as Sarkar noted. It is easy to understand why the administration would not want to talk about controlling grade inflation, because it would cause serious backlash. Natural science majors may object that they are not the culprits of grade inflation, because they already receive a lower median grade (B/B minus) than many humanities students. Students in favor of the status quo might say that imposing forced curves for example, reserving A's for the top 10th of the class would deprive talented students of the grade they deserve. If more than a 10th of the student population meets that bar, their grades should not suffer just to fit a bell curve. All of these are valid concerns that deserved to be debated in public, not just in private discussions and (often anonymous) confessions to journalists. Whatever solutions we may advocate, we need a forum of debate in which to advocate them. Even after writing this, I am not dead set on a specific solution, or even a position, and I am prepared to support the status quo if I am persuaded that it is the best solution. I am, however, convinced that the school needs an opportunity to sit down and talk about the state of grade inflation, so that people can have their voices heard and their frustration relieved. The newly minted Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault and the Student and Presidential Alcohol Harm Reduction Committee are models that could be emulated. Although the Committees are for drastically different problems, a similar group may prove to be a useful means of communication between the students and the administration.
One of the worst-kept secrets in undergraduate New England is that the Ivy League has a grade-inflating problem. We say so, our teachers say so and the school statistics say so, just not to other people. To address this problem, whether we decide to keep the status quo or adopt a new system, we have to start by admitting the problem openly talking about it: between ourselves, the faculty and most importantly, the powers that be.
