A proposal to disclose class rank on student transcripts has ignited a debate among University of Colorado professors with starkly different views on whether grade inflation is a problem.
On one side are faculty who attribute the climbing grade-point averages at CU to the improved qualifications of entering students in the past dozen years.
And on the other are professors who say their colleagues are so afraid of bad student evaluations that they are placating students with A’s and B’s.
One Boulder English professor said departments should eliminate raises for faculty if the GPAs within the department rise above a designated level.
The few professors who grade honestly end up with dismal scores on student evaluations, which affect their salaries, professor Paul Levitt said. There is also the “endless parade of malcontents” in their offices.
“You have to be a masochist to proceed in that way,” said Levitt, one of 10 professors and business leaders who spoke to CU regents about grade inflation Wednesday.
CU president Hank Brown suggested in August that the university take on grade inflation by putting class rank or grade-point-average percentiles on student transcripts.
Changing the transcripts would give potential employers and graduate schools a clearer picture of student achievement, Brown said.
At the Boulder campus, the average GPA rose from 2.87 in 1993 to 2.99 in 2004.
Regents are not likely to vote on the issue for a couple of months.
Regent Tom Lucero wants to go beyond Brown’s suggestion and model CU’s policy after Princeton University, where administrators instituted a limit on A’s two years ago.
“As long as we do something to address this issue, I’ll be happy nonetheless,” he said.
But many professors believe academic rigor is a faculty issue and regents should stay out of it.
“Top-down initiatives … will likely breed not higher expectations but a growing sense of cynicism,” said a report from the Boulder Faculty Assembly, which opposes Brown’s proposals.
Still, the group wrote that even though grade inflation has been “modest,” the issue of academic rigor “deserves serious ongoing scrutiny.”
“More important than the consideration of grades is the quality of education our students receive,” said Boulder communication professor Jerry Hauser.
CU graduates are getting jobs at top firms, landing spots in elite graduate schools and having no trouble passing bar or licensing exams, he said.
But faculty who believe grade inflation is a serious problem said they welcome regent input.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
