SHAKSPER 2001: Re: Grade Inflation

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 12/27/01 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.2895  Thursday, 27 December 2001

[1]     From:   Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
        Date:   Saturday, 22 Dec 2001 17:54:24 -0000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.2882 Re: Grade Inflation

[2]     From:   Edmund Taft <taft@Marshall.edu>
        Date:   Saturday, 22 Dec 2001 14:44:17 -0500
        Subj:   Grade Inflation

[3]     From:   Jim Slager <jslager12@attbi.com>
        Date:   Saturday, 22 Dec 2001 16:30:37 -0800
        Subj:   Re: Grade Inflation

[4]     From:   Paul E. Doniger <pdoniger@snet.net>
        Date:   Saturday, 22 Dec 2001 20:24:26 -0500
        Subj:   SHK 12.2882 Re: Grade Inflation


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
Date:           Saturday, 22 Dec 2001 17:54:24 -0000
Subject: 12.2882 Re: Grade Inflation
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.2882 Re: Grade Inflation

> In keeping
> with the philosophy of multiculturalism it is thought wrong to
> "privilege" courses on Western civilization by requiring them, despite
> the fact that it is our civilization, and that, because it is the only
> self-critical civilization, it is better than the others.

Would a "self-critical" culture really consider itself so much "better
than the others"?  Isn't this missing the point of self-criticism?

Thomas Larque.

"Shakespeare and His Critics"
http://shakespearean.org.uk

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Edmund Taft <taft@Marshall.edu>
Date:           Saturday, 22 Dec 2001 14:44:17 -0500
Subject:        Grade Inflation

David Kathman introduces some interesting quotes from the 20 December
Wall Street Journal, and ends with the following observation:

“I think Mansfield has some potentially good ideas here, though they’re
mixed with quite a bit of silliness and are almost obscured by the
stridency of his right-wing rhetoric.”

I basically agree, but it is still sobering to read your critics;
Mansfield’s thesis contains more than a little truth.  For example:

1. It’s true that in most universities and colleges the faculty is
overwhelmingly liberal; as a result, liberals can be blamed for
everything and consequently must accept some responsibility for the
current state of higher education. On the other hand, Mansfield ignores
the rise of a managerial, professional class: the administrator. Once
upon a time, administrators rose through the ranks of the faculty, and,
at really good schools, they often still do. But in most cases these
days, they are the products of a separate education (the specialized
Ed.D.) that teaches them how to “handle” faculty, and that their bread
is buttered by keeping students, alumni, and boosters “happy.”  This new
breed of administrator, by the way, is likely to be a conservative with
an MBA (“bottom line”) mentality.

2. Grade inflation probably originated in the late 60s and early 70s
when radical faculty decided that their duty was to give high grades so
that students would not flunk out of school and become eligible for the
draft. Course evaluations are also primarily the fault of liberals:
again, the 60s movement called “the student as nigger” stressed the
powerlessness of students, and many faculty responded by approving of
the widespread use of student evaluations. But it is the new class of
administrators, not the liberal faculty, who are responsible for the
current misuse of student evaluations. They shrewdly realized the ways
in which these evaluations could render the faculty powerless and under
their thumb, and soon that’s exactly what happened.

3. The transfer of authority from faculty to students is a pedagogical
and administrative phenomenon. The “all-knowing” professor is a thing of
the past in most classrooms, and the move to “student-centered” learning
is well underway. The problem is that a “student-centered” classroom
often results in the blind leading the blind. That was Midge Decter’s
classic charge against St. John’s in the 80’s, and she may well have
been right.  Again, however, it was the new class of conservative
administrators who, in the early 80s, conceived of the “student as
customer” mantra. This concept meant, in practice, that since “the
customer is always right,” the student is always right, too. It’s no way
to run a university, but now all but the leading universities are run on
this marketplace concept.

There’s much more to say, but this is enough to make the point that,
yes, there has been a lot of liberal silliness in higher education, but
the real villains are the shrewd, new, conservative administrators who
have hoisted the faculty with their own petards. For what it is worth,
liberals since the 60s seem to have lost the tough-mindedness and the
political adroitness of their forebearers -- like A. Philip Randolph,
John L. Sullivan, George Meany, Albert Shanker, et al. Lacking such
qualities, the postmodern liberal is an easy target, and can even be
blamed for changes actually made by conservatives!

--Ed Taft

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Jim Slager <jslager12@attbi.com>
Date:           Saturday, 22 Dec 2001 16:30:37 -0800
Subject:        Re: Grade Inflation

Here is the complete WSJ article copy-and-pasted from their website:

To B or Not to B?
By Harvey Mansfield, a professor of government at Harvard.

Harvard is now considering what to do about grade inflation. Having at
last awakened to the scandal of giving its students 51% A’s and A-‘s and
graduating 91% of them with honors, Harvard is now ready -- let’s be
optimistic -- to claim the honor of being the first university to do
something about it.

While this happens, we might pause to reflect on how Harvard got into
this mess. We could begin with who is responsible. The answer, without
hesitation, is America’s liberals: Our liberals own our universities. To
be a conservative professor in America -- and especially at the most
prestigious universities -- is a lonely life spent fighting down your
indignation, perfecting your sarcasm, and whistling in the wind.
Liberals are so much in charge that they hardly know it.

Liberals think that they had more merit and just rose to the top
spontaneously without stepping on anyone else. And they are partly
right.  It’s true that liberals in the 1950s such as James B. Conant at
Harvard and Clark Kerr of California transformed the premier American
universities into institutions to which merit alone gave entry. Before,
merit was not absent, but it was diluted with wealth and family. Since
that time merit has been the predominant factor in admissions, and
liberals deserve credit for that reform.

In a Harvard dining hall the other day I chanced to sit down next to a
bright young black student who turned out to be from rural South
Carolina.  He had been plucked from modest circumstances and placed
where his talents could flourish. This was affirmative action as it
should be, another success for America’s great engine of equal
opportunity (maintained by liberals in our universities, and by
conservatives in the business world).

But then, having recruited students for their merit, why is it necessary
to inflate their grades? Strict regard to merit had identified them and
brought them to Harvard; what is the point of abandoning strictness and
thus obscuring students’ merit once they arrive?

Actually, there is no idea promoting grade inflation at present. In the
1960s, when grade inflation got started, some people on the Left
believed that grading was done to subjugate students. Almost nobody
believes that now. Grade inflation is an unintended situation in which
individual professors routinely overgrade their students almost as
thoughtlessly as parents might spoil their children. If they do think
about it, they see that they (and the students) are trapped in a system
that nobody can change by himself.

But it doesn’t feel like a trap because it doesn’t appear to hurt
anyone. Students don’t object to easy grades and their parents are
pleased.  Professors get fewer gripes from students and find it’s less
trouble to slap a high grade on a paper than to detail its defects.
Administrators working hard to keep students happy find it congenial to
boast of their brilliance.

Grade inflation is not a policy but it is an unintended consequence of
policies, in which the liberals running our universities have lost their
own authority. A professor, I conceive, should be part midwife, part
taskmaster.  The midwife -- Socrates’s famous metaphor -- draws out the
good that is already there. But since it is not enough merely to express
oneself, the taskmaster sets the student to work. And for this a
professor needs authority.

Liberal policies, however, have transferred authority from professor to
student. More and more the university curriculum offers choice to
students, implying that they are sovereign consumers free to pick what
they want. Even core requirements can be fulfilled in several ways. In
keeping with the philosophy of multiculturalism it is thought wrong to
“privilege” courses on Western civilization by requiring them, despite
the facts that it is our civilization, and that, because it is the only
self-critical civilization, it is better than the others. This
reluctance to require diminishes the authority of professors. It shows
that they forswear the right to insist that students study specific
things. The professors’ experienced judgment is held to be no better
than that of their students.

Course evaluations by students, a feature of university life since the
1970s, is another liberal policy with bad consequences. Here is a direct
connection to grade inflation, as it has been shown that young
professors or part-time faculty without tenure make sure to give high
grades so as to get high ratings. In most universities student course
evaluations are the sole measure of competence in teaching, in part
because they are the only thing you can count. So the wise are judged
according to how well they charm the unwise.

Other items in the loss of professorial authority can be mentioned: the
influence of feminism, which makes liberal males feel guilty; numberless
deans who do not know how to be gruff and practice therapy instead; the
usual practice of affirmative action to the extent that it departs from
merit; and the notion of self-esteem, which makes solicitude for the
young into the professor’s vocation.

All this is liberal permissiveness, you might say; what’s new about
that?  Note that I speak of intellectual permissiveness, which in my
view is more harmful in universities than the moral kind. When I refer
to the lost authority of professors, there is more at stake than their
self-importance.  What matters is the atmosphere in which students are
educated: Will it be demanding or forgiving?

Grade inflation is an obvious answer to that question. It is a clear
sign that liberals have mismanaged the universities they run. They have
not been true to themselves. They have failed to challenge the students
of merit they sought out, and they have treated these students as if
they were spoiled, wealthy and privileged -- just the sort they wanted
to replace.

Why is change stirring now? Harvard has begun to realize that its
reputation is in jeopardy. There is no way that the grades it gives can
seem anything but lax. Concern for reputation may not be the highest
motive, but it will serve in a pinch. The liberal psyche, like the rest
of us, is often at its best in a pinch.

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Paul E. Doniger <pdoniger@snet.net>
Date:           Saturday, 22 Dec 2001 20:24:26 -0500
Subject: Re: Grade Inflation
Comment:        SHK 12.2882 Re: Grade Inflation

During all these postings about grade inflation, no one seems to be
questioning whether grade inflation really exists in any grand scale or
whether any university policies support the activity. Is there any real
evidence to prove or disprove the existence of grade inflation, any that
shows that it really is a serious or endemic problem, or any that
suggests it is as widespread as some extremists seem to think?

Skeptically yours,
Paul E. Doniger

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