Grade inflation in humanities a dangerous trend

"Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for."

--Mentor, computer hacker

The success hackers enjoyed breaking into student computers over winter break forces us to own up to the fact that we utterly misunderstand the technology upon which we depend upon utterly. Our modern world has become what literature professor Fredric Jameson describes as "a de-centered network of microcircuits and blinking lights," whose significance and operating principles we treat with careless indifference. How many of your friends could explain, in detail, the technology behind the ubiquitous cell phone? This problem of ignorance is by no means a recent development; Americans have been notorious underperformers in math and science, on average, compared to the rest of the world for decades, but only recently has this malady crept into our institutions of higher learning, riding on the coattails of grade inflation in the humanities. If grading practices at Duke between departments were fair, you would be better equipped to survive the technological era, and protect yourself from hackers.

Last year Valen Johnson, a former Duke professor of statistics, published "Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education," chronicling the rise of grades at the college level, using data collected here during the 1998-1999 academic year. His exhaustive quantitative study, which I highly recommend to statistics majors and chronic insomniacs like myself, gives bales of empirical support to a number of "duh" observations--similar to the recent paradigm-shattering conclusion of the Duke University Medical Center that there is a relationship between exercise and weight--with which all of us are already anecdotally familiar, in addition to other counter intuitive points. His conclusions: "1. Differences in grading practices between instructors cause biases in student evaluations of teaching. 2. Student evaluations of teaching are not reliable indicators of teaching effectiveness. 3. High grade distributions cannot be associated with higher levels of student achievement. 4. Differences in grading practices have a substantial impact on student enrollments, and cause fewer students to enroll in those fields that grade more stringently. 5. Grading practices differ systematically between disciplines and instructors, and these disparities cause serious inequities in student assessment." All of these are grounds for concern, but most unsettling is the evidence he presents that reveals the effect differences in instructor grading practices have on student course selection. As he reports elsewhere, students are twice as likely to enroll in a course with an A-minus average as they are to enroll in a course with a B average. The big losers are the natural science and math departments, since they grade hardest, and the big winners are the humanities, since they grade easiest. Johnson writes, "On average, American undergraduates take 50 percent fewer courses in the natural sciences and math than they would if grading practices were more equitable."

A number of theories claim to identify the causes of grade inflation, and some are rich with hilarity, e.g., "The students just get better every year!" or "What an effective teacher I am!" while the best considers teachers as self-interested decision makers who are aware of the strong correlation (as high as .75) between the grades a student receives and her ratings of the professor and accordingly give good marks to advance their careers since ratings factor into pay, promotion, and tenure decisions. Unfortunately for scientists and mathematicians, this tactic is structurally infeasible. As I have heard for years, often daily, from my math teachers: "Matthew, either you have discovered the first contradiction in mathematics, or you're wrong." The search for contradiction continues. Since scientists are unable to inflate grades because their disciplines lack the subjectivity of humanities courses, a gap in average grades develops between the humanities, math and the natural sciences and students, also self-interested decision makers, take courses in departments likely to boost their GPAs and, by extension, improve their prospects for employment and graduate school. If one agrees with Galileo, as I do, that the universe is writen in the language of mathematics, we are in the middle of a bad trend.

Moreover, it repairs itself when off track, and as Sagan points out, has much more prophetic power than religion, is a way to free poor countries from misery, warn ourselves of impending disasters, answer the questions of the universe, and encourage the democratic values of free inquiry and truth questing. In order to be responsible global citizens who understand our world, we need to take science and math in addition to the humanities, and grade inflation is an enemy of this.

Finding a solution to grade inflation that everyone can palate is impossible, but a single step (Johnson suggests many more) could be taken at Duke to make things better: Average grades should be made to fall within a specific range for every course regardless of department. B-minus is a fair place to start.

Equalizing grading practices across departments will do much to properly reunite science and the humanities by eliminating the disincentive for taking science and math courses, encouraging greater scientific literacy and wider pursuit of scientific careers, with all the individual and societal benefits that entails. Second, it will make the GPA a fair measure of relative achievement, which is the fair thing to do.

Of course, grades are superfluous, important only if you plan on working for someone; retention is what counts if you plan on working for yourself, but this is another matter.

Thousands of objections can be raised to constraining average grades to a value of B-minus. Professors--particularly postmodernists who don't believe in "truth"--will wail and rip out their hair at the abrogation of academic freedom and at the difficulty of distinguishing between the qualities of student work in humanities courses, but the reality remains that current grading practices are damaging to math and the natural sciences, that the GPA in its present form is meaningless, and that any change to ameliorate the situation is surely worth a few trampled toes because the cost of not acting (proliferating scientific ignorance, a widening rift between science and the humanities) is far greater than the cost of acting (professorial irritation).

What I have tied to argue for here is a reduction of grade inflation at Duke so that science and the humanities can be brought back into proper equilibrium. Ultimately they are interdependent; each needs the other. Both devote themselves to seeking truth, but neither has a monopoly. It is unbecoming to be lopsided in either direction, as history has taught and will continue to teach. Bertrand Russell puts it well: "If a scientific civilization is to be a good civilization, it is necessary that increase in knowledge should be accompanied by an increase in wisdom." Or, in other words, the humanities without science are lame, and science without the humanities, blind.

Matthew Gillum is a Trinity junior. His column appears every other Tuesday.