Despite discrepancies between Boston University departments and students over grade deflation, the Student Union has delegated an Academic Provost Committee to tackle the issue.
Along with assessing university-wide grading standards, the committee will also evaluate course and teaching assistants, committee co-chairwoman Erica Homan said.
“Grade deflation is definitely an issue with most students at BU,” the College of Arts and Sciences junior said. “Therefore, we are making this issue our priority.”
Committee co-chairwoman Brooke Feldman said although the university has no official grade deflation policy, it is still a concern among students.
“To our knowledge, grade deflation is not a BU policy nor does it appear unofficially on the books,” the School of Education sophomore said. “It is our goal to have it officially denounced.”
While this issue is the committees’ primary effort, Writing Program Assistant Dean Michael Prince said he is unaware of any use of grade deflation at the university.
“I am not familiar with any department that uses grade deflation,” he said.
Modern Foreign Languages and Literature Department Chairman Christopher Maurer said grading is based solely on what the students deserve.
“Our department does not deflate grades,” he said. “Our policy is to award the just grade, whatever it may be.”
Writing Program Associate Director Christopher Walsh said his department has already published a policy against grade deflation and said adherence to the policy is evident in class averages.
“We’re explicit in our faculty guide that we don’t have a curve and we don’t have a set range,” he said. “I taught two semesters of the same class and one class average was 0.5 higher than the other class.” But Walsh said the writing department does encourage professors to assign a wide range of grades.
“We try to encourage our professors to grade rigorous and fair,” he said. “We don’t want a professor to be a softy and give out all As, but we also don’t want a professor giving out all Cs. We try to encourage them to hold students to a high standard and to use the range of grades.”
Feldman said a professor’s grading practices may affect their reputation within their department of individual college.
“When professors are evaluated for tenure, the students’ grades affect the process,” she said. “If professors seem too easy, it could hinder their chances.”
Economics Department Chairman Kevin Lang said the department does not promote grade deflation, but often grades on a curve to supplement professors’ inability to predict the difficulty of an exam.
“It is very difficult for a professor to assess how easy or hard an exam is,” he said. “If a lot of students do poorly, they shouldn’t conclude that it’s the students who did badly. You should conclude that it was the exam. And that goes both ways.”
Lang said he notifies the students prior to exams that their grades might not be as high as expected.
“I tell my students ahead of time that the class average will be about a 65 or 70,” he said. “This grade does not reflect badly on them.”
While the committee is planning to work with academic departments and Provost David Campbell, Feldman said a large part of their research will come from students.
“We will also work with students,” she said. “We plan to conduct a survey. That way we gain all sides of the story.”