The grade of “A”

A simplified view of ambiguous data, the Spectator’s initial report on the number of students earning A-level grade averages last term was regrettable. The strong thrust of the article, “Beyond Straight A’s,” is that the quality of A-level work must have declined for so many undergraduates­—482 at Columbia College and SEAS—to have earned these grades. Hence, the article ends by quoting a CC student, “To me, it was just further proof of huge grade inflation.” That day’s front-page graphic, a long list of tiny “A’s” illustrating the abundant supply of the grade, added an implicit echo to the quote. But this picture of the data is presumptuous—the fact that so many people get certain grades says nothing conclusive about the meaning of those grades until the actual courses and the larger academic context are considered as well. The Spectator article shows how such sensationalized and sound-byte renderings like “grade inflation” both conceal the nuance behind academic life at an institution like Columbia and carry an even greater risk of marginalizing whole sections of our community.

For example, a scandal about “grade inflation” may forget the large majority of students who strangely missed getting A’s. We might forgive a B-level student who came away from Spectator’s shiny graphic of A after A after A with a more diffident and uncertain sense of his status at Columbia. “If the A is easy, why did I have such trouble getting a B?” Questions and doubts like these should find no occasion in genuinely educational settings where exploration, risk-taking, and imperfection are the accepted prerequisites of intellectual growth. The hasty inference that an abundance of high marks can only mean low standards is dangerously insensitive to students who did not attain these marks. We should not be surprised to find that the source of “grade inflation” laments is so often an academic super-elite. It is the Ivy League’s translation of Ayn Rand: “We’re on strike against your creed of unearned duties...I ask for nothing less than what I earn.”

The problem with the “grade inflation” charge is that its underlying desire for a single, common, “gold” academic standard is at odds with the diversity of a large elite American university like Columbia. All of the adjectives in that description­—large, elite, American—contribute to the diversity of Columbia students and the many academic backgrounds they bring with them. Students come from competitive feeder schools, under-performing public schools, and international programs with entirely different academic systems. Multiply this level of diversity by the fact that many classes at Columbia include students from different colleges within the university—CC, SEAS, GS, and BC—each which has its own mission, constituency, and admissions process with varying emphasis and competitiveness. So asking a professor and his or her TA’s to impose one uniform and meaningful grading “currency” is like trying to set a common currency for the economies of Greece and Germany. There’s bound to be some inflation or deflation. At a certain point, shouting “grade inflation” is just a divisive way of saying the obvious: we are a happily diverse and complicated community.

None of this is to say that in any particular class, the grades may not be determined more or less fairly. But that question must be referred to the courses themselves. A statistic like the one above may mean many things including and besides “grade inflation.” And whether or not it means grade inflation may not be the most pressing question to ask. Alternatively, does it mean that all students, regardless of their background, find a sufficiently wide outlet for their potential here? Does it acknowledge the value of taking risks? Does so much attention to students getting A’s represent a community that acknowledges that value? At the very least, we should be sure that our interest in the issue is consistent with the inclusive and nurturing premises of undergraduate education. This is just some, and definitely not all, of the essential context that must be considered before a discussion of academic assessment at Columbia will bear ripe and edible fruit.

The author is a senior in Columbia College majoring in history.