Feeling inflated

I dedicate this column to everyone who has ever been screwed over by the grading curve. Because we all have.

Yet despite this, certain personages still insist on the battle cry, "grade inflation is cheapening our education! We must fight grade inflation!"

These people are wrong.

Instead, it is grade deflation that we must actively seek out and destroy.

First things first: A letter cannot adequately describe a person's ability to understand a field of knowledge. Nor is it commensurate with the same letter received by a student at another university. It is a cheap crutch which we use out of necessity, like a load-bearing broom in a house on skid row.

So what would be better than letter grades?

My friend from Sarah Lawrence College showed me a copy of her transcript; it was no less than 10 pages long. Why? Because SLC doesn't believe in grades precisely for the reasons I outlined above. Thus, rather than forcing students into arbitrary and meaningless grade categories, SLC professors instead write a summary evaluation of their students at the end of each school year -- a maximum of 2,950 words describing each student's attitude, intellectual curiosity, analytical skills and progress made on relevant coursework.

Since each student is graded individually, not relative to others, there is no grade inflation nor grade deflation. Instead, there is fairness and accuracy of evaluation.

But that's not all. My friend from SLC recounted to me an added benefit of not having letter grades: stepping out of her comfort zone and embracing her intellectual curiosity by taking science and music courses.

Contrast that with Penn.

As a freshman, I promised myself that I would never, ever take any course in science or engineering or math because I knew that doing so would cripple my GPA, as it did for many of my unfortunate friends who will never recover from the scars that D's and F's have left on their transcripts.

I have kept that promise.

But I don't want to. None of us should be afraid of taking courses that we want to take simply because we fear being eaten alive by the grading curve. Nor should we have to settle for the "Pass/Fail" option; if we take the course and learn the material, then we deserve full recognition for it.

Thus, one solution would be to implement the SLC grading system at Penn. But I will concede that this is impractical because, although I'm sure that maybe Penn professors would love to write long evaluative essays for all of their students at the end of each semester, they have other things they'd rather be doing.

However, there is another solution within the framework of our flawed letter grade system: Don't deflate grades.

Here is a spiel I heard from one of my professors not too long ago: "Some of you have asked me whether I will grade this class on the Wharton curve. I won't, because then you will all drop it and take it next semester when Professor X teaches it on a relaxed curve and 50 percent of the students get A's."

For all of you who think that grade inflation cheapens our education, how is this scenario any better? How can you justify cramming 25 percent of the students in a class into the 'A' category when 50 percent of them are capable of earning A's? OK, so you've set a higher standard, but the course concepts are the same as they were when 50 percent got A's.

There is no reason to adjust your standard for excellence in understanding a field of knowledge simply because a lot of capable, ambitious individuals can reach that standard. Rather, our standards should only change as that field changes -- as new research throws us new concepts to master and new hypotheses challenge old mindsets.

Conversely, setting a standard of excellence by tinkering with a grading curve is just a way of unfairly molesting students' scores to force-fit them into arbitrary letter grades. It's like making yourself look better than your neighbor by beating him with the ugly stick simply because he didn't meet some arbitrary standard -- such as wearing a Wharton hat -- whereas in reality you and your neighbor are equally good-looking. Worst of all, it is a far cry from the impartial, individual critique given to SLC students. And since at Penn we have become unduly paranoid over grade inflation, we have used brutal curves to punish students and, in many instances, cheat them out of the grades that they justly deserve.

But in the end, we are only cheating ourselves. Judith Rodin stood before every freshman class at convocation for 10 years straight and said, "you are the best and brightest we have yet assembled." Amy Gutmann will surely do the same. If this is indeed the case, then let the grades reflect that statement.

Cezary Podkul is a junior management and philosophy major in Wharton and the College from Chicago, Ill. Cezary Salad appears on Mondays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.