A fair grade

It might seem counterintuitive for a student to complain about grade inflation. After all, we're the ones who benefit, right? Wrong.

In fact, students are the most harmed by grade inflation because it rewards mediocre and sometimes substandard performance, which will not be acceptable later in life. No employer will say, "Well, these numbers don't reflect much and led to several costly errors, but you worked hard, had an interesting idea and put them together into a flashy report, so good for you and let me give you a bonus." Because essentially, that's what grade inflation is.

Of course, from time to time you come across the professor who refuses to inflate grades. It's a humbling experience to have an assignment that would normally garner an A-minus returned with a big red C instead.

And there's no cheat sheet to use as a reference when computing GPAs. Grades count the same whether they come from someone who believes in grade inflation or not. A Harvard professor explained in The Chronicle of Higher Education that he uses a double system; one is the inflated grade he reports, and another is a private, more realistic grade that reflects the student's actual performance. That way, the students are not penalized for taking his class, but he's not simply giving them an undeserved pat on the back.

Also, a class full of inflated A's penalizes the student who really is achieving at a higher level. Currently, a student who has just slipped in under the cutoff and a student who has written an extraordinary paper are awarded the same grade. While the students themselves might know the difference between their A's, someone on the outside won't be able to tell. And in a world where admissions committees don't have the time to read every applicant's papers in order to see how good they are, the truly outstanding student is at a disadvantage.

I'm not sure how to fix grade inflation using our current system. A decimal-based system, computing the number of questions answered correctly out of the total, works well in some situations, but how can it be applied to essays or papers? I think perhaps the fault with the current system is that it expects that students will fulfill all expectations of the assignment, or even exceed them, and thus earn an A.

You can write a good, coherent paper without touching on many of the topics the teacher was expecting. Or you could give all of the answers with no sense of how they fit together. I think an ideal grading system would reflect these positive features without implying mastery of the subject at hand. We are students after all, and we're here to learn, even if it means acknowledging our mistakes, errors and omissions.

I happen to like the grading system used in French universities (and high schools, too, for that matter). The system is based on a 20-point scale, and grades of 1 and 2 are actually awarded from time to time. Obviously, a 1 or a 2 isn't really acceptable, but in some cases a seven might be. In fact, during my orientation while studying abroad, it was explained that French students jump for joy after receiving a 13. And very few grades are distributed at the other end of the scale; there's a saying, "18 is for the teacher, 19 for the president, and 20 is for God." I don't know about the God part, but I like the idea that not even the teacher knows everything. After all, in a true academic community, the teacher should be learning as well.

I don't know how well my peers would accept this system. People like to be told they've done well. But I continue to believe grade inflation does a disservice to students and to the academic community at large. And perhaps the French system just doesn't translate, but there must be some system that will. We must make assessments more realistic as well as rew-ard performance that is truly outstanding.

Edith Mulhern is a senior French, international relations and history majorfrom Ardmore, Pa. Her e-mail address is emulhern@sas.upenn.edu.Voice of the Sparrow appears on Fridays.

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