Following the Monday, Sept. 19, faculty meeting, Dean of the College
Nancy Malkiel issued the following message on behalf of the Faculty
Committee on Grading regarding grading results for 2004-05:
The Faculty Committee on Grading today announced the initial results
of the implementation of Princeton's new grading policy. "There is very
good news in the grading results for each of the four divisions," the
committee said. "Departments that were giving very high percentages of
A grades are making real strides toward bringing their grades down;
departments that were already grading according to the new expectations
are continuing to hold the line. We are impressed by the seriousness
with which members of the faculty have taken on the challenge of
bringing grades under better control, and we are very pleased and
encouraged by the progress that has been made. After so many years of
steady grade inflation, we have actually been able to move the needle
in the other direction, in a remarkably short period of time."
Princeton's new grading expectations, adopted by the faculty in April
2004, posit a common grading standard for every academic department and
program, under which A's shall account for less than 35 percent of the
grades given in undergraduate courses and less than 55 percent of the
grades given in junior and senior independent work. The standard by
which the grading record of a department or program will be evaluated
is the percentage of A's given over the previous three years.
In 2004-05, the first year under the new policy, A's (A+, A, A-)
accounted for 40.9 percent of grades in undergraduate courses, down
from 46.0 percent in 2003-04 and 47.9 in 2002-03. In humanities
departments, A's accounted for 45.5 percent of the grades in
undergraduate courses in 2004-05, down from 56.2 percent in 2003-04. In
the social sciences, there were 38.4 percent A grades in 2004-05, down
from 42.5 percent in the previous year. The natural sciences, at 36.4
percent A's, essentially held steady. In engineering, the figures were
43.2 percent A's in 2004-05, 48.0 percent in the previous year.
As the Grading Committee observed, "If each division succeeds in making
as much progress this coming year as it did last year, we will have
achieved our goal."
For junior independent work, the percentage of A grades in all
departments in 2004-05 was 57.9, down from 59.5 in 2003-04 and 66.4 in
2002-03. For senior theses and independent work, the figures are 58.6
percent A grades in 2004-05, compared with 60.2 in 2003-04 and 63.0 in
2002-03. While the members of the Grading Committee found some
encouraging indications here as well, they noted that there is clearly
more work to be done in establishing sustainable standards for the
grading of independent work across the departments.
The Faculty Committee on Grading consists of six elected faculty
members: Lynn Enquist, Molecular Biology; Michael Gordin, History;
Martha Himmelfarb, Religion; Jaswinder Pal Singh, Computer Science;
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Woodrow Wilson School; and T. Kyle Vanderlick,
Chemical Engineering. The Dean of the Faculty, the Dean of the College,
and the Registrar serve ex officio. The Committee's charge from the
faculty is to assess the progress made in implementing the new grading
expectations and to advise on ways of making further progress.
The Committee has begun the process of soliciting information from
departments about strategies that have proven to be effective in
bringing grades under better control. The early responses show that
approaches vary widely. In Economics, for example, the department
agreed on specific target percentages for A grades, depending on the
type, category, and level of course. At the beginning of each semester,
the chair reminded the faculty of the departmental agreement, adding
that "any instructor who feels that there is a special reason to exceed
the ordinary maximum may do so, but his or her grade sheet must be
accompanied by a memo addressed to the chair explaining the
circumstances."
In English, to take another example, the approach was to use the new
grading expectations to enhance rather than abridge the ability of the
faculty to employ their own expertise and experience to make informed
grading decisions. The chair suggested to the faculty "that we view the
policy as a tool to help us call grades as we see them and to resist
the impulse to award high and higher grades for work we know is
undeserving. Together we agreed that no one knew better than faculty
themselves how to evaluate their students' work, and we decided that
each faculty member would keep the expectations in mind and be trusted
to do the right thing. Before mid-terms and once again before finals,
colleagues were reminded via email of the new guidelines. We also
distributed to faculty and preceptors guidelines about the meaning of
particular grades, and we scheduled a special meeting with preceptors
to discuss these. Upon reviewing the grade sheets in January, I
concluded that efforts had indeed been honestly made to lower grades
and we would stay this particular course."
Impressed by what it has learned already about the varied approaches in
a subset of departments, the Grading Committee will ask all departments
for information about strategies they have employed that have proven to
be successful, as well as challenges they have confronted as they have
attempted to implement the new expectations. After reviewing the
information gathered in that process, the committee will disseminate a
compilation of best practices and consider additional steps to assist
departments in making further progress.
Commenting on the results for 2004-05, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel congratulated the faculty on making significant headway in implementing Princeton's new institutional grading expectations. "Many departments are at or very close to the desired standards; in others, while there is more work to be done, the progress made in a very short time has been nothing short of remarkable. Culture change is hard to achieve, and we always imagined that it would take several years to implement the new grading expectations. We are clearly on our way."