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Friday, February 04, 2005
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GRADE INFLATION AND
MEAT-LIKE SUBSTANCES: PARALLEL UNIVERSES from The Boise Weekly: '[A] grade distribution report [was] e-mailed to Boise State University deans during the first week of classes for the spring semester. Some deans forwarded the document on to their department chairs, a few of whom passed them to faculty members. At least one chair did so under the message heading of “Grade Inflation,” with the exhortation that “Grade inflation is a hot topic today. The data in the attached file may or may not be useful in discussing the topic but are certainly a good means of beginning such a discussion … this time of the semester is indeed a good time to begin setting academic standards and establishing adequate means for gauging whether students are meeting them.” Individual instructors were also invited to see chairs personally, in order to review the records of their own grading tendencies …Still, some professors remain skeptical as to how the data might be put to use. Two junior faculty members who preferred not to be identified voiced concerns that the records will be held against them by department chairs concerned with reputations for academic rigor. Anthropology professor Bob McCarl views the spreadsheets with similar suspicion. “This is simply another way in which faculty are micro-managed by overzealous administrators who used to be colleagues,” he said. “Grade inflation and the proper number of ‘meat like substances’ in your taco exist in parallel universes of rationalized labor for control. In academia we maintain the pretense of faculty governance while the substance slips farther and farther away.” ' |