GPAs part of bigger system-wide problem

As an educator, I read with great interest both Colleen
Honigsberg’s article “The learning curve” (News,
Oct. 29) as well as the related Oct. 30 staff editorial. Both
pieces discuss the disparity in grade point averages between
courses in different UCLA departments. The argumentation,
statistics and quotations presented in these pieces do not, as some
readers might believe, highlight the need for university-wide,
cross-disciplinary grading consistency. An examination of the
bigger picture reveals the true need for a complete overhaul of the
system for evaluating students.

Under the current letter grade-based system, achieving fairness
in grading even across one section of one class in one department
at one university is a difficult and painstaking endeavor. It
requires careful thought and has been the subject of a substantial
pedagogical literature. Trying to achieve fairness in grading
across different sections, different courses, different departments
and different universities is fruitless because it is an
ill-defined task.

Setting the goal of GPA consistency across classes or
departments presupposes some objective standards. But how is an A
grade determined? Surely it can’t represent the acquisition
of some objective amount of knowledge. What does it mean to know as
much about musicology as about economics? They are completely
different disciplines.

We might choose to forego the pursuit of objectivity and
recognize that all instructors have different goals and may
incorporate different amounts of knowledge into their classes. In
this case, perhaps an A is meant to measure against the
instructor’s own standards or perhaps standards relative to
the other students in the class. But then we are forced to admit
the arbitrariness of cross-course (or wider) comparisons.

The discourse on fair grading rages on, but all the while the
usage of GPA statistics by educational institutions, employers,
students and media reporters constitutes an abuse, a pseudoscience
of the worst kind, because it is impossible to quantify
knowledge.

In truth, the issue of unfairness in GPAs is a red herring. The
real tragedy of the GPA issue is that because letter grades exist,
students often focus efforts on achieving high grades rather than
on deepening their understanding of the subject matter. Educational
research has shown that when students are given extrinsic
compensations for learning, such as the attainment of a high mark
and the perceived accompanying “success,” they actually
learn less.

Yet students are hardly to blame for this misdirected effort
because they are forced to exist in a system where great meaning is
attached to GPAs. So who is to blame? Professors and educational
institutions are to blame, both for dangling the
“carrot” of a high mark in front of our students’
faces and for perpetuating a useless system that causes the college
experience to be assessment-centered rather than
learning-centered.

The letter-grade system exists because it is expedient, not
because it is accurate or inherently useful. Educational
institutions simply need to stop being lazy in this manner. Schools
might argue that giving letter grades to undergraduates is
necessary because graduate schools and potential employers use them
as measures for selection. But undergraduate institutions,
considered as a whole, could place a stranglehold on the system. If
the grading system at large were overhauled, graduate schools and
employers would have no choice but to adapt accordingly.

So what is the solution? Educational institutions should move to
a system where instructors give written evaluations to each student
in each class. These evaluations should describe the nature of the
class as well as the ways in which the student displayed (or did
not display) knowledge. Radical? Impractical? Possibly.
Implementing such a system would place a significant added burden
on already overtaxed faculty. But nonetheless, it is a good ideal
for which to strive.

A system of written evaluations would be more fair, and more
importantly, it would create an environment that better encourages
true learning. If we stick with the current letter-grade system, we
are doomed to a future of unfair selection processes and stunted
learning.

Topaz is a VIGRE assistant professor of mathematics at
UCLA.