The Grade Deflation

Students unfortunate enough to attend Princeton University already bear the heavy burden that is going to school in New Jersey. To this indignity, the NYT reported earlier this week, Princetonians must also add the horrifying prospect of grade deflation. A full account of the tragedy, with additional commentary, follows:

When Princeton University set out six years ago to corral galloping grade inflation by putting a lid on A’s, many in academia lauded it for taking a stand on a national problem and predicted that others would follow.

Yes, grades, like a wild stallion that can not be tamed, became a national problem six years ago. General Princeton Tiger, commanding an army of dissatisfied and ornery professors fighting each other for tenure, set a course for battle that would save this country from the terror of Ivy League students getting A's. The name of the campaign? "Shock and A-Minus."

But the idea never took hold beyond Princeton’s walls, and so its bold vision is now running into fierce resistance from the school’s Type-A-plus student body.

Of course, a Type-A student would be the first to tell you that Type-A-Plus personality does not exist, and that making this exaggeration cheapens the neurotic accomplishments of true Type-A's. "Would a general like it if you started calling some of them general plus?" asked one of them, tossing some Prozac-plus into her mouth. "I don't think so."

With the job market not what it once was, even for Ivy Leaguers, Princetonians are complaining that the campaign against bulked-up G.P.A.’s may be coming at their expense.

“The nightmare scenario, if you will, is that you apply with a 3.5 from Princeton and someone just as smart as you applies with a 3.8 from Yale,” said Daniel E. Rauch, a senior from Millburn, N.J.

The nightmare scenario indeed. Everyone knows Yale graduates can barely tie their shoes. To think that someone like Lloyd Blankfein might even consider Yalies in the same conversation as a Princetonian is unthinkable, especially when they are "just as smart as you" and have the advantage of a completely arbitrary grade obtained from a transcript that consists almost exclusively of humanities classes. What's next? Interviewing someone from Brown?

The percentage of Princeton grades in the A range dipped below 40 percent last year, down from nearly 50 percent when the policy was adopted in 2004. The class of 2009 had a mean grade-point average of 3.39, compared with 3.46 for the class of 2003.

Wait a minute and hold the phone. This whole thing is an issue because of a drop of 0.07 points on a college GPA? That is what those kids are crying about? 0.07? The only people for whom 0.07 should be a significant number are those who get pulled over after a couple of drinks.

But you know, at the very least, we can at least be grateful that we have located the source of the classhole invasion. Now if only we could contain them.

In a survey last year by the undergraduate student government, 32 percent of students cited the grading policy as the top source of unhappiness (compared with 25 percent for lack of sleep).

In a survey this year, 100 percent of students cited "Going to school where 32 percent of the students are douchebags who cite a grading policy as their top source of unhappiness" as the top source of unhappiness.

The undergraduate student body president, Connor Diemand-Yauman, a senior from Chesterland, Ohio, said: “I had complaints from students who said that their professors handed back exams and told them, ‘I wanted to give 10 of you A’s, but because of the policy, I could only give five A’s.’ When students hear that, an alarm goes off.”

This alarm -- also known as the "can you believe this?" entitlement bell -- also goes off when the first cab that goes by has their light on despite having passengers inside, when someone presses the wrong button in the elevator and provokes an extra stop, or when a momentary flash of insolence flares in their butler's eyes after you tell him that your sandwich should be cut into rectangles, not triangles.

Nancy Weiss Malkiel, dean of the undergraduate college at Princeton, said the policy was not meant to establish such grade quotas, but to set a goal: Over time and across all academic departments, no more than 35 percent of grades in undergraduate courses would be A-plus, A or A-minus.

The policy being attacked is one in which more than a third of the students get A's? I'm in law school. I, and every single one of my classmates, would gladly set you and your mother on fire for such a guarantee.

Early on, Dr. Malkiel sent 3,000 letters explaining the change to admissions officers at graduate schools and employers across the country, and every transcript goes out with a statement about the policy. But recently, the university administration has been under pressure to do more. So it created a question-and-answer booklet that it is now sending to many of the same graduate schools and employers.

"Dear Potential Employer, We all know that the most important factor in hiring someone is their college GPA. We ask that you keep in mind the fact that only a third of our students get one of the three types of A's. Everyone else gets a B+. Please consider this, if only to ensure that grades continue to matter for more than six months after graduation."

Princeton also studied the effects on admissions rates to top medical schools and law schools, and found none. While the number of graduates securing jobs in finance or consulting dropped to 169 last year from 249 in 2008 and 194 in 2004, the university attributed the falloff to the recession. (Each graduating class has about 1,100 students.)

So it hasn't affected the only two areas -- law and med schools -- where grade performance has a significant effect. And finance and consulting jobs were affected only after the Great Recession hit. In fact, finance and consulting jobs had increased by 25 percent in the time the policy was actually in place. Doesn't that eviscerate the whole premise behind the complaints and this article?

My guess? The reporter heard some little bastard from Princeton complain about his grades. Then she wrote the story. Then, to her credit, she actually checked out some facts. And the facts contradicted the premise of her story. And then she thought, should I drop this? And went, naaah.

But the drop in job placements, whatever the cause, has fueled the arguments of those opposed to the policy.

Wait. Princetonians are actually making this argument? They actually doubt whether the Great Recession is the cause of the drop in finance jobs? Are they doing this with a straight face? If so, then have they considered that maybe the reason for grade deflation is neither the policy nor the teachers enforcing it?

Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired professor at Duke who maintains a Web site dedicated to exposing grade inflation, said that Princeton’s policy was “something that other institutions can easily emulate, and should emulate, but will not.” For now, Princeton and its students are still the exception. “If that means we’re out in a leadership position and, in a sense, in a lonelier position, then we’re prepared to do that,” Dr. Malkiel said. “We’re quite confident that what we have done is right.”

Yes, nobody is lonelier than a Princeton graduate who complains about his 3.39 GPA. They stand alone, scarred forever by that B+ average from an Ivy League school, weathering the gale that is the world's scorn. But they stand secure in the knowledge that they are pioneers, valiant souls who endure the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune, taking arms against a sea of A's, to oppose and end them. Endure, brave ones. Endure.

It's lonely at the top indeed.