Didn’t your father ever tell you, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?
Faculty Senate Resolution 11-20 was proposed last January by Professor Don Chance. It has received its deliberation — the good, the bad and the ugly — and it’s due for its last round of debating and voting Oct. 2.
Chance looks at our dinosaur grading system as behind the curve. One of his two reasons for the proposal he offers is that we must not “lag” behind our peers, and we should “catch up.”
Is this really a question of having to catch up? Is the University so far behind its peers because of its style of grading?
The new plus or minus system proposes the grades A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D- and F. I guess unlike the A, an F is an F, and there’s no difference between failing with a “+” and failing with a “–.” Like HDTV, the high-resolution scale shows the real nit and gritty.
It allows those Cs to separate themselves from the slow-thinking C-minuses.
And interestingly enough, there is no A+, but certainly an A-. What a black eye that minus is on such pretty, blue-eyed grade.
The new system’s resolution will create a higher tier of cream-of-the-crop. Those who make only A-minuses will not only not receive the notoriety that their A-making competitors will, but they also won’t receive the same GPA.
A student who makes all As — but maybe some of their As were 90s or 91s — would not actually get that elusive 4.0 GPA. An all A- student would receive a much more satisfying 3.7 GPA.
So much for making all As.
Discrediting hard-line efforts students lay into their work to reach the ultimate goal in academia — the A — sure is a wretched way of rewarding the studious.
What if, in time, we realize that most of the student body tends to make grades on the lower side of the 10-point range? The school’s overall GPA would drop. Then we’d really be caught up.
What is apparent, though, is the lack of support students show for such a shift in grading systems. Since this institution is in existence by the being of the student, shouldn’t there be more catering to the student?
The lack of parking and the trigger-happiness of the ticket-crickets are plenty enough headache. Suffixing our C or D with a minus is just throwing salt on an open wound.
As per Chance’s reasons of flexibility for professors — is this just rhetoric for making grading easier for professors and teacher assistants?
Flexibility translates into subjectivity. When giving those who grade a more subjective system, you allow more external factors play into the grades of students.
I once approached a professor about a grade I thought was disagreeable, and I received the response, “Look, I have to grade 160 of these — it really depends on what mood I’m in.”
This problem of mood-swing grading will be exacerbated by a system that enables a greater amount of subjectivity.
No inherent problem with the current grading system has been pointed out, only non-substantive reasons to change it.
Thus leaving one conclusion: the system isn’t broken, so it doesn’t need to be fixed.
A University professor says LSU must change its grading system to “catch up” to other schools.
Should LSU adopt a plus-or-minus grading scale?
