Of Course There Are Curves

Macleans On Campus reports the latest on the Kovalyov grading dispute.  They note Dean of Science Greg Taylor's letter that the Faculty does not insist that grade distributions adhere to particular curves in its classes.  (Specifically, the letter states that "...there is no quota of As, Bs, Cs and so on in a course or across sections...")  Then, wishout fanfare, the author of the Macleans piece point out the explanation given by FSO David McNeilly for his decision to recommend the changes that were made (no C-, D+ or D grades given in the original distribution), and link to the GFC Policy Manual that includes a recommended distribution of letter grades for classes at various levels.  These are fairly blatant indications that curves are strongly "recommended," if not strictly enforced.

One has to wonder why the existence of such guidelines is being so vehemently denied.  There is value in assigning grades on a normative basis in large classes where typical distributions of student performance are likely to appear.  This imposes a common expectation for overall class GPA, without the wild variations that could appear if it were left entirely to the whim of the instructor.  For example, I know someone who graduated from the U of A in the 1980's with an Honours BSc in one of the physical sciences.  This person received a grade of "4" in a math class, which those of you who have been at the U of A long enough will recognize as one grade above "fail."  And that was the highest mark in the class.  In other words, the professor teaching this class set an arbitrary (and unrealistically high) absolute standard, and found all the students wanting.  On the other hand, I have a colleague, who is not terribly careful about writing exams, and who ended up with an average grade of 90 at the end of the term.  This was a large section, and there was no way that half the students had achieved sufficient knowledge to merit an "A," yet this was his plan.  It was overruled at the Department level, and I wholly supported that outcome.  Anything else would be patently unfair to the students in other sections whose instructors knew how to write exams that distinguished those who really understood the concepts from those who did not.  Students should not be rewarded simply because chance landed them in a class taught by an incompetent instructor.

If no one felt obligated to hew fairly close to the recommended distributions and overall class GPA, I think it is reasonable to expect an inevitable upward climb in average GPA.  Otherwise, students would undoubtedly punish the instructors who used the full range of grades when their friends were in a section with a class GPA of 3.5.  Grade inflation has seriously damaged the credibility of many institutions, and I don't think the U of A has a lot of credibility to spare right now.