By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff, 4/8/2004

Princeton University leaders are proposing to cap the number of A's professors can give to undergraduates, a move that would put the school in the forefront of the effort to stop the trend of rising college grades.

The plan, subject to a vote by professors in April, would limit each of Princeton's academic departments to giving a maximum of 35 percent A-plus, A, and A-minus grades in its classes overall. Several observers said the plan would be the strictest measure yet by any major university to fight grade inflation.

"We are trying to give Princeton students more accurate information to distinguish their best work from their ordinary work," said Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel, who wrote the plan. "We also want to motivate them to stretch to do the most imaginative work of which they are capable."

At Harvard University, where nearly half of all undergraduate grades are either A or A-minus, officials have identified grade inflation as a major concern but have not instituted any numerical limits on A's. Instead, Harvard College, the university's undergraduate program, has capped the number of students who can graduate with honors at 60 percent of the graduating class, and deans send yearly letters encouraging professors to avoid "grade compression" by giving more B's and C's. To date it has not had a major impact, and grades rose slightly last year.

A move by Princeton, which even among elite colleges enjoys a reputation for excellent undergraduate education, could be highly influential, said observers.

"The issue of grade inflation is one that is deeply troubling to the higher education community and Princeton's taking a stand," said Arthur Levine, president of Columbia University Teachers College. "It may just give professors the backbone to be able to provide standards in their classes."

At Princeton, as at many colleges, the number of A's as a proportion of all grades has gone up sharply over the past generation. More than 45 percent of grades in regular classes were in the A range between 1997 and 2002, compared to 30.8 percent of grades between 1973 and 1977.

In addition, like many elite colleges, Princeton gives relatively few grades below the B range. So a straight-B student at Princeton who graduated in 2002 would have been in the bottom 15 percent of the class.

"The grades of a college are a currency of that college," said Princeton economics professor Uwe Reinhardt, who said he supports the change. "The departments once a year should have to sit and say `You, [Professor] Joe Smith, are using all the A's in this department.' It will trigger a discussion about what is an A."

The change will be considered by faculty on April 26. If approved, it would return grading patterns to the levels of the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Malkiel, who announced the proposal in an e-mail to faculty yesterday.

Malkiel said she is hopeful that it will win wide support from professors and students, but some resistance is likely to emerge. Opponents of grade quotas say they are arbitrary and impinge on professors' freedom. Faculty members at Harvard and elsewhere have argued that high grades are a reasonable recognition of the top-level work done by students at selective colleges.

Though opinions differ on the roots of grade inflation, Malkiel traced the phenomenon back to the era of the Vietnam War and student protests, when students wielded great influence and good grades helped young men avoid the draft. Today, many professors say, students have become much more aggressive in overtly demanding high grades.

"When you get barraged with requests, some faculty members find it easier to give higher grades and not put up with importuning students," Malkiel said.

The Princeton proposal has been in the works for about a year, said Malkiel, as she and a committee have tried to respond to the widespread feeling of department heads that only a universitywide policy could bring results.

The plan would also bring some peer pressure to bear on the faculty. If the plan is passed, every department's grade distribution -- the percentage of A's, B's, and other grades that it grants -- would be published for all to see. Currently, professors are told the grade distribution of their departments and of the university as a whole, but a chemistry professor could not find out the grade distribution of the religion department. "We are going to depend significantly on cooperation and moral suasion," Malkiel said. For departments that don't meet the standard, "there will be a lot of talking, a lot of jawboning. If there are some number of faculty or departments who refuse to cooperate, the dean of the faculty might have some further talks."

Malkiel said it is too soon to decide whether there would be any punishment for departments that gave more A's than allowed.

The plan would not require every class or every professor to have a similar grade distribution, suggesting instead that departments might have one standard for large lecture courses and another for small, advanced seminars. It also makes an exception for senior theses and other independent study classes, which would have a limit of 55 percent A's per department.

To allay students' concerns that stricter grades would hurt their applications for jobs and graduate schools, Princeton would attach a note to transcripts explaining the standard, Malkiel said. In crafting the plan, the university contacted law schools, medical schools, fellowships, and employers, who by and large said they would take Princeton's grade rules into account in making judgments.

A few colleges, such as Reed College in Oregon, have grade limits for undergraduates, as do some professional schools, but no major university has taken this step, said Levine and others.

"As far as I know it's the first systematic approach aimed at restoring what was a grade curve that existed in higher education probably for well over a century," said Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel of the American Council on Education.

Two years ago, the Harvard faculty passed a measure committing itself to awarding more B's, but it relied on self-enforcement. At the same time, the faculty voted that no more than 60 percent of students should receive honors, down from a high of 91 percent.

Harvard officials declined to comment yesterday, saying deans had not had a chance to review Princeton's plan. But professor Harvey Mansfield, longtime grade inflation critic, said he hopes it will inspire Harvard and others.

"Most faculty feel caught in the really corrupt system that we have now, and it is not something that one person can change on his own," he said. "And yet it is not in the culture of an American university faculty to be told how to grade."

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/8/2004.
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