Can Tough Grades Be Fair Grades? - New York Times

Can Tough Grades Be Fair Grades? - New York Times: "'These students are competing for admission to graduate school, for post-docs, for study abroad,' said Jeffrey J. Henderson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. 'And to the extent G.P.A. is important, they say, we come out of B.U. and we have a lower grade point and no one can tell why. That is a legitimate concern.'

While neither students nor administrators will acknowledge as much, there is another less defensible explanation for the student criticism and for the university's defensiveness on the grading subject. If a degree from a respected institution is a commodity, as well it might be at a time when annual costs at private universities are in the vicinity of $40,000, then grade inflation is a service being purchased. No elite college, in vigorous competition to enroll the top high school seniors, is going to make its recruiting slogan, 'Home of the Gentleman's C.'

Maybe it is just too naïvely idealistic to wish that Boston University would boast about what it has done in holding the line against grade inflation. A study in the university's College of Arts of Sciences found that from 1972-73 to 2003-4, the percentage of A's and B's went up by a few percentage points (to 79 from 75) and the percentage of C's went down slightly (to 18 from 21"