Following a national trend, Bowdoin is seeing a consistent pattern of grade inflation, with students earning a rising number of As and Bs across the different academic disciplines.
According to Director of Institutional Research and Registrar Christine Cote, the average grade increases every year. The average grade earned by students has increased from 3.20 to 3.33 on a four-point scale in the last ten years.
Cote noted that grade inflation is not at all specific to Bowdoin, and said that colleges across the nation are seeing similar trends.
Dean of Student Affairs Craig Bradley agreed.
"I think you'll find that grade inflation is a fact of life in colleges and universities," Bradley said. "The corollary is monetary inflation, but they differ in one important way?monetary inflation does not have a fixed ceiling, whereas grade inflation does [an A or 4.0]. This means that grade inflation causes compression at the top," he said.
Princeton University, whose students were also earning increasingly high grades, recently embarked on a campaign against grade inflation. It aims to reduce the percentage of As distributed to no more than 35 percent in undergraduate courses and no more than 55 percent in junior and senior independent work, according to a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
One of the measures taken in reducing the number of As distributed by Princeton professors was to eliminate the so-called "mercy A-minus."
Though the vast majority of academic departments at Princeton saw declines in the number of As distributed, none reached the objective of 35 percent. In the 2004-2005 academic year, 40.9 percent of grades were As, compared to 46 percent during the previous academic year.
Because Princeton students are being evaluated not just on the grades they receive, but rather within the context of their college and its policies, some question whether grade inflation is a particularly serious issue, or whether new grades are being assigned in spite of similar standards of evaluation.
According to Daniel Levine, a history professor at Bowdoin, "The letters they give are different but the meaning is the same. They haven't changed the standards in looking at quality of work...The grading process hasn't been too disrupted."
Professor of English William Watterson said the trend of rising grades is due to the rising caliber of the Bowdoin student body.
"There has been some grade inflation, but I think the students are better prepared and smarter than those who were here in '76," Watterson said. "The middle range is demonstrably stronger," he said.
Watterson attributed the rising caliber of Bowdoin students in part to the leadership of Interim Dean of Admissions Richard Steele, and said Steele "did an amazing job of improving Bowdoin's image. He exercised high standards and got the word out that Bowdoin was improving itself rapidly," in effect creating a "homogeneity of high-quality students." Before Steele returned to Bowdoin this year to serve as interim director, he served as the College's dean of admissions for a decade, retiring in 2001.
While attracting an increasingly strong student body can account for Bowdoin's grade inflation trends, it fails to explain the presence of grade inflation at colleges at which the caliber of students is not rising to the same or similar extent as it is at Bowdoin.
While Bradley agrees that grade inflation is in large part due to the strength of the Bowdoin student body, he addresses a potential negative impact that it can have even on Bowdoin's high-performing students, saying, "One implication of this is that students with what I consider excellent grades will not necessarily be named Sarah and James Bowdoin Scholars, which is awarded to the top 20 percent of students in each class."
Amid this trend in grade inflation, Bowdoin transitioned this past year from the credit/fail option to a credit/D/fail option. Until this year, students had two weeks rather than six to declare such an option.
Previously, students were able to take courses that were perhaps more outside of their comfort zones and receive credit for grades of D and higher.
Bowdoin student Alex Reed '07 found the credit/D/fail policy to be convenient.
"I decided to take a music class credit/D/fail, and I feel like that made it easier to appreciate what I was being taught. That decision also took away lots of pressure, especially since I had no musical background," he said.
The move toward the credit/D/fail system was made in part due to the fact that credit/fail courses were unable to count toward a major because it allowed for "the hidden D" which the currently implemented credit/D/fail option exposes, thus making it easier to monitor a student's academic progress and encourage them to remain engaged in the class material.
Students may take as many as four out of the required 32 courses ungraded, though only one at a time in a normal four-course load. While most departments require that courses taken to fulfill major requirements be graded, those taken to fulfill distribution requirements may be ungraded.
According to Cote, 9.3 percent of courses last year were ungraded, compared to 8.6 percent the year prior. Cote said this increase may also be because of the deadline extension.
Many of the courses taken ungraded are to fulfill distribution requirements, in which students may be taking classes in areas in which they are less strong or comfortable. According to Professor of Biology Barry Logan, as many as 50 to 70 percent of students take non-major science courses ungraded.
In contrast to teaching classes under the credit/fail option with which students did not necessarily remain engaged in the class material, Logan said, "In a credit/D/fail class, I didn't feel it negatively affected the discourse of the class even though 50 to 60 percent took it credit/D/fail. At first I was worried but in the end I was satisfied."
The trends of grade inflation at Bowdoin also played a role in this decision to consider only grades of C and above for credit.
"It is a reality that grade inflation has made the threshold of a D insufficient for making sure that students are engaged in the class. The bar of a D may not be enough. Philosophically, that's problematic," said Logan.
While this move is aimed at encouraging students's involvement in course material and continued academic success at Bowdoin, it has not been met with an entirely positive response.
"I'm all for the credit/fail option but I disagree with the philosophy behind the credit/D/fail system. It defeats the whole purpose," said Reed. "Having the possibility of getting a D in the course you've elected to take credit/fail adds the type of academic pressure that the credit/fail system was meant to eliminate," he said.