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Your Turn It's Not About Grades I first wrote about grades 35 years ago for an opinion piece that appeared in the Wharton Journal. I was an MBA student reacting negatively to a peer proposal for a pass/fail grading system. I preferred the chance to achieve high marks, which I believed would earn me a premium in the job market. My conclusion went something like this: "If my good grades get me an extra $1,000 a year, and baloney is $1 a pound, I could buy a lot of baloney—which is how I would describe this proposal." As a dean, 35 years later, I once again find myself asking questions about grades, although now I am worried that they might not be reflective of actual achievement. The subject of grade inflation has been in the news a great deal lately as vari- ous reports allege that universities have permitted an inexorable climb in GPAs over the last 30 years. One discussion of this topic can be found on www.gradeinflation.com. My own philosophy about grades has evolved over the years as I moved through the educational system from student to teacher. I must confess that the high marks I received at Wharton were far from automatic earlier in my life. I fin- ished near the top of my class at a public high school in a state not known for high educational stan- dards. As a freshman engineering student at Tulane University, where standards are high, I received a C in Calculus 101 and a D in Calculus 102. Taking those grades as a "mes- sage"—I needed to spend more time studying calculus—I retook 60 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 by Robert E. Mittelstaedt Jr. the 102 course in summer school. I earned an A. I later realized that if I had not repeated the course and learned the subject correctly, I might not have finished engineering school. The math requirements only got harder. I had to have the foundation to proceed. Within my public confession lies my philosophy. We do no favors for students by "giving" them good grades. Instead, we provide a tre- mendous service if we hold them to high standards that will prepare them to succeed in life. It is for this reason that the trend toward grade inflation worries me. I think we are missing an opportunity to hon- estly evaluate perfor- mance in a way that helps students. Grades are mes- sages, not merit badges. If students are not performing to high standards in their classes, we should evaluate them accordingly. Otherwise, we are hurting them, not helping them. When an MBA alumna came back to visit recently, she told a department chair that she had thought her C in statistics was fine when she received it because it got her through the course. How- ever, a couple of years later, her job required her to apply some statistics. At that point she realized she didn't have the skills she truly needed on the job. She found herself seeking help and wishing she had worked harder in class. I've heard other stories from students emphasizing the need for rigor in grading. In particular, stu- dents complain about group projects where individual contributions are not well evaluated, allowing some students to earn high grades as free riders. Honors students sometimes tell me that higher grades are earned across too broad a band, with sig- nificant differences in performance from the top to the bottom of the same letter grade. If students share these observations, don't we as edu- cators need to re-evaluate our grad- ing systems? Part of the problem is that schools offer little consistency in the Robert E. Mittelstaedt Jr. WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR NEXT AIRLINE FLIGHT TO BE STAFFED BY PILOTS WHO WERE PASSED AND CERTIFIED ONLY BECAUSE THEY BEGGED FOR GOOD GRADES? way they determine grades. At Ari- zona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, an internal study revealed that grade assignments are made in distinctly different ways across departments and by individual faculty. Even within departments respected by faculty and students for high standards, there is variance. This variance complicates what is already a tricky situation any time we try to formalize grading procedures. If we ask a commit- tee to determine what constitutes acceptable performance by course and discipline, some faculty will per- ceive the analysis as everything from unnecessary to unfair. At the same