New business grade guideline

By Genna Tan

A new grading recommendation aimed at generating more consistency in marks at the business school is causing some anxiety among students.

The undergraduate leadership team of the Leavey School of Business developed a guideline for professors to use when grading, said Andrew Starbird, faculty director of undergraduate business programs.

The guideline, which was adopted in December 2008, recommends that professors give no more As than Bs, and the number of As and Bs should be no more than 80 percent of the grades issued. The guideline does not apply to courses with less than 25 students, honors sections, Leavey Scholars sections and senior seminars.

"The primary reason for introducing it was to ensure that similar grades reflect similar levels of achievement," said Starbird. "So we want an A to mean the same thing in different sections of the same class and in terms of level of achievement."

Many students were unaware of the new grading guidelines.

Senior accounting major Claire Schwab found out about the new grading guidelines when a professor mentioned it in one of her classes. She said she has mixed feelings about the guideline.

Brett Silverman, a senior accounting major, said he found out about the guideline by word of mouth from other students. "I expected it to come out in an e-mail, but it didn't, so I brought it up in class," said Silverman. "Many of the professors seemed kind of hesitant to talk about it."

Sheri Lee, a senior accounting major, said she was upset when she first found out, and added, "an announcement should have been made to the students, rather than just letting professors know."

Students are worried that the guidelines will change the working atmosphere of the business school.

"It's a bad policy because it creates competition among students and discourages a learning environment," said Silverman.

Lee said she disliked the guideline because it will create a more competitive atmosphere.

"'»¿A huge part of the business school is being able to work in teams and sharing thoughts and building a network, but these new guidelines will obviously make things more competitive, and the quality of community will be severely diminished," said Lee.

"A lot of students in the business school are generally helpful, but I don't think that will continue to happen once these guidelines are in place," she said.

Silverman said, "'»¿Since the guidelines state that a certain percentage of the grades need to be As or Bs, a class that is performing below par might get better grades than they actually should have gotten."

Braden Pivirotto, a management major, said, "I don't think it's going to encourage students to work together at all." He said the new guideline would be discouraging and students just might give up.

"I understand that grade inflation is a problem, but I think the guidelines deter students from working together and helping each other," said Schwab. "When you're put in a place where you don't really know where you stand, and you're forced to compete with everyone else, it kind of deters students from wanting to help each other out."

Buford Barr, professor in the marketing and communication departments, said he has made every attempt to adhere to the new guideline.

"As long as they will allow me the flexibility to reward and recognize a student's contribution based on the standards that I've set, I have no problem with it at all," said Barr.

It's better for students if the grading scale is more standardized, he said.

"We have a lot of required courses and a variety of instructors teaching those courses," Barr said. "It is important that a student has the confidence that their work is going to be equitably evaluated and recognized."

Barr said he has made some changes to his grading standards in order to incorporate the guideline.

"Personally, I'm going to raise my grading standards by about half of a letter grade," said Barr. "I will probably reset my baseline of an adequately done, or minimum level of effort grade. I'll probably set that at a B instead of a B+, and that will lower my overall grade distribution by at least a half to a full grade, and that should meet the guidelines."

According to Starbird, the undergraduate leadership team of the Leavey School of Business developed the guideline during fall quarter.

"We started looking at it because there was a considerable amount of variability in the proportion of As within different sections of the same class, which we thought was more variability than would be explained by random error in the assignment of students," said Starbird.

"We tried to come up with a reasonable recommendation on how the grades should be," he said.

According to Starbird, there were no formal grading guidelines in place prior to December 2008, and this is only a guideline, not a policy.

"If a faculty wants to give all As and Bs, they're certainly able to do that," said Starbird. "The idea is that if somebody is performing at the top level of performance, and they're achieving the learning objectives, then they should get an A, and it should mean the same thing in different classes."

Starbird said he has received some indirect feedback from professors.

"I've heard comments like 'We have to give 20 percent Cs, Ds and Fs,'" said Starbird. "This is not what this means. It means that if you have a random selection of students and you're standards are high, in terms of your learning objectives, then you might end up with 20 percent Cs, Ds and Fs, and it's OK to give those grades if students don't achieve."

Schwab said, "One thing that bothered me when I heard about the guidelines was that we only found out about it midway through the quarter."

She added, "All classes enforcing this policy should have professors explain it to students when they're breaking down the syllabus."

Contact Genna Tan at (408) 554-4546 or gbtan@scu.edu.