My adventures with Yale Alumni Magazine are continuing. The way they work is that I read an article, get upset, and leave the magazine until I feel ready to continue reading. (Did you know, for instance, that Au Bon Pain at the corner of York and Broadway has gone out of business? The only place with tolerable breakfast and lunch food on campus and the place where so many good memories were generated is no more. The place where I discovered that the word croissant means something completely different in the US than what it does in Quebec. The place where I had coffee before my very first class at Yale. ABP’s demise is very sad.)
In any case, the article I read at 4 am today when my heartburn was not letting me sleep informed me that 62% of all grades awarded by Yale College are As and A-minuses. Fifty years ago, the number of A and A- grades was about 10%.
As anybody who has taken teaching methodology classes knows, awarding 10% of As is about right while giving out 60% of As is a sign you need to revise your curriculum and adjust your expectations in the courses you teach. If 62% of people do exceptionally well in your course, then you are misunderstanding the meaning of the word “exceptional.”
The reason why grade inflation is taking over at Yale is, of course, that the majority of courses is taught by people who have no autonomy or authority. Tenured professors are a small minority, and tenure-track does not exist. (If anybody tells you it does, I will be happy to explain to you why that is factually untrue.) Tenured professors don’t like teaching Yale College courses and prefer small graduate seminars (where grades are not on the A, B, C scale).
The graduate students and the instructors who teach most of the undergrad courses don’t feel like facing the irate “I paid you all this money so that you would teach my kid well enough for him to get an A” parents and the whiny “I was always the best student at my private school and here you are giving me a B” students. So its easier to award an A and avoid the hassle.
The moral of the story is: the best, most responsible and most engaged teaching comes from people who see their school as their own, who feel allegiance to it and are deeply personally invested into the success of the students and the school. Yale’s President Levin failed completely at creating this sort of an environment at Yale. Maybe President Salovey will start realizing that when a university becomes more interested in flattering the vanity of its paying customers than in academic rigor, it loses a lot of its prestige.
Clarissa's Blog 
Indeed, although I think that 10% A’s in a junior or senior level course in the students’ major is draconian. By that time, the weaker students are gone, so the grades ought to be higher.
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Yes, you are right, higher-level courses allow for a greater number of As, although 62% still sounds like a lot.
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Is Yale one of the places that uses junior faculty for 6 years and then fires them? (Is the Pope Catholic?) Also, does Yale pay any attention to student surveys when renewing contracts? I believe that a large percentage of student responses are not well thought out.
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“Is Yale one of the places that uses junior faculty for 6 years and then fires them?”
– YES! I have seen horrible horrible stories when that was done to one person after another.
“Also, does Yale pay any attention to student surveys when renewing contracts? ”
– Absolutely not. It’s heart-breaking to see how happy these new PhDs are when they get jobs at Yale. And they have no idea that this is not a beginning of their career but an end to all of their professional aspirationa. 😦 😦 I have seen so many people’s careers end after these fake TTs.
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Okay, I did not read this post.
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