With Compres recently done and dusted, and us having received our grades, it felt a bit important to look at the grading system currently in place at our college, and address the issues that we face with what is currently being done. The grades that we receive are critical in terms of any further plans one has be it further studies or getting a job. Something this pivotal must be looked at carefully, and these decisions must be well thought out. However, the grading system here seems to follow a different philosophy.
To begin with, let’s take a look at the recent debacle at Harvard regarding their grading. Harvard uses a letter grading system (which assigns a numerical ranging from 0 to 4 depending on the grade assigned) with a 4.0 scale for calculating the GPA. A recent internal report at Harvard found that more than 60% of the grades that were being given out to undergraduates were A’s, a 25% surge from 20 years back. The median GPA among Harvard students was found to be 3.83 out of 4, which is truly astounding. The report eventually concluded that the current grading system was not serving its purpose. There seemed to be a disparity between the work a student put in and the grades that they received. The professors seemed to be lenient to a lot of students because they felt that academic life at Harvard is tough to manage. However, collectively, the Harvard faculty and the administration felt that a change was required to go back to the previous grading standards to make sure that the GPA students had actually held some value.
This system at Harvard disincentivizes students to put in as much effort as they ideally should if they had an ideal/working grading system in place. Not to discredit a Harvard-caliber student, but the majority being assigned the same grade for vastly different amounts of work essentially nullifies the point of grading and GPA in the first place, and makes it a useless metric to any potential hirer or university. This system, while it does sound brilliant for the students at the face level, fundamentally fails to serve the purpose and would not be useful in the long run.
However, in stark contrast to this, we look at the grading policies in our campus, BITS Pilani Hyderabad. While in Harvard, the majority of the grades given are the top grades, the grades assigned here are frequently the lower ones. One would assume the reason for this would be a skewed curve, but that is often not the case, and the assigned grades seem to disappoint most of the students who find themselves at the average or even above it. This notoriously difficult grading system creates a sort of a sink or swim situation for most people, where it is a strenuous task to score and maintain the higher grades.
The reason for this, one might speculate, might be the dissatisfaction of the professors with the performance of the students. However, the relative grading system exists for the exact reason, and it encompasses the hurdles of the papers set by them. Also, there always exist large inconsistencies in the grading statistics between different semesters and years, and it only leads one to come to the conclusion that the grading is not performance dependent (which it should be), but it is dependent on the Instructor in Charge, or the IC. Different ICs have different understandings of what the ideal performance of a student should be to get a certain grade, and it is observed that these expectations are often harsh.
Despite this, there should be consistencies in the grading across semesters, as it would be clearly unfair for those taking the course in a ‘harshly’ graded semester. This system often forces students to pick electives according to the IC or the professor who is offering them, not according to their interests, which is what should actually matter. Moreover, certain departments and branches have gained a stigma of having worse grading than others, discouraging students to pursue a degree they are passionate about, out of fear of having a lower CGPA than their peers. This is especially damning for dual degree students who pick their B.E after spending a year on the campus. A student should not be in a situation where they have to pick something that they are not fascinated by just so they can keep themselves out of a scenario of inconsistent and bad grading. This should ideally call for standardized grading based on the actual performance of the students, not just the whims of the professors and the department.
A sad reality is also that low grades being assigned consistently discourage a student. It often makes them unwilling to put in the effort, because it is natural to feel that, regardless of it, the grading will not go their way. As the Harvard grading system disincentivized students to put in the effort, as they were getting a good grade regardless, in some aspects, the grading here does the same, but because of the concern that they will get a bad grade. This is why standardized grading proportional to the efforts and marks of the students is absolutely crucial.
What we also need to consider is that while initially the CGPA is compared within students in the college itself, it will also remain with the students when they wish to pursue other avenues after graduation, including applying for jobs and further education. While multiple faculties express clear disinterest on their part in the future of students in terms of jobs, it has to be said that this is what most of the students are going to do, and the grades that they give are going to be influential in their career. Even in terms of applying for further studies, the universities are not to be judging the students’ CGPA relative to the students of BITS Hyderabad, but with respect to all the applicants, who may have had a better grading system.
This article is not a call to radically increase the number of As being assigned to the students, but it is to ponder if the grading system is actually serving its purpose to the students, or is it to satisfy some other things. Regardless of that, the aforementioned factors should be taken into consideration when gradings are done. It is important to be consistent in the grading across courses, across departments, and across semesters. The grading should serve the best interests of all: the college, the students, and, most importantly, their academics and their future.
The Journal Club 
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