In response to longstanding concerns about grade inflation at Pomona College, a faculty and student committee is developing a set of grade definitions to guide grading across the college.

The Curriculum Committee began reviewing grading practices last semester, after faculty voted in favor of a process to produce college-wide grade definitions. Pomona currently has no official grade definitions to designate what level of student performance corresponds to each letter grade.

The committee plans to submit a proposed set of definitions to a faculty vote in Spring 2011.

“Our goal is to define, as best we can, how the college wants to grade,” said Academic Affairs Commissioner John Thomason PO ’12, who represents the ASPC on the Curriculum Committee. “We want to reflect the wishes of the people that are doing the grading—the faculty—while taking all viewpoints into account.”

Thomason said that grade inflation at Pomona is not a new problem.

“The college has recognized grade inflation for a number of years now,” he said. “Among colleges that report their grade distribution, Pomona is at the high end of having the highest grades.”

He added that it is difficult to know how Pomona’s grading compares with that of colleges with similar academic reputations, since many prestigious colleges do not report their grade distributions.

Brittany Fair PI ’11, who has taken classes at both Pitzer and Pomona, agreed that grade inflation is a reality at Pomona.

“I think Pomona in particular is one of the more well-known schools that have inflated grades,” she said. She added that Pomona professors “want their students to succeed,” causing them to give a disproportionate number of high grades.

One student who asked not to be named said she had once received a low-grade notification after getting a C+ on a chemistry test.

“Only Pomona would consider a C+ to be worthy of a low-grade notification,” she said.

History professor Victor Silverman, chair of the Curriculum Committee, said that in addition to grade inflation, Pomona has been struggling with “grade compression,” with too many grades falling in too small a range.

According to the committee’s statistics, about 61 percent of grades at Pomona are in the A range, while less than eight percent are below the B range.

“There’s a lot of confusion about what the grades are,” Silverman said.

Even if grade inflation and compression are widely recognized at Pomona, not all students want the college’s grading practices to change. In a survey administered to about 200 students by the Curriculum Committee, many expressed satisfaction with grading.

“Students generally think that grading at the college is fine,” Thomason said, adding that some survey respondents deemed grading too lenient while very few thought it was too stringent.

Some students believe that inflating grades is a fair practice, given the fact that Pomona College is an elite institution with presumably more difficult classes.

“I think grade inflation is a necessary evil,” said Zev Gurman PO ‘11. “I’ve heard the argument from professors here that it wouldn’t be fair to give someone a B here, as opposed to the same student getting an A at a state school.”

One logistical issue that the survey highlighted, Thomason said, is the problem of standardizing grading standards across academic disciplines.

“People thought there was disparity among departments and classes, and that was a real issue that should be addressed,” he said.

At an Oct. 21 meeting, the Curriculum Committee presented the faculty with two sets of grade definitions, titled “Proposed grade definitions” and “Definitions that fit our actual practices.”

Silverman said the proposed definitions were meant to reflect the underlying ideal of letter grades, not the committee’s opinion on how grades should be assigned. He said he did not expect the committee’s final proposal to follow these standards, under which students would receive a C for work “equal to most peers.”

“There’s a real problem with adopting a set of definitions that might have applied 50 years ago but don’t apply today,” he said.

The next part of the grade-defining process, Silverman said, will involve seeking input from faculty and students in many departments.

“We’re going to speak to different groups where the discipline and the expectations might be different,” he said. For example, he added, the studio art and mathematics departments would likely have different grading needs.

One option that is off the table, Silverman said, is a strict grading curve such as the one adopted at Princeton University in 2004.

“We floated that idea last year, and it was immediately shot down,” he said. “[The students] would revolt.”

He added that many faculty members also felt that a strict college-wide curve would be obtrusive.

Silverman acknowledged that many students are concerned about how they will compete with graduates of other colleges for jobs and spots in graduate school if Pomona acts against grade inflation.

“A lot of students are not clear about how grades are read outside the institution,” he said. He predicted, however, that a reduction in grade inflation would not harm graduates’ chances with employers and graduate schools because of Pomona’s reputation for having “very good, very disciplined students.”

“I think it would actually provide an advantage to students, were grades a clearer indication of their accomplishments,” he said.

If the new grade definitions cause a reduction in the median grade-point average at Pomona, the administration will inform graduate schools and employers of the reason, Silverman said.

A review of how the final definitions affect Pomona’s grading is scheduled for Fall 2013.