Low Grade System

Harvard College does not pretend to possess a perfect grading system. Essay type examinations cannot be evaluated with mathematical exactness, and the grader cannot be completely objective no matter how hard he may try to prevent his personal views from affecting the mark he assigns a blue book. But the number of complaints from students who felt they had been victimized by methods somewhat less than just indicates that unfairness in the grading system has not been reduced to the unavoidable minimum.

Dissatisfaction results from the vast difference in scholastic work required to achieve the same grade even in courses within the same department, and the interminable difficulties involved in having a grade changed even when the instructor admits the possibility of an error in judgment. There are no standards for grading. Each instructor is left to conduct this course as he sees fit and the department does not intervene unless the grades he awards are completely out of proportion with the distribution that would normally be expected.

Some measure of uniformity is obtained in large courses such as Government 1, where the section men meet and decide what material should be contained in a blue book in order for it to merit a given mark. This is only the beginning of the coordination that is required if marks are to be more than a rather arbitrary estimate. Intra-departmental conferences can set roughly approximate levels of work which would yield equivalent grades on the final examinations in the various courses within the department. The conferences should extend beyond departmental bounds to insure a degree of standardization for courses within the same division.

Once this has been achieved there is still the need for easily accessible facilities for review of grades after they have been recorded. Under the present system errors in judgement must be referred to the appropriate Administrative Board for "investigation and report to the Faculty." Few students and fewer instructors are willing to go to such an extremity. But if there existed within each department a board of review, ready to consider grievances and with the power to act upon its decisions, a large proportion of whatever injustice exists would be climinated, and the cause of almost all student complaints would certainly be wiped out. Recourse to such an agency would not be so frequent as might be feared, for most students are good judges of their work and know just about what grades to expect.