<p>Sorry the way i saved this does not give me the date it was published. It is however from the Swarthmore school paper The Phoenix</p>
<p>Swatties concerned about other schools' high grades</p>
<p>By David Ellis | For The Phoenix </p>
<p>The t-shirts say it all: "Anywhere else it would have been an A." Such is the unofficial motto of Swarthmore College, where popular myth has it that professors maintain a grade point average of about a B, shirking the trend of grade inflation prevalent at colleges around the nation. Does grade inflation exist at Swarthmore, and if so, is this beneficial or harmful to students and the college as a whole?
"Swarthmore College has no official policy of maintaining low grades," said Maurice Eldridge, Vice President and Executive Assistant to the President. "It was an unofficial approach that has come to be a tradition over the years."
While Swarthmore does not have official standards for grades, statistics indicate that across the board, professors give grades centered roughly on a B to B+ average. In a recent study of Swarthmore GPAs conducted by the Registrar's Office, the grade point average was adjusted to fit in ungraded Honors courses. Swarthmore's average GPA rose from a 3.08 in 1982 to a 3.24 in 1994, where it has since leveled off.
Such numbers are considerably below most of the nation's undergraduates. The University of California at Berkeley Law School used to use a quantitative GPA analysis chart before this official method of analysis was outlawed earlier this decade. In Berkeley's chart, Swarthmore students had the lowest GPAs of any school in the country, with only Colgate, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Williams coming relatively close.
There are numerous benefits to having proportionally lower grades than the rest of the nation. With a lower scale, students' performance in classes are delineated far better than in a grade inflation environment.
"I would hope that Swarthmore students take pride in the fact that when they get an A, they really deserve an A," said Tom Krattenmaker, Director of News and Information.
This is in stark contrast to the environment at many schools, where extreme grade inflation has affected how hard students work. A former Swarthmore student, who wishes to remain anonymous, transferred to another school and has been unhappy with how grade inflation has affected a lax work environment.
Additionally, the fact that Swarthmore has such proportionally low grades has given it a great deal of positive publicity. In U.S. News and World Report's issue a year ago on colleges, Swarthmore was the feature of a four page article on grade inflation. The article closed with the line, "As for student boasting about lofty GPAs from schools where grades below B are exotic, they will have to stand out in other ways."
Not everyone agrees with U.S. News writer Avery Comarow's rosy assessment of Swarthmore graduates' chances. While it seems that most graduate schools have heard of Swarthmore's grade scale, it is uncertain how aware of it the corporate world is. While medical school advisors Gigi Simeone and Barbara Hirchfield make an intense effort to make sure that medical schools are aware of Swarthmore grade point averages, it is much more difficult for Career Planning and Placement Director Thomas Francis to do the same for the thousands of companies that students look at.
"If we took out an ad in The New York Times proclaiming Swarthmore's low grades, I do not think that would be all that effective," said Francis. "Since companies may not know of Swarthmore's grade policy, it is essential that students talk about the caliber of their education to whoever is interviewing them, and I feel that most students do this effectively."
While Francis does talk about it with representatives of companies that come to campus, he maintains that, given the sheer number of companies out there, it would be impossible to do this on a national scale. Because of this fact, students looking for jobs outside of the academic world are ostensibly hurt by their low grade point averages.
"Those hurt the most are 'accepted scholars' to the federal government," said Francis. "When a department is hiring, they do not do a full blown search if they do not have a 3.5 [G.P.A.] or better.
"The bottom line is, those with high grade point averages are not rewarded as much as those from other schools, and those with low G.P.As are hurt more."
However, Francis maintains that companies are aware of grades' essential nature. "Grades reflect how well a student will do in an academic, scholarly environment," he said. "This does not translate into most jobs, such as being an effective salesperson."
The data, which shows that Swarthmore students are not being affected by lower grade point averages, is somewhat suspect. For example, the fact that Swarthmore has an extremely high acceptance rate to medical schools can be explained by Swarthmore's effective limitations of applicants to medical school, because medical advisor recommendations are not given to students with lower GPAs.
Additionally, the University of California's Law School data on grade point averages groups quartiles of colleges based on grade point average. In essence, this means that Swarthmore students' proportionally lower GPAs are still adjusted exactly the same way as the GPAs from colleges like Bates, Carleton, Harvard, Pomona, Princeton, and Vanderbilt.
Additionally, critics maintain that it is inherently unfair to force Swarthmore students to come into a job interview with a huge disadvantage compared to students from other schools.
"Swarthmore's practice of grade control is fine in theory, except no one knows we practice it," said Dave Thomas '02. "It makes us look bad in interviews because no one knows we do it. If we were Harvard, we could have low grades, and people would know about it. For God's sakes, we're Swarthmore; let's be serious."
Institutions around the nation with proportionally low grade point averages have taken different steps to address students' complaints that the policy hurts them in the workplace. Reed College recently attached a sheet to transcripts explaining the college's academic philosophy and mean GPA of 2.9.
On the other hand, three years ago, the University of Virginia Law School re-centered the mean grade from a 3.0 to a 3.3.
"The idea behind the change was to make sure our students aren't disadvantaged," said Steve Hopson, University of Virginia Law Recruiting Dean.
This past year was the first year that the effects of higher grades could be measured, because it was the first graduating class affected by the re-centered grades for all three years. "This year is one of the best years we have ever had [in law students getting good jobs]," siad Hopson. "Intuitively, our sense is that this is directly attributable to the higher grades."
Currently, Swarthmore College has no plans to shift grade policies, but questions still remain on whether this hurts or helps students.</p>