Why did we adopt an institutional grading policy instead of relying on exhortation to the faculty to grade more rigorously?
We tried exhortation for five years, beginning in 1998 with the first dissemination to the faculty of historical grading data. Despite annual reports of grading results and intensive efforts to encourage more rigorous and responsible grading, grading patterns for 1997–2002 were no different than they had been for 1992–97, before the effort to address grade inflation got started. In the spring of 2003, the department chairs made it clear that we were not going to make progress with exhortation. Faculty in one department had no incentive to grade more rigorously if faculty in another department weren’t also grading more rigorously. So the department chairs charged the Faculty Committee on Examinations and Standing with drafting a University-wide grading policy, which was proposed to and adopted by the faculty in April 2004.
