7

Anyone who is interested in my experience as a grader in the past can check this thread.

This semester I was assigned a grader for a certain class, which runs two sections. There are two professors, Professor $A$ and Professor $B$. Both of them using Professor $A$'s personal written textbook and taught on the same schedule using the same set of problems to evaluate the students. As I am the grader, they hand in their midterms to me on Wednesday. They told me because it is not worth upsetting the students with a low grade, I should grade fairly but cut off no more than five points per problem. This gave an effective lower bound of 75 out of 100 for the students. Obviously I did not have a choice but to comply, because they often modify my grading in the past and complain I graded too harshly. I thought at 25 point scale the grade can still reflect the student's performance.

However, I was shocked when I hand in the graded midterms Professor B told me I still graded too harshly. For example, at a certain step in proving $\frac{2n-1}{5n+1}\rightarrow \frac{2}{5}$ the student computed for $n$ large $|f(n)-L|$ equal$$\frac{1}{4n-2}<\frac{1}{4n},\forall n\ge 2$$etc. I cut off all the five points available and gave a mark $\frac{15}{20}$ for this problem. But Professor $B$ claim that this is a inconsequential arithemetic mistake, 2-3 points should be the maximum. In this way he systematically raised up the students' grades to over $90$ unless the students did extremely badly. He told me that if the students receive a mark over 90, then they would be happy. Moreover since no one will complain if he taught the students well, he has no moral hazard by giving free $A$s to most of the students. When I questioned him if the students would learn anything after such a grading process, he admitted that is questionable. But "who cares?". He told me in order to get tenure one has to care about teaching references.

Since there is nothing I can do to Professor $B$'s grade inflation, I graded Professor $A$'s section of students as I did before, only with $15/20$ lower bound on each problem. Professor $A$ asked me how is Professor $B$'s class. After hearing my story, Professor $A$ exhibited deep sympathy with the situation. But to my surprise he proposed to let me inflate his section's grades as well so the students would not consider themselves to be treated unfairly. To be more specific, now about 2/3 of the students can get over $90/100$. However, there is an exception to this rule. There is a student who honestly written he/she cannot finish the test in time, and has to leave the last problem in blank. Since I cannot give a blank problem $15/20$, her final grade around $70$ was the lowest in the class even though her performance is not the lowest judged by the test paper. There are plenty of student written nonsense like the above equation and I have to grade them $15/20$ at first, and now maybe $18/20$ with Professor $A,B$'s personal policy.

I want to know (without disclosing more detailed personal information), if there is anything I can do to avoid behaving dishonestly like this in future. I know I have to compromise to live in the academia, but I found the whole inflation scenario to be totally absurd. When I think about it, the obvious answer is I should refuse to grade with $75/100$ at first, then maybe the next string of things would not happen. However doing that would not change the grade inflation at all since the Professors have the final say on the grades. I proposed to be the TA for their sections for free as I felt morally awkward at this moment. I want to ask for others with similar experience if this is a normality to be expected in any ranking $\approx 100$ university or a sign of academic corruption singularly at here.

Also, why the honest person should suffer while others being inflated? To me it is not someone's fault that he or she tried hard but still learned the subject very slowly. I know my department's funding policy depends on the students' performance. My guess is with a new $70$ on her midterm, her academic position is endangered significantly. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I felt somehow guilty even though I am not responsible for her performance as I am not the teaching for the class.

update:

My proposal of setting up personal office hour was accepted. However it seems I have to inflate my grades in future as well for Professor $B$. I felt very complicated.

update:

After taking a look at my grading results, Professor $A$ considered the inflation I had done is not enough to bring it to the level of Professor $B$'s inflations. As a result he asked me to cancel my office hours and spend more time on grading (he suppose if I spend more time on the grade inflation thing, I would do it better). Since I have to "match" Professor $B$'s inflation scale, I asked him personally and he said he is effectively grading on 5 point scale. So as long as student write something, no one will be cut off more than 3 points.

This is one of the most disappointing events in my short budding career.

Community
  • 1
Bombyx mori
  • 19,638
  • 6
  • 52
  • 112
  • This is mathematics. There is no "happy" or "sad," either the answer was correct or not, either the method was correct or not, either the method used was applied correctly or not, etc. I can't say that I would do very much differently if I had once agreed to "grade generously" in this way, but after such an experience I would make a personal TA policy and give it to each professor I grade for, and I would explicitly state that every grade from $0$% to $100$% is valid for a given student's performance. After that point the grade is completely determined by the professor. – abiessu Oct 19 '13 at 03:15
  • @abiessu: What Professor $A,B$ mean is they do not want to make the students unhappy enough to complain to the administration, write a negative review on ratemyprofessor.com, reflecting negatively in the course evaluation that the professor is too harsh so that may endanger the tenure evaluation for Professor $B$, etc. I do not know if by happiness/upset they mean psychologically satisfied/unsatisfied instead. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 03:20
  • 2
    If it helps, I do not think that you should feel guilty here. Perhaps you should grade as expected, so that the university will get the reputation it deserves? – Baby Dragon Oct 19 '13 at 03:26
  • My last sentence should be expanded to say "After I have determined a fair grade for each student for the assignment I am grading, then the professor must make the choice whether to give free "A's" or not, and I am free to interfere further or not (take case(s) to the administration/board of education, etc.)." – abiessu Oct 19 '13 at 03:26
  • @abiessu: Maybe I am just a moral coward, but I think (or I guess) if I ever bring this to the dean's office, I would be kicked out of graduate school sooner or later by department politics. Besides Professor $A$ is very likely to be my PhD advisor(if I choose to stay here). – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 03:30
  • @BabyDragon: Yes, this university has a reputation that the students pay a significantly lower fee for tuition while getting an education comparable to other well known public universities of similar rank. However the sacrifice is that the teaching quality suffers. So the school's ranking (or reputation) is dropping quickly. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 03:34
  • I am not calling you a coward. Just expressing my thoughts on what I hope I would do, no guarantees that I would actually have the courage myself... – abiessu Oct 19 '13 at 03:46
  • All else notwithstanding, the fact that each problem awards minimum 75% credit for just an attempt makes for a deeply unfair grading system. So any student can get a 75 by scribbling, whereas someone who genuinely tries but runs out of time can get a 70? This is a highly suspect grading system even without the moral dilemma the professors are putting you in. – Gyu Eun Lee Oct 19 '13 at 04:04
  • @proximal: Yes, I had raised up this issue. As MIT/Princeton educated professors, they came up with the solution that since the person giving up is not putting any effort, cutting off 20 points is justified. I had nothing to say. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 04:11
  • 1
    I feel like this thread belongs on the academia stackexchange board, as it is not exclusive (or dependent) on the fact that the courses being graded are mathematics courses. – Stahl Oct 19 '13 at 05:25
  • 4
    This question appears to be off-topic because it is about academic issues rather than math. I think moving this to the academia stackexchange would be ideal. – Stahl Oct 19 '13 at 05:26
  • Please let me know the name of this "university" so I can know how to interpret marks on their transcripts when they apply elsewhere. – Gerry Myerson Oct 19 '13 at 05:44
  • @GerryMyerson: You can find the name of the university if you look -- the OP has not made an effort to conceal it -- but I don't know if it will tell you "how to interpret marks on their transcripts", since this sort of thing is not likely to be uniform. I don't know the details at the OP's school, but I'm aware of a different school where the administration puts pressure on professors to treat students as "customers", and not all professors capitulate (and of the ones that do, not all do so to the same degree). – ruakh Oct 19 '13 at 06:44
  • @Stahl: I beg to differ. I think mathematics is one of the very few subjects one can judge student's performance very objectively. A proof is a proof. If this were an essay writing class I would feel very complicated about whether my own grading is fair at the first place. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 15:10
  • @GerryMyerson: I have a hint. My school ranks at #97 in the US news/word report. However please give me a chance when I am applying for postdoc. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 15:13
  • 2
    Prof. $B$ has no business teaching. I have a little sympathy for Prof. $A$ in that situation, but only a very little: the notion that a page of nonsense is worth more than a blank page is unprofessional rubbish. I’d much rather have a student answer half of the questions well and leave the rest blank than have one do a half-assed job on every question. – Brian M. Scott Oct 19 '13 at 20:17
  • @BrianM.Scott: Prof. $A$ told me that he is planning to have a conversation with Prof.$B$. He stated that Prof.$B$ might be worrying too much about getting tenure, while in fact teaching evaluation has nothing to do with tenure. I immediately regret telling him what happened. Now obviously I will have personal problem with Prof. $B$ in future and got verbal instruction to inflate the grade as well from Prof. $A$. However when I asked Prof.$A$ what to do with the student leaving blank, it seems there is nothing we can do (to inflate her as well). That's why I felt so complicated. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 21:28
  • @BrianM.Scott: I know you are a retired professor with years of experience in teaching. Prof.$A$ told me when he just arrived here he was the toughest grader, but now he has to agree to the situation and allow the grades to inflate. Is this kind of phenomenon inevitable in one's math career? I felt very awkward because 1 I do not want to become someone like Prof $A,B$ in future, 2 I suspect my own graduate class' grades might be inflated as well, 3 I do not really know how to face the $70$ mark student. The midterms are still with me and I do not know what to do with them... – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 21:32
  • @user32240: I don’t think that I changed the way that I marked individual questions very much over my career, but over time I probably did become a little more generous in my interpretation of the marks when I gave course grades, especially at the lower end of the scale in classes that were not prerequisites for anything else. In liberal arts math, for instance, I gave some low C’s and D’s that really ought to have been D’s and F’s, respectively. But I think that my standards for A’s were pretty consistent, and my standards for B’s nearly so, though the lower end may have slipped a little. – Brian M. Scott Oct 19 '13 at 21:41
  • 1
    With some exceptions I typically graded individual problems on a scale of $10$, and I used the entire range. I also made no effort to design exams to fit a predetermined set of grade cutoffs (e.g., $90$% for an A): I set the exams that I wanted to set and then interpreted the results. Consequently I generally got high scores around $80$% or perhaps $85$% and generally considered that a good score. A student who averaged $80$% for the term was generally going to be at or very near the top of the class. $50$% was quite likely to be a middling C. – Brian M. Scott Oct 19 '13 at 21:48

4 Answers4

5

"I want to know (without disclosing more detailed personal information), if there is anything I can do to avoid behaving dishonestly like this in future."

Two things. You can tell the chair and the graduate coordinator that you do not want to be assigned to either of those two professors any more and explain why (I hope that it is not the universal attitude towards grading at your college; if it is, you are just in a wrong place at a wrong time to save your moral integrity). When you become a professor yourself, grade in the way consistent with your own moral principles and make sure that you are a good enough researcher to make the department worry about losing you, not you worry about losing job at any particular place. Moral integrity of a slave is an oxymoron, and the choice between living on knees and dying upright can be postponed for a worthier crusade.

fedja
  • 18,619
4

For your moral peace, I can assure than such practices are not widespread. Some grade curving is probably common, but free A's are not.

I find the profs behavior appalling but there is one caveat, which is the administration's attitude. It might be the case that the profs are really pressured into having "happy students" and in such situation is harder to be a purist.

Martin Argerami
  • 205,756
  • I do not really know, but I think the administration got pressure from the parents to grade leniently on their children's performances. One of the parents called my school's president to lift his/her child's grades. Whether this pressure is conducted to us, I do not know. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 03:15
  • 1
    I suspect that the administration is in fact levying pressure, based on many similar observations. – Baby Dragon Oct 19 '13 at 03:45
  • Most likely. In fact, I don't envy their position. The university needs the students' tuition, and so enrollment numbers are essential. Students and parents don't want to see their investment in education go sour, and they want to blame someone else if they fail. – Martin Argerami Oct 19 '13 at 03:48
  • I had a private conversation with one of the professors here a long time ago, when I proposed to let the students teach themselves calculus instead of letting them buying the expensive Stewart book and learn little afterwards. He told me the very same thing and asked me to be realistic that the students needs to be "educated". – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 03:59
3

This is ridiculous - no matter how much pressure there is from the administration, this is academic dishonesty of an absurd level. Perhaps this is too idealistic, but if I were you, I would continue to grade in a fashion that I think is correct. If the professors are unhappy with that, they can regrade it themselves. If they end up grading all the answer papers again, then they themselves will realize the futility of fighting with you.

Furthermore, I would write an open letter to the administration expressing my thoughts (without taking names, though). If you are on good terms with said bureaucrats, then that might lead to some changes.

Of course, all this is tempered by the fact that such actions might lead to unpleasant consequences for you, which is something you have to think about before taking on the world.

Prahlad Vaidyanathan
  • 31,554
  • Thank you. I really tried, but when Professor $A$ asked me in private to inflate the grades according to what Professor $B$ did so that the two sections are graded in the same way, I realized I got into a morally hazardous situation. I really do not know what to do now. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 03:36
  • @user32240 : If he wants you to change a grade that you think is incorrect, ask him to give it you in writing. If he doesn't, then tell him that you cannot do it without written authorization. – Prahlad Vaidyanathan Oct 19 '13 at 03:48
  • 1
    No, I have no right to do that. As the instructor he has the right to change the grade in whatever way he likes. He decided that final formal grade, not me. This would infuriating him and not solving anything. – Bombyx mori Oct 19 '13 at 03:52
3

An honest person at a corrupt institution will be either corrupted or made miserable. Leave as soon as you can, and publish the name of the institution when you are beyond its reach.

John Bentin
  • 18,454