One really wants to say that the vice-chair is an idiot, but I will refrain. The policy is idiotic in any case. I've taught at places in which nearly every student excels on every measure I could devise. Why would I want to pit one student against another for the purpose of an artificial "average"? They weren't average.
If you have the twenty best people (students or employees for example) in the world and you measure them in any single way, then half of them will be below average. Just how fine can you make the graduations so that someone can be "called" worse than someone else.
On the other hand, if the average, as measured over several runnings of the class, is around 85 and if there are clear differences in behavior and outcome, then "rewarding" everyone equally is also idiotic.
You set a standard. People met it. The standard was not that you must do "better" than someone else. If you change it now you have an ethical failing.
I hope you have enough standing in the university and in the profession that you can stand up to such unfair and unethical suggestions. If your group of students was exceptional there is no reason not to mark them as exceptional.
If you want to lower the average in future, with a different group of students, make the course more demanding.
But if you change the grading structure after they have finished their work then you are doing evil, not teaching.
manpreet![Tuteehub forum best answer]()
Best Answer
2 years ago
I recently taught an undergraduate seminar course, in which each student has to read a research paper, summarize it and present it to the class. In the first lesson I explained to the students the components of the grade: attendance, summary writing, and presentation quality.
Most of the students did great jobs: attendance was near full, summaries were good, and presentations were great. Many of them did more than I expected - they contacted the paper's authors to get more information, presented movies and demos, engaged the class in discussions, etc. So, when I wrote the grades to myself, most of them were between 90 and 100.
But then, when I told this to the department vice-chair, he told me "what have you done? You will cause a grade-inflation! The department policy is that the average grade on seminar courses should be at most 85!" I totally understand this policy - grades that are too high might show that the course was too easy, and they do not sufficiently distinguish between good and better students. Also, they might be unfair to students who took the course in previous years.
However, I am not sure what I should do now. I haven't published the grades to the students yet. Should I just re-scale the grades so that 90 becomes 70? I feel this is somewhat unfair to the students who worked hard for their presentations. Are there better options?