Jason Riley:
The dilution of standards is no less a concern in graduate schools, where worry about racial and ethnic balance in outcomes has become more important than competency. Step 1 of the three-part licensure exam given to medical students to measure their basic grasp of anatomy, biology and other science used to be graded using a numerical score. In 2019 the medical groups who oversee the exam voted to change the grading of Step 1 to pass/fail.
“The solution to the fact that white students score better on the exam was to eliminate reporting scores,” wrote Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. “This makes about as much sense as Major League Baseball eliminating batting averages to ensure that no ethnic cohort outperforms the others.”
Harvard is weighing several proposals to address grade inflation. One would limit the number of A-plus grades awarded in each course. Another would require instructors to include the median grade in each class on the student’s transcript. Both would be steps in the right direction, but the impact would almost certainly be marginal.