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< | I'm sure many of you have read the recent NYT Article, In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That. I have enjoyed reading the comments of the article, which span from adamant support of tossing out the old regime to total disdain for a generation often described as entitled. I must admit, the article gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach, especially as we approach the Fall recruiting season. I fantasize about the minimal, or complete lack of, anxiety students at schools with no grades must be experiencing as they head into the process. What is most striking to me is that quite a few schools with students who compete with Columbia students for employment have made the determination that eliminating traditional grades altogether, or altering the curve, is in the best interest of their students. Even our friendly neighbor to the south has made alterations to its curve. This begs the question, what are Columbia's justifications for not rolling with the tide? | >
> | I'm sure many of you have read the recent NYT Article, In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That. I have enjoyed reading the comments of the article, which span from adamant support of tossing out the old regime to total disdain for a generation often described as entitled. I must admit, the article gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach, especially as we approach the Fall recruiting season. I fantasize about the minimal, or complete lack of, anxiety students at schools with no grades must be experiencing as they head into the process. What is most striking to me is that quite a few schools with students who compete with Columbia students for employment have made the determination that eliminating traditional grades altogether, or altering the curve, is in the best interest of their students. Even our friendly neighbor to the south has made alterations to its curve. This begs the question, what are Columbia's justifications for not rolling with the tide? | | | This topic has obviously received great attention in this course, but I still think this article is an interesting read. I would love to hear any comments or reactions people might have. | | | The thing that surprised me most about that article was that it was the NYT's "most emailed" article for a couple of days this week. Are there that many uneasy law students/lawyers/friends of same out there? Though it's definitely of interest to us, I was surprised by the broad appeal. There's certainly much more interesting content in the Times this week. I would recommend the fascinating five-part piece by Errol Morris.
-- CourtneySmith - 25 Jun 2010 | |
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> | Education reform (as I insist on calling it - grade reform encourages the illusion that systems of evaluation can be neatly cabined off from the substance of education) is an issue I care a lot about, so I'm happy to join in on a renewed discussion of it on the wiki.
I don't think the news here is about grade inflation as such. What's happened is just that few schools who had a lower curve adjusted it to match the curve of the majority of other law schools. I don't support the curve system, but I don't see a particular problem with fixing a situation in which student X, if he had gone to UC Hastings, would have gotten a higher mark for precisely the same performance than if he had gone to Loyola. It's relevant to consider curves at other law schools because students are not just competing amongst their classmates for jobs, they are also competing with graduates of other schools.
I am not convinced that Harvard, Yale and Stanford have gotten their evaluation systems right. A system that goes from A-B-C to HP-P-LP is not going very far. That being said, getting rid of the arbitrariness of pluses and minuses is a positive step. I think also that in some marginal sense, a terminology based on "pass" feels different from one based on the A-B-C system.
I think the larger issue at stake, as I've intimated above, is not actually how we're graded - it's about what law school is. I think the "industrial model," which requires large class sizes to finance the salaries of a large number of professors, which in turn produce a large amount of "prestigious" law review articles, is unsustainable. It fosters alienation and militates against the types of pedagogical relationships that build great lawyers. When new graduates could make hundreds of dollars per hour sitting in a high-rise and highlighting documents, this type of education may have been sufficient. I don't think it is any more.
My understanding of the reason that Columbia does not have a pass-based system is that students recently rejected it. I would like to know more about this, if anyone has any information about what the margin was, how the question was put, etc. In a sense, however, we have the education we have asked for.
Some links related to that debate:
Katherine Franke's blog post [expressing concern that women and minority students may still be disadvantaged if faculty relationships, not grades, become the new coin of the realm]
Columbia Spectator article [reporting on the debate, quotes Franke's post]
Finally, with respect to the Times Most Emailed section, it is relevant to note that an article on "Catios" also enjoyed a multi-day stretch as "most emailed" article in recent weeks.
-- DevinMcDougall - 26 Jun 2010 |
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