What's in a grade? With such a wealth of schools, departments and professors, the grading system of UW-Madison is diverse—and to some even capricious.
A UW-Madison chemistry student who asked to remain anonymous recently had an exam considerably marked up by a teaching assistant. Additionally, the student said the TA had changed several of the multiple choice answers.
I realized the points didn't add up,\ the student said. ""[The TA] had blatantly changed multiple choice answers to make them correct.""
When The Daily Cardinal contacted the TA, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the TA said the grades were changed to encourage students in the section. Additionally, the TA characterized the actions as offering points for partial credit, in stark contrast to the professor's policy.
The student flatly rejected the explanation.
""I think it's incredibly absurd,"" the student said. ""I'm just speaking for myself and for my test score that I made right, but if you look at all the people who received points, it not only says that [gender concealed] is a good TA, but it says all the people that are in different sections that did poorly on that test are worse off just because they don't have my TA.""
TA inconsistencies
The exchange strikes at the heart of the entire grading system, one the TA characterizes as flawed.
In large, often entry-level classes, the task of grading is distributed among a number of TAs. Although each is required to respect the professor's grading criteria, the TA said that is not often the case.
""For me, [the grading system] is unfair. To not allow partial credit is unfair,"" the TA said. ""In real life, there's no final or correct answers. There are steps. There are procedures. If you go into an industry and your boss asks you to solve a problem, you're not going to say, ‘It's 80 kilojoules per mole.'""
However, while admitting altering grades gave certain students an advantage over others, the TA could not say whether the approach benefited students in the long run.
Gary Sandefur, dean of the College of Letters and Science, said individual departments were often responsible for training TAs within their respective departments, often emphasizing consistency.
""What concerns me more [than grade inflation] is inconsistency. If you have two sections of the same course, when one person's a much harder grader than the other one, there's some unfairness, so we try to watch out for that, but I don't think that happens very often,"" Sandefur said.
The TA said inconsistency was not the worst offense observed at the University, particularly in the departments of chemistry, physics and mathematics.
The TA reported being aware of instances in which other TAs had provided academic help to students they were involved with romantically, or stolen exams and tutored students in exchange for under-the-table payments.
Long-term grade inflation
Complicating the initial difficulty of gleaning value from a grade is the long-term increase in grade point average.
""I think that's a problem at many universities. When I was in school, the all-school average was like a 2.3 over a 4.0, and I'm sure it's [now] probably above a 3.0 in the College of Engineering,"" said Jay Samuel, an academic staff senior lecturer who has been at the University since 1979.
""There's a lot of variation in the college because we have so many different fields, and if you look at grades at the University over time they've definitely gone up over the past 22 years,"" Sandefur said. ""On the other hand, academic preparation in students entering the University is higher now as well, so it's hard to know all the factors in grades going up over time.""
Samuel said some classes stick to a grading scale more reflective of the system of 20 years ago.
""I teach a course which a number of us teach, and we've agreed to say the class average is going to be like a BC. It always is. It's very difficult for us, but I'd say that's the exception rather than the rule,"" Samuel said.
However, Sandefur said he does not believe interdepartmental uniformity in grading or the long-term GPA increases are anything to worry about.
""Graduate admissions committees are pretty sophisticated about interpreting grades. I was on the graduate admissions committee in sociology for a few years, and there are some institutions where we know grades tend to be high, and other institutions where we know grades tend to be low on average,"" Sandefur said.\
