Illustration by Arnie Bermudez

True story. In an upper division engineering class, the professor hands back graded midterms. He gives the students a moment to look them over, knowing they would be disappointed. Almost everyone failed.

He goes over the answers, explaining the question on the dynamics of plane stress. But all the students are doing is just plain stressing. Fifty-five percent. Sixty-two percent. Forty-seven percent. Thirty-nine percent. They can't even focus on the task ahead - the next test. The professor had already said that there would be no dropping of a test.

The hour goes by. At the end, the professor pauses. He sees a class of 30 and realizes he'll be lucky if half are back the next week.

"I know what the syllabus says, but if nobody has a problem with it I will let everyone drop their lowest test grade at the end," he says.

Students' hands come off their foreheads and a sigh of relief visibly rushes over the class.

"Does anyone have a problem with that?" he asks.

Students look around to see if anyone is raising their hand. A moment passes. Suddenly, a red head front and center raises his hand, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

"Okay then, the next test is in three weeks. Good luck."

Ryan Johnson Columnist

It's easy to say that the kid that raised his hand is just an asshole. Clearly he wasn't among the failing bunch, but being able to drop a test wouldn't hurt his grade one bit, just help others.

But don't blame him.

Blame the grading system.

This story demonstrates several of the current problems of the grade environment.

First, some facts. Think that having a 3.0 grade point average shows you're working hard in college? Must be, because 2.0 is supposed to be average, right? Wrong.

The average is 3.1, and it's been climbing steadily for years. A grade of B is now a below-average grade.

Want to tell a potential employer you had a good GPA? You and everyone else.

While this may make graduation rates higher, students can no longer be distinguished based on grades, and employers and graduate schools can't be sure that a good GPA means a good education.

But what about the professor that offered to drop the test? Are we to blame him for offering the students the chance to improve their grades? Should he have just let half the class fail in the first place?

The truth is that if he doesn't bring the students' grades up he'll be putting them at a competitive disadvantage. What is one professor alone resisting grade inflation going to do? I'm not sure, but I am pretty certain that one side effect is some pretty pissed off students who write bad evaluations.

Not to mention that entire departments' success can hinge on grades offered. Department funding is based partly on number of students, and students like to go places where they get good grades. This benefits some departments as much as it harms others.

But more than the absolute level of grades, what's important is the information surrounding them.

The most extreme example I've experienced was a continuous 1.0-to-7.0 scale in Santiago, Chile. The top grade in any class, 7.0, is extremely rare.

The major benefit of their system is that their grades are very informative. A 4.9 is not much different from a 5.0, as where here an A and a B can be the difference between 89.9% and 90% or the difference between 80% and 100%.

This ambiguity surely played a role in the engineering student's objection to the professor's proposal.

Follow-up is another important aspect. If employers and graduate schools know how well a student did compared to peers, it theoretically shouldn't matter all that much what the actual GPA was. If the average GPA drops by .05 but everyone knows it, hasn't the university just made a more informative scale?

Currently Arizona State University is in the process of trying plusses and minuses, which is a step in the right direction. It gives a more accurate picture of how students actually performed.

The grade inflation trend has been steady for years, but individual teachers and even departments only hurt themselves if they try to change it. Instead, students should appeal to the administration. Only a university-wide change would have the desired effect.

Ryan Johnson is an economics and an international studies junior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.