This new curve is good news for all students — especially freshmen still calling themselves ‘pre-Haas’ — but it’s only going to be applied to classes starting this spring. Previous courses taken at Haas still fall under the old curves of 3.2 and 3.4. Being Berkeley kids, though, this simply isn’t enough. Revolution must be called for! Take action against The Man! Haas kids were so outraged at the fact that this policy is not being applied to previous semesters that they went so far as to create a Facebook event in protest.  We can picture the dean now, calling in all the troops and barring his doors now that the online world is in on the fight for curve equality.

The event was created as a forum to spread awareness of the change and get people to take action through means like letter-writing. They call for everything taken from fall 2011 — the last three semesters — to get that GPA boost, because that’s when a majority of those affected started at Haas. After all, with the competitive open business market ahead of them after graduation, we can imagine they’d want the highest GPA possible to up their job odds and not have to face the “Less than exemplary from one of the best business schools in the country?! For shame, we can’t hire you.” At least, that’s what we think business execs would say.

Do you empathize with the business kids? Wish your mean curve was higher? Or are you one of those English majors who don’t even know what it means for a class to have a curve? Whichever the case, keep an ear out for Haas friends complaining or rejoicing over the change! Thanks to the Clog, you can now chime in and sound extra smart about business-y current events. Not a bad way to spend a few study break minutes, if you ask us.

Contact Erum Khan at ekhan@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter @erumjkhan.

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Following in the footsteps of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — which approved contextualized grading in 2011 — UC Berkeley officials are in the process of exploring the creation of a similar system, which might entail adding information like percentile rank and a course’s  average grade to transcripts. Due to grade inflation, a comparison between GPAs at Berkeley and schools such as Harvard is deeply flawed; more context would make that juxtaposition fairer.

But putting context into grading also poses significant risks. If applied categorically, contextualized grading could unnecessarily make the classroom even more competitive by forcing students to focus too much on besting their classmates instead of learning. While it would have an obvious benefit for tougher classes that are strictly graded — and are often already extremely competitive — the impact could be damaging to smaller courses that place a stronger emphasis on collaborative learning. Therefore, administrators need to be very cautious in their approach to applying this system.

Professors should have the flexibility to use contextualized grading judiciously. Since instructors know what grading system will provide the best service to their students given the course material, they should also be able to choose exactly what context is recorded.

While context appears to be an overall win for most UC Berkeley students, it would mean even more if our competitor universities followed suit. Communicating the factors behind Berkeley grading can only go so far — employers and graduate schools should be able to see the same kind of information from the likes of Harvard and Stanford.

Right now, UC Berkeley is not equipped to implement contextualized grading because the campus’s technology cannot handle it, according to Bob Jacobsen, associate dean for the College of Letters and Science. Officials look like they will be working on a proposal over the next year or two. With that much time to develop a sound plan, they should be able to brainstorm a nuanced approach that would make the grading change beneficial to all students. Those responsible for crafting the proposal must also carefully monitor how contextualized grading fares at UNC. If it fails there, it could very well fail here.

In all, contextualized grading will almost certainly be a positive change, so long as it doesn’t transform the atmosphere of the English department into the cutthroat environment of the Haas School of Business. But so far, all signs indicate that context will help a lot of UC Berkeley students.

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If enacted, the policy would add information such as a student’s percentile rank and average course grade to students’ transcripts. The move follows a similar change approved by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the spring of 2011 that is set to take effect this year.

“It’s become clear that grade inflation is a significant problem,” said UNC professor of sociology Andrew Perrin, who led the initial steps toward integrating contextual grading at UNC. “A few years ago, this may have been more controversial, but I think there’s a pretty large degree of consensus.”

Historically, the average GPA at UC Berkeley has been markedly lower than at peer universities, potentially placing graduates at a disadvantage when finding a job or getting into graduate school. In 2005, the average grade awarded at UC Berkeley was a 3.24, compared to a 3.55 at Stanford University, according to the most recent data compiled by Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University geophysics professor who has researched grade inflation.

“Compared to other schools we compete with, we’ve had relatively less grade inflation,” said Ronald Cohen, chair of UC Berkeley’s committee on educational policy. “It sends a strong signal of all kinds to employers about the quality of education here.”

Some question whether the policy may increase pressure for grades on students and hinder collaboration in smaller classroom settings. Yet, according to Bob Jacobsen, former chair of the UC Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate and current associate dean for the College of Letters and Science, a more nuanced approach to selecting what types of information to place on a transcript may help to resolve this problem.

“In my discussion of this across campus, most of the objections are about very special cases,” Jacobsen said. “How do you handle specific senior seminars where everyone is a specialist? I would phrase it as, what’s the right context to put on the transcript?”

The campus hopes to develop a more detailed proposal within the next one to two years, according to Cohen.

Still, technological limitations at the campus level will make implementation difficult.

“The reality is that our computers just can’t do this right now,” Jacobsen said. “We won’t be able to implement the policy until new student systems arrive.”

According to Jacobsen, current student systems — including the computers and programs underlying BearFacts, Tele-BEARS the DB2 system for transcripts — are outdated and ill-equipped for change.

“I think done well, it can be very valuable,” he said. “I think that the faculty have to figure out a way to do this well and get the best possible result from it.”

Contact Mia Shaw at mshaw@dailycal.org.

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