Department chairs and faculty have weak arguments against grade distribution

Various department chairs at Central Michigan University are urging the removal of grade distribution information from the university Portal Web site.

Chairs are afraid that students will sign up for the easiest classes, which will pressure the entire faculty to go easy on students.

This is nothing more than a weak attempt to deflect judgment on the faculty’s teaching methods, keeping students in the dark on what classes are like with certain teachers.

The department chairs need to worry about maintaining quality teachers, not how grade distributions will affect registration for classes.

Access to grade distribution is already easy, thanks to the Internet. The University of Indiana allows its students to be specific when checking grade distribution, breaking it down by individual professors and certain semesters. Pickaprof.com allows users to chronicle how professors at a variety of universities grade their students. Since grade distribution is public record, everyone has access to them.

But certain department chairs don’t want students looking these records up and are making sweeping generalizations about the easy access to grade distributions. The department of psychology chairman Hajime Otani fears that making the records easier to navigate through will cause students to “shop around” for easy classes, and that academic standards at CMU won’t be met.

If that’s the case, there’s a serious problem with the faculty at CMU.

All professors should be held to the same standard when it comes to teaching, which apparently is not happening at CMU. Students wouldn’t be able to shop around for easy teachers if the entire faculty had a universal scale for grading. But instead, there is a significant amount of disparity among professors on how grades are given out. The fear of grade distribution on Portal simply shows how inconsistent the faculty is when viewed as a whole.

Grade distribution is public record, therefore deflating any argument faculty may have. Even if the link was taken down, any student could go into the campus library and find out how harsh professors grade their students.

But most of the time, students don’t even concern themselves with looking up the records. Professors’ classes fill up based on reputation and word of mouth. An instructor’s ratings on Ratemyprofessor.com can make or break the enrollment in their classes.

If department chairs are really worried about students taking easy classes, they need to come down on lenient professors not up to standard instead of trying to deter students from looking up the records.

Professors on campus can’t hide facts, nor can they try to bury them.