Word: grading
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Over the last ten years, a wave of grade inflation has hit Harvard. It is difficult these days to end up with a grade lower than a B minus in most social science and humanities courses. But as the grading of course work gets easier, the granting of departmental honors remains much the same, and undergraduates who do well in their courses feel slighted when Mother Harvard comes around to handing out summas to its children...
John M. Bullitt, senior tutor in English, says, however, that only a high magna-low cum discrepancy occurred this year. Bullitt may be technically correct after a fashion. But sources said that in two cases, submitted grades were changed before the final thesis grade was calculated...
Usually, the departments go to extraordinary lengths to keep the readers and their grades secret from the third reader. The Government Department is particularly careful about secluding its readers, while the English Department not only permits the third reader to know the other two grades (which is not too important, since there ordinarily is not a third reader unless there is a grade discrepancy), it allows the reader to know the identities of the other readers...
Usually, when grades differ by more than one distinction--summa to magna, magna to cum, or summa to cum--a third reader is called in to render another opinion. In most departments, the third grade is averaged with the other two, but in the English Department this year, the three readers held a meeting with Alan E. Heimert '49, chairman of the Department, to determine the final grade...
Bullitt denies that any thesis grade was changed for appearance's sake, but he not only admitted that some grades were altered, he defended the right of a Faculty member to raise or lower a thesis grade that he gave. "Sometimes a professor is feeling particularly dispeptic, Bullitt said, "and after he goes home, he thinks it over, and comes to me the next morning to change the grade...