The Academic Levelers At Work

Colleges have found a new way to make students — their tuition-paying customers — feel better about themselves. And that, of course, is the supreme aim of education. What’s the point, after all, of learning things if that doesn’t make you happier? For example, some students make the Dean’s List, but many more do not. And that doesn’t seem fair. More on the decision of two Ivy League schools, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, to do away with the Dean’s List, can be found here: “The End of the Dean’s List,” by Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed, February 20, 2024:

Deans’ lists have long been a staple of American higher education, each semester trumpeting the names of top-achieving students on college websites and in local newspapers.

But among Ivy League institutions, that tradition appears to be ending. Last fall, both Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania stopped releasing deans’ lists in an effort to reduce students’ academic stress.

“This decision is the culmination of extensive consultations over several years across the Penn community, including with undergraduate student leaders, in response to the shared belief that a Dean’s List designation does not reflect the breadth and evolution of students’ academic achievements over the course of their education at Penn,” Beth A. Winkelstein, UPenn’s then-interim provost, and Karen Detlefsen, vice provost for education, wrote in an announcement about the change last spring.

Cornell and Penn aren’t alone; Brown University hasn’t had a dean’s list since it moved to its current open curriculum academic model in the late 1960s. Harvard last published a dean’s list in 2002. Columbia still maintains a dean’s list for each of its undergraduate colleges, but it is currently re-evaluating that practice and certain other honors, according to a university official.

The move to eliminate deans’ lists comes at a time when some universities are working to address a culture of perfectionism on campus, where students feel pressured to earn the highest grades, participate in the most extracurriculars or land the most elite internships. Research has shown that such a culture can impact students’ mental health, as they may feel inadequate if they are unable to meet their lofty goals.

Looking at campuses today, one is struck not by a “culture of perfectionism,” but rather, by a distinct dumbing-down of the curriculum, with passing fashions elevated into objects of study — Harvard now offers a course on Taylor Swift and 300 students are taking it — the extreme politicization of student life, as shown by the raucous and menacing demonstrations against Israel, and the shutting down, by screaming, of any who dare to differ, the scandal of faculty plagiarism, the hiring and promotion of faculty based on considerations other than merit, the DEI plague, and now the elimination of the Dean’s List because those who aren’t on it may then “feel inadequate.”

That was a key reason why the associate deans’ council at Cornell initially recommended removing the lists, according to Lisa Nishii, the institution’s vice president for undergraduate education.

“It was believed that having many types of awards based solely on grades exacerbates stress and anxiety for students, perpetuates an obsession with grades, and makes students feel that they are in competition with each other,” she wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Students’ obsession with grades can impact their choice of courses and make them less likely to take risks in their course selections. A more measured approach affords recognition for academic achievement but does not promote an undue and constant emphasis on grades.”…

In other words, in order to ensure a high grade-point average, students will choose courses where the instructor hands out A’s like party favors. They can find out from the “Rate My Professors” website online which courses are not too taxing, which professors are the easy graders, and which ones maintain a semblance of standards and therefore are to be avoided. Teachers, especially those who are not yet tenured, want those “good” reviews and will do whatever it takes to get them, which means they will be giving out A’s and A-minuses. At both Harvard and Yale, are A’s. These places are Lake Woebegon on stilts: everyone is way above average.

Students’ responses to the demise of deans’ lists have been mixed. Some see such policy changes as attacks on meritocracy, likening them to handing out participation trophies. Lexi Boccuzzi, a former columnist at The Daily Penn, Penn’s student newspaper, argued in an editorial that removing the dean’s list reflects an academic culture that no longer values competition and achievement, something that other online commentators agreed with.

“The war against individual achievement continues unabated,” one Penn alum wrote on a forum regarding the decision.

Boccuzzi also noted in her editorial that deans’ lists could be motivating.

“While Latin honors are designated upon graduation, the dean’s list is an award that can allow students to feel gratified during their Penn experience and feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of each year,” she wrote. “It provides a short-term goal to strive for, and an opportunity to restart and try again after a difficult academic year.”

The Dean’s List is based on yearly grade point averages. If a student doesn’t make the grade one year, he can try harder the next year. The Latin honors — cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude — on the other hand, are given at the very end of the student’s college career, at graduation. But if the average grade at both Harvard and Yale is now an A-, does that mean that nearly everyone at those schools gets to graduate summa cum laude?

In order to end this so-called “culture of perfectionism” where students become overwrought with the need to compete for good grades, Cornell and UPenn have now joined Harvard and Brown in eliminating the Dean’s List. But will that be enough to calm the anxious students down?

Why stop there? Why not eliminate grades altogether, and instead make every course Pass/Fail? That should soothe those who would otherwise be up at night, losing sleep in order to cram for a test, or even “pulling an all-nighter” to finish a paper due the next day. Eliminate grades, and you eliminate a key cause for student anxiety. And surely the mental health of students comes before all other considerations, including their education. In fact, why stop at Pass/Fail? Why not just give everyone a “Pass,” so that no one need feel bad or anxious? After all, these students are higher education’s customers; most of them are paying a lot of money to go to these schools. Don’t they all deserve a satisfactory experience that will reaffirm their worth? Who goes to college only to be made to feel bad? Not I, certainly, and I suspect not you, either.

But banishing grades may not be enough. End, too, the practice of awarding some students their degrees with one of the three traditional levels of honors — cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude — that make a few feel good about themselves, but at what psychic cost to others? Think of those who don’t graduate with honors, think of the feelings of inadequacy experienced by the many who through the rest of their lives will be saddled with the melancholy thought that, on all of their curricula vitae, they will have to list their undergraduate degree that was granted with no lauds or plaudits whatsoever. Surely the universities should strive to achieve the greatest happiness of the greatest number. If despite grade inflation, some students still manage not to graduate with honors, this upsets them far more than any emotional benefit that those who do graduate with honors experience. End all distinctions of merit. No more book prizes, no membership in Phi Beta Kappa (hell, abolish Phi Beta Kappa altogether), get rid of the annual posting of the Dean’s List, stop the practice of having a class valedictorian and even a salutatorian (who needs them?), the honors affixed to diplomas, where some graduate “cum laude” or “magna cum laude,” or “summa cum laude,” while others, alas, do not. Why not dispense with all the glittering prizes, as we level down to a most common denominator?

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, it is the dodo who insists that “all shall have prizes.” American universities have hit on a different way to level not just the playing-field, but every classroom and lecture hall and graduate ceremony on campus. Their answer is instead “none shall have prizes.” What Nabokov called “the great fraternity of C-minus” should be pleased.