Students and faculty held a forum yesterday to debate the merits of integrating the plus-minus grading system into GPA calculation.
The majority of the 25 students who attended a University Senate forum yesterday were in favor of the proposed plus-minus grading system.
The forum, intended to provide students with a venue to voice their opinions, elicited favorable reviews, with many calling on the senate to approve the policy as soon as possible.
The students said the proposed grading system would better reflect their academic efforts. The current system does not factor pluses and minuses into a student’s GPA, though faculty members have had the option to give students pluses and minuses since fall 2002.
“There’s no difference with a 80.2 and a 89.6,” said Steve Hardy, a junior criminology and criminal justice major. “There’s absolutely something wrong with that.”
George Bean, committee chairman, said the senate will definitely vote on the policy in the fall and will likely pass it with high approval. The policy wouldn’t be retroactive, meaning it won’t change previous GPAs, and the earliest it could be enacted is fall 2006.
When students apply for graduate or law school their grades are usually recalculated, and sometimes it’s lower than they expected, which could hurt their admissions.
Elizabeth Joseph, a senior history major, applied to law school and said she missed graduating with honors by 1/4,000th of a point. If her B+s were calculated, her GPA would have been higher.
“Plus-minuses as awarded here have affected me outside, like applying for law school,” Joseph said. “In Maryland, it did nothing but hurt me.”
Other students expressed concern about convincing all faculty members to use plus-minus grading. If only a portion of the faculty uses the new system, it will be ineffective.
To combat that problem, Bean said students should encourage their professors to support plus-minus grading.
“Students are the ones to put pressure on the instructors,” he said. “It won’t come from the administration — it’ll have to come from the students.”
A few students at the forum opposed the plus-minus system, arguing that minuses will ultimately hurt their GPAs.
“I have a 4.0 average in criminology, and a great deal of it comes from my As,” said Patrick Rigiel, a criminology and criminal justice major. “It’s hard getting As.”
Students took issue with whether an A+ should be worth 4.3 on a 4-point scale, but many shot it down because no other peer institutions use the weighted average. They also debated whether a C- should be worth 1.7, which is considered a failing grade. The details of how the grades would be weighted, however, will be up to the registrar.
