Grade Reform, Law Schools

Grade Reform at USC Gould School Of Law: Here's a Free .1

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At least the USC Gould School of Law is being relatively honest. According to the administration, USC students do not get grades on par with students at peer institutions. This hurts USC students in the job market. The most simple way to fix this discrepancy is to just give everybody at USC Law an extra boost to their GPA.

You think it can’t possibly be that simple? Here is the grade reform proposal that USC faculty and student representatives will be voting on, on December 11th:

Proposed Revision:

Under the current grading curve, the average grade in each first-year course is set at 3.2. Under the Dean’s proposal, the average grade in each first-year course would be set at 3.3 rather than at 3.2. The effect of this change would be to raise each first-year grade by .1. For example, a student who would have earned a grade of 3.2 in Torts under the current grading curve would instead earn a grade of 3.3. Similarly, a student whose year-end GPA under the current grading curve would be a 3.2 would instead have a year-end GPA of 3.3.

I don’t see why a major law school would admit that their grading system was a joke that they came up with out of a hat, but there you go. Free points for everybody, because halfway through the 2008/2009 school year USC decided that law school was just too damn hard.

USC’s justifications and rationalizations after the jump.


Even the school’s stated reasons for this version of grade cheating reform make it clear that the motivation behind this proposal is simply to change employer’s perception of USC students:

Considerations Prompting the Proposal:

* The quality of students at USC law school has risen dramatically in the last decade. Nonetheless our grade curve has not changed to reflect this improvement.

* Our first-year grades and first-year GPAs appear to be lower than those at our peer schools which likely harms some of our students’ job prospects.

* Several of our peer schools, notably including UCLA, have recently revised their own grading curves upward to reflect current quality of the student body.

* If we are going to revise our grading curve in response to these concerns, the current difficulties in the economy make it desirable for us to implement the revision in the current year, rather than waiting for the next academic year.

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Looking at the first and second reasons together is just classic. “We’re a much better school than we used to be. We have no evidence for this statement, but we are, trust us. In fact, we’re so much better that our students should no longer be held to a rigorous standard. We rock!”

The third reason is hilarious because they’re trying to use UCLA as cover. Can’t you imagine UCLA football saying “USC has won all these championships, but our football program is as good as theirs. So, we just made up a PAC-10 trophy and stuck it in our trophy case. Everybody wins!”

But the fourth reason, that my friends is the rug that ties the room together. Because when you break that one down you get a real honest statement about how the USC brain trust is feeling just at the moment. They are basically telling everybody “look, the economy is in the toilet and we just can’t get our students jobs right now. We’re scared and they’re terrified. So, we thought that if we gave them an extra .1, it might help. Really, we’re out of options at this point.”

Pedagogical excellence at its finest.

If the move helps additional students land jobs, I suppose it’s a move that USC has to make. But one would think that there has to be a better way than just handing out a better GPA just for the sake of handing out better GPAs.

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Maybe it will help, unless of course employers figure out that every USC Law transcript is artificially inflated to reflect the current down market.

Earlier: A Columbia Potpourri: Columbia Talks About Deans and Grades But Provides Little Information

HLS Grade Reform: Splitting the Baby Was The Only Call

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