Pros and cons of plus/minus grading

The University Senate voted last year to implement the use of plus/minus grading and it was recently announced that the new grading system would take effect sometime this fall.

As with any policy change, students should ask themselves what effect it will have on them.

The new grading system will separate students into smaller, better-defined categories.

Students ranging, for example, between 80 and 89 percent in class are currently understood to be receiving a B.

With the new plus/minus grading, students with an 81 percent will be considered B- students whereas students scoring an 88 will be B+ students.

This change is a good idea, despite the inevitable grumblings that will circulate throughout the general student population.

The Office of the Provost has already admitted that there will be kinks and hitches that will need to be fixed before the new grading system is implemented. Transfer policies and admission requirements will be most affected by the switch.

These are not minor problems and it is the university's duty to ensure the policy helps - not harms - the educational experience of the students.

Detractors will claim the new policy aims for the middle instead of raising the bar--lifting some and leveling others. Perhaps.

But neither outcome would be unfair or inaccurate with the new grading system. The new system creates bedrock on which the university can build its foundation stronger than before. The plus/minus policy was created to improve numbers. The university could have used any number of tricky techniques to plump its academic success statistics.

As the grading system takes shape, perhaps there will be a change in how students are graded, but for now, the university is only changing the labels of the current grading method. The student averaging an 81 percent will still be averaging an 81 percent.

The only difference is that the student's transcript will register a B- instead of a flat B. For that student, the system won't be a welcome change, but there are flip sides to all coins and for every new minus student, there will be a plus student to match.

The new system serves to more precisely evaluate what students are doing and how well they are doing it.

If plus students have long felt slighted, their time has come.

For those students with minus-filled transcripts, it's time to step it up a notch.