One of the major issues Missouri Students Association President Xavier Billingsley hopes to address during his term is the plus/minus grading system at MU. He brought a resolution from the MSA Senate to Faculty Council on Thursday to start a discussion.
The resolution’s goal was not to immediately make changes to the undergraduate grading system; rather, it supports Faculty Council in looking at a variety of options, Billingsley said.
“It’s asking Faculty Council to reinvestigate and open this issue back up again,” he said.
Billingsley brought with him MSA Director of Student Communications and former Maneater staffer Zach Toombs, as well as data from an online survey conducted with MU students.
Toombs said he saw the data from the survey as an expression of students’ dissatisfaction with the current grading policies.
“We feel that this is reliable and this is a plea to reevaluate the system,” he said.
The grading system as it currently stands gives a grade point average boost for a B+ (making it worth a 3.3 instead of a 3.0) all the way through a D+. A D+ is worth 1.3 points instead of 1 point.
As brought up in the resolution from MSA, an A+ weighs in at a 4.0, which is the same as an A. This concerns them because students do not have an incentive to achieve higher than an A.
“Students feel that there’s a jump for a B+ and a C+, so why isn’t there a jump for an A+ as well,” Billingsley said.
Part of the reason MU has a plus/minus grading system in place for its undergraduates is because it is an attempt to control grade inflation, said Arthur Jago, a Faculty Council member and College of Business professor.
“Some business schools, for example University of California – Berkeley, put a cap on course grade point average to control grade inflation,” Jago said.
This is not the first time MU has changed its grading system, and it is important to hear from all faculty, Faculty Council member Steve Ball said.
“I know this issue came up 15 years ago when we went through this from a regular grading system to a plus/minus system, so this might be frustrating for some of you who are going through this again,” Ball said.
Billingsley also said this is neither a complete overhaul of the system, nor a decision on any reform right now.
“We want approval to investigate this issue; we don’t want to pick a way or method to go about this,” Billingsley said. “What is the best for a thriving AAU accredited institution like MU right now? We just want discussion to look into this issue.”
However, Faculty Council members were concerned about a lack of data and wanted more before taking any vote on the issue, council member Nicole Monnier said.
“We understand that the students feel strongly about this,” Monnier said. “For one, all of our faculty is going to care about grade inflation or some kind of data that shows students are negatively affected by (the current grading).”
Faculty Council chairman Harry Tyrer chose to send the issue over to Academic Affairs, a committee in Faculty Council, rather than take a vote. Academic Affairs will make a motion for all of Faculty Council next meeting.
