Whats Wrong with Grade Inflation?
Posted by Vivia Chen Grades still define careers. More precisely, grades define who gets their foot into the door of a prestigious practice and who is shut out. It took a while, but law schools are catching up to this game. The New York Times reported on Monday that “in the last two years, at least ten law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient.” The impetus for this change, the article says, is “to rescue their students from the tough economic climate” and “to protect their own reputations and rankings.” The NYT names some schools that have blurry grading systems, including Harvard and Stanford (the two have eliminated traditional grading altogether). “Like Yale and the University of California, Berkeley, they now use a modified pass/fail system, reducing the pressure that law schools are notorious for. This new grading system also makes it harder for employers to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, which means more students can get a shot
