Troubles with grade inflation are not limited to classrooms at Penn. Other Ivy League universities must deal with rising marks as well.
The steps taken to evaluate and prevent this inflation vary significantly across the Ancient Eight, but concerns about the topic are increasingly apparent.
Some schools, like Yale and Cornell universities, say the issue isn't a major one. Others, however, have taken dramatic measures to curb an excess of high grades.
At Princeton University, for example, faculty voted in April 2004 to implement "expectations" that each undergraduate department would grant A's for a maximum of 35 percent of coursework and 55 percent of junior and senior independent work.
As a result, A's received in undergraduate course at Princeton were reduced to 40.9 percent last academic year, a drop of 5.1 percentage points.
At other universities, whose measures against grade inflation may be less drastic, the proportion of high grades given is higher -- though not as high as at Penn.
In awarding 54 percent A's, Penn's College of Arts and Sciences surpasses every other Ivy League school. The College is Penn's only undergraduate school to say it actively monitors grades.
At Brown University, where 46.7 percent of undergraduate grades last year were A's, the number isn't just higher than Princeton's -- it's still growing. The percentage of undergraduate A's given has increased 7.5 percentage points over the past 10 years.
But Brown is starting to investigate ways to combat this.
Brown's College Curriculum Council began discussing the addition of pluses and minuses to grades last month. Currently, the school gives only the unadorned A,B, C, D and F.
Though this hotly debated issue hasn't yet been resolved, some proponents of the addition believe that it has the potential to reduce grade inflation because professors could more correctly assess student achievement.
Harvard University also has seen an increase in the percentage of grades in the A range.
Last year, 48.7 percent of grades at Harvard were A-minuses or higher, with a record high 3.424 median course GPA. The median GPA in undergraduate courses has increased at the university almost every year since the 1985-86 academic year's median of 3.164.
Not all Ivy League universities, however, are witnessing a surge in high grades.
Marks at Yale University have remained relatively consistent over the years because it only allows 30 percent of each class to graduate with honors, according to Yale spokeswoman Gila Reinstein.
Since the awarding of honors is based on GPAs, the system creates a similar ratio across individual course grades.
Reinstein couldn't say exactly what these ratios are, however.
And Cornell University spokesman Simeon Moss doesn't believe that inflated grades are an issue at Cornell.
Though the trend may not be clear-cut across Ivy League universities, those which have taken steps against grade inflation hope that others will follow.
Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said that other universities have approached her university to learn about its policies and how they were implemented, which the university considers a positive step against grade inflation.
"Princeton is attempting here to attain a leadership role, a national leadership role, in something that we have come to see as a national problem," Cliatt said.
Though students weren't all initially enthusiastic about the new measure, they eventually recognized its positive results, she said.
"When you have a system in which the majority of grades are A's, it calls into question the merit of that A," Cliatt said. Employers and graduate schools "know that a Princeton A is a mark of truly exceptional work."
At the New Jersey school, individual departments' methods of grade control vary, from the economics department assigning grade quotas for its classes to the English department encouraging professors to grade more critically.
Harvard too has emphasized the importance of an ongoing focus on the issue.
In a report on median grades issued last month, Harvard Dean Benedict Gross noted that "our grading practices should be easy to interpret, should be equitable across the curriculum and should make use of an adequate range of grades to differentiate among levels of good work."
