Gardiner ’28: Brown should grade out of 100

Since its inception in 1969, Brown’s Open Curriculum has been adapted, from changing requirements for the number of courses required to graduate, adding the WRIT requirement and, most recently, eliminating triple concentrations. Elliot Maxwell ’68, one of the pioneers of Brown’s Open Curriculum — originally the New Curriculum — said that “it shouldn’t be enshrined. It’s supposed to be alive.” But one thing has become an immovable fixture of Brown’s Curriculum: the grading scale. When it was originally adopted, the Open Curriculum eliminated pluses, minuses, Ds and Fs, leaving us with the infuriatingly simplistic ABC scale. But while Brown’s grading system hasn’t changed, the grades have. 

Between 2007 and 2024, the number of A grades at Brown rose from 51 to 63% of all grades awarded. Brown is just one example of the trend of grade inflation that is entrenched in the zeitgeist surrounding higher education. Unsurprisingly, efforts to combat grade inflation at Brown are unpopular with students, and a lenient approach to grading is seen as the core of our holistic, noncompetitive ethos. And, whether we like it or not, the grade inflation train has already left the station. What Brown needs now is a way to mitigate its effects without betraying our values. In the words of Professor Roberto Serrano, we need our grades to reflect a “meaningful measure of distinction” and our transcripts to actually “differentiate levels of performance.” That’s why Brown should adopt a grade scale out of 100, as the numbers can tell a nuanced story where the litany of As cannot. 

The New Curriculum’s grading system was intended to de-emphasize “arbitrary letters and gradations,” according to Ira Magaziner ’69 P’06 P’07 P’10. But the trifaceted ABC grading system has become aggravatingly arbitrary. The overwhelming number of A grades notwithstanding, the fact that professors are faced with merely three ways to characterize student work limits both instructors and students. An A can reward anything from cutting-edge, ground-breaking research to an essay just above mediocre. Even if the number of A grades remained the same — at around 60% of grades awarded — there would be ten times more variety in student feedback than the letter can capture. 

An original stated purpose of the Open Curriculum was “the removal or minimizing of pressures which would defeat the seeking of self-knowledge.” There is a vital distinction here between being competitive with peers, which the Open Curriculum discourages, and being competitive with oneself, which leads to self-improvement. Without the specified feedback that a variegated grading scale would give us, Brown has removed the pressure to seek self-knowledge. Getting a 91% on a math test, for instance, reflects a different degree of understanding than 100%, but students are likely to feel little reason to make up that extra 9% if both will get them an A on their transcript. 

Under the status quo, Brown students’ educations are fundamentally weakened by this lack of feedback. One student told the Brown Opinion Project in 2022 that they felt “the grading system doesn’t fully capture peoples’ work,” and another said that standards for work have gotten “pretty low” because of grade inflation. This is completely understandable — if you work really hard on assignments just to receive the same grade as someone who met a “low” standard, why would you do so again? And why should a professor need to provide detailed ideas for improvement to a student who has already received the highest grade, even if their work isn’t perfect?

This propensity to grow inert if we think we’re at the top is only natural — we all need the promise of external rewards to motivate us. Brown advisors already acknowledge that the pressure of grades on a transcript can encourage students to work harder. While it may sound harsh, this pressure can only feel real if this change is external and not hidden on a students’ Canvas page. 

Let’s consider what this proposal would look like in practice. Many professors already input grades into Canvas as percentages. Putting these numbers on transcripts merely means formalizing a process that already exists. To those concerned with how this would affect Brown transcripts reception in graduate school admissions offices or job recruitment, I would remind them just how different a Brown transcript already looks to most other schools. Brown already enjoys a reputation of intellectual curiosity and experimental academics, one which will cushion this otherwise admittedly radical change.