Caution… you are about to enter a Geek Zone…
I just noticed that Excel 2008 (Mac version 12.2) finally lifted the arbitrary 7-level limit on nested IF functions. Previous versions of Excel restricted nested IFs in a formula to 7, which meant that, for instance, you couldn’t write a nested IF formula in a gradebook to input a numeric grade and automatically output a letter grade; you could do this only with the first 7 letter grades, and then you had to manually assign the rest. (There were purported workarounds published on the web involving string concatenations, but I only discovered them while working on this post, and I haven’t tested them to see if they work). This wasn’t much of a problem on my campus until this semester, when we switched from an 8-point (A, AB, B, BC…) to a 12-point (A, A-, B+, B, B-….) scale. With the 8-point scale, I could handle manually entering the 8th letter grade (F) into my spreadsheet, because there were relatively few of them. But on the 12-point scale the 7th grade is a “C”, and there are lots of grades lower than that in a typical Intro course. So, just on a whim tonight, while entering the results of the semester’s first exam into my spreadsheet, I wrote a 12-nested-IF formula and, totally unexpectedly, it worked! Thank you Microsoft for finally… finally… removing the silliest limitation in spreadsheet history.
Good grief! Have you never heard of the concept of a “Gentlemen’s C”? A simple 3 level “if” should handle anything. ;)
Oh, right, 3 levels will do – C, D, and F.
Wow, I can tell YOU’VE got tenure!
Kidding aside, grading and the politics of it has always fascinated me. As grade inflation has removed any meaning from most student GPAs, I tend to think that academia, in a much too late effort, has moved to combat grade inflation by adopting 8 and 12 point systems to try to differentiate students but not upset them by giving them anything other than As and Bs. The original 5 point system is now more or less the range of A+ down to B (and maybe B- if you’re an especially tough grader).
Honestly, is there really a difference between a B- student and a C+? Does C even remotely mean “average” anymore? And other than very objectively measured courses such as mathematics which have clear and indisputable measures, what in the world is a grade anyway?
I think there’s actually been a bit of a backlash against grade inflation in the last few years (and one not manifested merely by a move to a 12-point scale), especially at the elite institutions (where previously ‘A’ students are the norm, and hence become ‘C’ students at the elite institution by definition, as long as ‘C’ means ‘average’…). My department at UWO has held the line pretty well; our median grade in lower-division classes has generally been around a ‘BC’ on the 8-point scale, and my guess is that it will be around a C+ on the 12-point scale.
The bottom line is that as long as grades are assigned at least roughly according to a bell-curve, with the median grade determined by overall class performance, grades can still be meaningful, but they have to be interpreted relative to the competitiveness of the university and/or program. The downside of this convention, of course, is that truly outstanding students at less competitive institutions can have their achievements properly represented only by letters of recommendation, and not by their GPAs. But that’s probably always been the case.
I remember reading of a professor at one of the Ivy League schools giving out 2 grades. The official inflated grade, and then he’d offer as a courtesy to the more serious students what he would have graded them if it were truly up to him. He hated the inflated grade system, but felt that it would be unfair to hand out his real grades and cause his students to be negatively compared to others not in his classes or at his school. I may not be describing his dilemma well, but it was fascinating to read.
In Georgia, where my brother teaches, the state offers a full free ride at state colleges to students that maintain a B average. This is funded by their extraordinarily successful lottery. In effect, it is a “tax on the stupid” to pay for education, but I digress. You can imagine the pressures that are applied to professors to give everyone at least a B lest the students be forced to fund their own education. My brother tells me that for the first time, parents are calling professors directly to push them to raise grades for their children. From an academic perspective, that sounds ridiculous, but at a state funded school with angry taxpayers, the pressure can really mount.
In IT, the industry has responded by offering professional certifications that require exams along the lines of the CPA exam administered by Microsoft or Cisco, etc. That of course results in the old “teach to the test” dilemma along with certifications that become out of date with new software releases and show nothing of the individual’s ability to go beyond memorization to truly be an effective and adaptive professional.
Which brings me back to my original point, what in the world is a grade anyway? LOL