The University announced on May 6 that it will discontinue covered grades in the fall of 2017. In the past week, many students, led by a coalition of groups called #ReCoverHopkins, have criticized the University’s decision. They say the covered grades policy is an effective program to guide students through the transition from high school to college.
The coalition has sent its demands to the University, and it interrupted a scheduled meeting of the Homewood Academic Council (HAC), which made the decision, on Wednesday. The Student Government Association (SGA) has launched a referendum where students can support or disapprove of the change. One third of the student body must vote one way for the referendum to reach administrators. Students can vote until 12 p.m. on Monday.
The News-Letter sat down with Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS) Beverly Wendland, Dean of the Whiting School of Engineering (WSE) Ed Schlesinger, WSE Vice Dean for Education Ed Scheinerman and KSAS Vice Dean for Undergraduate Education Joel Schildbach to discuss the process behind the decision and how the University intends to respond to the coalition’s concerns.
The Deans said that when covered grades were implemented in 1971, the University focused more on its graduate students, so covered grades were necessary to support undergraduates arriving at a rigorous research university.
The discussion to end covered grades began in 2008. At that time, the HAC consulted SGA and other students and in 2011 formally decided to end covered grades as early as 2014. From that moment, admissions stopped advertising the covered grades policy to prospective students. The termination was pushed back until 2017 because the HAC was waiting for certain academic and student support systems, such as PILOT and the MAPP mentor program, to develop.
Schlesinger identified three ways that students experience covered grades. First, there are students who excel during their first semester and can benefit from having their grades uncovered. Second, there are students who abuse covered grades to party and ignore their academic responsibilities. Third, there are students who need covered grades to help them transition from high school to college. Because the vast majority of students fall into the first two categories, covered grades hurt more than they help.
Peer Institutions
The University does have a set list of peer institutions that it compares its policies and standards to, the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE). COFHE consists of 35 member colleges. According to the Deans, while some schools on the list have policies similar to covered grades, most of them do not.
The COFHE-affiliated MIT, Wellesley and CalTech have implemented similar policies, but the Deans noted that these policies were not exactly the same as covered grades and that Hopkins’ policy was still an anomaly.
“The difference for MIT and CalTech is that as far as I know, you can’t uncover the grades. There is no grade initially assigned,” Schlesinger said.
Student Input
Schlesinger and Wendland said that they understood why certain students are frustrated that current undergraduates were not consulted before the announcement.
“Probably because so much time passed between the original discussions, the original decision, and final implementation, probably during that continuing discussion between 2011 and now, there probably should’ve been more communication with the students,” Schlesinger said.
They said that while students were consulted during the decision-making process, the University should have reached out to current students as well.
“Students were very much a part of all this back in the day, but all of them have long since graduated,” Wendland said.
There are several processes through which the University chooses students to serve on committees. SGA chooses students that serve on curriculum committees, but others are done in a more “ad hoc” manner, according to the Deans.
“We’ll often rely upon the SGA as a source of students… but we don’t want them to be the sole input for these types of activities,” Wendland said.
Offices choose students based on who they think will be the most engaged and provide the best input during discussions.
“Typically it’s some conglomeration of people in the Student Life office and the Provost’s office, directors of undergraduate studies, people who have contact with undergrads who can recommend a student who they think would do a good job,” Wendland said.
#ReCoverHopkins has accused the University of making the announcement when students are too focused on studying for finals, thereby hindering students from making a coordinated response. In response, the Deans said that there was no opportune time to make the announcement.
“We didn’t want to wait until the summer, when another criticism would’ve again been ‘You guys did it in the dark,’” she said. “It was absolutely not intentional… It would have been our wish to have it not have been during finals period if other things could have aligned better."
Schlesinger added that making the announcement in the fall would have confused prospective students. Also, delaying the decision further would not have been appropriate because it was originally made over five years ago.
“We didn’t want to do it when people had already been applying to Hopkins,” he said. “You could say you could’ve delayed it until the fall, but then that would’ve implied that we wouldn’t have done it until the fall of 2018 because by the fall of 2016 some students are already applying to Hopkins, and you want to make sure that the students who apply know what the policy is.”
Schlesinger addressed #ReCoverHopkins’ interruption at the HAC meeting on Wednesday. He said that the University would provide a more formal opportunity for the coalition’s concerns to be addressed in the fall.
“There was a group of students who protested outside of the the room, so they were invited in to talk about their concerns,” he said. “They read the ReCoverHopkins document we all received, and they added some personal experiences related to covered grades, and I think we’re going to try to schedule a fall opportunity for some of those folks to come and talk to [Homewood] Academic Council if they’d like to do that, get some more input.”
The Deans confirmed that the University will release a formal response to the coalition within the next few days.
“[It] is unfortunate that there was misunderstanding on the part of the students about what the process was, and the fact that there was student input,” Schlesinger said. “The issue of continuing the discussion on how to best roll this out so that the students that come in in 2017 have the best possible mechanisms to help in the transition, that’s a whole other conversation.”
Grade deflation and mental health
Students often complain about “grade deflation” at Hopkins, which some say covered grades ameliorated by taking students’ focus off of grades for their first semester.
Over the last eight years, GPA has increased at an average rate of 0.015 points per year, or 0.15 points per decade. Grades at Hopkins are lower than those at other top-tier universities, according to Scheinerman.
“I think they are a little lower,” he said. “But I’m not sure how a change in the covered grades policy does anything to ameliorate that. It’s a separate issue.”
Schlesinger said that those who run graduate programs know how strenuous Hopkins is.
“When I see students applying for graduate studies, and that’s where I get to see people’s undergraduate grades, do I take into account the school that they come from, in my own head? Absolutely,” he said.
Members of the #ReCoverHopkins coalition have stressed that the University has not done enough to support the mental health of undergraduates. Schlesinger said the University's current programs are only the first steps toward creating a healthier atmosphere on campus.
“I think that it is undeniable there is a lot of pressure on students at a place like Hopkins. There is no question,” he said. “That’s why there is so much attention being put into the student services – the whole ecosystem of student services – and Homewood Student Affairs, and so forth, including mental health, including academic support, it goes on and on... A lot of time, energy and money being put into that. Is it perfect? No. Can it be improved? Absolutely. Are we going to work with the students to improve it? Absolutely.”
Wendland and Scheinerman said that students put pressure on themselves by requesting course overloads.
“I think that there are things that sometimes the extra stress that students experience, in some cases can be because they’re having really high expectations for themselves,” Wendland said. “I think that at a certain point, students need to appreciate that we have these credit limits in place for a reason, and it’s better to try to respect those.”
Scheinerman said that students who take advantage of covered grades to take strenuous course like Organic Chemistry their first semester create their own stress.
“So it isn’t clear that eliminating covered grades will increase stress. As a matter of fact, I think in the long run, it’s going to be better,” he said. “Don’t jump into Calc 3, when you should only be in Calc 2.”
Undergraduates at Hopkins are required to take 120 credits in order to graduate, more than most peer institutions require. Some students say an average of five courses per semester is too strenuous, but some students overload with 18, or even 21, credits.
“At my previous institution [Carnegie Mellon University] we actually decreased the requirements to something which is probably comparable to what Hopkins is at right now,” Schlesinger said. “Interestingly, there was a strange effect. What happened was by decreasing the requirement, some students saw that as a mechanism through which they could overload and finish their degree in three and a half years. So we had exactly the opposite effect in some cases where the reduction in the requirement caused a certain group of students to begin to put more on overload in order to try to achieve that three and a half year completion, which actually created more stress rather than less stress.”
Schlesinger said that fostering a more open curriculum and creating less restrictive course requirements could reduce student stress because students would be more in control of their education.
Students have argued that covered grades make Hopkins a more fun place and are integral to forming social connections. Schlesinger said that while students on campus perceive that everyone is unhappy, most students he has met have had a “great time.”
“I think there’s a mythology out there of misery. But truth be told, most of the students I’ve talked to have had a marvelous time here, and no I don’t think that covered grades is going to dial down the student involvement,” he said. “I think of this place as we’re training marathoners, and they don’t come to Hopkins to lie on cots; they come here to train for marathons… There are some that are unhappy, I know, and there’s no question about it, but my guess is that they’d be unhappy anywhere.”
Schlesinger and Wendland say that when they meet undergraduates informally, students are struck by Hopkins’ sense of community.
“I always ask students, ‘How does Hopkins measure up relative to what you expected it to be?’ The typical response I’ve gotten is, ‘I found it to be more supportive, more of a community and more fun, still challenging, but more supportive and more of a community than I expected it to be,’” he said.
The Transition to Hopkins
#ReCoverHopkins and the Black Student Union (BSU) have discussed the impact that covered grades have on students of color and first generation college students, many of whom have a difficult time transitioning to college. But Schneierman says that covered grades just delay the inevitable transition another semester.
“I think covered grades masks the problems and doesn’t actually solve the problems. It allows them to delay dealing with those issues. Yes, there are people who come here that did not have an elite background from a really fabulous high school that maybe we’re taking more of a chance on some students, but they’re just as strong and bright as everyone else, but they just didn’t have quite the – whatever the reasons, socioeconomic or otherwise – they didn’t have quite the preparation,” he said. “So yes, definitely we should help those people. Not by saying, we’re going to ignore you for the first semester.”
While GPA should be important to Hopkins students, Schneierman argued that there’s more to life than grades.
“The truth is that the GPA is not this wonderful thing that measures your self-worth. I think students get a little hung up on the grades. And I understand. We select for students that are grade-driven,” he said. “If they stumble a little during that first semester, it’s okay. They will recover in second, third and fourth semesters.”
Schlesinger said that University must support students and is not trying to make students’ lives harder.
“We’re not saying ‘Suck it up and just do it,’” he said. "Let’s see what’s happening with you and lets, if there are issues, deal with those issues as opposed to paper it over, and we’ll only deal with this in the second semester.”
Schlesinger said that it is “very unlikely” that the decision is overturned.
“Of course there are institutional mechanisms. It is within the authority of the [Homewood] Academic Council to set academic policies as representatives of the faculty. What is the likelihood? It’s hard to judge, but given the many years that went into this, I would say it is extremely unlikely,” he said.
Rollin Hu, Sherry Kim and Kelsey Ko contributed reporting.
