The new format, which changes transcripts by displaying a student’s course letter grade accompanied by the median grade for the course, will appear on students’ unofficial transcripts for a year as a pilot program, Educational Policy Committee member Theresa Raphael-Grimm said.
“Students would be able to both get their regular transcripts and to get their new contextualized transcripts. And they’d be able to see how they compare,” former committee chairperson Andrew Perrin said.
“We’ll see that as a full year test to make sure everything is working right before it becomes the official transcript.”
An Educational Policy Committee meeting Friday will hopefully finalize the long-delayed decision to use contextualized grading.
Contextualized grading aims to reduce the problem of grade inflation, said Perrin, who is no longer a committee member. UNC’s rate of grade inflation is on par with other flagship universities across the country, he said.
“It’s not that we’re worse,” he said. “It’s that we think the problem is bad on the national level and that it really needs to be addressed, so this puts Carolina at the forefront of trying to do something about a national problem.”
Contextualized grading was supposed to be introduced in fall 2014, but due to calculation issues, the implementation had to be postponed.
“Just over a year ago when it was finally, we thought, ready to spin off, the registrar sort of last minute discovered a glitch in the software that was calculating some of the figures,” Perrin said.
