http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/9695712.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jspBenedict grading is under scrutiny
Accrediting agency looks into system of rewarding students for their efforts
By GINA SMITH
Staff Writer
Benedict College’s accrediting agency is looking into the Columbia school’s controversial grading policy.
The Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which accredits 800 degree-granting institutions of higher education in the region, has the authority to consider sanctions.
But John O. Dwyer, associate executive director of SACS, emphasized Thursday no discussion about sanctions has taken place.
“We’re nowhere near making any determination,” Dwyer said.
At issue is the Columbia college’s Success Equals Effort policy, or SEE policy, which has upset some members of the college’s faculty.
Under the policy, freshman grades are calculated on a 60-40 formula, with effort counting for 60 percent and academics, 40 percent.
For sophomores, the formula is 50-50; by the junior year, students are judged strictly on academic performance.
Benedict President David Swinton implemented the policy at the historically black, private college in the 2003-04 school year.
With Benedict’s open-admissions policy, Swinton said, many incoming students lack the study habits and other skills necessary to thrive in a college setting.
In recent weeks, Swinton has sent SACS a copy of the policy and a detailed explanation, along with a copy of a guest column that appeared in The State newspaper.
He’s not worried about SACS taking action.
“We don’t feel that we’re doing anything that’s not sound educational policy,” Swinton said. “If anything, the policy raises the academic standards at the college. It’s doing this by getting students to work harder and committing more effort to learning.”
The SACS executive director, if he disagrees, could take his concerns to the agency’s executive council, which is chaired by Clemson University President Jim Barker.
It would be up to the council to take any action.
Schools are accredited every 10 years. Benedict was last accredited in 2000. Schools that lose accreditation can have trouble attracting students, faculty, federal dollars and research grants.
Meanwhile, the American Association of University Professors in Washington, D.C., is criticizing the policy.
“Benedict is not unique in having to work something through with an open admissions policy,” said Jordan Kurland, the group’s associate general secretary.
“Many institutions find themselves admitting students who may not have been admitted (in the past). There’s all types of ways of dealing with this. One common one is remedial programs.”
Swinton points out that Benedict has such programs, along with tutoring, intensive summer programs and sessions for students on academic probation.
But it’s not enough, he said.
“We in academia do not have a successful way of dealing with this problem,” Swinton said.
“(The new policy) is like a warranty. We’re saying if you come here and do everything we ask you to do — attend all your classes, do all your work, all your homework — we’re guaranteeing that you’ll at least get a minimum passing grade,” he explained, at least for the first two years.
After that, students must be up to academic muster, he said.
Swinton predicts there will be few students who get an “A” for effort and “F” for knowledge.
“And those students won’t make it through four years anyway,” he said. “College is a four-year proposition. You don’t graduate based on those first years.”
The AAUP, a professional organization with a national membership of 45,000, has twice censured, or officially reprimanded, the college. The last time was in 1994, when the college refused to rehire three professors fired by former president Marshall Grigsby.
A group of Benedict professors also is speaking out about the new policy and has re-formed a campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
About 30 professors have been attending meetings, according to William Gunn, the chapter’s president. Benedict has 140 full-time professors and about 50 part-time instructors.
The group says that, in recent years, the school’s administration has handed down academic policies, rather than working them out with the faculty.
Their input has been largely ignored by the president, they say, and “the SEE policy has cast doubt not only on our work, but on our students’ abilities as well as the quality of an education (and degree) received at our (college),” the group wrote in a prepared statement to The State.
“Such doubts will only play to lingering racist assumptions about the capabilities of African-Americans, doubts that have historically plagued and polarized us as a community, state and nation.”
The chapter is preparing an extended paper on the SEE and several other academic policies, said Harry Singleton, treasurer of the chapter and a religion/theology professor.
The firing of two professors, despite a faculty grievance committee’s 4-3 vote to reinstate one, was more than the group could bear, he said. Both science professors were fired after they refused to go along with the policy.
For now, professors are reluctantly carrying out the policy, he said; it varies from professor to professor as to how closely they’re adhering to it.
Swinton said professors still have academic freedom.
“They have complete determination of their grades. They just don’t control the weight,” he said. “They are the ones who determine ‘effort.’ They are the ones who determine ‘knowledge.’”
Effort could include turning in homework assignments, attending classes regularly or participating in class discussions, he said.
Students and alumnae are also split on the policy.
Benedict junior Tina Sanders said it’s a generous way to help students in their transition.
“When you come into college from high school, there’s a lot of things that could sway you,” she said. Students are on their own for the first time and dealing with new pressures of college life.
“(The policy) motivates good attendance and effort,” she said.
And while some students worry the policy will undermine the integrity of their Benedict diploma, Sanders disagrees.
“The way you market yourself is (how) you’re going to be judged,” she said.
Shirley W. Kelly, a 1982 graduate of the school, said she has solidly backed Swinton during his 10-year tenure but said the SEE policy is a bad idea.
Swinton, a Harvard graduate, became president amid a mismanagement **** when the school was cash-strapped and enrollment was decreasing.
Since then, the school’s enrollment has doubled to 3,000, and additional programs have gained accreditation. Benedict has undertaken a $50 million campus improvement plan, and, after a 29-year hiatus, the school again has a football team.
“He’s done an excellent job,” Kelly said. “But everybody I talk to is concerned about whether (the policy) was given enough scrutiny before it was implemented. You’re not going to have the foundation that you need in upper-level courses if you compromise the grading process earlier on.”
