Back in April, the College Guide totally ridiculed Loyola Law School for raising the grades of all its graduates one level retroactively (so an A- became an A, etc.) in response to the fact that its graduates were having trouble finding jobs. A more effective, and only slightly more dishonest, tactic would have perhaps been to change its official name to UCLA, but there’s only so much a dean can do in one semester.
Well, it turns out that’s actually a fairly common practice. According to an article by Catherine Rampell in the New York Times:
In the last two years, at least 10 law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient. These include law schools like New York University and Georgetown, as well as Golden Gate University and Tulane University, which just announced the change this month. Some recruiters at law firms keep track of these changes and consider them when interviewing, and some do not.
The deliberate grade bump is one of the many strategies law schools use to help their students deal with the recession. Apparently simply reducing the size of law school classes is not one of those strategies.
