Los Angeles

Loyola Law School Boosts Grades in a Controversial Move

Jennifer Halligan

Los Angeles’s Loyola Law School recently changed their grading scale and the decision is sparking debate. The change affects current and future students as well as students from the past three years, which means it will even affect the grades of students who graduated in 2007. The alteration raises scores by a third of a grade by changing the number scale that letter grades are attached to. The purpose was to match the grading scales of similar schools and help students be on equal footing with their peers when searching for jobs in the current poor economy. The change has made the average GPA for first-year students go from a B minus to a B.

• On one side of the debate, people are saying that the change is artificial grade inflation, and is unfair. They say that the school should help students get jobs through other means.
• On the other side of the debate, people are saying that the change was simply to match the system other schools are already using, and that it would be unfair for employers to judge Loyola students for having lower grades when they were graded on a different scale.

Additional Reading:

-http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/04/loyola-law-school-ups-grades-provokes-debate.html