That’s right, I’m talking about grade deflation!

It seems there are two basic ways we could spell out what it means for work to deserve an A. I will give them the imaginative titles of “Way 1” and “Way 2.”

First, Way 1: There is some absolute standard for determining the quality of work. One such measure could be paper length: Your paper is just as good as it is long. That’s probably a bad standard, but it is a fine example of an absolute standard.

Now, Way 2: Quality of work is determined relative to the work of others in the class. For instance, it doesn’t matter how long your paper is, so long as it’s longer than all other papers. Again, that’s a bad standard but a fine example of a relative standard.

So, for example, in Way 1, if everyone wrote a two-page paper, everyone might get a C, and if everyone wrote a 12-page paper, everyone might get an A. Under Way 2, if everyone wrote a 30-page paper, everyone might get a B-plus. If one person wrote a 12-page paper but everyone else wrote a two-page paper, one person might get an A while everyone else got a B-plus.

Now consider the following assertion: There are some classes for which the University has mandated that no more than 35 percent of students may receive an A. I believe that most people think this is true. Now, if the academic administration has enacted such a rule, it seems like they could not possibly subscribe to Way 1, the objective standard. It seems an implicit rejection of Way 1 to mandate that certain merits could never be rewarded. For example, a policy that prevents every student from eating in the dining halls would seem to reject the possibility that every student might deserve to eat in the dining halls. So too, a policy that prevents every student from getting an A seems to reject the possibility that every student might deserve an A.

Therefore, the argument goes, the administration does not subscribe to Way 1, the objective standard. Rather, it must subscribe to Way 2, the relative standard. But it seems that a relative standard is just a bad way to measure quality of work. What if everyone just happens to do well in some class? What would a supporter of Way 2 say about this?

Well, such a person might say this is impossible: To do well means to do better than everyone else, and it is impossible for everyone to do better than everyone else. Spelled out as such, this is precisely why we should reject Way 2. It implies that if younger, anachronistic versions of Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman constituted a precept for an introductory economics course, it would be impossible for all of them to do well. Whatever “to do well in a class” means, I do not think it can allow for such possibilities.

So Way 2 is nonsensical, but it seems the thinking behind grade deflation implicitly rejects Way 1 — and the conclusions of this argument are at odds with the University. Indeed, I believe that many people believe in a similar argument.

Now, like I said at first, this argument is wrong. It contains a false premise: the aforementioned 35 percent rule. To quote the Dean of the College’s website: “Suppose more than 35 percent of students in a course do work of A quality? Grade them accordingly. Under no circumstances should any member of the faculty fail to give an A to a student who deserves it.” It’s a bit anticlimactic, but that’s the fact: I think many people believe the strict 35 percent rule to be true when it simply isn’t.

Where, then, does this notion of the 35 percent rule come from? Why do some professors seem unaware that they could in theory give more than 35 percent of the class A’s? I have to believe the roots of this problem lie in poor communication. For this, I think everyone is to blame: students for not seeking out more information, and the University for not continuing to remind us of this fact.

Of course, the argument above is not the only reason students dislike grade deflation. There’s the concern that deflated Princeton transcripts will compare poorly in the eyes of employers to inflated Harvard transcripts. I don’t mean to address this concern here — it’s legit and big and people spit about it a lot. There might also be other ways in which the grade deflation policy implies that the University thinks some cockamamie thing. My informal impression is, however, that many people dislike grade deflation for reasons very much like this argument. The lesson to draw is, in the end, a small one: Both students and administrators could be doing more to clear up misconceptions about grade deflation.

Greg Burnham is a math major from Memphis, Tenn. He can be reached at gburnham@princeton.edu.