Would tax plan further inflate college grades?
If President Clinton gets his way, next year's tax season could bring a bit of relief to middle-class families coping with crushing college bills.</br></br>But the proposed $1,500 tax credit for parents of college freshmen and sophomores would be contingent on grades: Students would have to have a B-minus average to be eligible. And that provision is stirring surprising concern in higher-education circles.</br></br>"I suspect it would be the end of any effort to control grade inflation," says Thomas Bickel, registrar of Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.</br></br>Though tying financial aid to academic achievement is hardly new, colleges are accustomed to setting their own rules. Most insist that scholarship students remain "in good standing," and that means different things on different campuses. If the Clinton plan is approved by Congress, it could pressure professors to raise grades in certain circumstances, administrators fear. And if so, it would further muddy what has already become a very muddy situation.</br></br>Hardly anyone disputes that overall grades have drifted up since the 1960s. In a national survey of college students, Arthur Levine, now president of Teachers College at Columbia University, found that 26% reported better than A-minus averages in 1993, compared with 7% in 1969. Averages of C or below fell to 9% from 25%. Undergraduate grades have become so suspect that graduate schools now give more weight to applicants' standardized-test scores and personal recommendations.