"The best way to eliminate grade inflation is to take professors out of the grading process..."

"... Replace them with professional evaluators who never meet the students, and who don't worry that students will punish harsh grades with poor reviews. That's the argument made by leaders of Western Governors University, which has hired 300 adjunct professors who do nothing but grade student work."

That's awfully nice for the professors who don't have to grade. Should we feel for the adjuncts who have a job consisting of the part of the job that the regular professors are freed from? The photo at the link depicts "Emily Child, an evaluator at Western Governors U., [who] grades 10 to 15 assignments a day, six days a week, working at home before her three children are up or while they nap."

So... that's either awfully nice for Ms. Child, who gets to work at home and arrange her hours around household responsibilities... or a restoration of the subordination of women. (Yes, yes, there are some men who keep house and take care of children... especially they've trained in an academic discipline that affords few career opportunities and their spouses have out-of-the-house jobs.)

I can't picture law schools adopting this method of grading, partly because I'm habituated to the burden, which balances what is otherwise the overwhelmingly pleasure of teaching law. In law schools, we avoid grade inflation by imposing a curve, with a restricted range for the average and a required distribution of grades (forcing you to at least give some Cs, even if Ds and Fs are optional). We also "blind grade," identifying the students with code numbers, and it is, in fact, easier to be critical when you don't have an individual's name on the paper.