In 1996, I undertook two difficult tasks at once. I became the Registrar of a small college and at the same time began a course of study leading to a Master of Education degree in administration. This paper, submitted as part of my course work, served to detail the problem of late grade submission, which had been identified as a problem that I would have to address. I enjoyed the correspondence with other college registrars in my research, and along the way I picked up a couple of useful tips.
Copyright 1997
Along with the maintenance of records and supplying of academic transcript data, one of the oldest responsibilities of the college registrar is reporting grades to students, advisors, departments, and deans. Traditionally, the requirement of this process that grade reports from professors must be in the registrar's office at a stated time has been enforced by central administration and deans, and the processes established under this style of management still persist. New paradigms of leadership, such as shared vision and transformational leadership, suggest more autonomy and participation for the individual and less directive authority for administrators. Even in the institutions that maintain traditional structures of leadership, a dean or president may strive to be perceived as facilitator and mentor rather than a supervisor, and vision statements, goals, and plans may be phrased in transformational language. This change in management style from authoritative to facilitative calls for a re-evaluation of the processes by which institutions maintain and enforce the essential minutiae of academic record keeping and calendar deadlines. This study incorporates a survey of 34 registrars with speculation upon faculty responsibility, administrative enforcement, and the needs of the college and of students. It defines keeping grade submission deadlines as a stakeholder activity in which shared goals and well-designed processes should produce a high level of compliance with little administrative intervention.
At the end of each academic term in almost every college and university, professors submit grades -- from the keyboard on electronic entry screens, by FAX or e-mail followed by hard copy to be mailed or delivered, over voice phone lines with solemn promises to bring the signed grade sheet by the next morning, and still most commonly hand-to-hand from the professor to the Registrar. A popular Registrar's handbook from 1979 describes a process that has perhaps changed technologically but is little different from today's grade reporting procedure:
The grade-reporting system should be designed to provide the student with a complete report of grades earned, together with updated cumulative grade point and credit summaries, at midterm (when applicable) and promptly after the close of each academic term. The reporting procedure typically begins with machine-printed grade sheets or cards provided to each member of the teaching faculty. These grade-reporting forms should contain the student's name and other identifying data and provide appropriate space for the instructor to mark the grade awarded to each student in longhand or in a machinable mode.... the completed grade sheets or cards are returned to the registrar's office, where they are checked and then read on to computer files. Since promptness is essential in this phase of grade reporting, a firm deadline, fully supported and emphasized by the central administration and deans, must be established for receipt of grading forms. A deadline of twenty-four to forty-eight hours following the close of final examinations is feasible and can be enforced by aggressive action on the part of the registrar, acting through department heads and deans when appropriate. After all the grades have been placed on computer files, grade reports may be produced....with copies of the grade reports supplied to faculty advisers.... (Quann, 203-204)
This process is simple, and compliance with the deadline is described as "enforced by aggressive action." Such aggressive action consumes time and energy, and is predicated upon administrative authority and relative perceived importance of the deadline at high administrative levels. The assumption of authority and power is as common today as it was at the time of Quann's writing. C. Cryss Brunner, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, writing in the June 1997 issue of The School Administrator, stated:
Power...is usually one of two kinds, power defined as control, authority, or dominance ("power over") and power defined as collaboration, consensus-building, or shared ("power with/to"). The first definition prevails in our culture and in our schools. (6)
Power over others in organizations is well understood, familiar, and sometimes comfortable. It provides the basis of most of the established ways of doing business. Quann describes the usual processes for compelling faculty to submit grades on time in 1979:
Several steps can be taken to prevent faculty from turning grades in late.... Enlightened registrars know that secretaries can often be more helpful than the dean when it comes to collecting late grades. Head secretaries should be encouraged to develop grade sign-in systems at the departmental level. In this way, the secretarial staff can determine well in advance which grades are likely to be turned in late, and collection can be expedited. Faculty handbooks and, if possible, teacher contracts might carry the admonition that the instructor's commitment to teach is not fully met unless final grades are posted on time. Some institutions even suggest that pay checks might be held until grades are deposited. (205)
Administrative control as command, the foundational assumption in the process described by Quann, is currently compromised by changes in the school culture. One of these changes is the intrusion of issues of employee rights under law into the academic work place, making the holding of paychecks, and indeed many administrative sanctions that were common several years ago, simply illegal. Contractual agreements come under rigorous legal scrutiny and can in any case never be detailed enough to cover the numerous and complex tasks expected of employees. Changes in technology and economic factors have contributed to the loss of the network of secretaries and head secretaries that Quann assumed, standing ready to oversee faculty as representatives of the dean or department chair.
Another challenge to administrative control relates to changes in social understandings of power and in administrative language and structure. Even in institutions that are not actively involved in modifying organizational structure to incorporate transformational or shared vision patterns of supervision and administration, the current ideas are compelling. Strategic plans are likely to use language that reconstructs traditional roles along less authoritarian lines, so that the dean becomes a leader and mentor rather than a "boss." The newly constructed "leader" is less empowered to "enforce" and more likely to "encourage," even when the literal powers of hiring and firing, promotion or denial, and all substantive powers remain intact, simply by the use of transformational language in formal statements of goals, policy, and processes. The new understanding of administrative power views authority as "a gift to them [administrators] from others" (Brunner, 9). Power becomes not equal to command, but rather equal to the ability to bring people together with shared vision, equal opportunity for input, and mutual recognition. Faculty working within management systems that use visioning and mission statements represent a new consumer base for leadership, a consumer base less responsive to enforcement tactics and processes of more openly authoritarian models. N. A. Prestine, in Ninety Degrees From Everywhere, writing in appreciation and support of the new paradigms, reported a contrary view from one of her subjects, a public school principal, who found that even the processes prescribed for implementing change were authoritarian in nature:
"When you have formal visioning sessions, everyone makes their compromises publicly, and you come up with a trivial vision because it's compromised. So there's no commitment to it, because there's little there to be passionate about....You can impose a vision and we would all be exceptionally clear about it. But no one would have it, would own it. Vision must be owned, you must live it. In that way we can ignore the differences in detail so we can all agree on the shared understandings. (149)
In a culture in which even a negotiated vision can draw resentment as an inappropriate imposition of authority, there is little hope of maintaining deadlines for grade submission by administrative mandate alone. On the other hand, a system that affords this degree of importance to individual interpretations of goals is uncomfortably idealistic for the registrar, who knows that some individuals' "differences in detail" include disregard for calendars and deadlines.
The tasks that fall to faculty, deans, and executives today as leaders and mentors in education are more numerous and complex than the enforcement and supervision that Quann noted in the 1979 text. New paradigms of excellence in management, outlined with detail and precision by Bernard M. Bass in A New Paradigm of Leadership for the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, focus on charismatic leadership or idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. (5-6) In this context, timely submission of grades may be viewed as a small matter of internal paperwork, overshadowed by other matters. Timely submission of grades is in fact a small matter of internal paperwork, and it should not require great investment of administrative time at any level. It cannot, however, be left to chance without serious consequence, because producing grades is an essential function of the college. Within the school culture with its changing definitions of responsibility and power, registrars may 1) cling to old processes and wish the dean would just tell faculty to bring grades in on time, 2) resign themselves to late grades as inevitable and set up systems of accommodation, or 3) seek new ways of responding to late submissions.
Timely reporting of grades is a component of the registrar's job description, and the problem of late grade submission is most often perceived as a problem of registrars. Most school organizations, as noted in the study by C. Cryss Brunner (1997), retain a top-down management structure despite strong affective and attitudinal challenges and small organizational inroads from new management perspectives. Within this authoritarian model, framing late grade submission as a registrar's problem places it beyond the scope of direct action by the person to whom it belongs. The registrar does not supervise faculty, i.e., the registrar has no power over faculty. If late grade submission is a registrar's problem, it is an unaddressable problem, one that defies and discourages a registrar's best efforts and engenders resignation to a bad situation. The resigned attitude of registrars is apparent in comments given in response to a survey conducted in October, 1997, on a listserv by which registrars share information (Williams, 1997). In this survey, 10 of 34 registrars stated that they had effective processes in place. Six respondents said that they do not have an effective system, and 18 did not respond to the question that asked if their system was effective. The survey instrument is provided as Appendix A, tabulated responses are provided as Appendix B, and quoted material from the registrars' comments is noted in the text with respondent numbers so that statements may be correlated to processes and evaluations of effectiveness. Registrars stated:
Most respondents either stated or implied that late grade reporting is the registrar's problem, and many accepted that the situation will probably not improve. This attitude contrasts sharply with the creativity and range of action registrars reported using in an attempt to address the problem. In addition to the methods noted in comments above, registrars' reported efforts included:
Except for Respondent #11, all of the above responses appeal to the traditional structure of power in which the dean is assumed to be able simply to tell faculty to get the grades in on time. Survey results, however, do not bear out this assumption of authority. Of the 10 systems judged effective, 8 reported to the dean but also had other systems in place. One reported that the timely submission of grades was included in the faculty member's contract, and late grades earned an immediate response from the chief academic officer stating that the offending faculty member had violated the contract and pointing out the potential consequences. Only one respondent stated that reporting to the dean alone was effective for insuring timely grade submission.
Of those who do not report to the dean and yet claim effective systems, one holds paychecks, another notifies department chairs who then contact faculty members, and a third counts on individual relationships with faculty members, especially department heads and deans. These three effective systems are all based upon traditional ideas of power as command. While the third does suggest collaboration, the phrase "especially department heads and deans" gives this system a strong color of traditional use of power. The fourth effective system that does not report to the dean has a person in the registrar's office who calls everyone who is late and explains the extra work involved for the registrar and for the faculty member, then requests that the faculty member submit the grades within twenty minutes of the call. In this system, the faculty member must notify each individual student about the incomplete grades they will be getting due to late grade submission. This system is distinctly collaborative, cultivating mutual recognition of responsibility by informing faculty and also by including faculty in the consequences of late reporting by permitting them to share the increased workload of notification to the student. In the short description provided in response to the survey, the operative principles in this system appear to be a mutuality of respect between the faculty member and the registrar's office staff, a sharing of responsibility, and an understanding of the process by all who are involved in making it work. The respondent noted that only new instructors are late, and that for the last two semesters all grades have been in by the deadline.
In assessing how power is distributed and used, it is apparent in the fourth effective system that the school culture supports a voice of urgency from the point at which the need is felt and understood without the intervening necessity of reporting to formal authority ("power over") the faculty. It is also apparent that in systems that do depend upon reporting to formal authority, that authority might or might not respond, and, when it does respond, has varying degrees of effectiveness. Of the 16 respondents who do report late grade submissions to the dean, only 5 call their system effective, and 4 of these 5 incorporate other processes in addition to reporting to the dean.
The essential nature of timely grades is easily demonstrated by a glance through a representative college catalog. The 1997-1998 catalog of Emory & Henry College, a small private college in southwest Virginia, in addition to promising a report of grades at the end of each term (EHC, 86), requires a specific grade point average for participation in a Departmental Honors Project (EHC, 88), requires a stated grade point average for continued good standing and for continuance at the college (EHC, 89), and requires good academic standing for student participation in college activities:
A student who is on academic probation may not participate in activities which represent the student body or the college in public or official capacities, including debates, dramatic or musical performances, or other similar public appearances; intercollegiate athletics; student publications, elective or appointive positions in campus government, or other leadership positions on campus; managing athletic teams, cheerleading, or similar activities.... A student who is on academic probation may be required to forfeit the privilege of operating an automobile on campus. (EHC, 89)
Financial aid is also dependent upon grades. A student at Emory & Henry must achieve a specified grade point average and a specified number of earned hours each semester to remain eligible for financial aid. The catalog states:
Course withdrawals, repetitions, incompletes and/or non-credit courses do not excuse the student from meeting the minimum semester hours and GPA requirements.... Failure to meet minimum requirements will result in financial aid penalties. If a student fails to meet satisfactory academic progress at the end of any academic semester, he or she will be placed on financial aid warning. If, at the end of any subsequent semester, the student again does not attain minimum satisfactory academic progress, he/she will be considered ineligible to receive financial aid for the following academic semester. (EHC, 90)
At the other end of the academic spectrum, Emory & Henry offers Dean's List recognition for students with a specified GPA, and numerous merit scholarships are dependent upon the student's maintaining a sufficient grade point average. (EHC, 91-92) Students may be assigned a room in an honors residence hall or invited to membership in an honor society based upon the GPA immediately after grades are run. These requirements and recognitions are specific to Emory & Henry College, but they are similar to practices in most other colleges.
When grades are late, registrar options fall into two categories: 1) hold all of the grades until the late grades come in, or 2) enter an incomplete or a late grade code which tells the student that the grade was late.
Holding the grade printing and mailing until the last grades come in accepts and encourages lateness, because each professor may feel that even if one's own grades are a bit late, they will not be the last ones submitted. Only one faculty member each term can earn the status of last submitter, and all others may feel that grades were not held because of them, since everyone had to wait for the last one anyway. The institutional effect of holding grades for late submissions is that the college comes to a standstill with every office geared up for the close of the term and waiting for grades. It is distressing to have staff in this holding pattern when the last thing to do before leaving campus for Christmas holiday is to get the grades in the mail.
Effects of holding grades extend beyond the college staff to students and parents, who are watching the mail for grades. Some students must submit grades by a deadline to continue with scholarship awards. For the most part, holding grades until everyone has reported (even when some are days late) distributes the damage caused by late grades more evenly over the students, causing irritation for almost everyone but avoiding improper dismissal or inappropriate loss of financial aid or eligibility for activities.
Entering an incomplete or a missing grade code serves the interests of the college no better than holding grades. One registrar in the survey reported giving incompletes, and three cited special codes for missing grades. Entering an incomplete or a late grade code transfers some of the damage done by late grades (and often the work of securing the late grade) from the staff to the individual student whose grade is late. One effect of late grade codes, cited by respondents who use them, is that the student who is harmed by the missing grade (or possibly the irate parent of that student) then pursues the professor and not the registrar. While this situation is more comfortable for the registrar, it disregards the student interest and abandons the promise of the catalog that grades will be given at the end of each term. A missing grade code or an incomplete generated by late grades is not a grade.
In addition to disregarding the obligation of the college to the student, the decision to use an incomplete or late grade code affords a degree of appropriateness, or at least acceptance, to late submission of grades, permitting the late submitter to assume that, since accommodation is provided, late grades are in some measure expected.
When grades are late and registrars resort to incompletes or late grade codes, critical information needed for students is unavailable to other areas of the college, and the impact of each instance of an unreported grade falls ultimately upon a student. A student might be awarded honors or dismissed, have financial aid awarded or denied, or be restricted from participation in athletics on the basis of incomplete information. When the grade is finally reported, it may be in the student's interest to modify the academic standing, but nothing short of a manual check of each student's record each time a grade is changed can locate such cases efficiently, and nothing at all can recall the letter of dismissal that goes to a student when the timely reporting of an "A" or a "B" that came in late would have cleared the student's probation. One registrar who responded to the survey expressed this concern:
[Respondent #12] Since we have a new disqualification policy, under which we expect to lose 1500 students in January, and since late grades will affect some of these students (maybe they wouldn't have been disqualified if we knew the grade in time), we're having an all-out campaign to remind professors to get them (or this time they may face lawsuits).
In addition to inappropriate dismissals and inappropriate awards both positive and negative, financial aid may be inappropriately awarded or lost. Financial aid is not easily recoverable, because when the late grade comes in, financial aid money may have been distributed based upon incomplete data, and a student may be restored to eligibility at a time when funds are depleted. Under Satisfactory Academic Progress and Eligibility for Financial Aid, the Emory & Henry catalog states:
Course withdrawals, repetitions, incompletes and/or non-credit courses do not excuse the student from meeting the minimum semester hours and GPA requirements. (90)
Honors residence hall assignments and invitations to honor societies may be embarrassing for the student who is invited based upon the reported GPA after grades but then cannot verify the GPA because a late grade has arrived, lowering the GPA below the necessary minimum.
If neither holding grades for late submissions nor reporting a late code or incomplete is a good option when grades are late, then grades must not be late. With recognition that an occasional accident or illness can always prevent scheduled activities, the college must arrange processes and commitments in such a way that late grade submissions become rare occurrences. In a general framework for approaching such problems, James Sweeney, et. al., recommended the following steps for administrators and faculty in dealing with difficult problems:
....framing problems; identifying possible causes; seeking additional needed information; framing and reframing possible solutions; exhibiting conceptual flexibility; assisting others to form reasoned opinions about problems and issues. (Thomson, ed., 3.3)
This study has focused upon the first step of the process, framing the problem. Late submission of grades is not a problem of the registrar, although the consequences seem at first glance to fall significantly upon the registrar. Late grades are an institutional problem, and the real consequences are widely distributed in increased work for financial aid, student life, and the business office, and perhaps worst of all, often have serious consequences for students and for student retention. While the process of grade submission, recording, and reporting is distinctly clerical and certainly a detail, a college cannot afford to regard the timely submission of grades lightly. The college must work toward an actual shared understanding of the importance of timely grade submission and develop administrative systems that support the registrar by affirming that importance at all levels, from high executives to the few remaining secretaries, and from tenured faculty to the newest adjunct instructor.
Late grades can remain a serious problem for an institution only when the problem is misconstrued as a problem of the registrar with local significance that inconveniences the registrar's office staff two or three times a year. When it is recognized as an institutional problem that must be addressed by faculty and administration as well as the registrar, it should become addressable. Within the definition of this long-standing problem as an institutional problem rather than a registrar problem, the steps recommended by Sweeney become possible steps toward a possible solution:
Survey of the Registrar's listserv conducted October 11, 1997, to October 17, 1997, soliciting comments on responses of registrars to late grades.
Hello!
As a new registrar, I am enjoying lurking about on the list, picking up a lot of information, and hoping I will be able to contribute later.
I am sure the list has discussed late grades before I joined, but I am interested in how everyone responds. Do you:
Thanks!