For HCND Investigates: Mendoza College of Business (Part I), click here.
Mendoza College of Business, which has been recognized at the #1 undergraduate business school by Bloomburg Businessweek for five consecutive years, is under scrutiny from students who disagree with the academic curve.
Even with a successful educational structure, Mendoza College of Business has its drawbacks. According to undergraduate students, the newly implemented curve within the business school creates cutthroat behavior amongst individuals and doesn’t foster group collaboration and teamwork, which many of the students hold as an important aspect of business.
Shannon Daly*, a junior finance major, explained how the curve affected her academically.
“The curve is a disadvantage in regards to the relationships students have with their peers,” Daly said. “It makes the classroom much more competitive, causing students to be less likely to help one another.
Mendoza students collaborating on a project.
Daly also emphasized the importance of the internship and job market when it comes to GPA.
“The competitive nature between students is heightened since everyone is trying to beat the curve to maintain a high enough GPA for business internships and jobs,” Daly said.
Even employers emphasized the need for students to attain impressive GPA’s throughout their four years of college. Adam Brooks*, an intern recruiter at Robert W. Baird in Chicago, shared the company’s guidelines for initial screening of resumes for both internships and full time positions.
“We require that our candidates maintain a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.5,” Brooks said. “Anything under that baseline is automatically rejected by the company.”
With a set GPA required for many firms and companies, students felt that the curve only makes it more challenging to find jobs that will even glance at their resume.
Analyzing placement data from the Mendoza College of Business Class of 2014, there are only 2% of students that are still seeking employment six months after graduation. 20% of Mendoza students who graduate go on to graduate school, law school, and medical school, while a number of students go into service.
Despite of these criticisms, Nichols upheld that the curve is still a beneficial factor for both students and employers.
“When a young man or woman graduates, there should be some metric that differentiates those who are outstanding from those who are average,” Nichols said. “If you have grade inflation, where the average grade is a 3.82, then what does that mean?”
Nichols mentioned a facet that he finds more problematic, which is whether or not the curve puts Mendoza students at a disadvantage applying to graduate schools around the country.
“If you’re in the business school, we have departments that hold different curves. But in general, a lot of the core junior courses, the curve can’t be more than a 3.3,” Nichols said. “If you’re going to another school where there’s a lot of grade inflation, then you’re actually put at a disadvantage. On the other hand, if you have outstanding scores for the GMAT or the GRE, then that outweighs them anyway. Plus, if you’re at a good graduate school, they aren’t naive to the fact that Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business is an elite undergraduate business school that has a curve.”
Nichols concluded that in spite of the curve controversy, Mendoza wants to emphasize its motto to “Ask More of Business”, promoting values and leadership along with academic excellence.
Mendoza Courtyard
“I can’t teach a class where grades are that important,” Nichols said. “I’m teaching innovation, and I think that smothers innovation having grades be such a concern in the undergraduate experience. Our most successful alums that come back aren’t the ones who earned the highest grades and were the best students.”
Nichols smiled as he remembered a comical quote from his colleague.
“In the end, it’s the A students that are the professors, and the B students who are the employees of the C students.”
Despite this, there are still many questions that the Mendoza College of Business needs to address: When will grades stop outweighing skill and experience? Is this curve only a problem when it’s recent graduates seeking employment because college is the most recent “experience” on their resumes? It’s only a matter of time before these questions must be taken into account by Mendoza faculty and administration.
*Names have been changed to protect identity
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