Posted Apr 2, 2010 8:23 AM CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Students who graduated from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles in 2007 or later will see their grades raised a step, so that an A becomes an A-plus.

The school is retroactively raising grades to help give its students a boost in the job market, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Above the Law broke the news.

Law dean Victor Gold says the new curve more accurately reflects the academic quality of its graduates. "We concluded that the grading curve was sending incorrect information about our students, and, frankly, it was putting them at an unfair competitive disadvantage in a pretty tough job market," he told the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Some government agencies refuse to consider law graduates who earned less than a B average, he told the Chronicle. All he wants, he said, is a level playing field for graduates. The law school has a bar passage rate of 85 percent, putting it seventh out of 20 accredited law schools in the state.

In a memo by Gold published on Above the Law, the dean said the grade boost was retroactive because many other schools in the region had already hiked their grading curves.

The New York Times Economix blog questioned whether the grade inflation idea will work. “Think of it this way,” the blog said. “If everybody wears increasingly high high-heels, no one looks tall, but everybody’s feet hurt.”