29 May 2019
Singapore Management University is reviewing the grades for a particular course taken by over 160 business students after it was discovered that the module lecturer, Professor Stefano Harney, had given all the students an A grade with the same numerical score.
SMU, which had described the grades as “bogus”, said that this was the first time this has happened. However, Prof Harney defended his action, saying that he wanted to spare students the pressure to achieve high grades and did not want to artificially restrict the number of As through a bell curve.
Prof Harney graduated from Harvard University and has a doctorate from Cambridge University. He has been at SMU since 2012 and is the professor of strategic management at its Lee Kong Chian School of Business.
Prof Harney taught and graded a module called The Capstone: Studying Business Through the Classics.
SMU associate dean in charge of undergraduate programmes Michelle Lee explained in an e-mail to students: “There is no variation to the scores he (Harney) assigned, even though the variation in quality of work submitted is plain to see.”