N.Y. Times posted a very interesting article about grade inflation, “A History of College Grade Inflation”.
The graph tells the tale fairly well. A’s are on the rise and C’s are on the decline. What does “A” mean if 40% of the students are achieving it. What does “C” mean if only 15% of the students are achieving it. Add to this studies that show students are studying less on average than they were 50 years ago.
The article mentions the the “consumer-based” institution as a player in this inflation and I’m sure it has made an impact, but I’ve seen plenty of missed expectations as well. Students come to college having received high marks for minimal work and creativity. It isn’t a wonder their expectations for college are skewed. A sense of entitlement that work should equal a good grade, even if mastery of the material isn’t there. They don’t just take the grade they are given and choose to work harder. They fight, argue, whine, and cry to change the outcome. The faculty I’ve observed range from very concerned about their students to almost completely uninterested, but few of them seem particularly interested in fighting back grade inflation. No wonder given the unbelievable hassle it would be. It would take a complete institutional initiative to really fight grade inflation (e.g. Yale). And even then you have the issue of cross-institution comparison.
Another thought this article had me come back to is the goal of the assessment. A solid, generic answer is feedback for the student and faculty, but that is generally unsatisfying to me because it really depends on how you do the assessment. Repetition of problems previously given doesn’t constitute much learning, but can give a fair bell curve of scores probably around 80 average. This isn’t really testing mastery of the material though. So you mix in a couple of good synthesis problems or even get crazy and ask some questions that require the students to extend their knowledge. You get a bit more information about what your top students are capable of and you shift down the average. My preference is a few repetition problems and lots of synthesis and extension. The average is certainly low, but the information the students and you receive is much useful. The downside is you have to translate how their scores become letter grades and when the students see an average score of 43 out of 100, they lose their minds. Its all about managing expectations I suppose, though I’d like to see expectations higher.
UPDATE (8/16/2011) – Chronicles of Higher Education published “Justify Every A” which teachers using professional evaluators to give out grades to fight grade inflation. It opens up the class because now the teacher is on the students side against the evaluation, instead of the students feeling against the teacher because they are assessing them. In a system where “A” is the most common grade, this idea doesn’t sound crazy.
UPDATE (10/10/2011) – Science jumped on this idea in a recent article “Easy A” mentions how “A” is now the most common grade while other academic measures stay steady or decline.
UPDATE (5/31/2012) – Washington Post article on grade inflation sent me to http://gradeinflation.com/ which has some actual data on grade inflation. I love data.
UPDATE (5/31/2012) – Just because it happened at my Ph.D. institution, check out “At [University of Minnesota], concern grows that ‘A’ stands for average” or “Too Many A’s? U. of Minnesota Professor’s Plan Would Give Grades More Context“. Dr. Cramer was on my thesis committee and taught one of my grad classes. He is brilliant and cares about education. The idea for revised transcripts is a good one, my question is what is the “right” way?
UPDATE (8/20/2012) – A student sues for the right to get into law school arguing his lower GPA from 1979 is better than the new required GPA because of grade inflation.