on grade inflation since 1990

[acroyear]

Collegiate Grade Inflation: It's All About Supply and Demand : Mike the Mad Biologist:

So I'll posit that a major factor in grade inflation is the increased competition for graduate school slots. This has led to B's and C's having a much stronger influence on students. At the same time, students have become more willing, when possible, to avoid courses that are graded harder. While it might seem that if everyone is getting high grades, that high grades don't matter. But if you don't have a high GPA, then you stand out as a poor student--there is a rachet effect that pushes grades upwards.

If we want to reduce grade inflation, then we have to stop making grades so critical for acceptance into increasingly selective 'good' graduate programs. Until then, grade inflation it is. The good news, I suppose, is that grades can't get any higher...

Comments

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

As a cororaly to this article, a blog post about cheating and lessons learned...

http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-will-never-pursue-cheating-again.html

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

URL does not work.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the author appears to have revoked the page for some reason. it was there yesterday when i bookmarked it.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it looks like he pulled it, since I don't see it on his blog anywhere.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

long story short, its a prof talking about the past few years - just pursuing the 22 *admitted* (by the time he finished talking with each student) cases of cheating detected by software or by "techniques" (one assignment was an excel spreadsheet where the template he provided had one font and one figure (10.468) where a past version of that assignment's template had a different font and figure (10.467 - thus, rounded it would look the same, but the formulas would be slightly different when you turned off rounding)) -

anyways, those 22 cases alone took 45 hours (averaging 2 hours each) of private discussions just to get to the confession which often didn't happen until he threatened to turn everything over to the dean's council.

When the class itself only has 32 hours lecture time, that's just insane.

The side effect is that the salary decisions are judged on student evaluations, so in spite of being "thanked" by the Dean for pursuing the cheating, the fact that his evaluations were a point lower than most meant that his raise the next year was among the lowest of the faculty - he paid a big price in reputation for doing the right thing.

Thus, the incentive to support cheating actually exists in a manner *against* the professors.

I also did not like the overall teaching experience, and this was the most important thing for me. Teaching became annoying and tiring. There was a very different dynamic in class, which I did not particularly enjoy. It was a feeling of "me-against-them" as opposed to the much more pleasant "these things that we are learning are really cool!"

[mareska.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's all about graduate school admissions. That's certainly part of it--the Ivy Leagues have inflated grades for years to maintain ratings which are determined, in part, but what grad schools their graduates get into. Other schools have followed suit. And I think in some fields (particularly small ones, like mine) grades are far from the primary consideration. There is some awareness among employers and grad school admissions staff which schools inflate grades and which don't. My undergrad was known for giving particularly low grades and one of my classmates was told by an employer that although their normal threshold for new hires was a 3.0 they'd accept anything above a 2.5 because of where he went.

The other huge factor is financial--under the current consumer oriented model of higher education schools, particularly large ones who can get away with not being so selective in quality, are seeking the students who will pay the most and donate the most as alumni. Then there is pressure from departments to inflate grades so that students will enroll in classes. If a class gets known for being hard students won't take it which can cause the department to lose class slots and thereby funding. I know at least one professor admitted to me that she makes sure she has at least a certain percentage of As in her undergraduate lectures out of fear otherwise undergrads will stop enrolling.

As a professor it's hard. I want to give my students the grades they deserve, but then I know they're competing against students who got much better grades for equal quality work. So I tend to split the difference, which is probably not the best solution, but the only thing I can come up with. The whole system has problems and I wish I knew the solution.