Grade inflation at universities is harmful and since it’s becoming more prevalent, grades and GPA might not matter in the future.
Grade inflation is the act of awarding students higher grades for work that would have received lower grades in the past. Essentially, the term implies that a student earning an ‘A’ or ‘B’ for his or her work by today’s standard would likely have earned a ‘C’ in past generations. A 2012 study by Stuart Rojstaczer & Christopher Healy, found that A’s make up 43 percent of grades currently earned by students at 135 colleges and universities. Furthermore, that percentage of A’s stands in stark contrast with previous years, such as 1960 and 1990, where the percentage of A’s awarded was 15 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
Distribution of Grades 1960-2008
Year |
A |
B |
C |
D |
F |
1960 |
15% |
32% |
35% |
12% |
6% |
1970 |
26% |
38% |
25% |
7% |
4% |
1980 |
29% |
39% |
21% |
7% |
4% |
1990 |
31% |
37% |
21% |
7% |
4% |
2000 |
38% |
36% |
16% |
5% |
5% |
2008 |
43% |
32% |
15% |
5% |
5% |
*The estimated numbers represent a sample of 135 colleges and universities conducted by Stuart Rojstaczer & Christopher Healy in their 2012 publication, “Where A Is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading.”
The causes of grade inflation can be debated, but scholars acknowledge a correlation with the social tensions that evolved during the Vietnam War. Some attribute the effect of the Vietnam era draft exemption as an indirect cause. Under this theory, professors handed out higher grades to keep males from flunking out, which would have made them eligible for the draft. Russell Nieli of Princeton University, refutes this claim by noting that 1960s grade inflation occurred similarly at female colleges and coed institutions, despite women not being eligible for the draft.
A more sensible explanation comes from increasing student demands during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some scholars believe that the initiative by students for a greater role in their own college curriculums led to lax faculty standards. The student upheavals correspond with the implementation of student evaluations of professors. The belief is that the threat of negative student evaluations unintentionally pushed professors to trade A’s and B’s for positive student reviews. Complementing this claim, scholars point to the growing significance of grades in the last quarter of the 20th century as graduate school applications increased along with employers searching for a uniform measuring stick for hiring as a larger supply of college graduates entered the workforce.
Regardless of the causes, it is clear that if left unresolved, grade inflation will continue to enlarge as well as the negative effects it imposes on society. Each generation grows accustomed to the grading standards, students who go on to become professors are likely to mimic the grading practices under which they learned. This leads to a never-ending cycle of students doing less work for higher grades. With the incentives of improving oneself eliminated, students will not understand the need to put forth their best effort when they land an A doing average work.
In 2004, Princeton spearheaded the most notable attempt to tackle grade inflation when the university instituted an in-house policy demanding A’s be held to less than 35 percent of all grades. While grade inflation experienced a decline, the policy struggled to cause the domino effect administrators had hoped for. Students became weary of having to explain to prospective employers why their grades were lower than those of other Ivy League students. In some cases, opposing Ivy League schools would use Princeton’s authoritative stance on grade inflation to draw high school students away from attending the university. These problems prompted Princeton to lift the grading policy in 2014.
One of the concerns with grade inflation is how it factors into the hiring of graduates. When 75 percent of students fall in the A-B range, it becomes hard to distinguish the sharpest students. According to the 1960 data, 37 percent of today’s students earning a 3.0 GPA or greater belong in the C-F grouping. The overcrowding nature of the top tier has employers and graduate programs second-guessing themselves when evaluating graduates on their GPA. As a result, 63 percent of A-B students — the group that deserves its recognition — are robbed of the acclaim they would have otherwise received.
As the Princeton case demonstrates, schools have minimal incentive to police grade inflation, because doing so causes them more harm than good. To successfully combat grade inflation, college and universities need to even the playing field by uniting together on one grade policy. Until that happens, a number of students will condition themselves to a life of receiving ‘excellent’ recognition for average work, and are prone to fail when the professional world demands excellent work for the same level of recognition.
College is supposed to give students the highest learning experience. If a percentage of students are able to breeze through a college education receiving A and B grades without being challenged to reach their full potential, the college strikes out in teaching the most important lesson of all — learning how to find success after failure.
David Holman is a junior studying screenwriting and producing at Ohio University and a research assistant at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Columns will be written by a different CCAP student from Ohio University each week. Email David at dh936611@ohio.edu.
