When did grade inflation, especially in colleges and universities, begin? Was it around the same time that they put in student evaluation forms that students fill out and hand in to the administration?
Actually, I’d like to see some good evidence that grade inflation exists at all. I’ve heard a lot arguments against it, but no actual figures to show that students are doing less work for their grades than previous generations of students.
But to give a possible answer the OP: according to Harvey Mansfield, a government professor at Harvard, grade inflation began in the 1960’s when “white professors, imbibing the spirit of affirmative action, stopped giving low or average grades to black students and, to justify or conceal it, stopped giving those grades to white students as well.” Mansfield is a very vocal critic of grade inflation, and is known amongst Harvard students as ‘C- Mansfield’.
The quote is from this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Frankly, I think if he were an SDMB member posting the same article in GD as an argument, he’d be ripped to shreds. He doesn’t give any evidence to back up his claims, saying instead that it’s up to his critics to prove he’s wrong.
Finding grade inflation is not that difficult, if a standard measure exists. Let’s take for example some school district in inner city Metropolis. Students there have a grade distribution in their algebra class that is pretty much Gaussian. The mean grade is 75% and the numbers tail off from there.
Now let’s have these algebra students take a Nationally normed algebra test. If the mean percentile rank score is way below 50%ile, we can suspect grade inflation. For the sake of this example, let’s say the mean prs is 20th percentile. This means that half of the algebra takers from our group scored as well or better than 20 percent of the norming group. Metropolis High’s “average” is lower than roughly 80% of the nation’s “average”.
Now, is this “grade inflation” to a detriment? Depends. Grading of individuals is usually done in reference to that specific group, i.e., the class, grade, all the algebra students that particular teacher sees (across classes), etc. “Smearing” percentages and measuring an individual against their peers is not necessarily inflating a grade. Grades can only be considered inflated when they are compared to some different norm. This makes for tricky interpretaions.
One problem with Mansfield’s claim that grade inflation started in the 60’s and 70’s is that student body radically changed during that time as well. Using Harvard as an example (as Mansfield does), women were not admitted as students until 1971, which means in that year, the pool of high school seniors to draw from suddenly doubled. This should mean that the quality of the average student rose significantly, as the school could only take same number of students as in previous years, but could now choose from twice as many candidates. So far his claims fail to address this.
According to an examiner from the Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations board (OCR) (see this BBC report) there is no doubt that exam inflation is taking place. To obtain a grade C at GCSE in 1988, a score of 65% was needed. Now, the necessary score is 45%.
It is also well-known that examinations in the UK are getting easier (higher education officials are constantly complaining that students are less and less well prepared each year).
So: students are learning less, and yet the number of passes increases every year. Seems pretty obvious to me that grade inflation is occuring.
The trouble is not that it is happening, but that officials deny that it is. I do not know whether it is a problem or not; perhaps GCSEs were too hard in the 80’s. What I do know is that denying it happens doesn’t help anyone: we just end up having the same debate every year when results are published, with one group moaning that the exams are getting too easy, and another saying that this is insulting to students.
Instead of denying the obvious, educationalists should be looking at whether the exam inflation is causing a problem or not. If it is, then sort it out. If it isn’t, then drop it, and let students celebrate their successes.
The Boston Globe just did a two-part article on grade inflation at Harvard.
“Last June, a record 91 percent of Harvard students graduated summa, magna, or cum laude, far more than at Yale (51 percent), Princeton (44 percent), and other elite universities, a Globe study has found.”
Part one:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/280/metro/At_Harvard_it_s_honors_all_around+.shtml
"Yale, Brown, and many other elites now limit honors as a way to preserve its value. Yale caps universitywide honors at 30 percent of graduating seniors, - though, when comparing various types of honors with Harvard’s, a total of 51 percent of Yale seniors earned some form of honors last spring.
Behind Harvard and Yale is Princeton, where the honors rate this year was 44 percent; Brown, 42 percent; Dartmouth, 40 percent; Columbia, 25 percent; and Cornell, 8 percent. The University of Pennsylvania denied requests for the data, saying furnishing it would violate student privacy.
Elsewhere, 28 percent of Duke University seniors received honors last spring, while the rate was 20 percent at Stanford and 35 percent at Johns Hopkins. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology doesn’t award honors, saying the sheer value of its degree is distinctive."
Part two:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/281/metro/Harvard_honors_lack_distinction+.shtml
OK, forgive me 'cos I don’t know much about the UK educational system, but it sounds like something else is wrong with this. Is C supposed to be a passing grade? An average grade?
If the exam is set up so that most of the examinees are able to answer less than half of the questions correctly, it sounds like the schools are either doing a terrible job preparing the students, or (more likely) the exam itself doesn’t reflect what students are realistically capable of learning.
It seems to me that, short of improving the standard of secondary education across the board, the best solution would be to revise the exam so that it tests what students can reasonably be expected to know, rather than to lower the grading curve after the students have taken it. It’s stressful and demoralizing to take a test where you can’t answer the majority of the questions, even if you can theoretically achieve a passing grade.
When you look into this subject you get a lot of educationalists arguing, oh well, testing was never any good, what are we testing when we test students, shouldn’t “other things” be considered, and so on. If you went to college in the late 50’s for instance, you only got a good grade if you ANSWERED TEST QUESTIONS CORRECTLY. Now not only is there grade inflation from professors making tests easier and giving out the questions beforehand, etc., PROFESSORS ARE ALSO GIVING CREDIT FOR ATTENDANCE!, TURNING IN “WORK,” CUTTING OUT CLIPPINGS, MAKING “PORTFOLIOS,” AND “GOOD BEHAVIOR,” (because so many students have not had mothers I guess). This leaves about 33% at the most for students who know anything. And professors are told well we must “develop critical thinking.” Let’s test for that. Overheard in the halls: “The teacher said we’re supposed to do a paper on our opinion that is supported by somebody else’s opinion.” This is one of the “critical thinking”-type assignments. Professors start each class period with, “Now how do we all feel today,” and they keep on asking this during the whole class as if they were psychologists and mothers rolled up in one.Students only seek out professors to hand them doctor’s excuses, implore them to provide makeup for tests, makeup for work not handed in, extra credit, and other desperate measures because they are failing to know the answers to test questions. Even when they have been given the questions and the answers, and also the reading that these come from! The educationalists’ answer to improving education is always to do more for students when the problem is that YOU GET OUT OF SOMETHING ONLY WHAT YOU PUT INTO IT. Students are never told this. They are told that professors have these expert methods to make them learn. Then when they don’t, they evaluate the professors as bad.
Professors know this and therefore they don’t dare go against students. Grade inflation began the day students took over the asylum by being encouraged to be critical of their teachers. This was declared the American way. People were quoted as saying, “Question everything.”
But how are you going to learn that 2+2=4 if you question it? Shouldn’t that come later on once you have mastered the system?
I have written this type of thing up to colleagues, but almost none of them are interested. They just want to please the students and do the best they can and hope nobody notices the standards.
In many colleges 40% of the students withdraw before they get a well-deserved F, so this may account for a lot of grade inflation too. Teachers I consider pleasing the students better than I do have THE SAME DROPOUT RATE AS I DO, 40% or more. THE PROFESSOR EVALUATION FORMS are given students IN OCTOBER, so THE ONES THAT ARE FAILING HAVEN’T DROPPED OUT YET. They wait until the last minute in order to preserve their government funding, their grants, their eligibility to play sports, and various other things that depend on their going to school. Meanwhile they get to evaluate professors that they think are failing them instead of the other way around. Ours is a society of blaming somebody for one’s own shortcomings. In the SAME CLASS
you get one student saying on the evaluation form that the teacher did not pass out a syllabus (there is a place for that on the form). The rest of the students say the professor did hand out a syllabus. One student says the teacher was too disrespectful of students and didn’t value their opinions (another item on the form!!!), another student gives the professor high marks in this area.
One area on the form is will this course help you in your chosen career. In fact not one, but two questions are about this. The average person taking history, for instance, is NOT going to think that it is going to help him with his chosen field of sales and promotion or business.
Two bad marks for any history teacher, whether the student liked him or the course or not. Nor is such a student going to say that learning about parameciums will help in his or her career either.
Was the course interesting is another question on the teacher evaluation form. The average teenager’s INTERESTS have never been in subjects like math, English, history, philosophy, or the arts. Or in general in reading, writing, or arithmetic.
Am I the only one that’s never heard of this?
No, they evaluated professors as bad because the professor failed to engage the students in a love of learning. Or because the professor wasted their time by reading directly from the book or syllabus. Or because the professor tested them on material not covered by assigned reading or lectures. or because the professor was capricious in his grading, or downgraded those with differing viewpoints.
Evaluations in my university were administered on the very last day of classes, the last meeting before finals. At my university, you could not withdraw with grade of “W” after midterms. You could not withdraw with grade of “W” if you were failing the class.
God, this is condescending bullshit like I can’t believe. Your lack of respect for your students must shine bright as day when you teach. No wonder you get such crap evaluations.
Also at my university, there were people LINED UP to take a class – any class – from a certain religion professor who was notorious for his high standards and harsh grades. (Fretful Porpentine, you know who I’m talking about). This professor would fail on principle any student he found to be taking his class Pass/fail. People LINED UP to take this class. They busted their asses to make a C+ or a B. Accounting majors, math majors, anthropology majors, music majors, whatever. Because he was a GREAT prof who truly inspired students.
\Former college prof stepping in…
I used to teach college math at a small college. This was no research institution so full emphasis was on teaching. Here is my take on grade inflation.
When I was a student, I thought prof’s tended to be soft and easy. Even when I didn’t work all that hard I would get A’s. I never had any idea what the rest of my class was like.
To be very frank, most students are complete morons with mush for brains. I cannot understand how these people even know how to breathe let alone function at the college level. Now, combine this lack of brainpower with COMPLETE AND TOTAL LAZINESS. They are not bright enough to begin with but they very much understudy.
I cannot tell you the true horror of grading. No matter how easy a test you give many people will flunk. You have to wade through reams and reams of complete garbage, debating how much to take off for this stupid mistake or that. Is this moronic error worth less of than this stupid mistake? I would routinely give a test that would be the FIRST THREE HOMEWORK PROBLEMS OF EACH SECTION and many would still flunk, and flunk with gusto. When I was feeling really cynical once, toward the end, I gave the same test as the ‘practice’ test I gave out the day before and 21 OUT OF 43 students FLUNKED! I am not making that up. Final exams were a special horror when you realized that maybe 5 students took ANYTHING of use away with them from the class.
No problem, you say, just flunk them. I did. I would lose 40-50% of my class by drop date and would flunk about 25% of what was left. This means that out of a starting class of say 50 students, you would have about 20 that ‘passed’ and about 5 of those would be ‘D’ grades. Now get this, I WAS THE POPULAR/SOUGHT AFTER MATH PROFESSOR which means others were tougher.
Yes, I tended to be easy because I wasn’t tenured and wanted to be and I tended to teach first 2 years (algebra/trig/calc) where many times it was the last math course they would take (like algebra for humanities, calc for some sciences, business calc for business etc.) I didn’t see the need to flunk a student close to a D in their final math course since it seemed pointless. They had no math skills and if it was important to a future job then they would look at the transcript, see the ‘D’ and know the applicant had no math skills.
Too soft, I know…and I did teach some courses with math/engineer majors where they were great students. I kept up my standards with them and they met them with gusto but math and engineer majors were not common so you would teach one ‘good’ class every other semester
I started out with high standards but dropped them significantly because…I wanted to keep the job and I wanted less stress in my life. If you hold to higher standards, people will complain and you will be ‘talked to’. If you hold, you could lose your job (not get tenure). You don’t get any benefit from being firm, only stress and grief – possibility of being fired, angry students, relationship with students that is strained and infrequent, etc.
It’s so much easier to just let go. Give easy tests, grade on a curve. Life is much more pleasant, students are happy, administrators like you since they hear good things about you from the community. Everyone thinks you are a good teacher, even other profs.
The problem in paradise is that even with your very loose standards you get the stats from above (40-50% drop rate then 25% flunk rate). If you kept your standards, you might have a 20% pass rate. This wears on you and you begin to doubt the value of what you are doing. You start to feel that what you do is worthless. Now combine that with low pay and when someone offers you a stat position at a private company you get very, very, very tempted till you jump which happened to me.
That, my friends, is why there is grade inflation.
Former college prof stepping out…
I believe grade inflation takes place at an alarming rate. I only mainly anecdotal evidence, having never truly researched the question, but that evidence overwhelmingly supports grade inflation taking place.
[ul]
[li]My mother works in an inner city school. She maintains that not only do the teachers grade much more leniently, the administration also passes students from grade to grade by either actually changing final grades or by using ‘social promotion’ to justify relaxing standards to pass a student who might be held back a second or third time based on performance.[/li][li]Teachers who grade critically and actually give average work a ‘C’ receive parental pressure. One teacher I had over 12 years ago had exacting standards which helped prepare me immensely. One student’s mother complained to the school and/or school board that her daughter was near a ‘nervous breakdown’ because of this; the teacher was then removed from the AG (academically gifted) assignment.[/li][li]Many if not most high schools now weight courses. Not only do the teachers give higher grades than perhaps deserved, if the class is an advanced class the students get an extra letter grade worth of credit.[/li][li]The SAT was curved upwards. Citing recent trends in performance, SAT grades were shifted upwards, with mediocre scores receiving higher ‘curving’ than high scores. This happened in 1994. "In 1994, ETS decided to raise the national average SAT-I scores from their previous levels of 470 Math/430 Verbal back again to 500 Math/500 Verbal, respectively. The test was not changed, and students performance did not rise; the scores were just inflated to create the new average. This change in no way effects your college entrance because every student in the nation now gets recentered scores and the colleges know how to equate them with the “old” scores. However, you can’t directly compare your SAT score to the those of your older relatives, and in ten years nobody will remember that the average was arbitrarily raised - no more “Falling SAT Scores” headlines! " from here: http://www.satdominator.com/chap1.html I’m sure I could find more support for this but don’t feel like looking it up.[/li][li]In personal experience, both 10 years ago and again today as I’m taking classes again, there is less expectation and the workload is easier. Writing standards for essays are much relaxed, in my opinion.[/li][li]“Whatever it is that grades represent, more students are getting A’s than ever before. In 1984, 28 percent of all students taking the SAT reported an A average, according to Wayne Camara of the College Board. In 1999, Camara says, 39 percent of SAT-taking students reported an A average, an 11 percent increase over 15 years.” from Harvard Education Letter[/li][li]Higher standards leads to lower grades: http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/062297/gradezz.html[/li][li]“The primary explanation is the market factor: When the institution needs to recruit and retain students to survive (a buyer’s market), intellectual standards are at risk of being compromised….[/li]
Administrators may offer the following apologia for students: ‘We admitted them, so they are qualified to be here. Therefore they graduate (with high grade averages).’ Or, from another perspective, they paid the price, so give them their pleasure. So the professor is expelled rather than the student; he is the victim of intellectual fraud, but is blamed for his plight.” From here: http://complit.rutgers.edu/palinurus/#Market
[/ul]
I’m all for national standards and testing. I’m also for teacher standards as well. Unfortunately the power of the NEA will keep these measures from implementation in many places.
The ‘good’ teachers and professors can still inspire learning and diligence. Unfortunately the system doesn’t seem to require much to advance and graduate.
So? In most cases this GPA only applies to class standing calculations. If this is the case, why should somebody who spent all 4 years of high school in standard classes receiving all A’s be ranked ahead of the student who took more challenging classes but received a B in one class? The numerous instances of this practice do not reflect grade inflation so much as a greater number of school offering advanced classes; something worth supporting.
Emphasis mine, naturally. The whole point of the SAT is to help colleges decide who’s ready for their institution. Comparing your SAT score to those of older relatives? What kind of twisted family does that? “I’m afraid I can’t will my estate to you as you did not exceed my childhood SAT score.” I did outscore my dad, but not by much and he was very encouraging and delighted to hear my score. I really don’t see why this is a problem either.
I don’t even know what this is referring to as SAT’s are not graded on a letter scale. However, couldn’t this easily be explained by the fact that more students nowadays know what to expect when the SAT comes around and have perhaps prepared for this type of test, therefore performing better?
I take issue with the rampant inflation noted among some ivy league schools mainly because it has the potential to make the rest of us look bad. “Not only did this applicant go to Harvard, he received a 3.5!” Obviously making it look like this student is that much more qualified than a student at an institution where grades are not inflated. Fortunately, however, it is said (could be an out-right lie) that my institution mails letters along with our transcripts specifically stating that grades here are not inflated and therefore cannot be easily compared with grades from other schools. After seeing the statistics provided by Papermache Prince, I’m certainly comforted by this thought (Apparently only 8% here graduate with honors, not a testament to lower intelligence as the snottier schools might like to think)
It seems quite rediculous when you hear basically every generation criticized by their predecessors. It’s very apparent with us “Gen-Xers”… god I hate that term… I’ve come across it often in the cultural archives of what should be our parents generation (“damn hippies go do some work”)… Just the other day I came across this… The description:
Seems pretty clear that this proclivity for denigrating the “rising generation” is somewhat of a fixture in our society and amounts to precisely jack shit when it comes down to discerning the level of success a given generation may achieve. I too look forward to the day when I can sit back and tell the young adults I come across that they are a disgrace to this great way of life and thereby elevate myself to the ranks of hard-working American.
If you really think that the interests of todays youth lie too far from what you would deem worthy, how about you do something about it? The potential being lost is not that of the voting, politically persuasive adult but the kid who watches Pokemon because, well, that’s what’s on. I certainly watched my fair share of cartoons, but I also watched a lot of educational shows because, well, that’s what was on. I certainly think that was beneficial to me, and if you’re really concerned for the minds of the future rather than consumed by a desire to belittle others, use your wisdom and intellectual prowess to divise and enact a solution to the problems that seem to be “draining the children”.
Let’s stick to the facts, please.
Kaje:
A decade or so ago, there was a great deal of concern about how scores on the SAT were falling across the board. htis concern was aimed at education, not students: "Our schools muct be lesseffective if everyone is gettinga lower score!’. The people who create the SAT “fixed” this problem by shifting the average so that scores are no longer much lower, on average, than they were twenty years ago.
Kaje, on the SAT (and ACT, for htat matter) on the name and date nad social security number page it also asks “what is your GPA?”. Even though this is self-reporting and a biased sample, it is the only real record of nation wide test scores we have, as local schools don’t send thier grades to any sort of central agency or anything. what we have is a situation where reported grades are going up and (adjusted) test scores are going down. That implys grade inflation.
As a teacher, grade inflation burns my butt. C’s should be average, but these days most kids look at them as something shameful, as only a serious idiot or someone that did no work at all gets a C. Considering that grades are compared nationally for college admissions, I feel like it isn’t really fair to recalibrate grades to what I think they should be–i.e., give my kids Cs for what would be A work down the hall. On the other hand, haveing to give B+/As for doing an adequate job means that I have no real carrot to offer to the good kids.
Perhaps my high school was different. Public and somewhat urban and all, but certainly A’s were not the norm. One policy that came and went was that if had a 90% (being an A) or higher going into the final exam, you didn’t have to take the final exam. Even with this policy, there were no more than 2 or 3 students out of 30 in each class that were exempt from the final… though I should note that these were primarily AP and I’m not sure about the exemption rate in the standard classes
Fretful, what you need to know about the British educational system is that they don’t use the same grading scale as the U.S., where 90%+=A, 80%+=B, etc.
In England, (or at least in Oxford), a “60” is considered passing. An 80 is “superb work,” and an 85 is “brilliant and original work.” A 90 would be all but unheard of, and a 100 – that commonplace mark of A+ in the States – does not exist. My quotes are from my Oxford graduate student guide, but the same goes for undergrads at most universities all over the country.
Over here they don’t buy into the theory that not knowing half the material “demoralizes” a student. In fact, IMHO that construction is a “I’m OK, You’re OK” approach to doling out grades.
What all these reports of falling SAT scores always fail to mention is that the pool of SAT applicants has been continually rising- particularly in the 20 years prior to recentering (1975-1995). Thus, quite a bit of the “drop” in scores isn’t because people are getting dumber- its because dumber people are taking the test that wouldn’t have years ago…
One would hope parental pressure by itself wouldn’t lead to grade inflation. At McGill University, most of my engineering courses had a “C+” average, in most first/second-year arts course only 3% of students got an “A” and 6% an “A-”. Couldn’t get an “A+” in any course, which killed you when applying to medical schools. At least they have standards, though, more so than my medical school!
don,
I spent much time and effort refuting some of your same questions/statements in this thread. Since I don’t feel like doing it again, please look at it.
What do you have against student evals, anyway? In my experience, they don’t affect tenure. Some university professors really are bad teachers. Just because someone’s incredibly intelligent or a whiz at research doesn’t mean they can teach. What’s wrong with feedback?
[b/]Dr_Paprika**:
I’m in an engineering field that is rather conducive to medical school (with a name like biomedical engineering, what do you expect?). Our program is still new–so new that we’ve only graduated 8 seniors. Of them, 2 applied to med school, and both got in. I’ve heard that med school administrators are a bit more flexible with GPA’s when one is an engineer–because you generally have harder coursework. It’s this reason that I’m in favor of weighting advanced courses in high school.