The problem of grade inflation has been well documented. I believe however that grade inflation comes from three places, while my sense is that the public thinks it only comes from two. The first common view about grade inflation is simply that professors are awarding higher grades than they did in the past. We do not need to get into the reasons for this now. But surely this has to do with a changing culture and one where students are growing up in public school environments where “feeling good” is more important than doing well. But there are certainly competitive (arms-racy) reasons why this trend might be happening. That issue requires much more space than we have here to explore.
The second view might be that some of the increase in average grades over time is due to students selectively taking courses and majors that are easier than in the past. Again there are myriad possible reasons for this, and they range from the difficulty firms and grad schools have in conducting their own evaluations of merit all the way to “new stuff is being taught and it just happens to be easier” and a whole host of ideas in between (e.g. changes to the curriculum). So the idea is something like, in the past, lots of folks suffered through abstract algebra as part of what it meant to be a college student, and received average grades of a C in it, while today more students are taking Spanish, and receive average grades of A-.
The third view is the point of this post. And both students and colleges are complicit in it. We’ll again leave the reasons why this is happening to your imagination, but I wanted to illustrate what happens. Basically, colleges have evolved to the point where students are given several chances of “undoing” the impacts of receiving a bad grade, and we have also allowed students to do things for grades that never ought to be the purview of a serious college education.
What do I mean by second chances? These are only a few of the things Rochester students can do to avoid dealing with the impacts of a C-. Most colleges sensibly have an “add/drop” period at the beginning of each semester to allow students to “shop” for courses beyond just having to look at syllabuses and course descriptions and recommendations and warnings from friends. This makes sense. However, this “add/drop” deadline has been extended to do something more than just “getting a taste” for the class. You would think that a school would allow, at most, 2 weeks from the start of the term for this period. After 2 weeks, you are no longer shopping and it is certainly conceivable that missing more than 2 weeks at the start of some classes (e.g. newtonian mechanics?) might seriously inhibit your ability to learn the material for the subsequent 12 weeks. Well, we at the U of R have extended this period to a full month! Our classes this spring started on January 10th and the add/drop deadline for this semester was on February 8. Most classes have provided students with some evaluation by this point in time, and now a kid sensing it might be a course that actually requires you to work has an easier time dropping it than before. Of course, you would think that this might actually leave the grades lower than with a less generous add-drop policy. Why? Because now kids are starting their new courses a full month behind, meaning that they would have a hard time catching up. Of course, the professors and college now each basically “excuse” students from missing the first 4 weeks of classes when we allow them to add a class at this time. For example, in my Environmental Economics class, if you come in 4 weeks late, you probably have missed 2 to 3 seriously tough quizzes (out of 8), and missed out on two paper assignments plus 8 out of 28 lectures. Yet I am asked to “excuse” them from this work. But more important perhaps is that you probably don’t see many kids adding those kinds of classes, and instead adding classes where you simply have to write some long paper for a midterm and a final for your evaluation.
This post would be incredibly long if I described in any detail all of the other things we do, so let me list them with some brief comments. To review, these are a few of the things we do to allow students to massage their grades, manicure their transcripts, feel good about themselves, and present a misleading view of their ability to graduate schools, parents and employers:
These are merely some of the articulated college policies regarding course taking and the curriculum. I think I’d get myself into trouble if I spilled the beans on what really happens behind closed doors in terms of hand-holding, grading policies, and special treatment of students. You all can imagine what is happening when no one is watching and by now I am sure you understand the misaligned incentives that lead to these nutty outcomes.
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You offer strong evidence about the factors contributing to grade inflation. I find the “arms race” explanation most compelling — both professors with in a college or university competing to attract students and universities trying to market their graduates. Your tone suggests this is a problem we (or someone: central administration? government?) ought to solve, so I think it is worth asking, who is actually harmed? I cannot imagine that a graduate admissions committee, for example, would be fooled by a “P” in Macroeconomics or three semesters of internship as the school mascot. A few years ago, Jordan Ellenberg went much farther in an article making the case that grade inflation does not matter (Don’t Worry About Grade Inflation). Do you have a different take?
I completely agree with you. There are many policies at UR and probably other schools which make it easy for students to inflate their GPAs and appear more qualified that they actually are. While I find this inflation unsettling, what I am a bit surprised about, is that you find this to be perturbing. In a free market, why shouldn’t a school [looking out for its best interest] employ a policy that attracts students, while at the same time helps it attain a higher rank? I recall one of your articles where you mentioned how you view it as permissible for a politician to buy votes. I’m curious then to know how you’d feel about an exchange between a professor and a student (provided that no coercion is involved and the two willing parties agree to the terms), in which the student purchases a grade from a professor? I view these scenarios as free market exchanges taking place, so I suppose I don’t understand why you find some to be fair while others not?