How Pervasive Is Grade Inflation? Essay

Grade inflation: Is it really a bad thing?

Usually by the time they have entered grade school, students have become acutely concerned about the grades they are receiving relative to their peers. This concern, according to some anecdotal and statistical evidence, has resulted in a slow, steady upward trajectory of grades. Students and parents alike are placing more pressure on teachers to ensure students have competitive GPAs for college and grad school. This, critics contend, is effectively cheapening the value of an 'A.' But is grade inflation really a bad thing? The question perhaps is not so much if grade inflation is bad but rather the extent to which grades are viewed as the ultimate purpose of learning. Is getting good grades the point of attaining higher education or is actually learning the material? "Are grades signals to students about their mastery of content and the skills of a discipline? Are they ways for professors to establish credibility or purchase popularity? Or are grades meant to send messages to future employers, rather than to the students themselves?" (Tworek 2014)

One of the causes of grade inflation is the pressure teachers are frequently subjected to by students (and parents and administrators) to give students good grades. As the expectation arises that a 'B' is a mediocre grade and a 'C' is no longer a gentleman's C. But near-failing in the eyes of society, students are outraged when they do not receive top marks. As noted by a professor of communications at American University, Alicia C. Shepard (2005), in describing an encounter in one of her classes: "Why was I given a B. As my final grade?' demanded a reporting student via e-mail. 'Please respond ASAP, as I have never received a B. during my career here at AU and it will surely lower my GPA'" (Shepard 2005:1).

The student did not make a case as to why he or she did not deserve a B, merely stated that he deserved an A because that was the grade he was accustomed to receiving even though he had missed quizzes and turned in assignments late. The idea of an 'A' denoting excellence has long been abandoned, according to Shepard, which frustrates her. "The students were relentless. During the spring semester, they showed up at my office to insist I reread their papers and boost their grades" (Shepard 2005:1). Despite consistently lackadaisical efforts, including sleeping through exams, students still expected As. But perhaps what is so dispiriting about the situation described at American is not that students viewed As 'average' but the lack of attention they devoted to their work -- even honors students. It is questionable that the threat of poor grades really had an impact (poor grades were not enough to motivate a student to remain in the competitive honors program), rather there was an overall a lack of concern about their educations and learning the material. Students were more interested in wheedling better grades from professors (even relatively competent students with B+ averages) than what they were learning in class. Students were product-focused, rather than process-oriented. And it is the learning process that students should be excited about as undergraduates.

It could be noted that this is not quite the same thing as grade inflation. True, if students do not do the work, they should be penalized. But what about if all students are conforming to a high level of excellence? For example, "Princeton University changed its contentious grading policy. The university had previously limited the number of students who could receive A grades, but rescinded for a variety of reasons, including fears that the lower GPAs disadvantaged Princeton students on the job market and discouraged the top students from applying to the university in the first place" (Tworek 2014). Granted, the rationale behind changing this policy is extremely questionable. However, it seems equally dubious to penalize students for taking a hard class who do well, simply because some more students in the class do better than them, perhaps because they had a stronger background.

If students do genuinely 'A' quality work, does it really cheapen the A if many other students also receive As? One frequently-cited statistic to substantiate the notion that there is grade inflation is the fact that such a large proportion of Harvard grades are As. "A grades have been the most common grade at Harvard for 20 years, and the median grade there today is an A-" (Tworek 2014). However, given the caliber of student which attends Harvard (it is said that Harvard University could fill up its incoming undergraduate class of freshman several times over with students who could excel in the school), it is not impossible that these A-level grades were deserved.Wellesley College, a highly competitive women's liberal arts school recently "mandated that the average grade in introductory and intermediate courses with over 10 students must equal a B+ or lower" which effectively penalizes students who may do high-quality work, simply because of the level of classes they are taking (Tworek 2014). If a student wished to double major or change majors and take more introductory classes, he or she would have a statistically higher probability of being penalized with subpar grades, regardless of the level of quality of his or her work.

The situation Shepard described at American University vs. The situation at Princeton, Harvard, or Wellesley might not be both the same kinds of symptoms of grade inflation: lazy students attempting to pressure professors to change grades unjustifiably is different from insisting that there must always be C-graded students to make the A-students shine. And there is a grey area: while students who do not do the work and act in an entitled manner are not very sympathetic vs. students who do excellent work and who are denied As because the class is graded on a curve, there is also a subset of students who do work of middling quality but feel they deserve As because they worked hard. "Many students…believe that simply working hard -- though not necessarily doing excellent work -- entitles them to an A" (Shepard 2005:2). This is the danger of grade inflation, its critics argue -- the concept of a higher ideal, of true excellence, is lost. The bar is lowered for academic excellence.

One of the darker reasons for this may be the legacy of consumerism: "Tuition at a private college runs, on average, nearly $28,000 a year. If parents pay that much, they expect nothing less than A's in return," given that the degree is supposed to be leveraged for a good job upon graduation (Shepard 2005:2). Self-enrichment and truly learning about a subject pales in comparison to the need to get a good job or get into a good professional graduate school. But if this is the case, then why are so many students so willing to slack off? Because they know they can challenge their grades, Professor Shepard would counter.

But is more stringent grades really the answer to this hyper-vigilant concern about marks? If grades are not motivating students to really work hard, why not do away with grades altogether and simply measure student achievement based upon internal rewards, or at very least, upon progress reports rather than letters and numbers? A number of competitive colleges have chosen this approach. "At least 10 colleges in the U.S., including Bennington and Reed, don't give students letter grades (though Reed records them at the registrar's office). The schools say they are encouraging students to focus on the intrinsic value of learning rather than the letter they'll earn at the end of a course" (Tworek 2014).

In the UK, its more generalized system of grading could be said to be a kind of compromise between no grades at all and an obsession with grades. "Why not simply have fewer grades and accept that the majority of students might receive the same mark? The United Kingdom's system only has three classes of grades: first, second, and third" (Tworek 2014). In other words, it is extremely difficult to be rated as excellent but also extremely difficult to fail. Students who try hard but fail to achieve excellence are not slighted if they get a second because they know how difficult it is to get a first; nor are employers unduly worried if they see a second level. Students who do put in extraordinary extra effort which results in above-average performance gain firsts.

Regardless of the solution which is adopted, it is unlikely to quell the anxiety of helicopter parents, who will obsess over students' grades no matter how rigorous or lax the grading. But penalizing students who do go over and above the required level by limiting the number of As to a finite amount does not seem like a fair solution, either. Nor is the ease of getting high grades necessarily the root cause of a culture of entitlement and laziness on the part of students: it is perfectly feasible for such a C-student to….....