Grade Inflation: The Good, the

GRADEHAPPENINGS INFLATION:

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

By: Aviva Wang | Illustrated by: Angela Guo | Layout by: Jocelyn Ho

Grade inflation has been an ever increasing issue in the American education system within the last few decades. It refers to an increase in a grade or grade point average (GPA), within a high school or a university, with no evidence that it has been earned. For instance, at Princeton University, A’s rose from 31% of course grades in the 1970s, to 47% in 2003. “Grades are not like temperature or weights,” Wayne Camara, former vice president of R&D at the College Board, says. “What constitutes an A or a B has changed, both in high school and in college.” Teachers are aware of the much fiercer competition within the world and try to help students by giving better grades. Moreover, the use of student ratings of teachers also inflates grades, as there now exists a culture where the studentconsumer is at the centre. Grade inflation is important because if high marks are easier to get than before, it could completely change the underlying value of degree attainment, or getting through school in general. While the causes of grade inflation are much debated, the impacts are equally important, if not more. This gives rise to the question: in what ways has the increased rate of grade inflation within the last thirty years affected the American education system? There are more and more experts arguing that the American school system has seen a positive

influence from grade inflation. This is due to the fact that it can support students to stick with their preferred majors, as well as the theory that universities would be more incentivised to make investments to improve the quality of their education. First of all, grade inflation can encourage students to stick with their preferred majors, often a better choice economically, rather than allowing them to be hindered by lower grades and any restrictions that may follow. For example, STEM courses tend to give lower grades than other fields of study, and at the same time, women are statistically more likely to switch their major if they receive lower introductory grades. With grade inflation, there may be a higher percentage of women motivated to enter these courses and earn STEM degrees, thus narrowing the concerning gender gap in such disciplines. In fact, a recent study by the University of Kentucky concludes that equalising grades among male and female students in STEM courses would shrink the STEM gender gap by over 10%. This demonstrates that grade inflation can positively impact students by allowing them to stick with their education despite its hurdles. Another example is the required grade boundary for taking an Economics course at the

University of California, Santa Cruz. At UCSC, students are only allowed to major in Economics if they have a minimum GPA of 2.8, or a B minus/B letter grade. While students who have not met this requirement are allowed to appeal to the school, most of them turn to the other social sciences for a major. The students who received GPAs not far from the 2.8 threshold were studied. Those who had GPAs lower than 2.8 were turned away, however, those who had GPAs slightly higher than 2.8 were accepted, despite the fact that these two groups of students had similarly low grades and skill levels. Although the students who turned to other majors were awarded higher average grades in those courses, the probability that they could have received an Economics major was neither higher or lower; they could have been successful in earning an Economics major after the four-year-long course. After all, an inflexible grade boundary does not and should not gauge the likelihood of an individual’s success after a four-year university course. However, not reaching the grade boundary, and thus not being able to take the course, had a significant impact on the students’ career prospects. Economics majors tend to earn more than majors from the other social sciences, and not being able to earn that major reduced early career wages by almost a third. In fact, those who had lower GPAs may have even been able to receive

higher wage values than those with accepted GPAs. Lower introductory grades were not a sign that they could not take the Economics course; they were more a sign that they had a lot to learn from the Economics course. If their grades were slightly higher, they could have reaped longterm benefits from their education. Hence, grade inflation can positively impact students in helping them break grade boundaries and stick with their favoured majors, often the better choice economically. Additionally, since the students with lower grades tend to be from more disadvantaged backgrounds, and since the courses with high GPA requirements tend to lead to more lucrative careers, grade inflation could support such students into courses despite their lower introductory grades, thus diminishing equity gaps. Not only that, grade requirements also determine the receivers of financial aid, and student debt is a significant barrier to tertiary education for disadvantaged students. Hence, grade inflation has a positive impact on such students by allowing and encouraging them to pursue and persist in an education that can open up to more successful vocations.

There also appears to be a connection between grade inflation and universities’ investment in the quality of their education. Schools invest less when grade inflation is prevented, and more when grade inflation is allowed to occur. When hiring, employers consider a student’s transcript as well as the reputation of their school. However, with the increasing rate of grade inflation, employers have looked less at grades and more at the school of which the student has graduated from. Thus, there is a greater incentive for schools to make costly investments in the quality of education that they provide, consequently enhancing the average capability of their students and their school’s reputation. So although the rising rate of grade inflation in the last thirty years has made the job harder for some employers to identify capable graduates, the resulting investment in the quality of education by schools may prove to be more important in the long run. Hence, through incentivising universities to invest more in the quality of their education, as well as allowing students to pursue their preferred majors, it can be argued that the increased rate of grade inflation in the last three decades has impacted the American school system in a positive way. To consider the opposing perspective, other experts assert that the increased rate of grade inflation in the last thirty years has negatively impacted the American education system. This is due to the fact that grade inflation is an issue of practical ethics embedded in contemporary social practice. In order to determine the harms of grade

inflation, three types of grade inflation must first be categorised and defined: longitudinal, compressed and comparative. Longitudinal grade inflation can be explained as the grade average being significantly higher in this point of time than an earlier point of time. This is what grade inflation is usually described as, and it is the most common case: American high school grades inflated by 12.5% from 1991 to 2003, and university grades inflated by the fact that A minuses and A’s account for 43% of all grades in 2015, which increased from 15% in 1960 and 31% in 1988. Strikingly, standardised grades, which

are also thought to indicate (to a certain extent) a student’s knowledge and skills, have not increased in the same respect. A second way to describe grade inflation is grade compression. This is because the bell curve of grade distribution has not only shifted to the right, such that the most common grade is not a C but a B and A’s are becoming more common, but the range of grades has also reduced drastically. This category of grade inflation may have a longitudinal element, or it may not have a longitudinal element. The floor for grading has risen — teachers may hand out B’s instead of C’s to fairly average, or even poor work. That being so, teachers would distribute A minuses and A’s to any work that is above average, considering that they have no other grade available to give. The third way to categorise grade inflation is not as a comparison between different time periods or a comparison with normal distribution, but as a comparison between different institutions. It is a widely observed phenomenon that private high schools and universities see a higher rate of grade inflation than public institutions. This occurrence is particularly seen in the United States. In 1992, the average student in a public college received a B minus GPA, whereas the average student in a private college got a B GPA. In 2007, the average private college student got a B plus GPA, whereas the average public college student was still catching up with a B GPA. Some may argue that this is owing to the fact that students at more selective and highranking schools are academically stronger; while this may be true, there is a more compelling reason — entitlement. Or, as a professor put it: “(parents believe that) they are paying and they deserve for their kids to get A’s.” There is even evidence that this phenomenon where more privileged students receive more heavily inflated grades occurs within a single school. A study looking into the most highranking public high schools, with predominantly middle class to upper class students, found that they took on a somewhat “winner takes it all” style: they gave harsher grades to highachieving, but not exceptionally affluent students, in order to differentiate between the top echelon and everyone else. These three categories of grade inflation can help identify three potential victims of grade inflation. The first, longitudinal grade inflation, harms students, as it makes them overestimate their academic capabilities. For instance, if receiving an A has been interpreted the same way over time, then a student getting an inflated A now would be of the opinion that they were academically skilled and competent, when that is not the case. Furthermore, they may believe that they have an aptitude for a certain career path which they have neither the knowledge nor the skill. Another way longitudinal grade inflation can harm students is by discouraging them from working hard or from pushing themselves to be the best that they can be, since they think themselves to be high-achieving already. The second, grade compression, harms institutions as well as employers. Schools distribute grades to inform students, universities and employers how much a student knows and has the skills for, and how that information compares with other students of the same class. They should present the absolute and relative achievement of the student. If university admissions officers are presented with compressed grades, for instance a range of B plus to A, then it makes it very hard for them to adequately assess applicants, and institutions have not done a good job at presenting the absolute and comparative attainment of the student. Similarly, employers cannot distinguish between applicants when hiring, and they are not truly informed whether or not the applicant has the sufficient knowledge and skill for the job. Moreover, this would lead to employers focusing more on the reputation of an applicant’s school, leaning heavily in favour of more privileged students, and not making a fair and accurate evaluation of all applicants. The third, comparative grade inflation, harms society by establishing and even intensifying the social inequality and injustice so prevalent in society today. Private school students already possess much privilege over their public school counterparts. When comparative grade inflation occurs, these students receive yet another unfair advantage in the college admissions process. It must be noted that it is not necessarily these students’ culpability. Nevertheless, these differences add to the already significant inequalities in the distribution of life opportunities to people. It must be noted that these victims of grade inflation do not and should not correspond one-to-one with each individual

category of grade inflation. Grade compression, like longitudinal grade inflation, can also harm students and lead to students overestimating their academic competence, as the bell curve of grade distribution has shifted to the right; comparative grade inflation can harm students and institutions alongside the broader society. But what solutions are there to this conundrum? First, there is contextualised grading. This means not only putting the student’s grade on a transcript, but also stating whether they are above, below, or at the class average. This can assist admissions officers in better interpreting a student’s performance. However, this is not a perfect solution. It doesn’t make a grade an absolute value of learning; rather, it fosters a highly competitive environment where everyone is aiming for a positional edge instead of cooperation. Indeed, the evidence shows that there is greater learning and less stress levels in a cooperative environment than a competitive one. The second solution is to standardise assessments. But this is not an ideal solution either. Standardised test scores, like those from the AP or SAT exams, are highly correlative with socio-economic factors. In this regard, the grading practice itself is not unjust, but rather society as a whole is injust in being unsuccessful in distributing opportunities to everyone equally. For this reason, whether standardised or teacher-evaluated, grades will always be, to a certain extent, unfair. The third solution is to abandon grades altogether. Narrative evaluation, instead, would replace grades. A few selective colleges, for example Alverno, Hampshire, and Yale Law School, use this method of assessment. However, this relies on a relatively small class size in order for teachers to provide informative reports. The University of Southern California, for example, switched from narrative assessment to grades due to increasing class sizes, rising demands on teachers’ working time, and declining confidence in the originality of narrative evaluation as a result of “copy and paste” habits. In this way, no solution is perfect; the future of grade inflation is uncertain. But one thing is sure — grade inflation is negatively impacting the American school system and something needs to be done about it.