Grade Inflation Must Go
Like any student, I love seeing that beautiful letter “A” on my transcript. Throw a plus on it, and I’m even happier. Hell, give me an A- or a B+, it’s all gravy. But that’s not what school should be like.
A quick glance at the Courserank grade distributions tells you that the average grade in a Stanford class appears to be a B+, with occasional deviations up into the A- or down to the B. This isn’t just the self-reported data: looking at the officially reported data from the Engineering School, I saw only a few classes that did not have a B+ (or higher!) as the class average. While I can’t claim that my study was definitive, I would find it incredibly hard to believe that the average grade weren’t at least a B. That means that scores are basically bunched between A and B-, since many classes don’t offer the A+ or it’s reserved for beyond extraordinary students, and understandably so. Outside of introductory courses, professors want to save the mark of pure excellence for extremely rare students. But should it really be the case that giving an A+ is the only way to mark a strong student? By bunching the grades so heavily, the power of the A and even the A- has diminished greatly.
It doesn’t have to be this way; Stanford can and should take a stand against grade inflation. For starters, the curve for classes should be shifted down to having them be curved to a B. This means that there would be the B+, A-, and A above the curve and a B-, C+, C, and C-, with the A+ and D still reserved for exceptional students, good and bad respectively. If we’re willing to go harder, classes could (and should) get curved to a B-, with the full range of Cs below and the D, as well as the dreaded “NC” below, while B, B+, A-, and A lie above.
But wait, won’t such a change penalize Stanford students, in particular those that take challenging classes? No, for two reasons. First, we are at Stanford, one of the nation’s premier universities, so if Stanford announces this policy, employers and grad schools will take note. They won’t just write off Stanford students as suddenly becoming collectively stupider. Second, Stanford could combine this with the addition of a column showing the class average in each class that you take on your transcript. This change alone would free teachers from the pressure to curve the grades so highly as it would allow people who are looking at the transcripts to see how the student did in comparison to others in the class. Got a B+ in a class with a B- average? It’ll be clear that you did the work and did well. An A in a class with an A average? Well, you can’t hide in soft classes any more. It’s time for Stanford to take a stand on this issue.
Interesting. The median grade for almost every Cornell engineering class is a B-, at least the freshman/sophomore classes that my friends are taking.
Oh, and the posting of median grades on transcripts is a great idea. All Cornell transcripts show the student’s grade as well as the median grade for a class, and I think all students like this policy. It’s a good way of differentiating a 3.0 in say, engineering or a basic science from a 3.8 in government or english.
It would still be grade inflation. A grade of C used to be considered average, and according to you a B+ is now the average grade. The uncomfortable joke amongst my family and friends (I was a school Teacher and am married to a college prof.) is that a C is the new F and a B is average. Many students expect a B for just showing up. The real truth is you should not be worried about the grades nearly as much as you should be worried about how much you learn.
Gee, I worked my buns off in 1966 to get a 2.3 and a 2.7 for my first two semesters @ my state university. My generation, particularly males, had tremendous motivation to study; if one fell behind on quality points, one could find oneself in a rice paddy within the year.
Seriously, having spent my career in public education, it saddens me to see yet another example of our entitlement mentality. How can one know how good one is if even our best universities make no distinctions?
A couple of interesting notes:
1. I saw little evidence that engineering was graded harder than “fuzzy” subjects. Not that it isn’t harder (it may well be), but it’s curved nicely anyways.
2. Yes, it would still be grade inflation to have a B- average, but at least it’s a step in the right direction. The sticker (or rather transcript) shock factor would probably be pretty high with a 2/3 of a letter grade swing alone.
I would welcome some scrutiny of examination methods and quality in this context. Curve manipulation is one thing. Revision of testing standards is another. Which would contribute to a better education rather than a more marketable graduate? Discuss:
At the moment I have a perfect score (145 out of 145 possible points) in my accounting class at a community college – I’m not sure if that means anything, though, since according to Blackboard, the average grade on any given assignment is somewhere around 93%. This includes homework problems, quizzes, and class participation – I find that I’m writing 750-word essays on our discussion board, and most other people are writing at most three poorly-phrased sentences; our efforts are judged to be comparable, apparently.
Grade inflation includes flat-out making the class so easy that you literally have to not do an assignment to avoid getting an “A.” At this point I long for a system like that at St. John’s (Annapolis/Santa Fe) – you don’t get a grade at all, but everyone knows you have to work hard to stick around anyway.
(I’m taking the accounting class because I want to be sure I can keep up with my MBA coursework. I will probably get an “A” and still have no idea whether I’m any good at accounting.)
Otis,
You may want to take a look at Princeton, who implemented a policy in 2004 exactly as you described. Basically, no class with more than a handful of students can give out more than 35% As. The goal was to lower the grade inflation at that school to a manageable level.
The results have not been kind. Most employers screen resumes with automated software that includes GPA cutoffs. Recently, the Daily Princetonian ran a story that Harvard Business School had not been aware of the policy even 5 years after grade deflation had been put into effect. PhD programs are even worse, since the admissions committee is made up of faculty instead of dedicated admissions personnel whose job it is to track such changes. On the medical school front, very few medical schools can admit a student with a 3.4 or below. Therefore, moving the average GPA lower simply limits the number of applicants to these schools.
A grade deflation policy does not effect the top achievers (those who can consistently get in the top percentages of any class). It hurts the next tier down. It creates a bad dilemma: attend a top school like Stanford or an easier state school where the grading is nicer.
Stanford attracts the top students, so what does getting a C mean then? The problem in our society is that every student is not compared by institution (a C at Stanford is better than an A at an easier school elsewhere), but rather by the grade itself (a B is better than a C no matter where it comes from). Stanford thus has the right motivation in seeing that students who meet a bar threshold get the grade they deserve.
For more info, see http://www.gradeinflation.com/
Danny
I hope you all have that warm comfortable feeling as you drive across new bridges and under new causeways.
Danny,
While you make good points, I still have to disagree with you. If the Harvard GSB was not aware of the policy 5 years after its introduction, then my immediate thought is that Princeton did a pretty terrible job of rolling out its program. I disagree that it will always hurt students; if Stanford did a good job of publicizing the change, I think that it could get graduate schools, firms, and others to recognize the change and adjust their standards accordingly. Obviously, the best strategy for everyone would be to have a number of elite universities all embrace a similar strategy at the same time so that there is less of a comparison gap, but even in the absence of such a move, I think this is all very doable.
The website to which you linked is very interesting, mostly in that it shows that grade inflation has been a much more serious issue at private schools than at state ones. In my view, it looks almost as though attendees of private schools have been able to purchase a higher GPA than their state school counterparts. To me, that bespeaks not only low intraschool private standards, but also a high level of unfairness: if what you say is true and people focus on the grade rather than the institution, then the ability to pay for a private school means an easier time getting high grades. That’s not how an ostensibly merit-based system like American higher education should work.
Otis,
Regarding your comment, “If the Harvard GSB was not aware of the policy 5 years after its introduction, then my immediate thought is that Princeton did a pretty terrible job of rolling out its program.” Princeton’s administration sends a full page explanation regarding the university’s grading system, including curves and how Princeton restricts the number of top marks with every single official transcript. The information is presented to every employer and every application from a Princeton undergrad.
The problem with admissions to graduate and professional schools is the pressure to increase the average GPA of the class. This comes from both traditional rankings and also students who use the number to compare the quality of matriculants. Admissions officer are judged on their abilities to raise the class profile. There are articles online that describe how some law schools, for example, literally *cannot* admit a student from a grade deflated school because it would affect their average GPA. A higher GPA from a grade inflated school should be equal to a lower GPA from a grade deflated school, but the targets do not take this into account.
Read this article from the Daily Princetonian(http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/03/25/23135/). My favorite quote is from the Harvard Business School: “The change in the grading policy has not prompted her to consider grades from Princeton more leniently, Leopold said, adding that the admissions committee already ‘took it de facto that people who get into Princeton are very bright.’ Grades from the University are still ‘compared to the whole pool’ of applicants, she explained.” No admissions committee can allow for lower GPA admits.
Otis, I ask you this question: exactly who benefits from grade deflation? The top students are still getting selected for the prestigious fellowships and admissions, but other students who would have been successful in law or medical school admissions (for instance) are denied because of a single policy. Please see the discussion in today’s Daily about the new undergraduate commission to study education here at Stanford. The quote I thought most interesting was from Dean Bravman, who posited that students are now spending more time working on academics than ever before, yet are not more educated than before. Grade deflation is anti-education, and I would hope that an institution like Stanford would reduce grading pressure, not increase it.
Danny
Back in the mid-80’s at GT, the all-student average was around 2.4-2.5… in a junior level ME classes with 45 students, the number of A’s was typically 2 to 5…
Glad to see modern students taking a stand and ensuring that get an education and not just a degree…
“The website to which you linked is very interesting, mostly in that it shows that grade inflation has been a much more serious issue at private schools than at state ones.”
I couldn’t disagree more, for the most part. I grew up in Wisconsin, stupidly chose to go to Marquette when I could have gone to UW-Madison. While I and other students at MU take 5-6 classes per semester, my friends at UW-Madison smoked pot 4-5 days a week while taking 4 classes and still got almost all A’s.
I think it is probably true that at the higher end private schools, grade inflation is worse than state schools. But not for private schools beyond that. I don’t think 50+ rankings on the US News ranking can afford, so to speak, to have a ton of faux straight-A students apply for PhD programs elsewhere. Make’s ‘em look bad.
“They won’t just write off Stanford students as suddenly becoming collectively stupider.”
FYI: Statements like this are why many believe current college students are becoming collectively more stupid!
Danny,
The points you raise here are important and perhaps I overestimate the ability of a prestigious university like Stanford to effect change unilaterally. However, the points you raise do not, I believe, undercut my ideal, just my idea’s practical ability to achieve success in the real world. It is truly sad if the competition to raise one’s “average GPA” and the push to inflate various statistics across the board outweighs the concern about admitting the best applicants. In the face of such a strangling system, it is perhaps foolish to deviate to a less inflationary grading system, but I think that that speaks badly of the system that requires high numbers over quality applicants, not of the idea that the full range of grades should be used in order to really differentiate students.
It is true that I would not want to see any Stanford student miss out on opportunities that they otherwise deserve due to a deflated GPA, but I would rather see a group of universities take leadership here and push multilaterally for grade deflation (with a corresponding change in admissions processes at graduate schools) than have the status quo continue.
An interesting anecdote in relation to this topic. I have never been a student nor an employee of R.P.I. I have no idea if RPI has grade inflation. I was speaking with an RPI employee in their placement department at a social event over the summer. It seems ,at times, they are more successful placing a C student with an employer than an A student. In the employer’s mind (this is an engineering school) the C student is more of a practical problem solver who communicates and works well in a team setting. Too often the A student is very smart but they tend to be loners and continually avoid social situations in their college experience. For what it’s worth and I would be unable to verify this.
There’s another important factor to consider in weighing grades: workload. The curve in Winter 2007’s Chemistry 174 (arguably one of the more difficult courses at Stanford) was as follows: 1 A+, 7 A, 1 A-, 1 B+, 5 B, 1 B-, 1 C, 1 F. Over half of the students received some kind of A! However, the 9 students who earned those As grades (myself included) had to produce the highest-quality work on a far more consistent basis than was required of, say, history students: 3 10-page reports, 4 20-minute presentations, 2 5-page reports, and 2 midterms. Chemistry students are essentially playing an endurance game, and this drives down grades, especially when multiple classes are involved. The chemistry student who encounters a schedule crunch, even early in the quarter, makes an irrecoverable blunder. The history student, on the other hand, can shuffle her work around to finish her 5-page midterm and 15-page final paper without harming her other classes.
you have to remember that people that attend the IVys , Stanford, MIT etc, are all hard working, bright individuals that were in the top of their classes at high school….so naturally, they DO WELL in college. These universities and colleges make their courses tough…but should they be trying to make it so incredibly tough that even the very brightest are getting B’s and C’s?