The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
In his 2001 op-ed, "Grade Inflation: It's Time to Face the Facts" in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield issued a brutal criticism of the rampant practice of grade inflation.
...[A]t Harvard, the supposed pinnacle of American education, professors are quite satisfied to bestow outlandishly high grades upon students. We even think those grades reflect well on us; they show how popular we are with bright students. And so we are quite satisfied with ourselves, too.
There is something inappropriate -- almost sick -- in the spectacle of mature adults showering young people with unbelievable praise. We are flattering our students in our eagerness to get their good opinion. That our students are promising makes it worse, for promise made complacent is easily spoilt. What's more, professors who give easy grades gain just a fleeting popularity, salted with disdain. In later life, students will forget those professors; they will remember the ones who posed a challenge.
....Grade inflation compresses all grades at the top, making it difficult to discriminate the best from the very good, the very good from the good, the good from the mediocre. Surely a teacher wants to mark the few best students with a grade that distinguishes them from all the rest in the top quarter, but at Harvard that's not possible...
...The loss of the notion of average shows that professors today do not begin with their own criteria for the performance of students in their courses...With an eye to student course evaluations and confounded by the realization that they have somehow lost authority, professors begin from what they think students expect. American colleges used to set their own expectations. Now, increasingly, they react to student expectations -- even though, by contrast to stormy times in the past, students are very respectful. Thus another evil of grade inflation is the loss of faculty morale that it reveals.
Professor Mansfield has done his part to combat grade inflation in the Government Department at Harvard with his two-tiered grading system --he gives each student two grades, one that reflects his or her true performance in the class, and another inflated grade that gets submitted to the registrar. However, new data compiled by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy (via Catherine Rampell at Economix Blog) shows that the problem of grade inflation today is more widespread than ever.
In this first chart which shows the distribution of letter grades at all American colleges over time, you'll see that 43% of grades awarded are A's and an additional 34% of grades are B's. If we are to understand that a C represents average performance, the data suggests that 77% of students perform above average -- by definition, a mathematical impossibility!
This second chart illustrates that the problem exists at both public and private institutions, but that the problem is much more severe at private colleges and universities.
In the past, I've mocked those schools like the University of California, Santa Cruz that have done away with letter grades in favor of written evaluations. But if letter grades no longer convey information to future employers or grad schools anyway, maybe there's something to be said for throwing letter grades out the window.
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Aug '10
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
I was a high "C" student.
I'd really, REALLY, hate to think that my grade was inflated.
Mar '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
How in the name of Heaven does Professor Mansfield's two-tiered grading system combat grade inflation? The only thing is appears to combat is integrity. Or was your description of the practice intended to be ironic?
Jan '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Here's another case where un-examined cultural assumptions come into conflict.
First, does a college have a responsibility to prospective employers to classify students into a five-letter grade strata?
Only by statistical sleight-of-hand can a school portray itself as a reliable measure. After all, how can you compare a C student in philosophy against a C student in economics? Relying on a grade point average doesn't answer the question. What if two identical twins take a metaphysics course at 2 different colleges, where one teacher is a fool and the other is Tommy Aquinas, Jr.? The average Aquinas student will know much more than his twin. How will grades reflect that?
No. The teacher has a responsibility to the student, but that doesn't mean promoting the student blindly. The teacher's responsibility includes telling the student the truth; did the student grasp the topic being taught?
The whole "system" is a hazy and vague game, but is treated as if it had mathematical precision. It doesn't.
Apr '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
If public and private secondary schools were to be included in this study, the results would likely resemble those of higher education. Based upon years of teaching in private secondary schools, it is clear to that as long as these institutions are dependent upon the tuition paid by over-indulgent parents, they will get what they are paying for - a mendacious but reassuring transcript. I say this with sadness as I am a firm believer in the free market. But in the realm of private education, it is an uncomfortable truth that the line between student and school is indistinguishable from consumer and vendor. Today's Gen X parent pays for a credential, very rarely for a real education. So much the better if the school has a prestigious brand. But woe to the private school that is really committed to academic standards and to grading in accordance with the truth of a student's performance. Progressive compulsory education has turned the schoolhouse into a shopping mall -- if education is mandatory, it is not valued per se, but only for its imprimatur.
Apr '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Let's fix the problem:
C should not mean "average" because that is a moving target that depends on the student body and not on standards. Try this:
A: Exemplary performance well beyond course requirements.
B: Performance beyond course requirements.
C: Performance that meets course requirements.
D: Performance that fails to meet course requirements. For a major or minor concentration, the course must be repeated until the student earns at least a "C".
F: Performance that fails to meet school standards. The course must be repeated until the student passes with at least a "D"; after two failed attempts to improve, the student is dismissed.
Now the professors can make their expectations explicit, producing a rubric and examples of the kind of work that leads to each grade. Now if 77% of the students really do exceed the professor's course requirements, the professor can give the "A" or "B" grade. Now a professor who requires much has no need to inflate grades.
Grading based on averages is always bad policy because it gives too much emphasis to outliers: medians and modes are almost always better statistics. In the same way, judging grade distribution by averages is also poor evaluation.
Mar '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
This is just a disastrous extension of our "everyone is special" culture. No, everyone is not special. Most people are just average. That's life. That's reality. Worse, "everyone is special" is now morphing into "everyone is a star".
Sep '10
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Louie Rhett: Let's fix the problem:
C should not mean "average" because that is a moving target that depends on the student body and not on standards. Try this... Now the professors can make their expectations explicit, producing a rubric and examples of the kind of work that leads to each grade. Now if 77% of the students really do exceed the professor's course requirements, the professor can give the "A" or "B" grade. Now a professor who requires much has no need to inflate grades.
Grading based on averages is always bad policy because it gives too much emphasis to outliers: medians and modes are almost always better statistics. In the same way, judging grade distribution by averages is also poor evaluation. · Jul 15 at 11:41am
Yes. Excellence should not be defined based on who happens to sign up for the class. If the whole class is great, fine. If the whole class is terrible, fail them all!
Jul '10
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Misthiocracy: I was a high "C" student.
I'd really, REALLY, hate to think that my grade was inflated. · Jul 15 at 10:46am
Same here. Though I was a low C student.
May '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Credentialed, not educated is a fact these days. I was a B student in economics many years ago, and consider myself an intellectual inferior to someone like a Victor Davis Hanson. But amongst today's recent graduates I might as well be Zeus.
At the office I made an Oracle of Delphi reference and received nothing but blank stares from the honor students surrounding me.
When interviewing I now ignore grades, honors, and even the university. I assume a college education the equivalent of an 8th grade education from 1940. I look for drive and the willingness to learn. The rest is just a doodle on a piece of paper.
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
As a student in Professor Mansfield's class, I thought his two-tiered grading system was great: It motivated the few of us who cared to work harder on our papers but didn't penalize us for taking his course. (Even he admitted that in an age of rampant grade inflation, it wasn't crazy to want to maintain an artificially GPA to get into graduate school.)
Throughout the semester, we had three papers, each of which were graded according to Mansfield's standards. As a result, the average grade was C+/B-. At the end of the semester, however, the teaching assistants scaled our grades according to the typical Harvard government-class curve -- that is, half the grades were A or A-. Then, when you saw your final (inflated) grade, as Mansfield warned us, only you would know whether you deserved it.
Aug '10
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Yes. That's the problem with being the lone hold-out when it comes to grading, and Prof Mansfield's compromise may be the best a teacher can do in such circumstances.
Louie Rhett:
C should not mean "average" because that is a moving target that depends on the student body and not on standards.
I agree. When students do what is required of them and also master the material, they should get good grades, reflecting their level of mastery; when they don't, they shouldn't. It makes little sense to penalize an unusually good class of students by insisting on a C average, just as it makes little sense to reward mediocre students beyond their deserts just because their classmates happen to be more deficient than they are.
Edited on July 16, 2011 at 5:54amAug '10
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
KC Mulville:
The whole "system" is a hazy and vague game, but is treated as if it had mathematical precision. It doesn't.
Exactly. Grades are at best approximations of students' real understanding. Either way of taking them too seriously (fearing to give bad grades or rigidly insisting on not giving out "too many" good grades) is ultimately beside the point.
My own father taught physics for a while and prided himself on being a tough grader. Well, he may have been a tough grader, but he was also a poor teacher, if the way he tried to help his own children with schoolwork was any indication. He was eventually let go -- for being too tough, he though. But my bets are that he was simply too incomprehensible, despite his clear mastery of the material for himself.
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
I guess it's not obvious, but I think his intention is to hold a challenging class where students have incentive to actually work really hard and are rewarded with an honest evaluation. He's an immensely popular professor, I think in part because of how he motivates students to excel. Witnessing Prof. Mansfield's successful grading approach should give other faculty the courage to proceed similarly. Unfortunately, none have followed suit.
Mar '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
But do not the grades Professor Mansfield submits to the registrar purport to be his honest assessment of his students' work when they actually are not? Sorry, but I don't see this as much different from the teachers who get together to "fix" their students' test papers so they meet SOL requirements. I understand the good intentions, but it really is a form of academic fraud, in my opinion.
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Yes. That's the problem with being the lone hold-out when it comes to grading, and Prof Mansfield's compromise may be the best a teacher can do in such circumstances.
Mar '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
But it also further debases what is, admittedly, an already debased grading system, does it not?
Diane Ellis, Ed.
I guess it's not obvious, but I think his intention is to hold a challenging class where students have incentive to actually work really hard and are rewarded with an honest evaluation. He's an immensely popular professor, I think in part because of how he motivates students to excel. Witnessing Prof. Mansfield's successful grading approach should give other faculty the courage to proceed similarly. Unfortunately, none have followed suit. · Jul 15 at 1:09pm
Mar '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
A friend who was an Engeerning student at UF had a second semester senior level class offered once a year that was based on a curve . 25% of the students got a D or an F. Then again he was in a program with a lot of curved clases were nobody every got over 50% on any test. This was in the late 90's.
What ever happen to class rankings? Now days since a grade is meanless ones ranking in their department/Program should matter a lot more. Even that has issues if one selects easy verse hard professors in a large department.
I think the better grading curves than Harvey Mansfields are what I had in Humanties 2 and Finance 101. The professor would grade as he thought but would curve up based on the classs average or on the highest grade on a given assignment/test. So I would get a low 80 on a test that the top grade was a 88 but end up getting a high 90 based on the curve. I always typcially found the hardest teachers that actually taught, I learned the most from.
Edited on July 15, 2011 at 10:43pmRe: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Basil Fawlty: But do not the grades Professor Mansfield submits to the registrar purport to be his honest assessment of his students' work when they actually are not? Sorry, but I don't see this as much different from the teachers who get together to "fix" their students' test papers so they meet SOL requirements. I understand the good intentions, but it really is a form of academic fraud, in my opinion.
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Each department requires a certain grade point average as a matter of policy. This is absurd and a great disservice to the students, but nevertheless a reality. Mansfield begrudgingly submits the conforming scores to the registrar, but at least tells students their true evaluation in the course.
Mar '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Perhaps it might be better, then, to say that Professor Mansfield accommodates grade inflation rather than combats it.
Diane Ellis, Ed.
Each department requires a certain grade point average as a matter of policy. This is absurd and a great disservice to the students, but nevertheless a reality. Mansfield begrudgingly submits the conforming scores to the registrar, but at least tells students their true evaluation in the course. · Jul 15 at 1:43pm
Sep '10
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
Did someone say "ironic"?
Harvey Mansfield on Uncommon Knowledge with some guy named Peter
Edited on July 16, 2011 at 12:36amMar '11
Re: The Worsening Problem of Grade Inflation
And the "ironic" grade is the one they use to get their ticket punched. Not necessarily ironic, but perverse. What's "sick" is the spectacle of a mature adult showering young people with unbelievable praise in public, while telling them the truth only in private. No wonder he's immensely popular with his students.
Pseudodionysius: Did someone say "ironic"?
Harvey Mansfield on Uncommon Knowledge with some guy named Peter
Edited on Jul 15 at 03:36 pm
Jul 15 at 3:34pm