End Grade Inflation - Cat is Out of the Bag

The Cat is Out of the Bag

A Synopsis of the Current Situation

The phenomenon of grade inflation is a trend in the cultural evolution
of our society. Evolutionary trends do not reverse themselves."
--The Initiative to End Grade Inflation (in higher education)

Grade inflation produces upper end compaction of the grade scale. The limit is 4.0.

The current round of grade inflation began in the mid to late 1980’s and is correlated in time to the adoption of Student Evaluation of Teaching or SET.

SET scores are directly related to the class average GPA as compared to the institution wide GPA.

Faculty having low SET scores come under scrutiny.

The numerical relation between SET scores and the GPA may vary from institution to institution or even program to program. Students transfer between programs and institutions. This leads to difficulty in determining what GPA is appropriate to the level of SET desired. It is safer to over-grade than to under-grade. Downgrading is degrading to students.

Grade inflation is tied to market forces in the national economy. Based on research conducted at UNC – Chapel Hill, a GPA of 2.6 to 2.7 seems to be the lower limit that is relatively safe to adopt. Below this value graduates may face stiff competition from those with much higher GPAs.

Reform of SET is not occurring.

Economic market forces are more powerful than SET.

Faculty that indulge in grade inflation create a gap, sometimes a very wide gap, in grade distributions compared to those who resist grade inflation. This gap is called grade disparity.

Grade disparity creates an unfair situation for students as well as faculty who attempt to resist grade inflation.

Grade disparity further aggravates grade inflation as faculty attempt to remove such disparity by upgrading.

The grade scale has dual meaning. One is founded in the belief that A = 90% - 100%, B = 80% - 89%, C = 70 - 79%, and D = 60 - 69%. The other is founded on the notion that average performance sets the grade distribution. This is the class curve.

The class curve serves as a ranking system which obscures to varying degrees the actual level of course content mastery. The grade of B may represent 80% performance, or 70% performance, or some value even lower.

Adoption of a class curve with a predetermined average GPA will stop grade inflation and grade disparity immediately. Performance disparity is expected to replace grade disparity as the grade of B could result from a level of 80% mastery, or 70% mastery, or some value even lower.

No consistency exists in the usage of these two forms of the grade scale. Other forms also exist. Use of + and – is one example.

Due to economic market forces previously mentioned, enrollments may decline when institutions attempt to resist grade inflation. Private institutions, including community and junior colleges, depend heavily on tuition revenues.

Grade inflation is accompanied by virtually the same phenomenon in letters of recommendation. Meaningful distinctions are rapidly disappearing.

Grade inflation is accompanied by watered-down course content. This permits awarding a large number of high grades without resorting to use of the class curve. The strict grade scale is retained. This is the most pure form of the “classic grading system.”

Watered-down content leads to a decrease in the amount of academic effort expended leading to a decrease in the level of academic skills acquired during the educational process. Watering down is sometimes called dumbing down. A book of the same title was written describing the phenomenon.

Grade inflation is not due to any sudden rise in academic ability.

No magical transformation occurs between high school and college. No magical transformation occurs upon entering the work force after graduation from higher education.

The central focus of academic assessment is to improve learning. Learning is the first stated goal of assessment. The Higher Learning Commission is committed to this end.

This position stands in conflict with grade inflation which is accomplished through watered-down course content and low class curves. Grade inflation is encouraged by current economic market forces as well as the widespread use of SET. These are more influential than The Higher Learning Commission.

Goals of academic assessment have not been met. Recent history bears this out.

Incentive to learn is intrinsic. Letter grades constitute extrinsic motivation. An incongruity exists.

The grade scale stands at the foundation of all this. It is the root.

There is no 11th commandment. God never said: “Thou shalt use A, B, C, D, F.”

Perhaps the devil did.

In conclusion, it must be accepted that average academic performance varies from course to course, program to program and institution to institution. Increased use of the internet as a means of delivering higher education, together with widespread transfers between programs as well as between institutions, have created an environment that impedes academic assessment as currently practiced. This problem can be resolved by assessment at the individual course level for all courses except perhaps the fine arts and other isolated exceptions. Tools for academic assessment currently exist. Their usage must improve if equitability is to be achieved by bringing consistency to the current situation.

Desire to learn is intrinsic. Competition is also intrinsic. Competition establishes congruency between motivation to learn and the learning process itself. Ranking against the class average provides incentive to compete. A fully numerical approach based on ranking against the class average is consistent with the inherent logic of mathematics and statistics. Current use of the grade scale is not. In fact, it defies such logic. Intelligence is a quantitative trait. Such traits result from multiple genes cooperating to produce the end result in the expression of that trait, also termed the phenotype. Quantitative traits result in a normal distribution, a bell shaped curve, with most individuals tending toward average. This permits analysis of variance and calculation of the standard deviation. Grade inflation, stemming from use of the grade scale, has led or is rapidly leading to distribution in which A’s predominate followed by B’s with very few C’s remaining.