Recent Events |  Current Environment in Higher Education  |  Academic Assessment Policy  |  An Unusual Coincidence  |  Reality of Grade Inflation  |  American Business Perspectives  |  Goals for Improvement  |  Current Status of HLC's Goals  |  Additional Goals  |  Integrated Approach to Academic Assessment  |  Current Efforts  |  Consequences of the Status Quo  |  Conclusions

The Initiative is a grass roots organization dedicated toward restoring validity to the academic transcript through honest presentation of student academic performance. We believe this can be accomplished through the proper use of the national accreditation agencies’ policy of academic assessment. We also believe that implementation of successful assessment policies must follow the four step problem solving process currently endorsed by American businesses. We further believe that academic assessment must align itself with the accountability movement now widespread in educational levels K-12, a movement that recently gained considerable focus and momentum from the No Child Left Behind Act signed into law by President Bush.

In October 2001 the Boston Globe released an article entitled Harvard’s Quiet Secret: Rampant Grade Inflation. The article reported a record 91% of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. Said one student, Trevor Cox, “I’ve coasted on far higher grades than I deserve. It’s scandalous. You can get very good grades and earn honors, without ever producing quality work.” Previously, Harvard’s Dr. Harvey Mansfield spoke out publicly against grade inflation in the April 2001 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts reveals a willingness on his part to take a public stand on the issue. In Professor Mansfield’s words “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. American colleges used to set their own expectations. Now, increasingly, they react to student expectations.” Additional recent commentaries include: “Once graduates enter the job market, they discover they can’t bank on those undeserved grades.” (Christian Science Monitor, November 6, 2001). “The effect of grade inflation is a devaluing of undergraduate degrees.” (Levine and Cureton, 1998). “…it is a societal trend to de-emphasize competition and make people feel better about themselves.” (Dr. Perry Zirkel, Lehigh University). A “bachelor of arts degree in 1997 may not be the equal of a graduation certificate from an academic high school in 1947” (Wall Street Journal, January 30, 1997).

In February 2002, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences published results of a two year study on grade inflation in American colleges and universities conducted by Henry Rosovsky and Mathew Hartley. The report Evaluation and the Academy: Are We Doing the Right Thing? finds grade inflation existent nationwide. Selected quotes include: “compression in grades will create a system of grades in which A’s predominate and in which letters (of recommendation) consist primarily of praise. Meaningful distinctions will have disappeared.”

In April 2001 the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement invited the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement (NCPI) at Stanford University to identify the most pressing issues confronting higher education. In October 2003 results of this study were released and can be accessed at the web site http://ncpi.stanford.edu. The treatise entitled Beyond Dead Reckoning: Research Priorities for Redirecting American Higher Education begins with historical perspectives including A Nation at Risk, a report released in the 1980s which “focused on the declining quality of learning in the nation’s primary and secondary schools…” A second, and according to NCPI “perhaps the most influential” report titled Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of American Higher Education, “… identified the need for higher academic expectations, enhanced student involvement, and for the assessment of learning.” The basic question “Access to What” is critically analyzed in light of economic and academic perspectives. Economically, the report finds that “While state appropriations per full-time equivalent student declined by 4 percent from 1978 to 1998, net tuition revenue per FTE student rose by 66 percent (Page 6).” Seemingly, as the value of a degree drops its cost in tuition steadily rises. “As the accountability movement has swept through state legislatures, policy-makers have made concerted efforts to extend postsecondary access for diverse populations as well as to effect improvements in student achievement and institutional performance (Page 7). What policy makers have not found is a means of ensuring that public funds invested in higher education in fact promote effective learning and advance key obligations within the social charter (Page 7). Most colleges and universities have not developed institutional definitions of educational quality (Page 10). In spite of 15 years of the (academic) assessment movement and increasingly vocal demands for improved student learning, few institutions actually use (academic) assessment results, and their fundamental practices of teaching have remained largely unchanged. Moreover, everyone-policymakers as well as institutional leaders-are all “in favor” of improvements in learning, yet there is little agreement about how to achieve them (Page 11). While assessment programs imposed in several states have pressed institutions to develop better measures of student learning, NCPI research has shown that these programs have not been successful” (Page 14). The Stanford report calls for further research posing questions to both institutional leaders and (government) policymakers. In closing the authors state “Higher education is a national resource critically important to both the students it educates and the nation it serves.” (Page 25).

The debate over the existence of grade inflation in higher education continues into the present. Noted education writer Alfie Kohn states his views on the matter in an article entitled The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation published in the November 8, 2002 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education now posted at http://www.alfiekohn.org. Mr. Kohn cites information that does support his viewpoint. Most other arguments that speculate on the phenomenon rarely include sufficient data necessary to reach a reliable conclusion. Some examine the proposition that higher grades are justified because of improved student academic performance. Those that do claim its existence often speak negatively about its consequences to higher education and society at large. Fortunately the reality of grade inflation is now being documented with information supplied by institutions across the country accessible at http://www.gradeinflation.com. The graphs presented below are downloaded from this web site. The first shows an unusual coincidence in that the initial current rise in the GPA for all institutions can trace its beginnings to the same time period that marked the origin of NCA's commitment to the policy of academic assessment, approximately 1989. A cause and effect relation in all likelihood does not exist between these two events. However, academic assessment has failed to control grade inflation. In fact, inflation seems to thrive in the current climate, this in spite of persistent and widespread efforts toward meeting assessment goals as stated by The Higher Learning Commission. Perhaps it is time for assessment to turn its efforts toward eliminating grade inflation while at the same time work toward meeting its first goal, that of improved student learning.

The damaging effects of grade inflation on society are becoming apparent. Recent events testify to its negative, even dangerous impact:

The December 2002 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education reported findings of the latest National Student Engagement Survey. The article’s feature photograph shows a student conscientiously studying in the library. Statements in the text do not support this projected image of serious effort toward learning. The Chronicle, in reiterating findings of the survey, states that “Nineteen percent of full-time freshman say they spend only 1 to 5 hours per week preparing for classes. Seniors who answered the same survey reported studying even less than freshman… Professors say that too many of their students are too focused on grades rather than on learning.” Students who create detailed logs of their study time “discover that they spend a lot of time that doesn’t add up to anything.”

In April 2003 The National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges finds that writing ability among students is “bad.” C. Peter Magrath, commission chair and president of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, calls it “a very serious matter for our society.”

The June 19th 2003 NBC nightly news reported on reading comprehension of students in America’s schools. After reading text material describing the federal income tax, many young people could not determine why tax forms are to be mailed by April 15th. The answer? “Because that is when they are due.” The conclusion? “The situation is a threat to this society.”

At this point an argument can be made that literacy itself now stands in jeopardy of serious decline. The National Commission on Writing calls writing the “forgotten r.” However, math scores are not any better and reading ability is termed “a threat to this society.” This will not help America to fair well in a global economy.

In June 2003 a series of articles entitled Faking the Grade appeared in the Columbia Missourian, the daily newspaper published by the University of Missouri in Columbia. “According to research at the University’s Center for Academic Integrity, faculty are reluctant to act on their suspicions of student cheating. A 1999 survey found that one-third of faculty members who knew of students cheating in their courses did nothing to address it. A recent survey of the MU faculty found that 51 percent of respondents had ignored a suspected cheating incident.” One reason given: “..faculty members could be put on trial themselves.” One solution offered: “…the Academic Integrity Assessment Committee is considering an honor code. …the honor code works quite well at some other universities.”

In their October 2002 report Stanford’s National Center for Postsecondary Improvement (NCPI) finds: “…higher education’s performance for the most part has fallen short of fostering an engaged citizenry. …recent evidence indicates that today’s college graduates are actually less engaged in the civic life of the nation than were preceding generations. More generally, the purposes of a college education have become primarily private and personal rather than public and societal (pages 3 & 4). Given the societal proclivity to regard higher education as a private good and students as consumers, research needs to examine the impact of students exercising their prerogatives as shoppers (page 20).” NCPI warns “Globalization necessitates that colleges and universities prepare their students to be citizens of the world, who understand the serious challenges of competitiveness and interdependence that come in its wake. Globalization also prompts institutional leaders and policymakers alike to rethink their reach and their boundaries—a focus that has become increasingly salient as the World Trade Organization defines the extent to which distributed education is to be a freely traded good” (page 24).

American business is now extensively involved in educational improvement in America’s public schools. Lou Gerstner, former chairman of the board of IBM and more recently Chairman Emeritus of Achieve, (web site: http://www.achieve.org) states “just as the Founding Fathers understood, that absent a healthy, vital system of free public education you can’t have an enlightened electorate, which means you can’t sustain a working Democracy; you can’t build a competitive workforce, which means you can’t envision a more prosperous future. It’s exactly that clear cut. We have an abiding responsibility to the kids and their future.” In November 2001 Dr. Craig Barrett, President and CEO of Intel Corporation, addressed the issue of educational standards in his speech Failure is not an Option: Solving the Math-Science Crisis in our Schools, one in a series entitled Profiles of Excellence in Business and Education Leadership is produced by the National Alliance of Business. Dr. Barrett states “In our graduate schools, about half of engineering Ph.D.s - and almost as many math and computer science doctorates - are earned by foreign nationals. Colleges are recruiting these foreign students because so few U.S. students are interested in these advanced degrees or have the math and science background to succeed in these programs. Yet, even with these foreign students, the numbers of electrical engineers, computer engineers, and systems engineers graduating from our universities have declined by 20 percent. This low achievement (in math and science scores) is not the fault of individual students, teachers or administrators, but evidence of fundamental flaws in our national system of teaching and learning. …we must persevere and completely change our system of teaching and learning from what we have done in the past. Every year we debate these topics or provide inadequate resources to produce real change, we lose another graduating class and condemn those children to a lower level of professionalism in their careers.”

Given this environment, we believe the following goals are attainable and preferable to the current situation now wide spread throughout much of higher education.

1. To eliminate grade inflation from higher education through improved use of academic assessment.

2. To reach agreement on measures of academic assessment that meet the goals stated by North Central Accreditation Agency’s Higher Learning Commission. These are: i) to improve student learning, ii) to provide accountability to external and internal constituents, and iii) to convince the public of the value of investing in higher education.

Goal number one seemingly has not been met. The NCPI report gives no indication of recent widespread improvements in higher education. Rather NCPI refers to “…increasingly vocal demands for improved student learning” (page 11). In fact “Critics regularly question the learning exhibited by college graduates" (page 3). The extent to which goal number two has succeeded is highly questionable. In his July 2002 keynote address Steven Crow, Executive Director of The Higher Learning Commission, told his audience “We seem to be congenitally incapable of providing clear, crisp descriptions of what we do and why. Simple requests for data are usually met with, “Well it is a very complex situation that makes good data difficult to provide.” This is a huge industry, operating in a global setting and absorbing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot get from it consistent information about much of anything.” The success of goal number three depends on meeting the first two. Hence it is a failure. NCPI finds “What has diminished is an awareness of the implicit social charter linking the nation’s colleges and universities, both to one another and to the society as a whole” (page 4).

3. To implement effective measures of academic assessment which bring well defined purpose to the policy enabling assessment to meet its current stated goals. Design and implementation should follow the four step process for problem solving adopted by American business. The process consists of a plan, do, check, act cycle that defines the issue, creates methods to solve the problem, implements these methods and measures performance, then establishes feedback loops that measure success or demonstrate need for improvement. Academic assessment, as stated by The Higher Learning Commission, is to establish feedback loops in order to improve educational quality. However, NCPI research finds that “few institutions actually use assessment results” (page 11). In 1995 the W.K. Kellogg Foundation launched an initiative to “Learn and work with institutions helping them to transform themselves to be more flexible, accountable, collaborative, and responsive to students, faculty, the communities and the regions they serve.” Central to this initiative is a program to “Identify, encourage, and support a small group of institutions as distinctive, emerging models of institutional change,” known as the Kellogg Network on Institutional Transformation (KNIT). The Initiative intends to explore this effort in greater depth.

4. To provide on the academic transcript a consistent, fair and accurate portrayal of the extent of subject mastery as defined by textbook content and master syllabi.

5. To ensure that evaluation of academic performance provides clear and meaningful feed-back to students showing both their academic strengths and also their weaknesses.

Any successful approach to academic assessment should include clarity and simplicity in presenting actual level of content mastery by students on the academic transcript but should not simultaneously increase faculty work load. Evaluation of student academic performance should be fair and consistent across departments and disciplines, across programs of delivery within an individual institution as well as between different institutions. In some cases, notably on military bases, several institutions offer degree programs concurrently while students transfer repeatedly as they complete course work toward graduation. Academic assessment must accommodate these situations. Internet based courses offer a still wider variety of options for students to choose from. A successful strategy will select appropriate assessment methods from those already in use and will put these methods together into a coherent plan that produces desired results. If additiona l methods are required they should be minimal and not impinge on faculty work loads. Ideally such an approach should meet all goals of academic assessment recommended by The Higher Learning Commission as well as the two additional goals stated above.

1. Does society wish higher education to continue its practice of grade inflation?

2. To what extent does the policy of academic assessment meet goal #2 of academic assessment as previously stated? To date, goals 1 and 3 have not been met.

3. Should competition in the global economy prompt higher education to shift its belief in the importance of extrinsic motivation to learning, a methodology that has emphasized the importance of pedagogy in teaching, to a focus on student learning instead? Focus on learning conforms to the current position of North Central’s Higher Learning Commission and also to the U. S. Department of Education which finds that content knowledge and verbal communication ability are important to good teaching, not pedagogy. The Initiative believes that improved learning will not take place until intrinsic motivation replaces extrinsic motivation. This view is widely supported by research in Social Science as repeatedly stated by noted education writer Alfie Kohn.

If allowed to persist, grade inflation will, in all likelihood, simply continue in its current trend toward increasingly elevated GPAs on the academic transcript. Accelerated use of the internet as a delivery system for higher education can be expected to augment this trend, perhaps significantly. Current practices of academic assessment do not lend themselves to reducing the extent of grade inflation in situations other than traditional, on-campus programs with stable student populations. Even then, considerable effort is required, and results are often only temporary. Academic assessment has been in existence for approximately 15 years which, coincidently, is the same time span for the current round of grade inflation.

Grade inflation does exist in higher education and is accompanied by a decrease in motivation toward learning. As the GPA creeps ever higher the value of the degree continues to drop. This occurs as its cost in tuition steadily rises. Extrinsic motivation toward learning is not producing the desired result of improved student learning. This situation is now widespread throughout the United States. It is entrenched in current thinking. To date, attempts toward improvement have not been effective (NCPI report page 14 ). America does not need this. America does not want this. America has it none-the-less. For these simple reasons, higher education now stands in jeopardy of violating its social charter, its responsibility of educating the citizens of American society to a level that will permit effective competition in a global economy.