Time for an apolitical topic to discuss. At least, I'm assuming it's apolitical, I've yet to uncover any evidence to the contrary. It's been in the news of late, and quite an interesting topic. It caught me by surprise anyway. Grade inflation is the trend in which students receive higher grades today than students with the same level of work and intellectual levels would have received in the past. In other words, grades go up, but learning or performance doesn't necessarily increase.
Grade inflation means that A's and B's become more common and lower grades, like C's and D's become more rare - even though the overall difficulty or quality of student work hasn't changed much. If an "A" used to mean excellent but now it's average, the value of the grade declines. This makes it harder for schools, employers, and graduate programs to distinguish truly exceptional performance. It's notable to clarify: rising grades can reflect better-prepared students or improved teaching. Grade inflation specifically refers to unearned increases.
This begs the question, why is this happening? There are a number of reasons/possibilities.
- Schools want to keep students happy to protect enrollment numbers, reputations, and evaluations.
- Higher grades will obviously help students get jobs or grad-school placements, which boosts the schools statistics.
- Professors who give higher grades often receive better course evaluations.
- Some systems reward universities for high pass rates or short-time to degree.
- COVID-Era leniency; remote learning policies temporarily relaxed grading, which increased top grades in many universities. Personally, I believe this has had a greater effect than any of the other items mentioned, though they all contribute.
So, what, if any is the long term negative effect? Or, is there a long term negative effect? There is an intensely profound long term negative effect. First and foremost, grades lose their meaning. It becomes harder to identify the top performers if the average grade is 3.7+. Let's be honest for a moment here. Is the majority of any one sampling of university students really 3.7+ GPA caliber students? Honestly, no. Let's face it, we're not all super achievers. A 3.7+ overall GPA for a four year degree is, well, maybe not super achiever, but it's undoubtedly high achiever. Not being a high achiever doesn't mean one is not an intelligent, competent, serious student. I have not done the statistical analysis to prove it, but I'm willing to bet that on a valid sampling, a bell curve would show that the majority would fall into the 2.8 to 3.5 GPA range. The 3.7+ group should consist of 5 to 10 percent of the sample. That percentage will, of course vary amongst universities, and would likely be somewhat higher at elite universities whose entrance requirements are obviously more stringent. However, there is growing evidence that 80% of the Harvard class of 2024 received 3.7 or above.
National databases from the National Center for Educational Statistics and other sources typically report that average GPA's are above a threshold of 3.7. To clarify, GPA scales, weighting rules (e.g. honors/AP course) and other institutional policies vary widely, so a 3.7 at one school may not mean the same as 3.7 at another.
Times change, and things change with time. But there are some things that shouldn't change. And the standards, significance and meaning of university grades are of the things that should not change. Grades, like any other meaningful, valuable metric in life must be earned. And they should reflect a level of objective performance. If such are not truly earned, then what we'll see is more people reaching their level of incompetency much sooner...
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