What Is Grade Inflation In Higher Education

It is no question that students in recent years have been receiving higher grades than in previous years. The most frequently awarded letter grade in the nation is currently an A, given 43% of the time. However, people are questioning whether today’s students have actually gotten smarter. These higher grades could be due to grade inflation. Grade inflation is defined as the tendency to award progressively higher academic grades for work that would have received lower grades in the past. Although it is known that grades have been rising, it is questionable what the true reason is.

In Brent Staples' story, “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A's” he explains how grades have gotten higher in colleges over the past years. Students and parents seem to demand for grades because of what they pay for college. Professors sometimes have no choice but to give in, because it might look bad on them or to avoid classes from being removed.

In “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation”, Alfie Kohn explores the phenomenon behind grade inflation. Whether it is complaints or just the general idea that such an undesired occurrence has routinely taken place, Kohn certainly explores them all. He begins with addressing that the issue has not just transpired, but has been in existence over time as many have complained periodically. As Kohn notes on page 261, grade inflation is recognized as a poor occurrence, yet Kohn reveals the struggle as “truly substantive issues surrounding grades and motivation have been obscured or ignored.” Why is this so? Kohn goes on to explore the issue through some evidence and research, but finds that while grades have become higher more recently than before, that still does not prove inflation exists behind the rise in grades (261). By this Kohn reveals a trend to the reader with the facts, or lackthereof, behind grade inflation.

In “A Simple Alternative to Grading”, Glenda Potts of The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges claims that the current grading system creates many issues and added stress for all parties involved (students and teachers). In addition to this, she claims that a contract grading system would be a preferable alternative and gives numerous reasons to support this. The author emphasizes how the current grading system is subjective, wasteful of time, and stress inducing for both students and teachers. Because the current grading system is holistic, the author claims that it often makes unfair comparisons between papers of completely incomparable content. There are a lot of viable alternatives, but the author focuses on contract grading because that is the system that she has experience with in her classroom. In the contract grading system, clear guidelines are set and must either be met or missed with no room for uncertainty. Potts explains that this makes grading quicker for teachers and makes expectations for assignments more understandable and clear cut for students. The author mentions a few issues that higher-performing students had with obtaining their previously easily-earned A’s, but was able to overcome these issues by explaining the function of the system to the students. The author finishes by proclaiming that grades should not be about a letter, but about learning and retention.

Practical and theoretical values in using statistics to predicting academic success. Grades, test scores, and GPA are used as criterion across all grades and ages for predicting success. These statistics are used to allocate resources to education. High school grades, GPA, ACT scores, SAT scores, and essays are the criterion needed from universities to evaluate whether the student is a good candidate. These factors alone determine the acceptance into a college. Administrators think these scores are efficient enough to decide whether the student will attend and whether the student will achieve success as a college student. The process of getting into a university or obtaining a higher education degree is a high stakes situation. The reliability and validity of using GPA and grades can be questioned. Grade inflation is not considered when making these high stakes decisions. Grade inflation is high grades given for the same performance at different levels of study or at different time periods (Poropat, 2009; Trapmann et al., 2007). An A Becky earned in English in California is the equivalent of the A Susan earned in English in a small-town school in

Alfie Kohn, author of “From Degrading to De-grading”, discussed the negative psychological effects that grades have on students. School should be used to educate people and strengthen their mind so that they can more easily learn to deal with specific challenges they will face throughout their life. There are two articles that agree with the views of Mr. Kohn, “Higher Education” by Howard R. Pollio and “Do Grades Do Any Good?” by Jessica Ellis. The articles that were chosen describe the importance of removing or replacing the grading system.

On June 22, Vikram Mansharamani, a lecturer at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied sciences, wrote an article named “How an epidemic of grade inflation made A’s average.” In the article, Vikram first explained what is grade inflation. Second, he provided some possible explanation about what inflation occur along with some school’s attempted solution. Last, the author starts to consider what is the impact of grade inflation and how the inflation effect.

Happy Thursday, what a great article you choose to analyze. Just reading what you choose for the each term, the information looks to just fell in place. Not like the article I choose I had to read and reread to find each term. Grade inflation is a great problem that iI seen with some high school students. Only in the end the student is the one suffering on finding to study better to receive a true earned grade. I completely agree with you about the Turnitin out come the few Quotes used will cut down on the similarity match.

The bar chart above shows the thought about grade inflation by science stream students and accounts stream students.

Grade inflation is not uniform between schools. This places students in more stringently graded schools and departments at an unfair disadvantage, unless employers take into account a school 's ranking.

How does the grading system and learning go together? What makes learning something gradable? How can the grading system base a child 's knowledge off of a test alone? These questions and more have popped up in educators minds for years. These are the thought that have had people like Liz Mandrell, Jerry Farber and Steven Vogel rectify the grading system in their own views. Many of these authors give valid reason for understanding why student are affected by the grading system the way they are.

Tucker and Courts explain grade inflation is a practice among universities and colleges to deflate the actual, real value of an A. According to statistics, the authors claim that the large increase in GPA in higher education. And it does not due to an increase in intelligence or an increasing in the amount of time college students are studying. The authors point out the grade inflation gives certain students an unfair advantage in the job market or when applying to graduate schools. They also point out grade inflation hides laziness on the part of the students, and as long as it exists, even faculty who want to do a good job don’t feel they can. According to the article, if a good grade no longer means the student has exhibited an above average

The purpose of this experiment is to determine the effect of grade classification and school of college grade classification and the amount of hours that Undergraduate Students at UT are currently enrolled in. The explanatory variables consisted of the grade classification and the amount of hours taken for this semester (Fall 2017). The response variable was the number of hours spent studying per week. Upperclassmen were thought to have studied more per week than Lowerclassmen since upper division courses tend to be more difficult that introduction classes. Additionally, students in the College of Natural Science were predicted to study the most per week, followed by the Business students, and then the Others.

Throughout schools, there is a debate about grade inflation and if it accurately determines the competency level of the student based on the grade that they have received. The answer to this question like any subject depends on who is asked. To employers the answer is mostly no, “How can we distinguish the best from the adequate?” If you ask the average student, the answer usually is yes, “Even though I did not originally earn that B, I performed with the top twenty percent of the class”. There are some drawbacks to the system, but overall the concept behind it follows normally occurring trends in the population of students. This is called norm-referenced grading. So if something follows normal trends in a population, there should not be

Beginning in the eighties and continuing to present day, higher education has been pressured by the public and governmental bodies to provide proof of student learning. Public trust has declined and employers are becoming increasingly distrustful toward academic credentialing as an indication of qualification for positions. Many employers have argued that new graduates do not possess the necessary skills to succeed in the workforce. There has been increasing concern about grade inflation, which has led many employers to administer assessments developed by independent agencies.