March 14, 2006
Grade inflation
UCITE had an interesting discussion on grade inflation last week.
As some of you may know, beginning January 2003, the GPA cutoffs to achieve honors were raised to 3.56 (cum laude), 3.75 (magna cum laude), and 3.88 (summa cum laude) so that only 35% of students would be eligible for honors. (The earlier values were 3.20, 3.50, and 3.80 respectively.) This measure was taken because the number of people who were graduating with honors had risen steadily over the years.
Is this an example of grade inflation, by which it is meant that grades have risen without a corresponding increase in real learning? Or are there more benign causes, such as that we getting better prepared and more able students now, or our teaching methods have improved. Another important issue is whether Case's experience of rising grades is part of a national trend or an exception.
The question of what causes changes in average grades (both locally and nationally) is a topic that generates a great deal of passion, as do the various suggestions for what steps should be taken to deal with the issue. It is important to realize that although many faculty strongly feel that there is grade inflation and that it is a pernicious phenomenon that should be addressed, studies investigating this question give results that are decidedly mixed.
For example, a recent publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences asserts that grade inflation exists and should be dealt with by instituting measures such as mandatory 'curves', adding information such as class size and average grade for each course on the student's transcript, or reducing the number of gradations to three (honors, pass, fail), etc.
On the opposing side, Alfie Kohn argues that there is no evidence for grade inflation, that this is an issue that has been blown way out of proportion by those who have a very narrow concept of the role of grades in learning.
Striking the middle ground, an ERIC digest of the literature on this topic finds evidence that the situation is much more ambiguous, with evidence for and against the existence of inflation.
Posted by: mxs24 (Mano Singham) March 14, 2006 11:51 AM | Category:
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Posted by: mxs24 (Mano Singham) March 14, 2006 11:51 AM | Comments (1) | Trackback
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I think grade inflation is good because it makes grades less important. For me, by far the most learning seems to happen in environments where grade letters are never mentioned. Last semester I had a class where we did not receive a grade all semester. It was the most though provoking class I have had yet at Case. The last week everyone received an A, but that we received an A or an F had nothing to do with the amount of learning that took place.