In a Washington Post column last week, Stuart Rojstaczer, associate professor hydrology, presented evidence of grade inflation over the past three decades at Duke and about 30 other universities. Unsurprisingly, the data show that the average Duke GPA has jumped since 1969 from a 2.79 to a 3.33.
However, grade inflation is not a bad thing; in truth, grade inflation is almost irrelevant. Grading is not an absolute system of comparison, because if it were, almost all Duke students would receive straight-As after being compared with students from other institutions. Grading has always been a relative concept, useful primarily for comparing students from the same school.
Thus, since grades serve as a relative measure of a student's performance against his or her peers, whether the average Duke GPA is 2.79 or 3.33 does not provide any information about how a student performs relative to all the other students.
Of course, when the median GPA shifts upward, the system loses some ability to compare students in the upper-ranges of GPA--that is, if more As are being given out, then many of the top students' GPAs probably become grouped more closely together. However, the net impact of this effect is probably minor.
If everybody--students, professors, administrators, graduate schools, employers--knows grade inflation is occurring, then they sould take grade inflation into account and it should have no impact.
The real problem with grade inflation is that it is unequally distributed through the University. That is, different departments and different professors have different standards by which they grade. So while a C might be the median grade in, say, the sociology department, an A might be the median grade in, say, the economics department. This does not necessarily mean that economics students are smarter than sociology students; rather the two departments might have different standards for how grading should be conducted.
These differentials in how grading occurs between departments and professors encourages students to take courses that have easier grading rather than taking courses in which they are truly interested. Some might argue that people know which departments and courses are easily graded and which are more rigorously graded. However, there would still be required courses like Writing 20, where the grading varies widely from class to class.
Obviously, these inequities in grading need to stop. Students should be ensured of consistent grading across the University. Whether the median GPA is a 2.79 or a 3.33 is irrelevant, so long as all students can expect to receive the same type of grading across their disciplines.
The challenge is figuring out a system that will do this. Two proposals, grading all classes on a curve or an academic indexing system that adjusts the GPA of students relative to the average GPA of other students who have taken the same classes, are inadequate. Curving and academic indexing assume that all classes have an equal distribution of qualified students, which may not be the case.
Although the problem appears insoluble from on-high, the University and most importantly professors need to recognize the problem. Perhaps through a collective effort to grade students' work honestly and consistently, grade differentials between departments can be ironed out, even if grade inflation is not.
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