Combating the grade inflation problem

Last fall, Princeton University announced that it would repeal its 10-year-old policy of “grade deflation,” which stipulated that each department should assign A-grades to no more than 35 percent of students. The administrative change is striking, especially considering it was enacted to combat what had been deemed “grade inflation”: diminished grading standards that resulted in a weakened transcript. Indeed, over the course of the policy’s reign, Princeton had developed an impressive reputation for exacting grading policies.

Such a significant amendment to procedure raises pertinent questions about the meaning of grades, the effects of grade inflation and the state of GPA standards at American colleges and universities. Grades have always been and will always be necessary. Though they should not be the driving force behind student motivation, they serve an important purpose: to measure a student’s demonstrated mastery of material. Of course, grades do not tell the whole story. Particularly in large lecture courses, a letter mark often fails to account for intangibles, like a student’s intellectual progression.

Still, the power of grades as a comparative metric—between what the student produced and what is good—cannot be overlooked. And, yet, it is just this distinguishing power that is threatened by grade inflation. As artificially high grades are increasingly meted out, GPAs will steadily become merely an unintelligible number stamped on a transcript. And Duke is no exception, with an average GPA in 2007 of 3.44, a B-plus, compared to an average GPA in 1960 of 2.41, a C-plus.

Besides the obvious consequence—the reduction of a grade’s meaning both to students and prospective graduate schools and employers—inflation weakens the incentive for students to work earnestly. When a professor at the beginning of a semester concedes that the grade “will take care of itself”—perhaps in an effort to foster a stress-free learning environment—the pragmatic student often decides that work for this course will take a backseat upon any perceived conflict of priorities, academic or extracurricular.

Furthermore, from a professorial perspective in the non-curved, non-introductory course context, easy grading relativizes what constitutes good work. Instead of employing an objective range, in which during a weak semester, no students earn A’s, and during a strong semester, many students earn A’s, grade inflation leads professors to award generous grades that do not reflect student performance. In other contexts, professors are incentivized to hand out high grades with the expectation of receiving generous student reviews, which are used at many universities for promotions. These trends effectively expropriate grades of their intrinsic meaning.

Princeton’s initial grade deflation policies sought to change the current grading climate. Yet, such a change can be achieved only with collective buy-in from other institutions. Given the importance of grades in the post-grad arena, students are invested in obtaining high GPAs, which can affect their choice for matriculations. That Princeton’s yield rate paled in comparison to its peer Harvard, where the median grade is an A-, for example, may have been influenced in part by its policy. For universities vying for top students in such an environment, a policy of grade deflation like Princeton’s can be unappealing. We commend Princeton’s foray into uncharted grading territory and note that the failure of other institutions to follow its charge was a large factor in its discontinuance.

Universities should band together to collectively combat the grade inflation problem. In the meantime, Duke can distinguish itself by reviving a share of the inherent meaning in grades by providing on transcripts both a student’s GPA and the average GPA of that major. This addition would provide context and meaning to an otherwise increasingly arbitrary number. A small step though it may be, it would, hopefully, encourage graduate school and professional recruiters to return the emphasis placed on worse metrics—like test scores and a stack of “credentials”—to good, old-fashioned performance in the classroom.