<p>In an era when 4-year-olds win trophies for just showing up at their tee-ball games, it's no wonder that nearly half the grades handed out on today's colleges campuses are "A's" ... at least according to The Chronicle of Higher Education ...</p>
<p>
[quote] As Represent 43 Percent of College Grades, Analysis Finds</p>
<p>July 13, 2011, 5:33 pm</p>
<p>Although grade inflation affects all types of colleges, its influence varies by the type of institution, the academic field, and even by region, according to a recent article on college grading. The piece comes from Stuart Rojstaczer, a frequent critic and scholar of grade inflation, and his colleague Christopher Healy, and it includes the most recent data on the pervasiveness of grade inflationsuch as the fact that As represent 43 percent of letter grades, on average, at a wide range of colleges. According to their analysis, Private colleges and universities give, on average, significantly more As and Bs combined than public institutions with equal student selectivity. Southern schools grade more harshly than those in other regions, and science and engineering-focused schools grade more stringently than those emphasizing the liberal arts.
<p>That’s interesting. I go to Holy Cross, which is reputed to be very difficult, but now that I see this, I realize a lot of people do get high marks.</p>
<p>Perhaps the students are just motivated? Or inflation, I don’t know. Some of the people I know, I find it impossible that they can do so well. Haha</p>
<p>I do feel that, overall, students care more about grades now than they did when I was in college 40 years ago. </p>
<p>In those days, the percentage of students from well-heeled families was far higher, so there was less concern about finding a high-paying job right after college and repaying college loans. And the job market was more wide open in general. Also, the competition for graduate school wasn’t as keen. </p>
<p>Thus I do feel that today’s college students are looking down the road past college far more than many folks did in my own era. Sure, even back then I had classmates who studied all the time and put their grades above all else, but it wasn’t as common as it is now, as a growing number of undergraduates equate solid college grades with future success.</p>
<p>On the other hand, in the current culture, being a “B” student is often considered synonymous with being a mediocre one. In my day, most folks were pretty happy with B’s. Now, my college professor friends tell stories about getting phone calls from parents who are berating them about Junior’s A-. I think that this sort of behavior was virtually unknown when I was in college.</p>
<p>This is often true. Top profs present information in a way that is interesting and clear, and they motivate their students to work hard.</p>
<p>But there were great professors in my own day, too, and not even the most eager students routinely received A’s. For instance, as a college junior I had a studio art professor whom almost everyone loved. Attendance and effort in that class were very high. But, even so, most of us got B’s, and I think we were all pleased with them. (As a non-artist, I was very pleased.) But I bet that today, this poor prof’s phone would be ringing off the hook or his in-box would full of whiners … all wondering why they didn’t earn an “A” for their focus and effort.</p>
<p>I feel that with the economy more students are concerned about costs. They know that college is expensive, thus the ones I know, feel they should do their utmost to achieve good grades. My Dgt feels that when she goes to college this fall it will be her “job.” She feels she should study, get good grades so she is not wasting all the time and money her parents are spending.</p>
<p>Grades should be handed out according to the standard distribution. If “A” is thought to represent excellent, then only the best students should be receiving A’s.</p>
<p>^ They are not supposed to be handed out to the best students- they are supposed to be handed out to anyone who has mastered the material. If you understand the class well enough to get 90%+ on a test, then you deserve the A. It doesn’t matter if 1/10 of the class does this or 3/4. </p>
<p>I’ve seen the grade distribution for many classes at my U. The majority of people in the class usually get a B. Strangely enough, the science classes I’ve taken seem to have a higher distribution of As/Bs than the Humanities classes I’ve taken- go figure.</p>
<p>I guess you have to ask yourself what the purpose of giving out grades is. I would assume the answer would be to distinguish students from others within their cohort. By awarding the top 43% of students the top grade employers/grad schools have no way of distinguishing between the very best and fairly average students.
Even if students are more motivated than they were 40 years ago, since there is very rarely a need to compare the academic performance of students from 40 years ago with those of today (either for employment or further study) there doesn’t seem much benefit to handing out more and more As. Taking the extreme case imagine every student in a class today would be of A standard 40 years ago, if you give each one an A what use was grading them at all.
I think another factor is that universities/colleges are incredibly expensive and are increasingly attracting students whose families struggle to afford to send their offspring there. There is an enormous pressure to justify the expense and satisfy their customers.</p>
<p>The teachers at my school last year didn’t just hand out A’s. I worked hard for the ones I got. My grades also reflect the classes I didn’t work as hard in.</p>
<p>“They are not supposed to be handed out to the best students- they are supposed to be handed out to anyone who has mastered the material. If you understand the class well enough to get 90%+ on a test, then you deserve the A. It doesn’t matter if 1/10 of the class does this or 3/4.”</p>
<p>– I disagree with this practice of giving everyone who “mastered” the material an “A”. If everyone masters it, then the class is not challenging enough or the students must be brilliant. I think there are very few situations where more than 20% of a class should receive “A’s”. College mathematics sees a lot of grade inflation in my opinion. Lots of students get low “A’s” and “B’s” that have no idea how to completely solve the problem or apply the problem to the real world. If an “F” or “D” student gets all “A’s”, how then do employers distinguish who to hire?</p>
<p>Science and Math classes give out less As than humanities? Shocker…</p>
<p>If 90$% of the class is getting a 95%good than they should all still get As. They shouldn’t be punished for a poorly organized course (the course should have lower grades).</p>
<p>"In an era when 4-year-olds win trophies for just showing up at their tee-ball games, it’s no wonder that nearly half the grades handed out on today’s colleges campuses are “A’s” "</p>
<p>– I should comment on this as well. I think it is wonderful to recognize little children (and all of them) for their hard work and dedication towards a sport or school work. BUT, there comes a point where it needs to stop. That point should happen before 4th grade in my opinion. 4th grade is a pinnacle year in education, and this is the point I believe we should start instilling real-world values. A child should not receive 12 sports trophies during middle school, unless they were winners – this instills a sense that you can do whatever you want (win or lose). This then carries over to academics. I know of several public schools where students learn nothing at all and slide by with a “B” just because they show up to school and do cursory work while their there. This is ridiculous because prospective employers can pick up on these attitudes that were developed as a child.</p>
<p>This isn’t punishing students for a poorly designed course. If the course was indeed poorly taught everyone would do worse but you would still award the same proportion of students an A/B/C-grades. The overall percentage mark a student achieves in an exam is totally arbitrary, it just depends on how easy a test you set. The best test will produce a spread of marks over a large range.
e.g. the best student in the class gets 95% the worst student 35%. If all the students are clustered above 90% you haven’t tested anything.</p>
<p>Question number one is what is the purpose of grades:</p>
<p>Is it to motivate students to learn the material?
Is it to motivate students to strive for perfection?
Is it to distinguish students from one another?
Is it to control the number who can succeed?
Is it for another reason?</p>
<p>Everyone’s answer to this question will determine their response to the issue, and different people will have different answers to the question.</p>
<p>Universities have an incentive to inflate grades because medical and law schools consider GPA generally without adjusting for grade inflation or difficulty of courses and major.</p>
<p>So a university with high grade inflation will be able to say that more of its students go to medical or top law schools than a similar quality university with less grade inflation.</p>
<p>Science may have less grade inflation because giving a good grade to a student with poor or marginal knowledge of the subject matter will cause those teaching later courses to complain about things like “why are the students who got good grades in calculus not able to understand calculus as used in physics?”.</p>
<p>I personally don’t think the purpose of grades is to distinguish students from each other. It should be based on mastery of course material. If all the students in a particular class got As (in a hypothetical world) because they all happened to master the material, I would have no problem with that. If they all understand the material, they all deserve As. Of course, since that is rare enough to almost be called impossible, I understand the reasons for curves and such based upon a standard distribution (although I highly dislike them and I applaud teachers that find them unfair and choose not to use them). However, I think they should only be used in certain classes (like intro or weeder courses). </p>
<p>You also have to think about the fact that there are many ridiculously easy BS courses where most people will get an A as long as they do work or show up. Should there be less of these? Probably, but many times they are interesting and taken more by students who want to learn more about the subject (though there are also many students who take it for the easy A). I have taken a few classes where I received an A by not doing much work, but I was interested in the material and I think I learned more in those classes than in some other classes.</p>