“… A recent study revealed that 42 percent of four-year college grades are A’s, and 77 percent are either A’s or B’s. According to Inside Higher Ed, “At four-year schools, awarding of A’s has been going up five to six percentage points per decade and A’s are now three times more common than they were in 1960.” At Yale, 62 percent of grades were in the A range in the spring of 2012. That figure was only 10 percent in 1963.” …
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/column-how-an-epidemic-of-grade-inflation-made-as-average/
All this talk about grade inflation kinda confuses me. At my school the GPA scale is generally:
4.0 - 95%+
3.5 - 90%
3.0 - 85%
2.5 - 80%
2.0 - 75%
In some classes the GPA scale is a little harsher, sometimes it’s a little easier. Most classes don’t curve. Is the grade inflation based on laxer testing and laxer grading? I’m in a technical major so maybe I’m less exposed to grade inflation lol
Grade inflation means higher grades for lower quality work. I assume that grading scales have stayed pretty much the same over the years, but it has become easier to get the higher grades. You can’t really tell whether a school has grade inflation just from looking at the grading scale.
I haven’t really seen much grade inflation (to my knowledge). Looking at the course distributions for my university, about 10-30% of students receive an A (4.0) in any given class. Though, I’ve had the impression that the harder the class gets and the smaller the class size, the percentage of A’s tends to increase (probably due to a combination of curving and weeding out weaker/uninterested students).
How do we know the quality of work is actually lower?
It would have been more accurate for me to say that grade inflation means higher grades without a corresponding increase in the quality of work. According to the grade inflation hypothesis, there is good evidence that grades have gotten higher, but there isn’t good evidence that students are submitting better work.
While this may be a baseless claim, we also have access to the internet today versus textbooks alone back then. We have the power to get help in an instant if we’re stuck or watch a video on what to do if the teacher doesn’t explain it in a way that buzzes our mind. We also have Chegg for some textbooks (not that I’ve ever used Chegg, but I hear it’s alright).
So perhaps the high percentage of As can be attributed to better resources for learning, making education more accessible.