While looking at some data on college GPA distributions, I discovered that the median GPA of Davidson graduates has drastically increased in recent years. The median GPA of a 2017 Davidson graduate was 3.44; the median GPA of a 2021 Davidson graduate was 3.625! And this wasn’t a one-year aberration either; the median GPA of Davidson graduates has been, in mathematical terms, monotonically increasing from 2017 to 2021. Does anybody know the reason for this? This kind of increase doesn’t happen on it’s own, especially in such a short period of time.
Like may schools Davidson loosened it’s pass/no-pass rules during the pandemic. I don’t recall all the details but I think you can even apply it retroactively to several courses (i.e. you can basically cherrypick your lowest grades after the fact) before you graduate, which of course would improve GPA’s a bit.
This wouldn’t account for all of it as the trend toward grade inflation started before then but is in-line with many of Davidson’s peers. Grade inflation in college (and high school) is a widespread trend.
I’m sure more lenient pass-fail policies would obviously improve GPA’s relative to without lenient pass-fail policies, all else being equal, but (in general, not in the case of Davidson specifically), I can’t imagine the positive effect of lenient pass-fail policies would outweigh the negative effect of the pandemic (on grades). While students at Amherst had the option of converting any and as much grades as desired to pass/fail after the fact in Spring 2020 (up until a few weeks after the spring semester) without it counting towards the limit of pass/fail courses, students were strongly discouraged from doing so (and in some cases, not even allowed to) in classes counting towards their major or classes relevant to their prospective career/graduate school program for any grade at or above a “B-”. Also, the increase in GPAs from 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021 are similar to the GPA increases from 2018 to 2019 and 2017 to 2018, so I do not believe COVID was a factor in Davidson’s grade inflation. Multiple surveys suggest that the average academic performance of college students decreased throughout the pandemic.
Do you have any data to support the notion that Davidson’s peers are experiencing similar rates of grade inflation? The data I have seen concerning other elite colleges on gradeinflation.com , a website that tracks grade inflation trends at numerous institutions, suggests that an increase of this magnitude (more than a quarter of a point) in median GPA in such a short period of time (7 years) is unprecedented.
No insights on this to share as my D who is graduating doesn’t really mention her peers’ grades and she’s never brought up overall campus GPAs.
If there was a decision to ‘loosen up’ on grades it wasn’t made public – I’m sure I would have heard about that because I regularly read the college newspaper. My supposition would be that this is somehow a reflection of new faculty alongside retirement of older faculty, possibly combined with the pandemic. But I have no inside information.
Grades aside, Davidson is certainly rigorous and expectations are high.