Someone explain Grade Inflation to me

Applying to College
1

<p>I heard this term come up browsing through the forums and I even went to Wiki up the article but I still don't quite understand grade inflation.</p>

<p>Is it like the economy, the value (of an A, B, C, etc) rises over time ? An A when i was a freshman and an A when my sister gets into high school are not worth the same. This is what i picked up. </p>

<p>But what if majority of the kids in the class earn 90%+ (an A, at my school)? Does that mean grade inflation even if all those kids earned that grade ? What if those teachers had a very talented class (like my math teacher) and overall, the other classes that these kids took, they also earned A's. </p>

<p>Would that be grade inflation ? </p>

<p>OR if that same teacher(s) suddenly made their courses less rigerous ? Is this grade inflation ?</p>

<p>Which case is it ?</p>

2

<p>An A now and an A 10 years ago shouldn't be any different. But unfortunately, they are. For some reason, a lot of teachers are easing the difficulty of the classes and/or are grading much more easily, and more and more students are getting A's. So, for example, a lot of students who deserve C's are getting A's (at my school, at least), and it's annoying for those people who deserve A's, because it will be harder to distinguish yourself (if you really are a bright student who deserves the A) from those who aren't academically motivated anyways but still get A's because their teachers aren't tough enough. That's grade inflation. If everyone deserved A's and got A's, then that wouldn't be grade inflation.</p>

3

<p>Well what if it's different between two different schools? I mean there's no grade inflation at my school, but there is at another school. It doesn't seem fair to match up 4.0s from an inflated school and a noninflated school</p>

4

<p>There are a lot of "what ifs" with grade inflation. What if students are better prepared than before, have learned or understand more, etc. Interesting thing showing that average IQ has gone up over the last 10 or so years, apparently this is a worldwide study. So it may be grades should also. Interestingly, video games (the pragmatic solving problem part) is partially responsible. If your school gets more selective then they should have higher grades. Look at top college profiles. Are these c students. Average at Harvard is not average at the local community or small state college. It is a complex issue and I am not sure what the solution is.</p>

5

<p>Grade inflation - This is when your parents had to actually work for their A's and you get A's by just showing up for class.
I can tell you it was around when I was in college (ahem.... 30 years ago) - There was such an outcry - "grade inflation" was rampant. I worked hard for my B's I can just imagine - now kids must be getting A's for staying in their dorms and watching soap opera's.</p>

<p>If the majority of kids in your class are getting A's then perhaps there is grade inflation. or the course work not rigorous enough. or both.</p>

<p>On the high school level - there is not only grade inflation but GPA inflation. This trend toward giving such heavy weights to certain classes does in fact inflate one's gpa - seriously a 4.0 on a 6.0 scale doesn't mean very much.</p>

6

<p>Isn't grade inflation something you would expect with the rise in competition for med school/grad school etc? More students working harder=higher average GPAs. </p>

<p>Although, I guess it works in reverse too- grade inflation causes more competition? I guess it could go either way.</p>

<p>BTW, JustAMomof4, you're generalizing..alot.</p>

7

<p>The IQ test has to be recalibrated every few decades to standardize an upward IQ trend back to its normal bell curve. There's even a name for this documented phenomenon, so it's not a bizarre or unexpected occurence even.</p>

<p>More financial aid, more awareness, larger population, larger international arena = greatly increased applicant pool. And I do think greatly increased.</p>

<p>And this is not to even mention cultural differences concerning academics, increased economic apprehension, and the precariousness of US world power.</p>

<p>It's no longer the case that someone like a Al Gore can apply to one school - Harvard - and feel relatively safe; or that any "overachiever", with a few bake sales, volunteer hours, and a science fair, can reasonably expect to attend an Ivy.</p>

8

<p>but if IQ and err... ability is going up.. then shouldn't the course load be more difficult, so that always only about the top 10-20% of the students get As and so on... otherwise its stupid if everyone is getting As... there isn't any differentials then between students...</p>

9

<p>
[quote]
Isn't grade inflation something you would expect with the rise in competition for med school/grad school etc?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>why would you expect it? what rise? there was intense competition for med/grad school when I was in college. I don't know that it was any less then than it is today.</p>

<p>I don't understand how I am generalizing at all. Just making personal observations. I heard the same rhetoric back in the late 70's that we hear today about grade inflation - in colleges that is.
What goes around comes around.</p>

<p>Of course, I am a baby boomer - the largest class since this years boomlet. Perhaps in the between years there was not a lot of competition.</p>

<p>I am not sure if the OP was speaking of grade inflation in colleges or high school - for me they are two different things.</p>

<p>I will caution anyone who thinks they can coast through college via purported "grade inflation" to think again. Well - maybe at Harvard -;)</p>

10

<p>insane, your concern is valid, but applies only to the ersatz world of a rigid, zero-sum school system that uses grades mostly as a marker for competition. It seems to me like the "curve" is useful only in forming comparisons between subjects, like with percentiles in IQ tests and grades in an undifferentiated public high school class. But when you're talking about elite colleges, where the curriculum is almost standardized, where the students are culled from the top, and where work is done with an objective goal of application, isn't it wiser to adopt GPA as an absolute measure of competence rather than a source of petty, needless competition? For example, if five doctors are expert surgeons, should one necessarily get a grade of A and one an F?</p>

<p>Pushing courseload for the sake of difficulty is the worst thing you can do, in my opinion. Are we so much more advanced that you can justify a difficulty increase in subjects like history or English, where it's the subject matter that changes more often than our perspective? Even in areas of rapid progress, like engineering and medicine, so what if a greater percentage of the class is proficient in the basics, which really haven't changed that much? The cure for more complex issues of physics or biology is more schooling, not harder schooling; to that extent, I think current students are keeping pace. If everyone is acing the intro to biology class, it doesn't mean that the top students won't be distinguished - it means the top students should move onto harder classes. Again, we don't need difficulty just for the sake of difficulty.</p>

<p>As for grade inflation being more common among top schools, I'll just attribute that to top schools becoming more efficient at attracting the real top students, while Average U still gets everyone else. The number of seats at top schools have not kept pace with the overall increase in the college population.</p>

<p>Also, is grade inflation really a bad thing? It seems like one of those downwardly inflexible criteria that is affected more by social expectations than the laws of economics. Sure you can't compare today's prices to yesterday's prices, but I don't think people are railing against inflation as being inherently evil.</p>

<p>However, I do think a double standard is being imposed because no one challenged dchow's assertion that "An A now and an A 10 years ago shouldn't be any different."</p>

<p>I don't know why I typed all this, I'm home sick from school :)</p>

11

<p>Wow, there's a lot more to it then i thought. </p>

<p>There's no for sure way one could pin point the problem. That's interesting problem. </p>

<p>BUT if a school were to only give A's to top 10-15% of that class, I honestly think may kids would slack. Why? Because when the best you can do is always a B/C then it gets you discouraged. The kids at the top will always be at the top, in my math class these top kids toally destroyed the curve (it was an insanley hard math class too). </p>

<p>When you're graded against other people with whom you have little to no chances of out scoring its VERY discouraging. </p>

<p>then again life's not fair....</p>

<p>blah</p>