Grade Inflation

Various social commentators and academics tend to make draconian claims about grade inflation and its effects. A google search on the subject exemplifies this impression, with descriptions like "fraud" and "nightmare" appended to titles of articles. The issue even forced Princeton University to enact a policy mandating that no more than 35% of students in a given class may receive A grades. The entire uproar and controversy conveniently distills to two main considerations: the extent of grade inflation and its effects. The strong presence of grade inflation is supported by virtually every empirical indicator that I can find. Nevertheless, while most commentators decry grade inflation as bankrupting the academy itself, I believe that it is mildly problematic, but mostly inconsequential.

The most extensive survey of grade inflation on the web comes from the site gradeinflation.com. Reports have indicated that the effect is most pronounced among the most elite universities. Data seems to confirm this observation. My own institution, the University of Chicago, has long been known for being one of the harshest graders in academia, yet it experienced massive grade inflation in the latter half of the 20th century.

Average GPA:
UChicago
1965: 2.50
1996: 3.26

Comparatively speaking, however, Chicago is a still a somewhat harsh grader compared to similar schools

Average GPA
Stanford
1968: 3.04
1992: 3.44

Harvard
1985: 3.17
2001: 3.39

Princeton
1971: 2.99
2001: 3.40

Pomona:
1970: 3.06
2001: 3.43

Brown
1989: 3.34
1999: 3.47

UC Berkeley:
1986: 2.95
1996: 3.10

These statistics are interesting, but they are not proof of grade inflation, strictly speaking. If students are indeed performing better today than they used to, then higher grades are justifiable. This would not be inflation, but merely the effect of increasing intelligence. I don't have statistics for this possibility, but I find the sheer magnitude and consistency of the rise in grades over time to render it doubtful. On the other hand, it may have some effect. The Flynn effect, for example, is a well-documented phenomenon in which IQ scores increase over time. Indeed, the IQ index is periodically recentered to 100 to account for this rise. So people are getting smarter, but it seems unlikely that they are getting that much smarter. I consequently believe that it is very reasonable that grade inflation exists to a significant degree in college.

The real issue, however, is whether all of this is a problem. I contend that it is, at worst, an annoyance. Most people decry grade inflation: exemplary work can no longer be distinguished from the shoddy, students are given a false impression of success, the GPA becomes meaningless, students cease learning... etc. But I think that these arguments rest upon the false premise that the absolute meaning of a grade is fixed. In other words, people assume that if I attended college in 1965 I would feel the same about receiving a B- as I would today. This is plainly false. A B- is a vastly worse grade today than it was in 1965. Academic agents constantly adapt their interpretation of grades based on prevailing grade level, in the same way that economic agents constantly adapt their prices based on prevailing prices.

I see three possible counterarguments to my line of argumentation, one of which is moot, and the other two of which legitimate. The moot point is that, as grades rise, grades become less detailed and sensitive. In other words, a hypothetical grade distribution might only include grades between C+ and A. In this range, there are only 6 possible choices. If we used the full range between F and A, we would have 12 levels. So there is less detail in the grade. This is not terribly important since, for all practical purposes, the GPA is the most used indicator of a students grades and it has two decimal places of accuracy. Furthermore, relative grades still give some measure of a student's performance.

The second counterargument is more serious. Unlike monetary inflation, in which prices can rise forever, grade inflation has a natural limit: 4.00. It is clearly not useful to have large numbers of students earning 4.00 GPAs. At this point, one really does lose the ability to differentiate performance. Even so, grade inflation only becomes a problem in this case, if we have large numbers of students earning perfect or near-perfect grades. I don't have comprehensive statistics on the matter, but I think this is not terribly problematic in college. At Chicago, for example, roughly 1 student graduates with a perfect record every other year or so. That's about 0.05% of the population. I don't see that as unreasonable. This effect was, however, unreasonable in our high school. We had 17 people with 4.00 GPAs, amounting to roughly 5% of the population (given the difficulty of classes however, most of these students probably genuinely deserved their grades).

The final, most damaging, but most tenuous counterargument to my view deals with the trend in grades. I mitigated the previous counterargument by pointing out that the current number of perfect students is not worrisome. Grade inflation is a dynamic process, so one should really be concerned with what will happen in the future. All indicators seem to suggest that grades are increasing, if they are moving at all. Lacking a firm theoretical basis for why grade inflation has occurred in the first place, this equation of past performance with future changes is not perfectly sound.

For aesthetic reasons, I find "uninflated" grading to be much preferable to the status quo. Nevertheless, I don't think grade inflation at most institutions has been particularly problematic. It is certainly not good, but I don't think that it is particularly troubling.

Speaking of theoretical reasons for grade inflation... I have my own theory about the commodification of higher education, but that will have to wait until another, not-so-late night.