70+ Years of Collegiate Grade Inflation

Where I went to undergrad, students complained that we *didn’t* have the same grade distribution or average as other schools, and that it made for unfair comparisons in the marketplace. (At the time, we had the highest ingress SAT scores in the nation, I believe, and the highest % of graduates who went on to earn PhD’s. And yet it was said that the average GPA was 3.0)

There were rumors of a “normalization function” among graduate schools (medical school, in particular was mentioned), and it was said that the multiplier/primary coefficient for our school was the highest among all. I had no way of verifying that, and, frankly, I doubted there was one shared among med schools. But I do remember some disturbing job interviews…one who actually said to me “gee, you’ve got a 3.5. But I’ve got another applicant with a 3.6, from (tier 4 state school), so my comparison’s actually pretty easy, and I’m not sure I even need to interview you.

It’s a vicious, socially induced cycle, this grade inflation, as evidenced by both my apocryphal story, and my personal anecdote.

That graph would be more helpful and less misleading if the X-axis were zero.

Combine this with the asian college influence =D

How interesting it is that when scholastic indicators (in the form of college grades) go up, it’s taken as an indication that we’re all becoming stupider. And when they go down (in the form of SAT scores)…we conclude the same thing.

It’s actually worse (or better) than the article suggests, when you consider how much more of the population (per captia) goes to college now than in 1940. If you’re of the “grades as an absolute” persuasion, you’d expect grade *deflation,* as we’ve seen with SAT scores (and which has happened solely for that reason, not because Americans are getting dumber as certain Conservatives have suggested…which shows if nothing else, that they majored in Calumniation instead of Statistics).

Even if grading on a curve, the median, of course, ought not to’ve changed.

More interesting to me is that that the net inflation over 70 years is just about 20% overall, but while it’s 17.5% for public institutions, it’s a whopping 27% (!) among private schools.

This in turn suggests that since the main reason for the existence of private colleges is provide a mantle of superiority for the children of the privileged classes, that their grade inflation as a function of actual student accomplishment (prime example, our former president) is far higher.

But since the graph didn’t track grade performance on a per capita basis, we may never know. And of course, since the curricula are so different now than 70 years ago, it’s all pretty much meaningless anyway.

My personal theory is that the introduction of women and minorities to the cathedrals of the rich simply means that college students are now 17% smarter (if not more so ) overall than they were in 1940, and that the change in grades is not evidence of inflation at all. A rising tide, after all, lifts all boats.

The only thing that’s actually getting stupider is the media-consuming public.

Grade inflation is directly related to the college rankings, but not because of the ‘how many students pass’ metric.
These rankings play a huge roll in determining how much money a college will get from donations and investments (many colleges have bonds you can buy). They also help to attract new students. As more people start attending college, more of the applicants do not know the reputations of different colleges, so they have to narrow their search down by looking at rankings and what their SAT/ACT scores say they can do. Ergo, the ranking becomes an even stronger force in granting a college the ability to attract ‘quality’ students (who will either raise the college’s ranking or donate lots of money).

In many college ranking schemes, colleges get more ‘points’ for students going directly on to grad school than they do for students going on to jobs. This was explained to me when I asked my professors why my college’s curriculum seemed to *only* prepare me for grad school and not employment. Whenever the number of students attending colleges goes up, the number of students applying to grad schools goes up. So colleges have to find a different way to make their students stand out. If you want your students to stand out to grad schools you give them exciting research opportunities (which costs major $), help them test better (not something you can guarantee), and give them better grades.

So if a college wants to improve its ranking without costly construction projects, grade inflation is the easiest route. It could spend a lot of money on cooler research gigs – which everyone else is trying to do (and if a school doesn’t have the most money, how can it win that competition?) – or it could just tell the professors to grade the students more gently.

I see in this graph where private schools’ grade inflation outpace the public schools and I’ve seen similar results in colleges; all lead to a common thread of the $$$$, particularly as it increases so much every year. If you are paying for it you want to see results regardless of input. As with all things, there are many causes but the common denominator is hard to ignore.

As for employers, most were are blind when weighing majors and grades. In the early 80′s I was a physics major and ended with a 2.9 GPA with the tougher curriculum. Though I didn’t stay in the science field I noticed that some of my friends who had BA or liberal arts majors and to their credit ended with a very high 3.3+ GPA and fared much better getting jobs in the business world due to their better GPA. Others in a similar boat as me agreed that if we had to do it again would pick an easier major and would cruise in college with a higher GPA given the opportunity. I can see the pressure for higher grades on all counts. Jobs are so difficult to come by today.
Jason