This year’s TLISI offered faculty the opportunity to engage in a highly interactive conversation on a topic of genuine interest to us at Georgetown as well as to others at universities throughout the nation: grade Inflation. We would like to share with you some of the questions, comments and suggestions that were raised during the conversation by both Barbara Walvoord, the facilitator, and the session participants. Knowing this is a topic of significant interest to those of us at Georgetown, we have started a blog to help advance the conversation locally. We invite you to post your comments and suggestions on our blog (url cited below) so that we can begin to craft solutions to address this University-wide challenge.
Managing Grade Inflation
Instructor: Barbara Walvoord, Professor Emerita at the University of Notre Dame
The workshop helped participants ascertain the nature of “grade inflation,” myths and realities about it, and what faculty can do about it. We discussed the relationship between grades and student study time, the role of grades in students’ lives, how grades affect motivation, and various models that universities use to address grade inflation. The discussion built upon previous discussions of grade inflation at Gerogetown, particularly within the 2007 Provost’s Seminar on Teaching and Learning.
Background information on national debate on Grade Inflation (from session handouts)
- More than 50% “A” grades. Substantially higher than a decade ago, yet SAT scores, high school grades, selectivity, and yield have not substantially risen.
- Students continue to spend too little time on their studies.
- Some proposals focus on pressuring faculty to give fewer high grades and require more student study time. Proposals include:
- Distribute grade guidelines to faculty and discuss them at annual new faculty orientation
- Departments distribute and discuss grading guidelines
- Distribute tables of grade distribution by department
- Dean reviews the departments’ grading practices annually
- Merit reviews for faculty include how faculty member’s grading aligns with guidelines
- Merit review attends to student evaluation items on student study time and on the degree to which students report being encouraged and challenged.
- Other proposals focus on broader issues
- Undergraduate student involvement
- Student-faculty contact
- What kind of graduate do we want to produce?
National debate on grade inflation
Website includes: definition of grade inflation, arguments for its existence, arguments against its existence, and additional resources
Questions and key points raised during the session:
Opening questions:
- What does the word “inflation” do to shape our thoughts about this problem?
- What is the national average grade? Why and how should Georgetown faculty depart from the national standard?
- How can we assure that student motivation around grades results in the maximum learning possible?
Key points in the discussion:
- Two key issues frame the problem of grade inflation:
- Undergraduate grades are gradually increasing, nationwide
- Employers are looking for measures other than grades to assess our students as potential employees.
- Economically speaking, grades are the currency the students trade for their lives.
- Why would we want to give our students lower grades, that don’t reflect their true value in a competitive job market?
- Put another way, “We can no longer turn back the price of hamburger to 1950s levels.” [Barbara Walvoord]
- Given that the average grade in higher education today is a B, Georgetown is not that far out of line regarding average grades awarded in peer institutions.
- National studies indicate that there is no good correlation between giving good grades and high student evaluations.
- Faculty might consider stating the problem as “grade compression” (i.e., the former A – F 5-point scale has been compressed to 5 points ranging from A to B-: A, A-, B+, B, B-) as opposed to “grade inflation.”
- Currently, there is no strong, highly visible national organization or movement seeking to sweep and reset grades.
Suggestions for countering grade inflation:
At the institutional level:
- Establish University-wide grade guidelines; require all departments to justify higher percentages awarded
- Decrease pressure faculty feel from students (and parents)
- Counter faculty belief that they need to give higher grades in order to receive high student course evaluations (Cashin, William. "Student Ratings of Teaching: The Research Revisited." Idea paper # 32, Center for Faculty Evaluation and Development, Kansas State University. September 1995.)
Classroom strategies:
- Shift the conversation from grade inflation to solving classroom preparation problems:
- Maintain high expectations of our students and enforce student time on task outside of class. For example, require students to make daily contributions to class, rather than only episodically.
- Look at ‘tough courses’ that are over-subscribed, and analyze how faculty members encourage transformational learning in students, despite refusing to give inflated grades.