Grade Inflation

11 thoughts on “Grade Inflation”

1. The 3.1 GPA number for Cornell is not correct. The Cornell dean may have been referring to grades for first year students only, which are considerably lower than those for all undergraduates. For some reason, Cornell students are under the impression that the school grades tougher than it actually does. This type of misperception on the part of students is common nationwide. Grades at Cornell are on the low end of what is found in the Ivy League, but grades are high relative to national averages. Student caliber is also high relative to national averages. In Fall 2004, the percent A’s awarded (relative to all letter grades awarded) as a function of school were as follows:

   All Undergrads 48
   Ag School 50
   Arch School 49
   Arts & Sciences 48
   Engineering 45
   Human Ecology 60
   Hotel 31
   Labor 50

   Data come from the Cornell “Student Data Records Mart.” At least one person has made the claim that I included Arts and Sciences data only on my grade inflation web site to make Cornell grades look higher than they are. That is not true. I don’t exclude data. I think what is happening in terms of people’s skepticism is that they have these preconceived notions about grading – I work very hard and A’s are so, so tough to come by – and when real data shows that those notions are false, they tend to get very irrational.

   At the time I posted the Cornell data, Arts and Sciences GPA’s were what I had. As can be seen above, Arts and Sciences grades are about the same as those for the university as a whole. I now have historical grades for all schools at Cornell. I’ll add university-wide totals for Cornell to my web site in the next few weeks.

2. Thank you for your comment, Professor! I have two questions and a brief comment.

   First, Cornell has started publishing median grades along with received grades on all students’ transcripts (class of 2012 and younger). Doesn’t this eliminate some of the problems of grade inflation? Now that every grade is published next to a median grade, it’s much easier to interpret a B+/B- (earned/median) as more significant than an A-/A, for example.

   Second, I’m interested to know what you think the actual “problem” of grade inflation consists of. Is it that grade inflation diminishes the extent to which grades can be used as an effective signal of ability? Does grade inflation erode the actual quality of a college education?

   Finally, you hint at the fact that students are averse to the reality of grading here:

   “I think what is happening in terms of people’s skepticism is that they have these preconceived notions about grading – I work very hard and A’s are so, so tough to come by – and when real data shows that those notions are false, they tend to get very irrational.”

   I must respectfully disagree with you here, professor. The only reason that I was skeptical of the figures you published was because of the “3.1” number that I heard during orientation, along with the fact that many engineering and basic science courses have B- median grades. I can’t speak for students at other schools, but I really don’t think Cornell students are disillusioned about how their grades compare to the average grades of their peers. We publish all median grades and professors frequently tell students about the grade distributions (actual number of As, Bs, Cs, etc) in their courses.

3. Some quick answers, Dennis.

   1. Publishing median grades doesn’t eliminate the fact that grades are high and continue to rise. It gives employers/grade schools a context, I agree. But when a class has a median of A/A-, which many classes do, how exactly is an employer supposed to interpret a grade? Are they supposed to discount someone’s A in a class like that altogether since so many people are getting high grades? If grades are that high, you might as well go to pass/fail because the grades, in terms of identifying excellence, are essentially worthless.

   My interpretation as to why Cornell (and places like Dartmouth) decided to publish median grades was that they couldn’t come to terms with actually dealing with inflation, so they came up with a silly, ineffectual compromise. Who is going to actually look at 30 plus grades and their contextual medians anyway? It really is half-baked.

   2. Yes, I think that when grades are high, education takes a dive. If a student knows that they are going to get a high grade in a class regardless as to whether they work hard or not, what are they going to do? It’s human nature to just go through the motions and get your A. I’m not criticizing students for slacking off under such conditions. I’d probably do so as well if I were 20 again. It’s the professor’s fault in a situation like that. They’ve abrogated their responsibility to evaluate.

   3. I haven’t looked at the median grade lists for Cornell in over a year, but from what I remember B- median courses were there, but were not common. I should check again just to make sure. In engineering classes as a whole as of Fall 2004, 45 percent of all letter grades for undergrads were A- or A. That’s well higher than a B- median. Students seem to want to discount the data that say that grades are high and A’s are common. I think that’s human nature, too. Not many people whose parents earn 200K a year are willing to say they are rich. But they are. Similarly, not many students who go to schools where A’s represent about half of all grades are willing to admit that A’s are easy. But they are.

   Hope that helps.

4. N.B. I just did a quick and dirty look at Fall 2006 grades. I found two classes on that total list with a B- median grade. Maybe you can find one or two more that I missed in my quick look-through, but B- is a very uncommon median grade at Cornell. For A&S only, well over half of all classes on that list have a median grade of A- of better. How is someone supposed to interpret a transcript with such high grades overall?

   Cornell gets some wonderful students. But it is simply impossible that such a high percentage are performing at an excellent level in their classes. Professors at Cornell – like elsewhere – have created a fiction that excellence is common. They aren’t doing their jobs. They aren’t grading realistically and the strange thing is that elsewhere in the Ivy League (with the exception of Princeton) the situation is even more farcical.

   The Ivy League needs to either reset grading back to a reasonable level or simply put up a white flag, admit they have failed and cannot grade honestly, and go to a pass/fail system. The situation right now – pretending to grade but instead handing out A’s like candy – serves no purpose except perhaps as a cautionary example of institutional failure.

5. Professor, I still think you are exaggerating the problem when you say that Cornell professors are “handing out A’s like candy.”

   If you look at the median grade report for fall 2008, for example (http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeFA08.pdf), you’ll find convincing evidence to support my point. Look at the following subjects:

   Econ: mostly B+ grades, some A’s, some B’s
   Math: almost all B’s and B+’s, some A’s, but these are in advance honors classes where studnets really are performing at “excellent levels.” (I can vouch for this, I got an A- in Math 4310 and that was the hardest grade I ever worked for!)
   Chemistry: almost all B and B+ grades
   Operations Research: Lots of B and B+ grades, some A’s.
   Philosophy: mostly B+’s mixed in with a few A- grades.
   Physics: mainly B and B+’s, some A- grades.

   I’m obviously leaving out subjects like Anthro, English, etc., because they do, like you argue, suffer a lot from grade inflation. But as you can see from these examples and from looking at the entire median grade report, there are many disciplines (more than i’ve listed here) that have perfectly reasonable median grades.

   But I also disagree with your general skepticism about so many students performing at “exceptional levels” in their courses.

   I went to a very good high school in Virginia, but, looking back on it, I realize that A’s were actually pretty easy to come by. As long as I turned in every assignment, did every project well, and studied a good amount for each test, I could expect an A. I spent a lot of time working in high school, but essentially I got good grades for being disciplined and consistently “showing up.”

   Any Cornell student will tell you that the difference between Cornell and high school is like day and night. Everybody here does all their assignments, everybody studies for exams, so simply “showing up” is never enough. “Showing up” to the extent that people do to do well in high school is enough for getting a passing grade. This is especially true for engineering, math, and basic science courses. From personal experience, I know it’s possible to do every assignment, study incessantly, and then fail to get above the median grade on an exam.

   My point here is that I don’t think it’s unreasonable for, say, 40% of the students in an econ course to get A- grades or above. They all worked hard, they all studied, and more than 90% of these students graduated in the top 10% of their high schools. Is it really unreasonable to say that 40% of them are performing “excellently”?

   If anything, I think A median grades are very appropriate for some courses. If you have 25 students in an honors analysis course, all of whom have 800 Math SAT scores, performed tops in their math major prerequisie courses, and are all passionate enough about the material to do 15-20 hr problem sets every week, why is it not okay to give most of them A’s at the end of the semester?

   I’m not saying that grade inflation is not a problem. I think Cornell should definitely take more of an initiative to have more B and B+ range median grades in more courses (I predict that this iniative has been taking place, but we’ll see what happens when Cornell releases its fall 2009- spring 2010 median grade reports). I also think that some subjects like English, Government, History, should make serious efforts to lower their own median grades. But I do disagree with the notion that Cornell is a place where A’s are given out like candy and that students are unmotivated to work because they know that their professors will just hand out A’s at the end of the semester.

6. The data are the data. The data say that A is by far the most common grade at Cornell. A’s in fact are handed out like candy in many classes. Not in all. But in many. There are even classes where the median grade is an A+. I’m focusing on averages, though, precisely because I don’t want to exaggerate. The data show that for most of Cornell, the grading system is broken. Professors are pretending to grade. Students are pretending they deserves their A’s. That’s not true in Chemistry and Physics and probably most of Econ. But it is true in the preponderance of classes at Cornell. The data don’t lie.

   As to how much work Cornell students put in for their A’s and how easy or hard Cornell is relative to high school, I cannot say. If Cornell is like the other Ivies, students are studying on average somewhere about 12-17 hours a week. That’s an average. Obviously, there will be individual students who study more. But there will also be individual students who will study less. It’s not a very impressive number of hours. Many of the students in the Ivy League studied more in high school than they do in college.

   I taught at a school very similar to Cornell for fifteen years. I can tell you that students told me explicitly that college was easier than high school. They told me explicitly that they did not read assignments, worked very little on papers, and received high grades. They told me this sometimes when complaining about their grades in my classes, where they were required to do homework and I checked papers for plagiarism from the Internet. Sometimes they told me this just in casual conversation. I like talking to students about anything under the sun, including grades. It’s amazing what they’ll tell you over a cup of coffee or a beer. So it is likely false that “the difference between Cornell and high school is like day and night. Everybody here does all their assignments…” Some do. Some don’t.

   The assumption that 40% of all students in any class, econ or whatever, are doing an excellent job is likely a poor one at Cornell or any other institution. Students across the nation are studying less than they did fifty years ago by about ten hours a week. Back then at Cornell, A’s were handed out a mere 18 percent of the time. SAT scores of students were identical to what they are today. Students back then were smart. They worked, on average, much harder than students of today. Why should Cornell students of today get a 22 percent bump in A’s relative to those of yesteryear? That said, I’d be more than willing to compromise and see students get 35% A’s on average across the board.

   Dennis, you need to learn how to argue your points better. In Econ101 for Fall 2008, the median grade was B. That’s far below, giving 40% all all students A’s. If Cornell graded all its classes like Econ101, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. In fact, if all of Cornell graded like Econ, Chemistry, Math and Physics, we wouldn’t be having this discussion either. But you’re cherry picking here and finding the departments that actually, historically and now, across the country tend to grade honestly and seriously. I can cherry pick on the other end and find outrageously high GPAs. Entomology 260, for example, in Fall of 2008 had a median GPA of A+. Do you honestly think that everyone in Practical Beekeeping, all 16 students, performed at an outstanding level?

   But let’s move away from Practical Beekeeping. Look at average behavior at Cornell. The averages aren’t pretty. They, in fact, say that professors on average are grading in a farcical way. Not all do. But many simply are abrogating their responsibility to evaluate. They are in fact, handing out grades like candy.

   At Cornell and elsewhere we’ve created more or less a bi-modal educational experience. There are a significant minority of students that work hard and take difficult classes. Then there is a significant minority that doesn’t work hard at all and takes the cheesy classes. Finally there are students that do a mix of both. Some are more on the slacker side. Others are on the studious side. It’s entirely possible at Cornell and elsewhere for a slacker student to pick classes wisely and if they are at all intelligent, goof off and earn a B+ GPA at graduation. On the other end of the spectrum, someone can grind like hell in the sciences and earn the same GPA. Is that fair? Don’t tell me that someone, an employer, is supposed to look at transcripts and know the difference. They don’t have the time.

   Here’s where we agree, Dennis. You said, “I think Cornell should definitely take more of an initiative to have more B and B+ range median grades in more courses.” I couldn’t agree more. So my advice is to go to your dean and say we want honest grades in all departments, not just in the sciences and econ. It’s not fair to those students in the hard departments to have other departments give away A’s. It means science students have less of a chance of earning honors upon graduation. We want honest grading everywhere. That’s in fact what Princeton has tried to do over the last few years, level the playing field and have everyone grade like the sciences already grade. Cornell should level the playing field. Or they should give up the pretense that they are making honest evaluations. The middle ground isn’t benefitting anyone.

   This has been a good discussion, Dennis. That’s it from me. I typed this very fast. Forgive any typos/errors.

7. Thanks for the response, professor. I too feel that this has been good discussion. I do want to make three comments about the points you’ve made for the benefit of our readers and for other people who might want to join in on the discussion–but please don’t feel compelled to respond to all the points if you feel that this discussion is no longer productive (some of these points require completely separate debates).

   1) “Students across the nation are studying less than they did fifty years ago by about ten hours a week. Back then at Cornell, A’s were handed out a mere 18 percent of the time. SAT scores of students were identical to what they are today. Students back then were smart. They worked, on average, much harder than students of today.” This might be true, and I don’t have any evidence that students are studying more than they did 50 years ago, but aren’t there some fairly pedestrian explanations that could account for these differences? Fifty years ago a select portion of the population went to universities, now everybody goes. Back then “research” probably took a lot longer than google searching does today. The mere fact that the average time spent studying by students has gone down doesn’t convince me that the overall quality of education has gone down.

   2) With respect to my “cherry picking” example in my last comment, I myself made it clear that I was cherry picking classes that supported my point and excluded departments that were in fact guilty of major grade inflation. If I was trying to say that Cornell did not suffer from grade inflation, then yes, this would be a bad argument on my part. But like I said in my last comment, I merely wanted to demonstrate that “there are many disciplines (more than i’ve listed here) that have perfectly reasonable median grades.”

   3) “It’s entirely possible at Cornell and elsewhere for a slacker student to pick classes wisely and if they are at all intelligent, goof off and earn a B+ GPA at graduation. On the other end of the spectrum, someone can grind like hell in the sciences and earn the same GPA. Is that fair? Don’t tell me that someone, an employer, is supposed to look at transcripts and know the difference. They don’t have the time.” I actually don’t think this is as serious of a problem as you make it out to be. Consider the possibilities. Students going to graduate school: not a problem, grad schools can see through this. Law school: sure, you might be able to get away with a little here, but not much. Sure, maybe a 3.8 gov student will be considered the same as a 3.8 econ student (even though econ is considered to be more difficult and has lower medians), but I doubt that a law school would consider a 3.9 sociology major as more competitive than a 3.7 math major, for example. Jobs: Okay, jobs have to be broken up into two categories, on-campus recruiting and everything else. For “everything else” I can see how this would be an issue. But for on-campus recruiting, many recruiters are either former students or people who have been hiring from cornell for many consecutive years. They should know exactly what classes are difficult and which classes are gpa boosters masked as difficult courses.

8. I’ve noticed that rigorous intro courses (Intro Chem/physics/bio, A&S/Eng math sequences, orgo, etc…) tend to have lower median grades than upper-level electives. This trend holds across many departments, from AEM to CS. Perhaps “grade inflation” is (at least partially) a proliferation in smaller, upper-level seminars that tend to grade more leniently, or even a down-sizing of folks on a premed/science track? Just a thought …

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