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Father Augustine Kelly, O.S.B., dean of Saint Anselm College, confirms the “consumer theory.” He says grade inflation has developed over time throughout higher education. “There is a mentality that ‘because I’m paying, I want it reflected in good grades.’ Alumni feel better about the college. Faculty want good evaluations—if not, students won’t take their classes.”
Many believe grade inflation is especially prevalent among Ivy League colleges. Harvard University received negative attention in 2001 when a Boston Globe story revealed a record 91 percent of seniors graduated with honors. New policies were launched in an effort to tackle the problem, but in a Globe column on Feb.15, 2004, the headline read: “Harvard Still Home of the Easy A.” According to the article, figures indicate the percentage of A and A- grades was up slightly last year.
A 2002 report published by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences revealed that the percentage of A grades given to Princeton undergraduates rose from 31 in 1973 to 43 in 1997.
According to a Sept. 5, 2003, editorial in the Wall Street Journal, a Princeton faculty committee asks, “Who could have ever imagined that we would reach a point where a student with a straight B average would rank 923 out of a graduating class of 1,079—or where a student with a C average would rank 1,078?” Says the editorial, “we’ll know that universities are really doing their jobs when they give us more C students.”
While generous grading appears to be more rampant at America’s bellwether institutions, it doesn’t stop there. Stuart Rojstaczer, a professor of environmental science at Duke University, has created a Web site called gradeinflation.com that includes a database of grade point averages over time at various four-year colleges. It suggests that GPAs increased on average by 0.6 from 1967 to 2001.
Still, such convincing studies and statistics have not swayed some educators.
Alfie Kohn, described by Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores,” is a former teacher who has written eight books on education and human behavior. In a Chronicle of Higher Education article, he writes, “No one has ever demonstrated that students today get A’s for the same work that used to receive B’s and C’s.” He offers a number of possible explanations: faculty are getting better at assessing students, students have more freedom in course selection, and students can withdraw from a course before a poor grade appears on their transcripts.
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