What are your thoughts on "grade inflation" at colleges and universities?

I have mixed feelings. At a school like Harvard, you can genuinely get a class full of geniuses, each of whom hands in a brilliant essay. But should each of them receive an “A?” Would that reward them for being brilliant before even arriving at Harvard? And if so, is Harvard saying it has nothing else to teach them? On the other hand, if you spread the grades onto a normal curve, is it really fair to give even the worst essay in the class an “F” if it was genuinely brilliant but less so than the best?
I think we have to accept that grades are an imperfect system and that there are bigger issues involved, including adjusting for the quality of the students, and the desire to motivate students to achieve beyond their current abilities. Overall, I think concern about grade inflation at colleges and universities is overblown, but the problem in grade schools and high schools is huge. I think it is criminal that students who can barely add or read are getting passing or even exceptional grades and graduating high school with a 5th grade education.

We can’t know unless you give us an example of the work. Sometimes you just get a class where everyone does A level work, and you can’t rightfully punish people for being in the class with the “wrong” people.

This doesn’t really sound like grade inflation to me so much as a difference of opinion. My instinct is to defer to the professor’s grading schema since s/he has seen a wider range of student performance and has a better idea of what’s considered average, above average, and below.

I wouldn’t take it so seriously. Grades have little purpose in the pedagogical process. People are individuals and need to be treated as such. Assigning a grade doesn’t help many people learn much. Grades are for administrators who need to have some kind of proof that they have educated an individual.

So, if grades aren’t that important except for some kind of administrative purpose which really has nothing to do with you, then your efforts are largely pyrrhic. Give it up. Do as @nikipedia suggested, and let him have the final say.

Grade inflation for me is when students’ work is rewarded with marks higher than what they would have been given when compared to previous students. For me it is not about how many A’s are given out or that a certain number of F’s should be given either. When you compare the body of work to previous bodies of work where does it fall. I recently was told by a student that at her school a 70% was considered a fail for her rotations. When you do something like that you artificially make it so it is harder to differentiate average work from good work from exceptional work. Some graduate level programs are going to a pass, high pass, and honors system. Those being distinguished by how student perform relative to their peers. I kind of like that idea personally.

I’m confused as to what exactly the students are doing wrong when they ask the teacher for an opinion on the grade you gave them. Aren’t they the teacher and not you? Are the students the one’s who feel entitled, or are you?

@papayalily – I’m confused about your comment.
@sleepdoc – Yes, it is not a matter of having a quota here where only a certain number of students can get an A and so on. Also, there is no curve.
@wundayatta and @nikipedia – In this class, the prof is pretty much hands-off. The TA’s do all of the grading and he doesn’t want to get involved at all. Recently, one of my students pestered him into reevaluating the grade that I gave him. In other classes I have TA’d for, the prof looks over the grades that the TA’s give. Often enough, the prof decides to give them higher grades. Naturally, I have to defer to the prof in those cases.
@wundayatta – Maybe grades are not so important, but tell that to my students..
I think that part of my “problem” is that I attended a more rigorous university that had higher standards. I’m still living in that frame of mind, but that is not how it is at most colleges.@georgegee – I’m not at Harvard (and never was) btw.

@answerjill Yeah. Students, especially at more working class universities, really buy into grades.

Personally, I think it’s good to have high expectations, and having high standards is one way to set high expectations.

I’m also curious as to how you developed your sense of who is rigorous and who isn’t. In my experience, the small liberal arts colleges often turn out the best scholars. Universities, sure they turn out some good ones, but not at the same rate that small colleges do. But that’s just my experience.

@wundayatta – This school is by no means a working-class school. It is a small-medium size private university. It is very expensive school and less than half of the undergrads are on financial aid. As for rigor, I developed my sense of rigor from having experienced it as an undergraduate at a university that has a reputation for not having grade inflation. I have also TA’d at a large, urban, public university. In general, I had fewer complaints about grades from students there. At my current school, I do perceive a stronger of sense of entitlement among the student body. Also, most of these students were among the better students in their high school classes and it is hard for some of them to get used to not being at the top anymore. (I’ll admit, I remember having a wee bit of that attitude when I was an undergrad, too!)

It’s a disfavor to the students and their future employers.

We can never know if grade inflation is happening without appropriate comparisons. One comparison would be from one year to the next, but that wouldn’t be nearly as good as five or ten years of experience.

Even if grades are getting higher, grade inflation is not the only explanation. Students could be getting better. Don’t scoff at that. The SAT has to be recalibrated every couple of decades or so because the population as a whole is scoring higher (making the test less useful).

Your professor may just have raised the grade because it was borderline and the student asked. In fact, I once read that if you ask, you often get half a grade better just for asking. Lots of students do that. It’s like a little negotiation.

It occurs to me that what might be bothering you is the professor overruling your judgment. As if he didn’t trust you or something like that. That could be lurking underneath this even if you don’t think it is true on the surface. I really don’t think it means much, and I don’t think the grades of your class as a whole mean much in terms of either pride or grade inflation. You’d need a lot more data to show grade inflation, and I doubt very much it could be proved.

I know we hear this every once in a while. Maybe there always someone complaining about it. I suspect is as much perception and the special group you are looking at, and the special group you share information with as it is something significant. Professors are under all kinds of pressures. Time. Dealing with students. Dealing with the administration. Getting grades in. Getting papers graded. You know. A few here and there are always going to be giving in just because the pressure is too much. I don’t think it means much.

@wundayatta – Interesting about the asking and getting a half grade better! And yes, I am annoyed with the prof for overruling me. I do feel like it undermines my authority. But don’t worry, I know that this is all part of being a grad student… This summer, I taught my own course for the first time and I really liked having full authority. I’ll admit that it is now hard to go back to working for someone else! This case with the prof was particularly irking because he told me that he would not change a student’s grade unless I was really off, but that is not what happened. He raised it a half grade even though he said that he would have written even more critical comments on the paper. Yes, I know that in the whole realm of things, this is not so important.

Maybe you need to ask a question about working with a boss/professor that undermines your authority and does not apply his or her own policies consistently.

@wundayatta – The semester is almost over and it would be too much trouble to confront him about it. I won’t be working with him in the future. He is grading the final papers—the first grading that he has done all semester. I have been in grad school for a while now and do not have much more TA’ing ahead of me, anyway.

@answerjill It’s still a good question in my humble opinion.

@wundayatta – It is a good question, but I don’t have the energy to pursue it!

I mean that your details don’t match your question. Your details are all about students going to the professor to ask about the grade they got, but I don’t know what the problem is with that. Students are encouraged to ask the professor what’s going on if they don’t understand a grade or think it was really off. Your entire comment just came off as really whiny and “Why don’t students respect my authority?” Except that you don’t have any authority. The professor does. He’s the one the school hired as a teaching professional, they must think he’s doing ok (or at least not terrible) if they keep him around. If the professor has a problem with students coming to him, then he should tell them that, but it’s not your job to be The Decider, and students shouldn’t have to see you as The Decider.
You might be grading too high. I don’t know what class this is or what college it is, but papers for a Freshman Composition class don’t really have to be publishable quality. So if you’re grading them on that scale, that’s really unfair to them.

@papayalily – That’s kinda harsh. 1. I was hired by the university, too. 2. This is not a Freshman comp class. As for students not respecting my authority—Yes, I admit that it does rankle when students know that they can just go over my head. I’ve been teaching for a long time (in a variety of settings) and already have at least one advanced degree in this academic discipline. Even if I was whiny, Fluther seemed like a safe outlet for my frustration. EDIT: I just saw your earlier question about your comp class. That helps me understand where you’re coming from. We are looking at the same situation from different sides.

As a university lecturer myself, I have found that the way to stop students going over your head is to have clear marking criteria, and mark according to them. If it can be shown that they access to the criteria before attempting the assessment task, and that you have marked according to it, then the students have no recourse to go over your head. Make sure you hand back their work with a clearly justified criteria sheet, explaining exactly why they got the marks they did.

@answerjill I understand if you need an outlet. I’ve had crappy jobs with crappy respect before. I just see it as a totally different issue than grade inflation. Two totally separate questions, that’s all.