This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from:
altany@email.wcu.edu
The following message was enclosed:
Does grade inflation widely exist at WCU, or not?
Reasons for your response?
Have you ever heard a faculty member (without giving any
names) say something similar to the author of this short
essay?
Have parents, students or others ever tried to exert undo
pressure on you to give grades higher than you thought
justified?
How did you respond to that pressure?
Is this issue one that does or does not need to be brought out
into the open for discussion?
Thanks.
Alan
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Thursday, January 30, 2003
Duke Professor Releases Data on Grade Inflation at 34 Colleges
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
Stuart Rojstaczer, a professor of environmental science at
Duke University, hasn't given a student a C in more than two
years, and he finds himself giving plenty of A's. He is the
first to admit that he is part of a nationwide problem of
grade inflation, but he says that the only way to change
things is to get universities to work together to deal with
the issue.
As a step in that direction, Mr. Rojstaczer is trying to
highlight the scope of the problem by compiling a database of
average grade-point averages over time at various four-year
colleges and placing the information on his Web site,
GradeInflation.com. So far, he has data from 34 colleges, some
of it going as far back as the 1960s.
Mr. Rojstaczer says he's found grade inflation at all types of
institutions -- large, small, public, and private.
Less-selective colleges tend to report lower average GPA's
than more-selective institutions, "but they're all rising," he
says. "Every school that I can find that has data available
shows grade inflation."
The numbers contradict those who blame affirmative action for
grade inflation, he says. In fact, grade inflation actually
waned a bit at many institutions during the mid-1970s and
early 1980s, when the numbers of minority students at those
colleges were increasing.
The latest wave of grade inflation started around the same
time that colleges began operating more like businesses, Mr.
Rojstaczer says, treating students like customers who bring in
revenue. Today, students and parents demand high grades, and
professors are reluctant to buck the trend.
"I'm not grading honestly, but if I were to grade honestly, I
would be unreasonable because of the context of my institution
and all institutions," he says. "It's simply not fair to my
students to give them a grade that's off the charts in
relation to other professors. A C is the mark of Cain on a
college transcript, so why would I want to do that to my
students?"
The first step toward dealing with the issue is for
institutions to admit that there is a problem, which they are
starting to do, says Mr. Rojstaczer.
But what is the next step?
"We could simply create a new grade, the 'double A' or the
'uber A,' and we could reserve that for exceptional
performance," he says. Or, "you could have [professors] wear a
scarlet A if they were easy graders, but I think that's going
too far."
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Copyright 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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