Brian SotakNicole Nejedly usually studies for the subjects in which she has approaching tests. The only class she tackles regularly is biology, and that’s because she has a quiz each week. She tries to spend more time on the subjects she enjoys, but she doesn’t have much free time.
“Honestly, would you really spend your time if there was no grade?” the sophomore asks.
Washington University students want good grades, and the numbers show that they get them. In spring 2004, the school average GPA was 3.39, according to the Greek Life Office’s Greek Scholarship report. The fall 2004 average was 3.37. These high numbers could be further justification for Wash U’s climb up the U.S. News and World Report rankings. Our admissions are more selective. However, this high GPA in part appears to be a national trend, which goes by the name of grade inflation.
Grade inflation occurs when grades rise and student performance remains the same. National dialogue about grade inflation re-emerged in 2001 following a Harvard study that uncovered that about half of Harvard seniors graduated with an A or A-minus average. Overall, 91 percent of the seniors graduated with honors, a distinction which required a major average of B-minus or better. Only 22 percent of seniors had A’s in 1966, according to USA Today.
At the time of the study, Harvard professor Harvey C. Mansfield led the attack on grade inflation by establishing two separate grading systems for his government classes. As Mansfield described in an April 2001 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he gave students their official grade, which matched the averages of the University. The other grade he gave was a less generous, personal assessment of the student’s performance.
The national trend in grade inflation is obvious. The controversial question is whether or not grade inflation matters.
“I don’t have to get my all A’s stamp out or anything,” says English professor Amy Pawl. “I feel like I have the whole range of grades available to me when I grade.”
Pawl has taught at the University for 10 years and formerly ran the freshman English Composition program.
Biology professor Ursula Goodenough agrees and says that it is still possible to distinguish between levels of student performance.
“C used to be average and now B is average,” Goodenough says. “Everybody knows that. In a way it is just a translation and I don’t think it means that much in reality.”
One danger with grade inflation, Pawl says, would be if Wash U failed to keep up with the rest of the country. Competition between students vying for acceptance into graduate schools demands that Wash U keep their grades on par with the nation. However, both Pawl and Goodenough insist that no University figure has ever urged them to distribute their grades in such a way.
“Everybody is a realist about the way it works, and everybody knows that grades and GPA matter,” says Goodenough. “Why not pay attention to grades? In the end, how hard you work and how good you are as a student correlates with the grades you get.”
Whether grade inflation is dangerous seems to depend on what grades are there to do, says Pawl. If grades are meant to reflect mastery, as Mansfield of Harvard advocates, grade inflation hurts the ability of exceptional students to distinguish themselves.
“It begins to de-value the process and the degree and everything else if grades don’t actually reflect mastery of the knowledge,” Pawl says.
Conversely, if grades exist to motivate students, Pawl says, inflation may not matter as much.
Goodenough says her students are intense about their grades, and she doesn’t blame them.
She points to schools which have experimented with the grade-less classroom. One such university is Massachusetts’ Hampshire College, where Goodenough’s friend works as a professor.
Instead of giving grades, the professors give written evaluations. Writing evaluations turned out to be a pain for her friend, who eventually created an A and B evaluation paragraph to give students.
Sophomore Sheetal Joshipura doesn’t like to obsess over her grades. Still, she feels pressure to compete with the other students who do. In the end, she sees grades as a necessary evil.
“There has got to be something that tells people after graduation what our level of ability is,” Joshipura said. “School should be about preparing for the future, but it should be about learning, too.”