PRImACk | doEsn’T AnyBody gET A C AnymoRE? 772 3 4 5 6 7
Why such a “low grade,” the indignant student wrote.
“Low grade”? Back when I attended Tufts in the late 1960s, a B in
certain courses was something I could only dream about. But grade
inflation, the steady rise in grade point averages that began in the
1960s, now leaves many students regarding even the once-acceptable
B — which has always stood for “good” — as a transcript wrecker, and
a C — that is, “average” — as unmitigated disaster. More and more aca-
demic leaders may lament grade inflation, but precious few have been
willing to act against it, leaving their professors all alone in the mine-
field between giving marks that reflect true merit and facing the wrath
of students for whom entitlement begins with the letter A.
Grade inflation “is a huge problem,” says former U.S. senator Hank
Brown, who tried to make it a priority issue as president of the Univer-
sity of Colorado in 2006. “Under the current system at a lot of schools,
there is no way to recognize the difference between an outstanding job
and a good job. Grade inflation hides laziness on the part of the stu-
dents, and as long as it exists, even faculty who want to do a good job [in
grading] don’t feel they can.”
That’s because many professors fear that “tough grading” will trig-
ger poor student evaluations or worse, which in turn can jeopardize the
academic career track. “In my early years, students would say they liked
my class, but the grades were low and the work level high,” says retired
Duke University professor Stuart Rojstaczer. “I had to get with the pro-
gram and reduce my own expectations of workload and increase grades
in order to have students leave my class with a positive impression to
give to other students so they would attend [next year]. I was teaching
worse, but the student response was much more positive.”
Harvard University is the poster campus for academic prestige — and
for grade inflation, even though some of its top officials have warned
about grade creep. About 15 percent of Harvard students got a B-plus
or better in 1950, according to one study. In 2007, more than half of all
Harvard grades were in the A range. Harvard declined to release more
current data or officially comment for this article. At the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, the average GPA in 2007 was 3.19 (on a four-
point scale), up from 3.02 a decade earlier. That “modest increase” sim-
ply reflects better students, UMass spokesman Ed Blaguszewski says in
an e-mail. “Since our students have been increasingly well-prepared . . .
it makes sense that their UMass grades have crept up. Essentially, the
profile of the population has changed over time, so we don’t consider
this to be grade inflation.”
That’s certainly the most common argument to explain away grade
inflation — smarter students naturally get higher grades. But is it that
simple? Privately, many faculty members and administrators say col-
leges are unwilling to challenge and possibly offend students and their
hovering, tuition-paying parents with some tough grade love. And03_GRE_5344_Ch3_055_079.indd 77 11/19/14 11:06 AM