7 ms·

Recent trends in grade inflation at American universities

20 points by ajdecon 17y ago

yequalsx 17y ago
I teach at a public institution of higher learning. Over the past 30 years funding per student has declined. This causes a shift in perception. Society is no longer my client as a result of this shift in funding. My clients are the students and the students want to pass. This pressure to pass people is especially present in adjuncts and the use of adjuncts has dramatically increased.
- bokonist 17y ago
  Over the past 30 years funding per student has declined Source? According to this paper: "From 1970 to the present, state support for higher education has generally kept pace with both enrollment growth and inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index." http://www.sheeo.org/about/paulpres/Baruch%20College.pdf http://www.sheeo.org/about/paulpres/Baruch%20College.pdf
  - yequalsx 17y ago
    Your source is hardly a valid one. It gives statistics but does not cite the source of the statistics. The paper you cited contains statements like this: "Increases in net tuition have significantly, but not completely replaced the decline in state support per student from 2001 to 2005. In 2001 total revenue per FTE was $10,100 in 2005 dollars, essentially an all time high. It dropped 8.8% to $9,212 by 2005. While this is a material decrease from the high point in 2001, it is roughly the level of funding available in the early 1990s. " The author thinks that since the funding per FTE student in 2005 is roughly the same as in the early 90's there has been no decline. This is an astoundingly bad conclusion. There is a thing called inflation. There is no reason to believe that since $9,000 per student was spent in the early 90s then this same amount ought to be adequate in 2005. The author also writes: "This amounted to about $10,000 per FTE student in financial aid, half grants and half loans and work study." See, he counts as part of his funding per student debt that the student acquires in order to attend school. When a student acquires debt to pay for his/her tuition then this can't be counted as part of government funding for higher education. The only part of this debt that can be counted is the reduced cost in interest payments due to any federal guarantees of such loans. In another place the author writes: "The State Higher Education Finance study, done annually by SHEEO, shows “net tuition” (tuition revenues less waivers and student aid from state and institutional sources) has grown from 22% of total expenditures in 1981, to 26% in 1991, to 37% in 2005. This is a worrisome trend. " Later the author writes: "Increases in net tuition have significantly, but not completely replaced the decline in state support per student from 2001 to 2005. " It's a bad paper and a bad source of information.
    - bokonist 17y ago
      So what is your source? The author is controlling for inflation, that's why he says, in 2005 dollars, meaning inflation adjusted dollars. I don't think it's a particular good piece, since he doesn't cite the raw sources, which is what I'd want to look at. But it's enough to question your original statement that inflation adjusted, per student state funding of education has decreased over the past thirty years. Do you have a better source? I do agree that net tuition has increased. But that's because the universities have allowed costs to increase at a much greater rate than inflation. The solution is to control costs, not to complain about under funding.
      - yequalsx 17y ago
        The author of the paper you cited explains that funding per student has declined from 2001 to 2005. He says that in 2000 funding was at an all time high. This is so because of the Clinton presidency and the economic boom. Sorry, I didn't read the part of the 2005 dollars. I suspected but didn't find it in the paper. I retract my paragraph that this relates to.
        bokonist 17y ago
        You originally stated that, "Over the past 30 years funding per student has declined". What is your evidence for this? The paper I cited states that funding had no general trend over the time period, although with ups and downs based on the economy (for instance it declined from 2001 to 2005).
  - pinko 17y ago
    You're missing the point. Tuition increases have outpaced inflation. The portion of college tuition that is privately funded vs. publicly funded has increased considerably. The author of the paper you link acknowledges this but justifies it by reasoning, "Most college and university expense is to pay well-educated people, whose incomes in the general economy have grown quite a bit faster than the CPI". If you accept the premise that higher education isn't really meant for working-class people, then there's no problem. Bully for you.
    - yequalsx 17y ago
      The reason for the increase in tuition over inflation is because of the decrease in funding per student by the government. The gap that tuition is trying to overcome is twofold. It seeks to overcome inflationary adjustments and adjustments to the decrease in funding per student. Higher education should not be free but should not be an undue burden on students. It's in society's long term interest to make higher education affordable. Your last paragraph is not justified by anything that I have written.
      - pinko 17y ago
        Yes, yequalsx, I agree with you completely! Check the thread lineage -- I was responding to bokonist's comment, not yours. (Admittedly snarkily, but that kind of revisionist crap annoys me.)
- yequalsx 17y ago
  The paper below talks about the funding decrease at public institutions. This coupled with the increase in adjunct labor is partly responsible for the rise in grades. http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/FFP0410S.pdf http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/FFP0410S.pdf
yummyfajitas 17y ago
Good to have statistics to back up my anecdotal observations. My hypothesis about the cause: students complain more than they used to, and professors cater to them. Student evaluations amplify this: the common formula is "2 points easiness, 2 points sympathy, 1 point good looks." (Evaluations are out of 5 points.) I received the following complaint this semester: "Linear algebra is supposed to be an easy A! But people are failing!" Linear algebra is the first class where you do proofs and see abstractions like vector spaces. It's meant to be a weed-out course. Some profs remove all the proofs and just teach you to multiply matrices, which is indeed an easy A. Interesting fact: there was a much bigger spike in grade inflation during the Vietnam war. Professors graded more easily at that time to allow students to remain in college and escape the draft.
- yesimahuman 17y ago
  I don't know how I feel about this. Many of the students probably took Linear Algebra because they believed it would be a way to satisfy their electives without messing up their grades and thus their future. They were thinking about other things than your class. Also, you don't really know anything about your students and what path they might be on. For example, I'm taking an elementary level class right now because it's easy and I have one more requirement left and I am graduating this semester and have a startup on my mind. University is incredibly valuable but the idea that it's the only thing in a student's life is just not true anymore (if it ever was). Even with amazing grades you will lose out to those with experience. I'm not saying these classes are worthless, and I value highly the things I've learned that I wouldn't have otherwise. I just don't know what the solution is. I feel like society has destroyed our students' ability to make university their life. Trying to force the students to dedicate their lives to your elective class is just not realistic and you are focusing on the wrong group.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    If you want a certification without knowledge, go to the University of Phoenix. It's completely unreasonable to expect one of the most fundamental math courses (taught at a top 5 applied math school) to be an easy A. Particularly when the students are business, econ, CS and physical science majors, some of whom plan to work on a trading desk. A specific complaint: I showed how to use linear algebra to construct synthetic derivatives (e.g., build a bull spread or iron condor from puts and calls). One of the business majors complained to me that it wasn't in the book and was too hard.
pw0ncakes 17y ago
This also has a lot to do with the watering down and "subjectivization" (for lack of a better word) of the humanities. Even at Harvard, which is notorious for grade inflation, math and science courses still give Bs and Cs for middling work (I know some very intelligent people who've received Cs in physics and chemistry courses there). The inflation is mostly in the humanities. Also flagrant is the bifurcation of the economics major. There's a "serious economics" track for those who want to go to grad school, involving quant courses and math up to real analysis, and a watered-down/easy-A economics track for the mediocrities who want to be investment bankers.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  There's a "serious economics" track for those who want to go to grad school, involving quant courses and math up to real analysis, and a watered-down/easy-A economics track for the mediocrities who want to be investment bankers. Fun fact: the I-banks don't even look at students who did the watered-down track.
  - pw0ncakes 17y ago
    False. It's not like people put "watered-down track" on their resume, and most investment banks don't ask for transcripts until after employment (as verification; they fire you if you don't have one, but this is extremely rare). Investment banks don't care about intelligence so much as the ability to go through hoops, follow orders, and game the system. In fact, if you look at their preferences as far as analysts go, intelligence seems to be selected against.
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      Most students list difficult courses on their resume. They also ask tricky brain teasers on the first phone screen. It's not that hard to weed out the dumb ones. Students on the watered down track will never get into the front office. I've gone on IB interviews myself, and I've spoken to students who've done the same. They do focus on conformity and big company culture (I was definitely a bad fit at Goldman), but they also aim for a great deal of intelligence. I think you are basing your opinion more on politics and tribal identity than on facts.
csmeder 17y ago
Why did you start the graph at 2.6? I understand you want to prove your point, but please don't lie with graphs.
- sp332 17y ago
  Because otherwise the graph would be several thousand pixels tall?
  - csmeder 17y ago
    No, you could keep the graphs just as tall. However, it would show that this trend is smaller than you are currently making it appear.
tseabrooks 17y ago
When I was a grad student, 2 years ago, I was the teaching assistant for Operating Systems. I was responsible for all the grading in the class and the professor told me to give everyone A's no matter what on the assignments and quizzes. Most of the students had little to no understanding of the material. The professor said he was up for tenure that year and he was afraid that if we handed out bad grades the students poor evaluations of him would keep him from getting tenure. I wonder if universities put to much stock in the opinions of the students. I'd imagine that the professors eveluations would be heavily skewed towards the negative if they grade their students performance accurately. I'd expect, if grades were some how a normal distribution which they probably weren't, that the students doing poorly in the class would give the prof low marks and the students doing well would give the prof meaningful marks - some percentage of which would be negative.
- physcab 17y ago
  It's funny you bring up that anecdote about tenure because I had several professors tell me that exact same thing. Except in my scenario, I had brought forward allegations of cheating and the full professors were the ones to get behind my cause while the up-for-tenure ones (generally) looked the other way.
- DrSprout 17y ago
  Student evaluations are there to determine how effective the professor is at teaching. Only talking to the students the professor succeeded at teaching gives you a completely skewed and overly rosy perspective. Also it may surprise you that some people have such poor self-esteem that they will in fact take on blame themselves for their failings, even when an objective analysis might show that another professor could have made that student succeed. Conversely, a high performer might falsely believe that their success occurred in spite of the professor's incompetence, when the professors actions were a key part of the student's success.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    Student evaluations may be there to determine that, but they don't do an effective job. If you make the class difficult, students will hate you. If you are easy, they like you. There are a few other tricks you can do to get better evaluations: sympathy, good looks, and jokes. It doesn't matter if they learn more in your class than they would elsewhere, since we don't measure learning. If we really wanted to determine how effective the professor is, we would standardize exams and compare student performance across sections. We don't do this, probably because we don't really want to know the results.
chaosmachine 17y ago
I have a theory about the second half of that graph. http://imgur.com/nmEsW.png http://imgur.com/nmEsW.png I could be wrong, but surely home computer access plays a role in evening the playing field and raising the bar.
timtadh 17y ago
The most important line in the paper: "As a rough rule of thumb, the average GPA of a school today can be estimated by the rejection percentage of its applicant pool: GPA = 2.8 + Rejection Percentage /200 + (if the school is private add 0.2)" Interesting the more students a school rejects the higher its GPA seems to be. To say it another way, the more selective an institution is the higher the GPAs. ie. If you get smarter students, they tend to have higher GPAs. Example my econ professor has been looking at the actual distribution of performance in his class. He does not find a bell curve. Additionally he asserts there is no reason to expect a bell curve in a college course, as students tend take courses they are both interested in, and good at. The consequence, since you don't have an even distribution of stupid students to smart students, you won't have an even distribution of grades.
- goodside 17y ago
  The problem (or at least the obvious problem) is not that some schools have higher GPAs than other schools, but that average GPA has been increasing over time at a rate that cannot plausibly be explained by improvements in performance.
  - DrSprout 17y ago
    It depends on enrollment at the institutions in questions. If overall enrollment has not increased in step with population, then it makes sense that the quality of the students at the most selective schools has increased.
- oiuytfgvbhjnk 17y ago
  So all the students in his class are above the average for the class? That does explain quite a lot about economics!
- physcab 17y ago
  Well, I think you have to define what you mean by "college course". From past experiences, core college courses seem to have bell curves because everyone has to take them and not everyone will be good at them. Graduate core college courses have less of a bell curve because the students tend to be smarter and more motivated, but there are still those who do poorly. I would say, Graduate College Courses in Your Major are the ones that resemble a homogeneous distribution.
jleyank 17y ago
This is NOT a recent complaint. I went to college '74-'78, and they raised Dean's List from 3.2 to 3.4 in 1978 to reflect grade inflation...

20 points by ajdecon 17y ago

I teach at a public institution of higher learning. Over the past 30 years funding per student has declined. This causes a shift in perception. Society is no longer my client as a result of this shift in funding. My clients are the students and the students want to pass. This pressure to pass people is especially present in adjuncts and the use of adjuncts has dramatically increased.

bokonist 17y ago
Over the past 30 years funding per student has declined Source? According to this paper: "From 1970 to the present, state support for higher education has generally kept pace with both enrollment growth and inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index." http://www.sheeo.org/about/paulpres/Baruch%20College.pdf http://www.sheeo.org/about/paulpres/Baruch%20College.pdf
- yequalsx 17y ago
  Your source is hardly a valid one. It gives statistics but does not cite the source of the statistics. The paper you cited contains statements like this: "Increases in net tuition have significantly, but not completely replaced the decline in state support per student from 2001 to 2005. In 2001 total revenue per FTE was $10,100 in 2005 dollars, essentially an all time high. It dropped 8.8% to $9,212 by 2005. While this is a material decrease from the high point in 2001, it is roughly the level of funding available in the early 1990s. " The author thinks that since the funding per FTE student in 2005 is roughly the same as in the early 90's there has been no decline. This is an astoundingly bad conclusion. There is a thing called inflation. There is no reason to believe that since $9,000 per student was spent in the early 90s then this same amount ought to be adequate in 2005. The author also writes: "This amounted to about $10,000 per FTE student in financial aid, half grants and half loans and work study." See, he counts as part of his funding per student debt that the student acquires in order to attend school. When a student acquires debt to pay for his/her tuition then this can't be counted as part of government funding for higher education. The only part of this debt that can be counted is the reduced cost in interest payments due to any federal guarantees of such loans. In another place the author writes: "The State Higher Education Finance study, done annually by SHEEO, shows “net tuition” (tuition revenues less waivers and student aid from state and institutional sources) has grown from 22% of total expenditures in 1981, to 26% in 1991, to 37% in 2005. This is a worrisome trend. " Later the author writes: "Increases in net tuition have significantly, but not completely replaced the decline in state support per student from 2001 to 2005. " It's a bad paper and a bad source of information.
  - bokonist 17y ago
    So what is your source? The author is controlling for inflation, that's why he says, in 2005 dollars, meaning inflation adjusted dollars. I don't think it's a particular good piece, since he doesn't cite the raw sources, which is what I'd want to look at. But it's enough to question your original statement that inflation adjusted, per student state funding of education has decreased over the past thirty years. Do you have a better source? I do agree that net tuition has increased. But that's because the universities have allowed costs to increase at a much greater rate than inflation. The solution is to control costs, not to complain about under funding.
    - yequalsx 17y ago
      The author of the paper you cited explains that funding per student has declined from 2001 to 2005. He says that in 2000 funding was at an all time high. This is so because of the Clinton presidency and the economic boom. Sorry, I didn't read the part of the 2005 dollars. I suspected but didn't find it in the paper. I retract my paragraph that this relates to.
      - bokonist 17y ago
        You originally stated that, "Over the past 30 years funding per student has declined". What is your evidence for this? The paper I cited states that funding had no general trend over the time period, although with ups and downs based on the economy (for instance it declined from 2001 to 2005).
- pinko 17y ago
  You're missing the point. Tuition increases have outpaced inflation. The portion of college tuition that is privately funded vs. publicly funded has increased considerably. The author of the paper you link acknowledges this but justifies it by reasoning, "Most college and university expense is to pay well-educated people, whose incomes in the general economy have grown quite a bit faster than the CPI". If you accept the premise that higher education isn't really meant for working-class people, then there's no problem. Bully for you.
  - yequalsx 17y ago
    The reason for the increase in tuition over inflation is because of the decrease in funding per student by the government. The gap that tuition is trying to overcome is twofold. It seeks to overcome inflationary adjustments and adjustments to the decrease in funding per student. Higher education should not be free but should not be an undue burden on students. It's in society's long term interest to make higher education affordable. Your last paragraph is not justified by anything that I have written.
    - pinko 17y ago
      Yes, yequalsx, I agree with you completely! Check the thread lineage -- I was responding to bokonist's comment, not yours. (Admittedly snarkily, but that kind of revisionist crap annoys me.)
yequalsx 17y ago
The paper below talks about the funding decrease at public institutions. This coupled with the increase in adjunct labor is partly responsible for the rise in grades. http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/FFP0410S.pdf http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/FFP0410S.pdf

yummyfajitas 17y ago

Good to have statistics to back up my anecdotal observations. My hypothesis about the cause: students complain more than they used to, and professors cater to them. Student evaluations amplify this: the common formula is "2 points easiness, 2 points sympathy, 1 point good looks." (Evaluations are out of 5 points.) I received the following complaint this semester: "Linear algebra is supposed to be an easy A! But people are failing!" Linear algebra is the first class where you do proofs and see abstractions like vector spaces. It's meant to be a weed-out course. Some profs remove all the proofs and just teach you to multiply matrices, which is indeed an easy A. Interesting fact: there was a much bigger spike in grade inflation during the Vietnam war. Professors graded more easily at that time to allow students to remain in college and escape the draft.

yesimahuman 17y ago
I don't know how I feel about this. Many of the students probably took Linear Algebra because they believed it would be a way to satisfy their electives without messing up their grades and thus their future. They were thinking about other things than your class. Also, you don't really know anything about your students and what path they might be on. For example, I'm taking an elementary level class right now because it's easy and I have one more requirement left and I am graduating this semester and have a startup on my mind. University is incredibly valuable but the idea that it's the only thing in a student's life is just not true anymore (if it ever was). Even with amazing grades you will lose out to those with experience. I'm not saying these classes are worthless, and I value highly the things I've learned that I wouldn't have otherwise. I just don't know what the solution is. I feel like society has destroyed our students' ability to make university their life. Trying to force the students to dedicate their lives to your elective class is just not realistic and you are focusing on the wrong group.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  If you want a certification without knowledge, go to the University of Phoenix. It's completely unreasonable to expect one of the most fundamental math courses (taught at a top 5 applied math school) to be an easy A. Particularly when the students are business, econ, CS and physical science majors, some of whom plan to work on a trading desk. A specific complaint: I showed how to use linear algebra to construct synthetic derivatives (e.g., build a bull spread or iron condor from puts and calls). One of the business majors complained to me that it wasn't in the book and was too hard.

pw0ncakes 17y ago

This also has a lot to do with the watering down and "subjectivization" (for lack of a better word) of the humanities. Even at Harvard, which is notorious for grade inflation, math and science courses still give Bs and Cs for middling work (I know some very intelligent people who've received Cs in physics and chemistry courses there). The inflation is mostly in the humanities. Also flagrant is the bifurcation of the economics major. There's a "serious economics" track for those who want to go to grad school, involving quant courses and math up to real analysis, and a watered-down/easy-A economics track for the mediocrities who want to be investment bankers.

yummyfajitas 17y ago
There's a "serious economics" track for those who want to go to grad school, involving quant courses and math up to real analysis, and a watered-down/easy-A economics track for the mediocrities who want to be investment bankers. Fun fact: the I-banks don't even look at students who did the watered-down track.
- pw0ncakes 17y ago
  False. It's not like people put "watered-down track" on their resume, and most investment banks don't ask for transcripts until after employment (as verification; they fire you if you don't have one, but this is extremely rare). Investment banks don't care about intelligence so much as the ability to go through hoops, follow orders, and game the system. In fact, if you look at their preferences as far as analysts go, intelligence seems to be selected against.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    Most students list difficult courses on their resume. They also ask tricky brain teasers on the first phone screen. It's not that hard to weed out the dumb ones. Students on the watered down track will never get into the front office. I've gone on IB interviews myself, and I've spoken to students who've done the same. They do focus on conformity and big company culture (I was definitely a bad fit at Goldman), but they also aim for a great deal of intelligence. I think you are basing your opinion more on politics and tribal identity than on facts.

csmeder 17y ago

Why did you start the graph at 2.6? I understand you want to prove your point, but please don't lie with graphs.

sp332 17y ago
Because otherwise the graph would be several thousand pixels tall?
- csmeder 17y ago
  No, you could keep the graphs just as tall. However, it would show that this trend is smaller than you are currently making it appear.

tseabrooks 17y ago

When I was a grad student, 2 years ago, I was the teaching assistant for Operating Systems. I was responsible for all the grading in the class and the professor told me to give everyone A's no matter what on the assignments and quizzes. Most of the students had little to no understanding of the material. The professor said he was up for tenure that year and he was afraid that if we handed out bad grades the students poor evaluations of him would keep him from getting tenure. I wonder if universities put to much stock in the opinions of the students. I'd imagine that the professors eveluations would be heavily skewed towards the negative if they grade their students performance accurately. I'd expect, if grades were some how a normal distribution which they probably weren't, that the students doing poorly in the class would give the prof low marks and the students doing well would give the prof meaningful marks - some percentage of which would be negative.

physcab 17y ago
It's funny you bring up that anecdote about tenure because I had several professors tell me that exact same thing. Except in my scenario, I had brought forward allegations of cheating and the full professors were the ones to get behind my cause while the up-for-tenure ones (generally) looked the other way.
DrSprout 17y ago
Student evaluations are there to determine how effective the professor is at teaching. Only talking to the students the professor succeeded at teaching gives you a completely skewed and overly rosy perspective. Also it may surprise you that some people have such poor self-esteem that they will in fact take on blame themselves for their failings, even when an objective analysis might show that another professor could have made that student succeed. Conversely, a high performer might falsely believe that their success occurred in spite of the professor's incompetence, when the professors actions were a key part of the student's success.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  Student evaluations may be there to determine that, but they don't do an effective job. If you make the class difficult, students will hate you. If you are easy, they like you. There are a few other tricks you can do to get better evaluations: sympathy, good looks, and jokes. It doesn't matter if they learn more in your class than they would elsewhere, since we don't measure learning. If we really wanted to determine how effective the professor is, we would standardize exams and compare student performance across sections. We don't do this, probably because we don't really want to know the results.

chaosmachine 17y ago

I have a theory about the second half of that graph. http://imgur.com/nmEsW.png http://imgur.com/nmEsW.png I could be wrong, but surely home computer access plays a role in evening the playing field and raising the bar.

timtadh 17y ago

The most important line in the paper: "As a rough rule of thumb, the average GPA of a school today can be estimated by the rejection percentage of its applicant pool: GPA = 2.8 + Rejection Percentage /200 + (if the school is private add 0.2)" Interesting the more students a school rejects the higher its GPA seems to be. To say it another way, the more selective an institution is the higher the GPAs. ie. If you get smarter students, they tend to have higher GPAs. Example my econ professor has been looking at the actual distribution of performance in his class. He does not find a bell curve. Additionally he asserts there is no reason to expect a bell curve in a college course, as students tend take courses they are both interested in, and good at. The consequence, since you don't have an even distribution of stupid students to smart students, you won't have an even distribution of grades.

goodside 17y ago
The problem (or at least the obvious problem) is not that some schools have higher GPAs than other schools, but that average GPA has been increasing over time at a rate that cannot plausibly be explained by improvements in performance.
- DrSprout 17y ago
  It depends on enrollment at the institutions in questions. If overall enrollment has not increased in step with population, then it makes sense that the quality of the students at the most selective schools has increased.
oiuytfgvbhjnk 17y ago
So all the students in his class are above the average for the class? That does explain quite a lot about economics!
physcab 17y ago
Well, I think you have to define what you mean by "college course". From past experiences, core college courses seem to have bell curves because everyone has to take them and not everyone will be good at them. Graduate core college courses have less of a bell curve because the students tend to be smarter and more motivated, but there are still those who do poorly. I would say, Graduate College Courses in Your Major are the ones that resemble a homogeneous distribution.

jleyank 17y ago

This is NOT a recent complaint. I went to college '74-'78, and they raised Dean's List from 3.2 to 3.4 in 1978 to reflect grade inflation...