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One problem that has attracted considerable attention
lately is something called grade inflation
-- in
essence, our colleges and universities are giving more A's
than they should.
At Harvard, for instance, nearly half of all grades given are A's, and more than 90 percent of the students receive some sort of honor distinctions. In Colorado, former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown has raised the issue in this forum and others.
Brown, now the president of the University of Northern
Colorado in Greeley, presented good evidence that the
problem is real. He cited one study: In 1969, 7 percent
of all students received grades of A-minus or higher. By
1993, the proportion had risen to 26 percent. Grades of C
or below moved from 25 percent in 1969 to 9 percent in
1993.
So a straight-A student today might not be of the caliber of the straight-A student of yesteryear.
But what do grades really indicate? In general, it's something like A is for excellent work, B is for above-average, C is average, D is passing, and F means you get to do it again.
That looks like a reasonable way to express a student's performance until you consider that many colleges require students to maintain at least a C average.
If a D means passing, then isn't it enough to pass all your classes?
If a C means average, then it follows that some students are going to be above average and some below. And those who are below, even if they're doing passable work, will be eliminated if the college requires a C average for continued enrollment.
Before we start worrying about what all those A's really
mean, we should ask the colleges what a D means. If it
means passing,
then a D average should be enough to
keep you in school.
With the C requirement, then the C, rather than the D,
is the just getting by
grade. This pushes the scale
upward, and a college could eliminate this pressure by
allowing students to stay in school so long as they're
passing
-- that is, getting at least a D in every
class.
But the problems with letter grades go beyond that. In some cases, they're totally inappropriate.
Recall your grade-school adventures with the multiplication table. You either know it or you don't. There can't a A where you know that 9x7=63, and a B if you're within the range 61-65, a C for 57-71, etc.
Another problem with letter grades is determining how to assign them. During my school days, there were two major systems: percentages and the curve.
On the percentage system, if your score was 91 to 100 percent, you got an A (some teachers started the A at 93), 81 to 90 was a B, etc. That seems fair, but it also means that if the teacher is doing a good job of conveying the material and the students are attentive, then they can all get A's. Is that so bad?
On the curve, the scores were plotted on a standard distribution. The top 7 percent of students got A's, the bottom 7 got F's, etc. So even if you were doing good work with a 91 average, you could fail the class if you were in a classroom with geniuses. Conversely, if your classmates were dullards, you might get an A with a 58 average.
The preceding examples presume that a teacher can assign meaningful scores to student work. It may not be easy. About a decade ago, I taught a computer assembly-language class for the local community college.
Some grades were simple to assign. A program that wouldn't assemble, link and run was an automatic F, no matter how hard the student worked on it -- effort is a wonderful thing, but it should not be confused with accomplishment, and out here in the real world, you don't care how hard I worked on a column if it's incomprehensible.
But if a student's programs worked, and his source code indicated that he understood what he was doing, should he get an A? Or, since that was what was expected, merely a C, with the A reserved for elegant and creative solutions to programming challenges?
My view was that this was like most other writing classes, even if the writing was for machines rather than people. You can teach technique, not inspiration, and students should be graded on what you can teach. That, however, means that the merely solid student gets the same A as the brilliant student who finds interesting new approaches.
Did that make me a participant in the grade-inflation process? Perhaps so, but I don't feel guilty about it.
Beyond that, the major question on grade-inflation remains to be addressed: What difference does it make? In the 28 years since I dropped out of college for the second time, no one has ever asked to see a transcript, or even inquired as to my GPA.
Bill Gates, the richest man on earth, is a college drop-out. George Walker Bush is now a man of many accomplishments, and he was a C student. So, before we get too excited about grade-inflation, let's find out first whether grades are worth caring about.
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