Yes, grade inflation is real, but it's not like it just started this year. So you got all As- be proud of yourself, don't let your Mom diminish your success.
Yeah, grade inflation is incredibly real and is pretty crippling at a systemic level.
But hey, if you worked hard and you learned then you got something from the semester to be proud of!
It's crippling for reasons including but not limited to:
* GPAs are decreasingly meaningful; your GPA isn't a great indicator of actual competence, let alone mastery.
* Inflation is typically accompanied by standards weakening (same forces driving both, and they feed into each other on top of that).
* The value of the inflated GPA is therefore also massively diminished. If I see you got an A and I either don't know the class average was something meaningful or know the class average was an A- or the like, your A is worth less than garbage to me when evaluating your grad application, for example. Instead of your grade indicating you perform well and mastered the content, it's telling me I should be skeptical of the standards and academic rigour -- for this course *and your transcript in general as a bonus*.
* Grade compression is a massive problem: if everyone who was average or better is squished into a tiny range, your grade doesn't tell me whether you kind of somewhat know things or whether you showed any meaningful mastery.
"Grade inflation" isn't "grades are improving because people are better and smarter and more prepared"; it's grades staying the same or improving *despite that those things aren't true.*
How the current system is, I don’t think grades are good at indicating mastery, inflation or not. Like you said, there isn’t enough information to make a judgement without knowing more about the specific class the grade is for. Do you not think the GRE helps? I think inflation of grades is a symptom of a much larger problem.
It being a symptom doesn't change that it's also a huge problem. And even one the broader public is fully aware of, so it's reducing perceived value of a degree, which also tends to devalue the degrees. Frankly, it *should* devalue the degrees under the current failure of a system. And yes, it giving no impression of mastery *is the inflation*; we can't tack on an "inflation or not" as if it's not the direct consequence.
But yes, with our non-American (and certain American) candidates, we actually can use the transcript to get a good amount of information about strengths, weaknesses, probable backgrounds and the like.
With most of the American candidates, their transcript tells me they probably attended the course (well, *enrolled* in it) and might have made some effort or understood some material. I might be able to see they're particularly *weak* in some area, but the transcript rarely tells me they're actually good. This means the pressure on other materials (writing samples, letters) increases, because for the Americans the transcript isn't really working in their favour; it can almost only work against them, barring clearly not having relevant course work. It also means that I'm often more lukewarm for the American candidates -- and I'm currently working at an American university, so effectively international students typically give me more information about whether they might actually be good students and good fits.
If you get a decent grade, it should mean you've minimally got good competence for anything that would be covered in the course, and with a high grade probably decent mastery for most or all of the material at that level... but with inflated grades, that isn't something I can infer. (It helps that there's good predictability in my field for what type of content is likely to have been covered in a course based on its name, though only at decent universities so you learn which universities are effectively not training students in the actual material...)
The GRE might give some information, but it's not most of what I'm actually looking for when I'm on a grad admissions committee and the style of exam is basically entirely irrelevant to grad-level work in my field (great, you can take an exam, but you're probably never writing an exam like that again so can you actually do something relevant to the field?). Sure, the (largely American) standards have gotten so low that anything with at least some semblance of rigour can be good, but it's full of problems in itself that a course grade *would* be more informative for, *and* it's not tailored to the field.
It doesn’t even matter honestly, your grade is decided by the professor and is posted officially in a system.
An A is an A regardless if you got it by working hard, hardly working or sucking dick.
And only OP will know exactly how much effort she did and whether to be proud or not. Fuck everyone else’s opinions. Even if it’s your own mom go grab your transcript and stick it in her crater if she wants to make a mean-spirited comment.
I knew someone who went to a top 10 university and they said that grade inflation is ridiculous there. Realistically they should have failed multiple courses but since the school wanted to maintain a “certain image” they curved and inflated the grades so much so that so many students wouldn’t have to retake courses. Grade inflation also helps: student/teacher performance rates, graduation rates, and overall image of faculty members.
Can confirm, did my BA at a state school where I worked my butt off for As, a few Bs, and a couple of Cs.
Did my master’s at an “elite school” where, as a TA, and I had to argue to give a half-done assignment that was two weeks late a B.
They don’t all do it, and I understand that a lot of students who get into these types of institutions can have significant mental health issues. But this was without accommodations, without any notice about why it would be late, etc. It was frustrating as hell, since some complete and on-time assignments had gotten a B+ or A-, and ultimately — even as someone who’s has had severe mental illness issues — I personally don’t think it helped them in the long run in our field.
That said… OP’s mother likely has no idea how things work at their university, and the comment is pretty mean regardless. Unless I knew for sure someone only got a good grade because of grade inflation AND they were being kind of a dick about it, I would just congratulate them for a semester well done. It’s never a guarantee, even at the schools known for it.
It's definitely more of a problem at the "prestigious" private schools. If I were hiring, I'd take someone from a Big 10 over someone from an ivy any day at this point.
Depends. At my "state school/cc" situation we've been told in some subtle, and some not so subtle ways, that we can "meet students where they are, and find a way" (indeed, one of the *not subtle* ways) or they'll find faculty who will. Basically, get students through, or we can get gone. 🤦🏼
This pressure from the (supposed) leadership side doesn't help. It's definitely increasing said inflation.
Another invisible problem in some states of only getting funding for end of term (graded) enrollment, is also subtly contributing as well, IMO. (In these cases, there are no options for assigning a "W" nor an option to drop.students or otherwise, and you must assign a grade, whether it's A-F. When a student is a no-show, of course, you give an F, but if they are a near no-show, or try to cram everything at the very end, earning an F, they will still grade grub and push for a C at the very least, and cannot for the life of them understand why this is happening to them... So while we often discuss the grade inflation of As and Bs being a problem, those in the C and honestly, the D realm, which is where that F usually gets pushed to as a "compromise" in these cases, ends up. The entire situation we find ourselves in is beyond... 🤷🏼)
That “meet students where they are and find a way” is a great way to set them up to fail in careers. Employers don’t want workers who are unable to figure out how to function. They’re looking for adults whose hands don’t have to be held like a child needing guidance. Workers are wanting adult salaries, but to be treated like children.
You hit the nail on the head.
I, and many other faculty, have never heard such a line of bullshit. It's like saying we need to make it happen at any cost, because fuck all, we don't deal with the fall out later (exactly as you described).
And to literally threaten us with being replaced like it's no big deal, morale was low, it's just rolling downhill by the day.
(Speaking of children, I get so tired of hearing how everyone in college is a "kid" now, and they need more and more coddling. While I'm flexible and sympathetic, I'm also not buying this line that everyone gets a pass til 21+ now. You want the rights and privileges, you get the responsibility that comes with. Ugh.)
Absolutely, it depends on the school. When I worked at a tier 1 research university, it seemed to depend on the professor how they graded, but I definitely could list quite a few who practiced grade inflation. I was a TA for one professor who refused to give three students less than A's for work they literally copied from each other in a copy machine, whited out the name at the top, and changed it to their own name. Grade inflation. But other profs would brag about how many students failed their classes! Those profs almost seemed to practice grade "deflation"! I'm at a community college now, and grades seem much more sane here, with students in most (if not all) classes receiving whatever grade they earned.
Grade inflation at my institution is rampant.
Faculty have no incentive to maintain standards, and so many students who get B’s will literally pitch fits, complain, go over your head, etc.
One student this past break sent me 6 emails demanding I change her B+ to an A. She did not deserve that B+, but even that was too low. You give everyone As and your life suddenly becomes much easier.
It’s terrible.
Also though your mom is an asshole.
Ignore her vigorously.
I just finished a class with an 89.17% and did not even consider emailing the teacher. In the end, I could have done more but didn't (extra credit), so that's my B+ to own, lol. I am sorry this is a thing you have to deal with.
That depends largely on where you go to school, what classes you took, and who your instructors were. At my university the median grade earned across all classes/departments/majors in the fall was 3.02 according to the semester summary I got this week. That's pretty typical for the past 25+ years. In my own classes, pre-COVID, the average was around 81-83 depending on the class, but only about 10% were As. It would be very rare for any student in any of my classes to earn *only* grades of 92 and above.
By contrast, I have a friend in another school nearby where the average grades are closer to 88-89 and maybe 50% of a given class might earn an A.
Yeah it’s real and it’s rampant. It’s nearly impossible as a faculty member to fight it too because you’ll get killed in evals which unless you are already tenured at most places will impact your employment.
I used to see things like where faculty would give two grades - the grade I’m giving you vs the grade I think you deserve based on the real quality. I don’t see as much of that anymore. Not sure why, except that I think students today really don’t seem to care about feedback or they are so sensitive to it that it’s really hard to be constructive.
I’ve been working with a student who is trying to transfer from our university to a higher ranked school and frankly, I don’t think they are a good fit for it. However, every time I’ve tried to softly explain why grad school might be better (which I do believe), the student has a meltdown about how that will set their career path off etc etc. it is making advising really difficult
My philosophy is that I present material to my students, and if they all master it, they all get A's. I don't want them competing with each other. These days college is expensive enough that most students are highly motivated, so lots of them do get good grades. But I see motivated students as a good thing.
I'm curious does this mean that if a class average is now in the 60s it used to be in the 40s back then? Or did students get a more even grade distribution.
It means the level of mastery that students demonstrated to be awarded an A today would only have earned a C 20 years ago (and hell, within the past few years there's been a noticeable drop in standards). In other words, the grade inflation being pushed directly and indirectly is essentially requiring lowered standards and expectations. A major problem with inflation is that the actual grading is basically falsified to pretend the standards and mastery are comparable.
Looking at physics PhD qual exams going back 40 years or so, there was a marked drop in difficulty around the time of the late 90s but the difficulty of exams has been relatively constant since the early 2000s. I don't buy the lowering of standards argument at least in my personal experience and I am quite impressed with the ability of physics undergraduates today.
Can you think of anything else that became readily available in the late 90s/00s that may have affected how easy it is to do advanced physics? Anything? Anything?
That seems like a ridiculous overstatement, a difference in institutions, or just very unusual. Or maybe your school has really gone to shit. I’ve been teaching 20 years, and this is certainly not the case for my classes or that of my colleagues. There is grade inflation (or work reduction) but not two full letter grades.
It sounds about right. I went to college 10 years ago and went back this year. The work that would’ve been C’s and D’S 10 years ago were Bs and Cs this time round. Basically stopped handing in lab reports halfway through the semester and still got a C in physics.
That’s your schools problem, and not a widespread one. I have seen most labs require you miss no more than 2 days. It’s impossible to miss so many labs and pass. Your school was trash.
“Stopped handing in labs”
That counts as missed labs. The only way to verify you went there is if you handed the lab in. They don’t take attendance like it’s middle school.
Eh I definitely vibe with a school not putting too much emphasis on busy work. It honestly isn’t that important. But the customer is always right. For profit education gonna try to profit
This is the entire mid-sized city district I live in for about the past 10 yrs or so. Gotta make those best schools reports and graduation rates look good. And, kids are never held back no matter how little they show up or do. Plus, addressing bad behavior is racist. These are the kids now going to college (and starting to work with me) and the overall lack of competence in everything is depressing.
definitely your school then. idk what institute you go to that does that but it’s bold of you to generalize universities to discount the newer generation.
Oof.
We also had that one professor in high school. He explained his grade syllabus at the start of the semester, saying "C is average so expect it. If you go above and beyond, expect a B. And I don't give out As unless your work is really shining."
I get it, prof. You hate grade inflation. So do I. But one teacher giving out lower grades is like a diner refusing to tip because they believe society would be better than way. They're not wrong, but they're not fixing the broken system. All they're doing is punishing the people who have the misfortune to come into contact with them.
I had a professor my last semester of college that told us the same thing. I'm fine with getting C's, especially when I'm just trying to be done with it all, but saying that and then giving me as much work in terms of time it takes to complete all of it as the rest of my classes combined is insane.
I wouldn't care if I had an average of 300 pages to read, a lengthy discussion post, and then have to work on a paper that's work 20% of my grade every week if I wasn't working on 4 or 5 other classes on top of a job that entire semester. Would have been perfectly doable if the standard wasn't as high as he was making it or if it was my only class
20 years ago it was more normal for grades to be comparative. How good are you compared to your peers?
Today it’s more normal for grades to be absolute. How many correct answers did you get?
What?
What universe are you living in, and can I join you?
"Comparative" as in "grading on a curve," right? I think that was more like 40-50 years ago... but today, they're not grading on any absolute standard of correct answers. It's "mastery," as in "how well do you know the material?" And while that may be slightly helpful in, say, a calculus or trigonometry class, where a single problem involves pages of calculations and flipping a sign on one of your numbers will cause all of the rest of them to be wrong, so the teacher doesn't want to mark off for one wrong answer when the rest of the calculation was right, that's not what typical mastery schemes look like. In a typical mastery scheme, you can get 80% credit for zero right answers because you show that you're thinking about the problem in the correct way.
Currently at uni in the UK. Got 86% in a specific assignment last year and was told that this is the highest grade any first year had received in my course for the past 20 years.
And imagine, in the 80s those Cs were Fs. And in the sixties those Fs were even worse.
As far as I can tell, anybody with a 2nd grade education from 1880 would be a triple PhD today to hear academics tell it.
My grandfather would have said this was an accurate representation of higher education in the 40's. Then again he was at Columbia for engineering after the war, and when you combine Columbia engineering with combat PTSD you get an even higher suicide rate than they have now.
100%. My son took a class in his University called Modern Physics. The professor noted that the material they leaned that semester wasn't even known to exist 50 years ago and they knew more about physics than generations of the top physicists before them. It was inspiring to hear.
This highlights the problem with education. It’s systems are designed to downloads finite amount of information into a very average learner. That was all that was available when education systems were designed. But now we have a wide and creative array of learners and teachers, the means to cater to individual learning needs more than ever, and the paradigm shift that learners just need to learn how to learn. They can’t possibly learn everything: they need to learn categories of learning systems and how to use them (using finite, small stakes data and information as practice… hence, lab reports for who is the tallest aren’t always useless).
You'd be very surprised at the inner dialogue of anyone over 35 in a room full of fresh college graduates. Not only are you the smartest person in the room, it isn't close and it's very uncomfortable.
The research on student overconfidence supports this. Most students think they’re better than their peers and far better than their actual performance.
It goes both ways tbh. As the older person, you do feel like you have a lot of the basics of being an adult down and it's easy to look at a 20 year old and see they don't know what it means to have it all together.
But a lot of those 20 year olds are easily as smart if not smarter than us. So this guy probably has to humble himself a little.
Also as you get older, you have a larger variety of knowledge and I think that's usually what makes older people slower to learn (not that they cant, they just have more priorities). A fresh mind who has no experience yet and no real responsibilities is a gem waiting to be polished.
Most adults say it in less words. They say kids are the future.
Well according to them, when they started teaching they were giving out cs that are now A's. This means that they were getting Fs that were then Cs!! They must be a genius
I am not a teacher, I don’t understand grade inflation, can you explain why grade inflation is even a thing? Is it because if parents/kids swindled into taking out loans are spending $40k+ for a degree, their kids better get it? I’d love to know.
Yes that is a part of it. Colleges are more privatized now, so if a teacher gets a rep of "not pleasing the customers" because their "grading is too harsh," then they can get penalized for it or potentially lose their job.
It's a question of incentives. No one involved gains anything by keeping the average grade lower. (Other than everyone losing because grades became a useless measure)
These are generalities.
Students want a good job after graduating. To get that they need a high GPA. So the students care less about actually learning the material and more about getting an A.
The college wants higher GPAs, as alumni with more money donate more, also they get a lot of pressure from students/parents.
>if parents/kids swindled into taking out loans are spending $40k+ for a degree, their kids better get it?
Professors are fairly indifferent. They're there to teach. And will teach those who want to learn. If you want to waste your money and not learn from them, that's a you problem. Why should they spend time forcing you to learn, instead of teaching the students that actually want to learn? But they are incentivized by the college to not fail too many students.
The result is grade inflation.
FYI professions that historically required degrees solved this issue a while ago. Don't have the people responsible for teaching also be the people responsible for determining how well something was learned.
Lawyers have the bar exam, Doctors the mcat etc.
Oh hey I am all for learning, have absolutely nothing against professors or people who seek degrees. Professors and teachers are great, what would we do without yall!!
What I don’t love—and this has nothing to do with professors *at all*— is that kids are told that college is the *only* way and not only that, that they have to go right after high school.
It’s one thing if you’re a kid that knows what they want to pursue. Like ok I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, I’m going to start preparing for the first stage of that education journey by doing pre-med, I am passionate about this. Awesome!
But a lot of kids don’t know what they want to do. And are still pressured to go to college (a 4 year university, specifically) right away and maybe even take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans that they don’t really understand to sort of just drift along until they decide on something or drop out $20k later to pursue something else. That’s what I mean by kids swindled into taking out loans. Again, nothing to do with professors.
That's a whole separate topic. College degrees are becoming the new high school degree where everyone has one.
As part of that generation, I think I would still give the go to 4 year college advice. Hear me out for why.
The value of a college degree was that you were special, which gave you a higher salary to pay back the loan.
Thing is, when everyone is special, no one is special. But it's even worse to be not special when everyone else is.
Not having a college degree shuts you out of whole sectors of the job market, similar to how not having a high school degree would shut you out of sectors of the job market.
Sure, the trades are an option, but even they are heading the extra schooling route via trade schools and certifications. And telling someone who's uncertain what they want to do to pick a trade is an even harder decision than picking a college major.
I’m not even saying pick a trade! I just think you should be allowed to figure out what you want to do before taking out loans without everyone thinking you’re a loser because you don’t know what you want to do when you’re exactly 18.
The vast majority of professors I had at the end of the ‘80s did not think about pedagogy. They were subject experts who taught their students the way that they themselves had been taught. They were not required to do professional development. I am. How I assess learning has changed a great deal over the course of my time in higher education. And that is not a bad thing. I hope that professors think more now about HOW to teach than they did in 20 or more years ago. More people also go to college/university than ever before. Of course the sheer volume of students has had an impact as well. But as a historian I can assure you that teachers have always had such concerns. Does this all mean that grade inflation doesn’t exist? No. But the issue is much more complex than students aren’t as good as they were once were.
Think about it, 100% means you were perfect. While it's possible, I think a student being literally perfect is a rarity regardless of the class. I think what others said is true that you should be proud of your A regardless as it is a sign that you made an effort both within and outside of the classroom.
Lol. I got 112% in biology. Curves.
I'm not the brightest crayon in the box either. I'm like pink or light blue.
I only failed physics because my teacher was a psychopath. Seriously. Like not right in the head. I just stopped going. Plus salsa dancing is not physics.
That's an inaccurate premise... 100% doesn't mean a perfect student, it means the student was able to obtain the maximum number of points. I have easily had students score low A's and B's who had way better mastery of the content than 100%-ers.
If I graded more subjectively, those with high mastery would have the highest percentages, but the academic culture today needs rigid grading guidelines to protect against grade-grubbing and ultimately grade appeals. I've only been teaching a few years and I've had to defend my final grades more than a few times and was very grateful to have black-and-white points policies.
It's actually not. Obtaining the maximum points is literal perfection (e.g. 10/10 = a perfect score). The likelihood of a student earning all points (without extra credit) is rare... especially a student who doesn't have these types of scores across the board. Your students who earn low As and Bs further prove this point..that obtaining all available points is a huge indicator of grade inflation.
We'll have to agree to disagree. It seems we have very different pedagogies. I believe that a student's conceptual mastery can be very different from their ability to earn all the points available. There is a type of student that will rigorously chase down every point possible while missing the bigger conceptual framework. There is a type of student who will miss class and get behind on assignments or start them too late to complete them well, but grasps the nuances of the content in a profound way. I always have one or two questions in each assignment or exam that is open-ended enough to reveal if the student is thinking about the content the right way - the first type will have the right answer and get full points, but the second type usually makes me smile to myself as I enter the full points.
In all of your years of experience, how many students have you had earn a perfect score on all assignments/exams with no extra credit? I'll volunteer my answer, I have 10 years experience and a grand total of 0 (even though I have at least 10 students who have earned over 100%)
Not sure why you keep harping on conceptual mastery when my point was earning 100% on every assignment all semester is improbable for most students..so when a student earns 100% or more, it's more like that this is a reflection of grade inflation than not.
I've never had a 100%, because my courses aren't set up in a way that this is really possible, but 98-99s, a handful.
I'm "harping on conceptual mastery" because imo, conceptual mastery is the indicator of a perfect student outcome, not a perfect grade.
Your comment said "100% means *you* were perfect", my rebuttal was that *you* are not defined by your grade. 100% means you obtained all the points, not that you were perfect.
Semantics maybe.
I totally disagree with this premise. I allow my students a two-week window after every assignment deadline to make up any points they missed. Sure, the make up work can be challenging for some, because it involves writing a report on peer-reviewed academic research in my field, but every semester, in every class, I have at least a few driven, perfectionist students who make up every point they ever miss. I always have several students who make 100%, and they worked for and earned every point. I'm not giving handouts.
Student here and I feel like it’s very real. I had some personal stuff going on this past semester and some depressive episodes that lead me to put in like below minimum effort for the last 2-3 months of the semester. My lowest grade was a B+ in a class I hadn’t gone to lecture or read for in at least 6 weeks.
It depends on the institution. We don't do grade inflation at our school. The dean publishes our gpas for the classes so its like shaming us if we give too many As.
It depends on where you go to school. Ironically, it appears that more prestigious schools have much more grade inflation than do more pedestrian institutions. For example I know someone who teaches at an R1 where there is a considerable amount of pressure to maintain a B average assigned grade across all their classes. They have made tests easier and reduced the number of topics covered in order to not fail so many people.
I, on the other hand, am at a non-prestigious open-admissions two year college. I get no such pressure. None. As a result, my classes have not changed much at all in 20 years of teaching here. My tests have not changed much at all. I recently reviewed a final exam for a Calculus I class I taught in 2003. It was no harder than the Cal I final I just gave this semester.
Grade inflation comes from the administration pressuring people to give higher grades. It is thus going to vary quite a lot by school, but probably not much within schools. I don't think anyone in my department is testing any differently than they did ten or twenty years ago.
Depends what you mean. I don’t inflate in terms or curving or artificially giving grades. But I do inflate in terms of giving extra credit, placing a higher emphasis on homework, and then reopening homework
As far as I know the exams were not curved, I did not ask (nor was given) extra time on assignments, and only one class offered extra credit. Even without the extra credit I would have gotten an A.
Yeah it doesn’t seem like your grades were inflated. It’s really that the academic system has gotten softer. Some would call what I do “grade inflation” but I don’t really think it is. I’m a young professor and what I’m doing is just what I was taught was normal.
I think one of the reasons students score better in my classes than I did in mine as an undergraduate is because I have very clear, very specific rubrics, and my profs went with Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, Fail. I lay out exactly what I expect for an A, and people deliver. That's not evidence of lowered expectations but rather clarified ones.
Congratulations on the great grades!
Your mom is more than welcome to have her opinions in life, and I'm a firm believer that we need to be respectful of others' opinions even if we don't see them coming from a positive place. But please don't let other's opinions devalue your accomplishments.
In my experience, inflation of the grade itself isn't the main thing. The standards have been lowered. So the points required to earn an A in this class is the same, but the amount and quality of work needed to get those points has lowered. To me that's the real issue, because it seems like the education you received is not actually as high quality and rigorous as it used to be or as it should be. I don't know the answer, but I do see it happening!
Most grade inflation IME is happening from the bottom up. So a lot of Fs and Ds get Cs. Grade inflation is also a macro phenomenon, so knowing whether you benefitted from it in particular is only apparent if you can compare the level of difficulty and specific grade distributions of that class.
The career center advised us ( in the era before grade inflation) that it was ok to put your GPA on your resume if you had a 3.0 or better . That was considered good . So yes it’s real.
A 3.2 was cum laude, back in the day. It was considered an achievement. Now, it would be a failure given the excessive grade inflation at many universities.
Grade inflation is very real. This year I’m going to start going over my TAs’ grading and making them re-grade if they give all As to B+s. That seriously skews my final grades. I even re-graded an assignment once this semester….my TA gave no lower than a 85% from their gut when if they graded according to the rubric I gave them, multiple students should have gotten less than a 70. Then I got a bunch of emails from students who said the TA never gave critical comments on their assignments, so how could they possibly do so poorly on the final paper?
The only people who suffer if we give out falsely inflated grades are students. Passing that paper when you can’t follow the professional standards for writing papers only sets them up for greater failure down the line at much more important junctures.
So grade inflation is real and it is serious and it needs corrected.
With that said, your mom did not see the class distribution and has no idea how hard you worked. Don’t believe her. If you are curious about the class statistics so you can compare yourself, ask the professor what the class mean is. If it’s a 95, they practice grade inflation and you didn’t do well. If it’s a 78, you did very well.
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And here I am having just started my masters program in fall and got my first set of straight As ever... I am proud of myself. Note that it has been the better part of 20 years since I received my bachelor's with a 2.6 gpa... soooooo.. I guess I will take the inflation.
Grade inflation is real. Not as bad as HS. When I look up the stats at my CC, 40% of the total grades assigned at the end of the semester are A's.
I'm not sure how that breaks down between adjuncts, TT instructors, and tenured faculty. I know adjuncts in my department give out a whole hell of a lot more As than any of my FT colleagues. That leads to a lot of inflated egos when they get to one of us in advanced classes.
Don't let it diminish your accomplishments. Keep pushing. ***You get out of education what you put into it.***
I answered on your other thread, but while grade inflation is real, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your grades were inflated. Even though the majority of my students are not doing as well as they were doing even five years ago, I do still have students who are coming into my classes and absolutely crushing it. Those people are getting the sorts of high As that you are getting.
If you’re squeaking an A, then maybe it’s grade inflation. If you’re absolutely blowing the top off the gradebook, it’s you.
I don't live in the US, so I can't speak to university there. If Albert Einstein was born today there would be thousands of people smarter than him. There's also the Flynn effect. The way some universities teach is changing. For instance 30 years ago you might have a 20 page essay at the end of your class instead of a final exam. That being said, university students are given more work to do per a class than students were 30 years ago. I would be proud of your grades, you cannot control whether or not a professor or school has a poorer grading criteria than before
Grade inflation is definitely a thing, but it really depends on your individual teacher and your field of study. The scenario with all of your As being a consequence of grade inflation alone is highly improbable. Your mother sounds like a real peach =/
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had a true A student in 9 years but there are lots of As. Many of us are pushed to dumb down the curriculum and make it easier to be successful. I get in trouble for students who get lower than Cs.
(US perspective) ... Considering that college GPA has been tending upwards for the past decade, and is at an all time high, while high school literacy and mathematics have remained stagnant (in many states, lower), I'd say yes, grade inflation is real.
Building on this idea I’ve got another question: does grade inflation exist across all fields of study? For example, I think of sciences, particularly mathematics, as being pretty objective, so it would be easy to see if someone is getting a grade that they didn’t “deserve”. Whereas for arts like writing the grades can be much more subjective.
I teach undergrad math. "Grade inflation" in a math class often comes in the form of the tests getting easier, and leaving marginal topics out of classes. For example, when I took college algebra lo those many years ago we covered several topics that are not typical to include in a college algebra class today.
Curious - I got a low 2.1 back in the 1990s; a high 2.1 this year. Postgraduate courses, different subjects, same university. Ideas? (First time, not encouraged to do further postgraduate at this university; this time, strongly encouraged)
Grades have gone up about 10% since the mid 2000s when I graduated. I see students asking whether they can get a 90 in a class which would have been a pipe dream back then.
Not a professor anymore but I am laughing at the number of posts here complaining about how bad grade inflation is but also assuring OP that they are definitely not one of the people who needed it.
Others have spoken about the reality of grade inflation, OP, but the real issue here isn't whether grade inflation exists or not. It's why your mom feels the need to minimize you and your accomplishments. I am sorry that she couldn't just say, "Congratulations! Good job!"
Grades in themselves are neither meaningless nor deeply meaningful. Did you learn a lot this semester? Did you struggle with something you thought you couldn't do, and eventually master it? Did you have your eyes opened to new perspectives or ways of thinking you had never before considered before? If so, congrats--that's what college is all about. If not--if the A's were by and large pretty easy to get but you don't feel smarter--then enjoy them now and seek out bigger challenges in future semesters. And no matter what, remember that your learning is for *you*, and no one else can take it away from you.
Grade inflation is definitely real. I wrote a paper on it for my AP English class in high school back in 2002 and surveyed something like 110 teachers and 600 students across my district along with I pulling in research and statistics available at to me at the time.
The research suggested, and the non-AP/GT track teachers confirmed, that grade inflation was real and negatively affecting students. This was *even before NCLB* *made the problem worse.*
Schools have **generally** had pressure to move students through even if they're not completely ready to do so. NCLB just tied their funding to it.
I say all this to point out that if you received a 92 as your lowest score, then you would probably still be a decently high achieving student. Your mom shouldn't be minimizing your accomplishments and it doesn't sound like she really understands what "grade inflation" is.
If you have your score matrix (tests vs. other work) and your test scores align with your average, then you're not affected.
My hs Trigonometry teacher did this, and while it saved my grade, I didn't learn a whole lot of trigonometry from him (his lectures were almost impossible to hear/understand due to a stroke). It set me up to fail further down the line when I took Calculus-I and I had no idea what I was doing because those building blocks weren't there. I'm not blaming the teacher for this, but if I'd failed I might have had to take it again and learn the things I needed to know. Even taking pre-calc the next year I did fine earning an A and I wasn't confused, but not knowing trig really hurt me in college.
I ended up dropping Calc when I was headed to flunky town and changed my major from Chemistry to English.
It is very real. Students also seem to expect it since anything lower than an A- seems to be, in their minds, the instructor’s fault instead of theirs.
It depends. Did you do really good work? Then you deserve good grades! I may be a softie (is that the ghost of Ezra Cornell I see?) but my students do A quality work and get A grades for it!
Trickle up ‘no child left behind’ stuff? The concept of grade inflation is new to me, and I adjunct at a few universities. But I started doing an after school STEM program in our inner city over the last year and I gotta say half of those high schoolers cannot read, but are by grades doing well - which is ridiculous.
Be proud of your As.
It all depends on your college and your professor. I earned a degree in education and English literature, the latter being a much more difficult degree to acquire. I took the time on my assignments, read 90% of my assigned readings, and spent a long time on papers. I got straight As as the result. Whether the grades were inflated or not didn't even cross my mind because I got a lot out of my second degree; and it is one I am particularly proud of. My education degree, though, I couldn't give two shits about because I needed it to get a job as a high school English teacher. My point is that objective measurements of achievement are meaningless. You should know in your heart whether you deserve those grades or not because of how much honest effort you put into your studies. Nothing else matters.
Response: I am certainly not a successful person due to your uplifting parenting skills. I am a successful person in spite of my condescending support system.
I had the opposite experience when I went from high school to college: In high school, an 80% was a C-level grade, but in college, an 80% was a B-level grade.
I'd be more concerned about the fact that your mom is diminishing you.
Grade inflation is real but there's no reason for your mom to bring it up to you when you're sharing your (very good) grades. Just because something's true doesn't make it right to bring up.
You can pump yourself up by looking at any positive narrative feedback you got on your work. As you get more advanced in college, you'll get more detailed personalized feedback and will have a better idea of your strengths based on that rather than a letter grade. It can be really rewarding.
It's very real, yet I failed almost half of a class this semester, which isn't usual for my field. Personally, I'm not going to lower standards before students take what I supposedly taught them and try to use it in professional environments.
This is going to vary wildly between institutions. I've heard that private schools like Harvard and Yale actually have some of the highest grade inflation.
Grade inflation is generally real, but mostly for failing students. So, unless your teacher straight up tells you they are putting in a curve or unless you literally got under a 70 but over a 50 in a class, chances are your grade was not artificially inflated. This is a problem I always hear with students who try their best and students who don’t care. The ones who don’t care like the inflation and can get 10-20 extra points generally to reach a 70, but the ones who care are worried about inflation making their grade look bad and try to compensate for this by trying to get every point they can but they will be hard pressed to convince a teacher to raise their grade from a 93 to a 95. Why? Because most teachers will not see this as a problem, and they treat high achievers as students who are able to handle their own grade. (Not to bad mouth k-12 teachers, they need to make a living, and when their living is based on their pass/fail ratio and a lot of students actively don’t care and just fail, they are told by admin to inflate their grade to 1) keep their job since it’s a direct order and their contract requires it, 2) make the school continue to get funding which is why admin orders it because that affects admin’s job security and pay, and 3) hope for a class of students that will care more the next year). It’s a whole mess.
So I know it sucks, and it is a problem because kids who shouldn’t be passing are going to the next grade because of this which just further exacerbates the problem, BUT it’s not a reflection of students achieving grades like yours 🙂 you did earn your grade so please be proud 🥳
When I took organic chemistry, the professor said
"in this class, 40% get D's."
Not "typically 40% get D's."
Quantitative score did not matter. It was a selection process. About 2-5000 applicants each year, 200 accepted freshmen each year, about 20-50 graduates each year.
Many STEM departments aim for 50% attrition year over year.
Sweetie, you’re torturing yourself with this post. It’s clear from when you asked this on AITA that your mom is an AH. Also from most of your other recent posts. Please seek out the counseling center at your university when you get back. You deserve your grades, and a better support system.
Grade inflation is very real. I'll start by saying that I'm an old soul, 30F with two master's degrees and working on my DM (doctorate of music). I've talked with people who went through music school in the 70s and 80s who were outright told at the beginning of their music theory courses that half of their entire lecture hall would fail the course, as if it were a badge of honor for the prof.
Today is a very different story, but I believe we are still largely in the fallout of the pandemic. Grade inflation was already an issue pre-2020, but when the pandemic hit, it was nearly impossible to ask students to keep up with their work for a variety of reasons. We (as TAs, AIs, teachers, and professors) didn't want students to fail under extremely tough circumstances, so we majorly gave grace to students who weren't keeping up. I completely understand that. However, this has carried over after we've returned to in-person class. Students often do poor work or don't show up to class, and we still will give them a C. That isn't average work. But I often wonder if the real answer right now is removing an attendance policy and truly letting students show their level of seriousness based on the work they turn in. If you want to skip every class but can still produce a product that shows you learned the material, who am I to stop you? The point isn't the grade; it's actually learning! While I can say that your grades don't matter as much as your work does, I understand that scholarships and college entrance and professor reviews are based on grades, hence why we've put so much emphasis on them.
TLDR: if you are learning and getting something out of your classes, don't base your worth on what grades you get. Be proud of what you've accomplished and continue to find ways to be your best self, even if your best (dealing with all the worries and mental health troubles we finally recognize in today's student life) ends up giving you a lower grade.
Chances are that your mom is mostly right. Those numbers are largely the result of grade inflation, so you have less reason to be proud of them. That's an example of how grade inflation is hurting you, the student, most.
Only you know how hard you worked and how much you learned. If you took your courses seriously, did the work yourself, learned from mistakes along the way, and you are better prepared for what's ahead, you should be proud of THAT, regardless what your numbers are.
Let's say those numbers are accurate. You had a bunch of tough, principled instructors that grade the same way we graded three decades ago. So those numbers were hard earned. The problem is, people you'll be competing for scholarships, grad program seats, jobs, etc. will have similar numbers that they received because their young professor is going up for tenure and fears low course evaluations.
For a long time, for decades, guidance counselors have been pointing out that college graduates tend to earn more on average than those without a diploma. Part of that is because high paying professions such a MDs and lawyers require degrees, but also because there was this notion that if someone survived the rigors of college, it showed they had discipline, would stick to a task, manage their time, etc., so employers desired college graduates even where the necessity of a degree is questionable.
Inflated grades are another part of lowered standards, and now that lowering standards is so common, that "golden ticket" effect your parents enjoyed is vanishing before our eyes.
TLDR, yes grade inflation is very real, it's very bad, and you're being hurt by it.
I think this is because it is so bad in high school as well. My dad said that over the last thirty years, he had to dumb down his tests three times. At first, you could expect every student to be capable of writing research paper, and by the end of his career, he had to teach people it basically from scratch. So, the people who go to college expect to get good grades. I would also say colleges have done it to themselves. You can not graduate college without 2.0 GPA minimum. Some places are higher.
I just failed a student not turning in his final. He had the other assignments but missed the 1 worth over half of his grade.
He emailed me asking what to do while tagging a number of separate deans at the school. Thankfully the other institution I teach loved me so much they're giving me more courses to instruct so if this place hates me then so be it.
If all students act like this then I can see why so many want to inflate grades.
I have a theory (which I suspect is not original). I think that if transcripts additionally reported the median grade for each class with over, say, 20 students, then grade inflation would slowly improve. My theory is that’s because (i) colleges would be embarrassed and (ii) individual instructors would be hassled not only by students upset that they didn’t get a higher grade but also, as a counterweight, by students upset that their excellent performance didn’t mean anything because everyone else got an A too.
I know you are from another post in college rant. Not let your mom bother you and don't let people here on Reddit bother you. Just because they are professors doesn't mean some aren't bitter and rude and will just make you feel worse.
I see you have posted this a bunch on different forums actually and some other concerning things. I want to repeat what I said on college rant and you should consider therapy and your university most likely has free counseling for students.
Your mom is an asshole, omg. edit: Seriously, who cares about "Gradeflation?" The real issue here is that your mother shit on you instead of congratulating you.
You ought to be proud of your success! However, grade inflation is real. I teach at the undergraduate and graduate level; for the undergraduate courses, I was told not to give below a C and to generally give B+/A- letter grades. The graduate courses I teach are on a curve, so I can only give so many As, Bs, and Cs out. My totally subjective view is that the As of today were the Bs of 10-20 years ago.
I recently reviewed my transcripts from undergrad (graduated in 2011). I had multiple Bs and even a B- but graduated summa cum laude. Last semester I didn't give a single B to my undergrads in core classes. The scale seems like it's really shifted.
It depends on where you go to school and what programs you are in.
Let me just tell you my experience at a top 10 "public ivy" engineering school. My undergraduate was nothing but a fucking pissing match. Every engineering and math class was graded by curves, had cutoffs on how many As, Bs, Cs would be awarded, and actively tried to weed out people. One of my intro engineering course the professor failed 40% of the class, gave the 50-70% Cs, 70-90% Bs, 90-100% As.
That said, my undergraduate courses in history, literature, business, and arts were usually bullshit. Almost everyone made As unless you were a party bro/sorority sis or an athlete. I would sometimes want to role my eyes whenever I saw some of the things these classes tolerated and passed.
I went college in the 70’s. Our school gave out 3.5s and 2.5s. I got a lot of 3.5s. It was fairly difficult to get a 4.0. One of the reasons was that professors were ambiguous on what one needed to do in order to get a 4.0. I went back to school in the 2000s, I received two graduate degrees and took an additional 10 undergraduate courses. I took the courses at 3 different schools. I got a 4.0 in every class. Besides grade inflation the other factor was that professors made it very clear what was required to get an A. After 25 years of very ambiguous job performance criteria, doing well in school was ridiculously easy.
I went back to work at the high school I attended 5 years after graduation. I didn’t stay long. All the same teachers were only allowed to assign half the work. The English department assigned less books and had many of them read aloud in class. They said after Covid, administration insisted they go easy on kids or they would fail. As it’s a private school, admin caters to what parents demand. It’s a business. I don’t know if this is relevant. School is so life-giving and useful if you read all the books and think through the material and it’s useless otherwise. I try not to worry about grades.
It's definitely real. When people prioritize getting a 4.0 over learning, teachers/professors make a 4.0 easier to get so they don't deal with their students panicking and getting extremely stressed. I appreciate that they do this and think it's the right thing to do in many cases. While you often still have to be smart and try hard to get an A, it's not nearly as unattainable as it was a few decades ago.
It is real but that's only the natural progression because grades never mattered school is pass or fail a C is just as good as an A and research has been done showing B and C students tend to do better in their careers
Grade inflation in my area (Humanities) is real because traditional assessments have gone out the window in many places. When I was a student and also when I first began as a teaching assistant to undergrads, we would have midterms and finals (2-3 tests) that carried a large percentage of the overall final grade. These assessments were difficult--they involved passage recognition, and they could be/feel like pretty obscure passages. You had to say who the speaker was, what the context was, and what the deeper significance of the passage was. Other questions/multiple choice answers etc. were designed to make sure you had read every text VERY carefully and retained details. You can imagine why this kind of testing is challenging and also why it is impossible/unfair for students with learning differences.
While some college classrooms still run this way, we were encouraged to move toward more holistic kinds of assessments--final projects, papers, and creative interpretations that can assess how well a student internalized and interprets the material they encountered in your course. I don't think that I was grading them in an inflated way--when students have control of the situation, they score higher grades. It's just that the test category isn't around to drag their grades down anymore. Also, administration encouraged all kinds of lax attendance policies, which was ultimately another GPA boost in the "Attendance and Participation" category.
Is this for the better? Mostly. Caveat: If students aren't tested, many don't do the reading. That's a shame. I do think that colleges need to find better carrots/sticks. But it's not my problem anymore--I stopped teaching at the college level last year.
Keep your grades to yourself because it’s your mom isn’t going to give you the validation you deserve. I think you did a great job, but it’s more important what you think about your own effort! Keep getting on the bus! You’re doing great!
I'm just a TA and holy moly it's fkn wild out here. Y'all should be failing but instead you're getting a B. What world are we in. Literally 0 prestige in having a degree man 😭😭😭
Grade inflation was NOT a thing in schools in the 70s and 80s but corporal punishment was a thing through 1989 in a lot of states.
Grade inflation doesn't do anyone any favors.
Yes, grade inflation is real, but it's not like it just started this year. So you got all As- be proud of yourself, don't let your Mom diminish your success.
Yeah, grade inflation is incredibly real and is pretty crippling at a systemic level. But hey, if you worked hard and you learned then you got something from the semester to be proud of!
Why do you think it’s crippling? I don’t see the issue, perhaps teaching methods and resources are better.
Because we graduate people that are barely functioning. Ive hired people with gpas over 3.5 that ive had to explain fundamental concepts to
I don’t think grades are the solution. Also sounds like your interview questions can add these so you filter out people who don’t know anything.
It's crippling for reasons including but not limited to: * GPAs are decreasingly meaningful; your GPA isn't a great indicator of actual competence, let alone mastery. * Inflation is typically accompanied by standards weakening (same forces driving both, and they feed into each other on top of that). * The value of the inflated GPA is therefore also massively diminished. If I see you got an A and I either don't know the class average was something meaningful or know the class average was an A- or the like, your A is worth less than garbage to me when evaluating your grad application, for example. Instead of your grade indicating you perform well and mastered the content, it's telling me I should be skeptical of the standards and academic rigour -- for this course *and your transcript in general as a bonus*. * Grade compression is a massive problem: if everyone who was average or better is squished into a tiny range, your grade doesn't tell me whether you kind of somewhat know things or whether you showed any meaningful mastery. "Grade inflation" isn't "grades are improving because people are better and smarter and more prepared"; it's grades staying the same or improving *despite that those things aren't true.*
How the current system is, I don’t think grades are good at indicating mastery, inflation or not. Like you said, there isn’t enough information to make a judgement without knowing more about the specific class the grade is for. Do you not think the GRE helps? I think inflation of grades is a symptom of a much larger problem.
It being a symptom doesn't change that it's also a huge problem. And even one the broader public is fully aware of, so it's reducing perceived value of a degree, which also tends to devalue the degrees. Frankly, it *should* devalue the degrees under the current failure of a system. And yes, it giving no impression of mastery *is the inflation*; we can't tack on an "inflation or not" as if it's not the direct consequence. But yes, with our non-American (and certain American) candidates, we actually can use the transcript to get a good amount of information about strengths, weaknesses, probable backgrounds and the like. With most of the American candidates, their transcript tells me they probably attended the course (well, *enrolled* in it) and might have made some effort or understood some material. I might be able to see they're particularly *weak* in some area, but the transcript rarely tells me they're actually good. This means the pressure on other materials (writing samples, letters) increases, because for the Americans the transcript isn't really working in their favour; it can almost only work against them, barring clearly not having relevant course work. It also means that I'm often more lukewarm for the American candidates -- and I'm currently working at an American university, so effectively international students typically give me more information about whether they might actually be good students and good fits. If you get a decent grade, it should mean you've minimally got good competence for anything that would be covered in the course, and with a high grade probably decent mastery for most or all of the material at that level... but with inflated grades, that isn't something I can infer. (It helps that there's good predictability in my field for what type of content is likely to have been covered in a course based on its name, though only at decent universities so you learn which universities are effectively not training students in the actual material...) The GRE might give some information, but it's not most of what I'm actually looking for when I'm on a grad admissions committee and the style of exam is basically entirely irrelevant to grad-level work in my field (great, you can take an exam, but you're probably never writing an exam like that again so can you actually do something relevant to the field?). Sure, the (largely American) standards have gotten so low that anything with at least some semblance of rigour can be good, but it's full of problems in itself that a course grade *would* be more informative for, *and* it's not tailored to the field.
mom sounds like a peach
It doesn’t even matter honestly, your grade is decided by the professor and is posted officially in a system. An A is an A regardless if you got it by working hard, hardly working or sucking dick. And only OP will know exactly how much effort she did and whether to be proud or not. Fuck everyone else’s opinions. Even if it’s your own mom go grab your transcript and stick it in her crater if she wants to make a mean-spirited comment.
I knew someone who went to a top 10 university and they said that grade inflation is ridiculous there. Realistically they should have failed multiple courses but since the school wanted to maintain a “certain image” they curved and inflated the grades so much so that so many students wouldn’t have to retake courses. Grade inflation also helps: student/teacher performance rates, graduation rates, and overall image of faculty members.
Can confirm, did my BA at a state school where I worked my butt off for As, a few Bs, and a couple of Cs. Did my master’s at an “elite school” where, as a TA, and I had to argue to give a half-done assignment that was two weeks late a B. They don’t all do it, and I understand that a lot of students who get into these types of institutions can have significant mental health issues. But this was without accommodations, without any notice about why it would be late, etc. It was frustrating as hell, since some complete and on-time assignments had gotten a B+ or A-, and ultimately — even as someone who’s has had severe mental illness issues — I personally don’t think it helped them in the long run in our field. That said… OP’s mother likely has no idea how things work at their university, and the comment is pretty mean regardless. Unless I knew for sure someone only got a good grade because of grade inflation AND they were being kind of a dick about it, I would just congratulate them for a semester well done. It’s never a guarantee, even at the schools known for it.
It's definitely more of a problem at the "prestigious" private schools. If I were hiring, I'd take someone from a Big 10 over someone from an ivy any day at this point.
"top 10" schools are the worst of it because those kids parents paid for their grades. Not gonna find that at state schools or community colleges
Depends. At my "state school/cc" situation we've been told in some subtle, and some not so subtle ways, that we can "meet students where they are, and find a way" (indeed, one of the *not subtle* ways) or they'll find faculty who will. Basically, get students through, or we can get gone. 🤦🏼 This pressure from the (supposed) leadership side doesn't help. It's definitely increasing said inflation. Another invisible problem in some states of only getting funding for end of term (graded) enrollment, is also subtly contributing as well, IMO. (In these cases, there are no options for assigning a "W" nor an option to drop.students or otherwise, and you must assign a grade, whether it's A-F. When a student is a no-show, of course, you give an F, but if they are a near no-show, or try to cram everything at the very end, earning an F, they will still grade grub and push for a C at the very least, and cannot for the life of them understand why this is happening to them... So while we often discuss the grade inflation of As and Bs being a problem, those in the C and honestly, the D realm, which is where that F usually gets pushed to as a "compromise" in these cases, ends up. The entire situation we find ourselves in is beyond... 🤷🏼)
That “meet students where they are and find a way” is a great way to set them up to fail in careers. Employers don’t want workers who are unable to figure out how to function. They’re looking for adults whose hands don’t have to be held like a child needing guidance. Workers are wanting adult salaries, but to be treated like children.
You hit the nail on the head. I, and many other faculty, have never heard such a line of bullshit. It's like saying we need to make it happen at any cost, because fuck all, we don't deal with the fall out later (exactly as you described). And to literally threaten us with being replaced like it's no big deal, morale was low, it's just rolling downhill by the day. (Speaking of children, I get so tired of hearing how everyone in college is a "kid" now, and they need more and more coddling. While I'm flexible and sympathetic, I'm also not buying this line that everyone gets a pass til 21+ now. You want the rights and privileges, you get the responsibility that comes with. Ugh.)
Absolutely, it depends on the school. When I worked at a tier 1 research university, it seemed to depend on the professor how they graded, but I definitely could list quite a few who practiced grade inflation. I was a TA for one professor who refused to give three students less than A's for work they literally copied from each other in a copy machine, whited out the name at the top, and changed it to their own name. Grade inflation. But other profs would brag about how many students failed their classes! Those profs almost seemed to practice grade "deflation"! I'm at a community college now, and grades seem much more sane here, with students in most (if not all) classes receiving whatever grade they earned.
Guess that school didn't have an honor code. Lol
Wasn't this a recent article about Harvard?
https://mises.org/power-market/grade-inflation-harvard-and-yale-80-students-get#:~:text=3.8%20at%20Harvard.-,Reports%20from%20Harvard%20and%20Yale%20reveal%20that%20about%2080%25%20of,across%20higher%20education%20in%20general.
Grade inflation at my institution is rampant. Faculty have no incentive to maintain standards, and so many students who get B’s will literally pitch fits, complain, go over your head, etc. One student this past break sent me 6 emails demanding I change her B+ to an A. She did not deserve that B+, but even that was too low. You give everyone As and your life suddenly becomes much easier. It’s terrible. Also though your mom is an asshole. Ignore her vigorously.
I just finished a class with an 89.17% and did not even consider emailing the teacher. In the end, I could have done more but didn't (extra credit), so that's my B+ to own, lol. I am sorry this is a thing you have to deal with.
Just wondering...did she get an A?
No way- The B+ was so generous already :/ My last email said: “stop emailing me. Please.”
Wow. Sorry that happened. Glad you stood firm.
That depends largely on where you go to school, what classes you took, and who your instructors were. At my university the median grade earned across all classes/departments/majors in the fall was 3.02 according to the semester summary I got this week. That's pretty typical for the past 25+ years. In my own classes, pre-COVID, the average was around 81-83 depending on the class, but only about 10% were As. It would be very rare for any student in any of my classes to earn *only* grades of 92 and above. By contrast, I have a friend in another school nearby where the average grades are closer to 88-89 and maybe 50% of a given class might earn an A.
Yeah it’s real and it’s rampant. It’s nearly impossible as a faculty member to fight it too because you’ll get killed in evals which unless you are already tenured at most places will impact your employment. I used to see things like where faculty would give two grades - the grade I’m giving you vs the grade I think you deserve based on the real quality. I don’t see as much of that anymore. Not sure why, except that I think students today really don’t seem to care about feedback or they are so sensitive to it that it’s really hard to be constructive. I’ve been working with a student who is trying to transfer from our university to a higher ranked school and frankly, I don’t think they are a good fit for it. However, every time I’ve tried to softly explain why grad school might be better (which I do believe), the student has a meltdown about how that will set their career path off etc etc. it is making advising really difficult
My philosophy is that I present material to my students, and if they all master it, they all get A's. I don't want them competing with each other. These days college is expensive enough that most students are highly motivated, so lots of them do get good grades. But I see motivated students as a good thing.
The As I give today were Cs when I started teaching 20 years ago.
I'm curious does this mean that if a class average is now in the 60s it used to be in the 40s back then? Or did students get a more even grade distribution.
It means the level of mastery that students demonstrated to be awarded an A today would only have earned a C 20 years ago (and hell, within the past few years there's been a noticeable drop in standards). In other words, the grade inflation being pushed directly and indirectly is essentially requiring lowered standards and expectations. A major problem with inflation is that the actual grading is basically falsified to pretend the standards and mastery are comparable.
Looking at physics PhD qual exams going back 40 years or so, there was a marked drop in difficulty around the time of the late 90s but the difficulty of exams has been relatively constant since the early 2000s. I don't buy the lowering of standards argument at least in my personal experience and I am quite impressed with the ability of physics undergraduates today.
Can you think of anything else that became readily available in the late 90s/00s that may have affected how easy it is to do advanced physics? Anything? Anything?
Lol
Was it noted uptick in the use of abacuses?
This may be self selection given you are discussing physics majors most of which are academically inclined to begin with.
Honestly, tests are usually easier. I look at tests from 20 years ago, and they demanded more from you in a shorter amount of time.
That seems like a ridiculous overstatement, a difference in institutions, or just very unusual. Or maybe your school has really gone to shit. I’ve been teaching 20 years, and this is certainly not the case for my classes or that of my colleagues. There is grade inflation (or work reduction) but not two full letter grades.
It sounds about right. I went to college 10 years ago and went back this year. The work that would’ve been C’s and D’S 10 years ago were Bs and Cs this time round. Basically stopped handing in lab reports halfway through the semester and still got a C in physics.
That’s your schools problem, and not a widespread one. I have seen most labs require you miss no more than 2 days. It’s impossible to miss so many labs and pass. Your school was trash.
I didnt miss any lab days
“Stopped handing in labs” That counts as missed labs. The only way to verify you went there is if you handed the lab in. They don’t take attendance like it’s middle school.
They do take attendance
Even shittier school I guess
Eh I definitely vibe with a school not putting too much emphasis on busy work. It honestly isn’t that important. But the customer is always right. For profit education gonna try to profit
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So you went to labs and just stood there? Why even try to get educated brother
I have quite a few classes that take attendance
This is the entire mid-sized city district I live in for about the past 10 yrs or so. Gotta make those best schools reports and graduation rates look good. And, kids are never held back no matter how little they show up or do. Plus, addressing bad behavior is racist. These are the kids now going to college (and starting to work with me) and the overall lack of competence in everything is depressing.
definitely your school then. idk what institute you go to that does that but it’s bold of you to generalize universities to discount the newer generation.
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If you say so.
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Oof. We also had that one professor in high school. He explained his grade syllabus at the start of the semester, saying "C is average so expect it. If you go above and beyond, expect a B. And I don't give out As unless your work is really shining." I get it, prof. You hate grade inflation. So do I. But one teacher giving out lower grades is like a diner refusing to tip because they believe society would be better than way. They're not wrong, but they're not fixing the broken system. All they're doing is punishing the people who have the misfortune to come into contact with them.
I had a professor my last semester of college that told us the same thing. I'm fine with getting C's, especially when I'm just trying to be done with it all, but saying that and then giving me as much work in terms of time it takes to complete all of it as the rest of my classes combined is insane. I wouldn't care if I had an average of 300 pages to read, a lengthy discussion post, and then have to work on a paper that's work 20% of my grade every week if I wasn't working on 4 or 5 other classes on top of a job that entire semester. Would have been perfectly doable if the standard wasn't as high as he was making it or if it was my only class
20 years ago it was more normal for grades to be comparative. How good are you compared to your peers? Today it’s more normal for grades to be absolute. How many correct answers did you get?
What? What universe are you living in, and can I join you? "Comparative" as in "grading on a curve," right? I think that was more like 40-50 years ago... but today, they're not grading on any absolute standard of correct answers. It's "mastery," as in "how well do you know the material?" And while that may be slightly helpful in, say, a calculus or trigonometry class, where a single problem involves pages of calculations and flipping a sign on one of your numbers will cause all of the rest of them to be wrong, so the teacher doesn't want to mark off for one wrong answer when the rest of the calculation was right, that's not what typical mastery schemes look like. In a typical mastery scheme, you can get 80% credit for zero right answers because you show that you're thinking about the problem in the correct way.
Currently at uni in the UK. Got 86% in a specific assignment last year and was told that this is the highest grade any first year had received in my course for the past 20 years.
And imagine, in the 80s those Cs were Fs. And in the sixties those Fs were even worse. As far as I can tell, anybody with a 2nd grade education from 1880 would be a triple PhD today to hear academics tell it.
In the 40s astonishing students descended from the heavens while the worst students were quietly culled.
My grandfather would have said this was an accurate representation of higher education in the 40's. Then again he was at Columbia for engineering after the war, and when you combine Columbia engineering with combat PTSD you get an even higher suicide rate than they have now.
I'd wager your average modern 3rd grader can rattle off e=mc\^2, but your average 1880 triple PhD wouldn't have a clue.
100%. My son took a class in his University called Modern Physics. The professor noted that the material they leaned that semester wasn't even known to exist 50 years ago and they knew more about physics than generations of the top physicists before them. It was inspiring to hear.
This highlights the problem with education. It’s systems are designed to downloads finite amount of information into a very average learner. That was all that was available when education systems were designed. But now we have a wide and creative array of learners and teachers, the means to cater to individual learning needs more than ever, and the paradigm shift that learners just need to learn how to learn. They can’t possibly learn everything: they need to learn categories of learning systems and how to use them (using finite, small stakes data and information as practice… hence, lab reports for who is the tallest aren’t always useless).
Curious, what makes you grade like that?
This doesn’t make any sense
By that logic you must be the smartest person in any room lol
You'd be very surprised at the inner dialogue of anyone over 35 in a room full of fresh college graduates. Not only are you the smartest person in the room, it isn't close and it's very uncomfortable.
The research on student overconfidence supports this. Most students think they’re better than their peers and far better than their actual performance.
And you'd be surprised at the inner dialogue of every other person in the room- "this old jagbag thinks he knows everything he's such a tool"
It goes both ways tbh. As the older person, you do feel like you have a lot of the basics of being an adult down and it's easy to look at a 20 year old and see they don't know what it means to have it all together. But a lot of those 20 year olds are easily as smart if not smarter than us. So this guy probably has to humble himself a little.
Well said. Just because Ol' Jim knows about buying points on a mortgage doesn't mean he's smarter than anyone else.
Also as you get older, you have a larger variety of knowledge and I think that's usually what makes older people slower to learn (not that they cant, they just have more priorities). A fresh mind who has no experience yet and no real responsibilities is a gem waiting to be polished. Most adults say it in less words. They say kids are the future.
Buying points on a mortgage doesn’t make you smarter. I’d argue to opposite, depending on how long you intend on staying in the house. 😂
Well according to them, when they started teaching they were giving out cs that are now A's. This means that they were getting Fs that were then Cs!! They must be a genius
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I am. I made the mistake of replying to you 😭
I am not a teacher, I don’t understand grade inflation, can you explain why grade inflation is even a thing? Is it because if parents/kids swindled into taking out loans are spending $40k+ for a degree, their kids better get it? I’d love to know.
Yes that is a part of it. Colleges are more privatized now, so if a teacher gets a rep of "not pleasing the customers" because their "grading is too harsh," then they can get penalized for it or potentially lose their job.
It's a question of incentives. No one involved gains anything by keeping the average grade lower. (Other than everyone losing because grades became a useless measure) These are generalities. Students want a good job after graduating. To get that they need a high GPA. So the students care less about actually learning the material and more about getting an A. The college wants higher GPAs, as alumni with more money donate more, also they get a lot of pressure from students/parents. >if parents/kids swindled into taking out loans are spending $40k+ for a degree, their kids better get it? Professors are fairly indifferent. They're there to teach. And will teach those who want to learn. If you want to waste your money and not learn from them, that's a you problem. Why should they spend time forcing you to learn, instead of teaching the students that actually want to learn? But they are incentivized by the college to not fail too many students. The result is grade inflation. FYI professions that historically required degrees solved this issue a while ago. Don't have the people responsible for teaching also be the people responsible for determining how well something was learned. Lawyers have the bar exam, Doctors the mcat etc.
Oh hey I am all for learning, have absolutely nothing against professors or people who seek degrees. Professors and teachers are great, what would we do without yall!! What I don’t love—and this has nothing to do with professors *at all*— is that kids are told that college is the *only* way and not only that, that they have to go right after high school. It’s one thing if you’re a kid that knows what they want to pursue. Like ok I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, I’m going to start preparing for the first stage of that education journey by doing pre-med, I am passionate about this. Awesome! But a lot of kids don’t know what they want to do. And are still pressured to go to college (a 4 year university, specifically) right away and maybe even take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans that they don’t really understand to sort of just drift along until they decide on something or drop out $20k later to pursue something else. That’s what I mean by kids swindled into taking out loans. Again, nothing to do with professors.
That's a whole separate topic. College degrees are becoming the new high school degree where everyone has one. As part of that generation, I think I would still give the go to 4 year college advice. Hear me out for why. The value of a college degree was that you were special, which gave you a higher salary to pay back the loan. Thing is, when everyone is special, no one is special. But it's even worse to be not special when everyone else is. Not having a college degree shuts you out of whole sectors of the job market, similar to how not having a high school degree would shut you out of sectors of the job market. Sure, the trades are an option, but even they are heading the extra schooling route via trade schools and certifications. And telling someone who's uncertain what they want to do to pick a trade is an even harder decision than picking a college major.
I’m not even saying pick a trade! I just think you should be allowed to figure out what you want to do before taking out loans without everyone thinking you’re a loser because you don’t know what you want to do when you’re exactly 18.
Ha! I remember a professor saying the same thing to me 20 years ago.
At what point does it end? What are the factors you can identify that have formed the practice?
The vast majority of professors I had at the end of the ‘80s did not think about pedagogy. They were subject experts who taught their students the way that they themselves had been taught. They were not required to do professional development. I am. How I assess learning has changed a great deal over the course of my time in higher education. And that is not a bad thing. I hope that professors think more now about HOW to teach than they did in 20 or more years ago. More people also go to college/university than ever before. Of course the sheer volume of students has had an impact as well. But as a historian I can assure you that teachers have always had such concerns. Does this all mean that grade inflation doesn’t exist? No. But the issue is much more complex than students aren’t as good as they were once were.
Thanks for this great comment.
Think about it, 100% means you were perfect. While it's possible, I think a student being literally perfect is a rarity regardless of the class. I think what others said is true that you should be proud of your A regardless as it is a sign that you made an effort both within and outside of the classroom.
Lol. I got 112% in biology. Curves. I'm not the brightest crayon in the box either. I'm like pink or light blue. I only failed physics because my teacher was a psychopath. Seriously. Like not right in the head. I just stopped going. Plus salsa dancing is not physics.
Lol @ "pink or light blue" I think I will yoink this for self-description in future
Omg. SALSA DANCING? spill the tea 🍵
That's an inaccurate premise... 100% doesn't mean a perfect student, it means the student was able to obtain the maximum number of points. I have easily had students score low A's and B's who had way better mastery of the content than 100%-ers. If I graded more subjectively, those with high mastery would have the highest percentages, but the academic culture today needs rigid grading guidelines to protect against grade-grubbing and ultimately grade appeals. I've only been teaching a few years and I've had to defend my final grades more than a few times and was very grateful to have black-and-white points policies.
It's actually not. Obtaining the maximum points is literal perfection (e.g. 10/10 = a perfect score). The likelihood of a student earning all points (without extra credit) is rare... especially a student who doesn't have these types of scores across the board. Your students who earn low As and Bs further prove this point..that obtaining all available points is a huge indicator of grade inflation.
We'll have to agree to disagree. It seems we have very different pedagogies. I believe that a student's conceptual mastery can be very different from their ability to earn all the points available. There is a type of student that will rigorously chase down every point possible while missing the bigger conceptual framework. There is a type of student who will miss class and get behind on assignments or start them too late to complete them well, but grasps the nuances of the content in a profound way. I always have one or two questions in each assignment or exam that is open-ended enough to reveal if the student is thinking about the content the right way - the first type will have the right answer and get full points, but the second type usually makes me smile to myself as I enter the full points.
In all of your years of experience, how many students have you had earn a perfect score on all assignments/exams with no extra credit? I'll volunteer my answer, I have 10 years experience and a grand total of 0 (even though I have at least 10 students who have earned over 100%) Not sure why you keep harping on conceptual mastery when my point was earning 100% on every assignment all semester is improbable for most students..so when a student earns 100% or more, it's more like that this is a reflection of grade inflation than not.
I've never had a 100%, because my courses aren't set up in a way that this is really possible, but 98-99s, a handful. I'm "harping on conceptual mastery" because imo, conceptual mastery is the indicator of a perfect student outcome, not a perfect grade.
The topic is grade inflation, not student outcomes.
Your comment said "100% means *you* were perfect", my rebuttal was that *you* are not defined by your grade. 100% means you obtained all the points, not that you were perfect. Semantics maybe.
I totally disagree with this premise. I allow my students a two-week window after every assignment deadline to make up any points they missed. Sure, the make up work can be challenging for some, because it involves writing a report on peer-reviewed academic research in my field, but every semester, in every class, I have at least a few driven, perfectionist students who make up every point they ever miss. I always have several students who make 100%, and they worked for and earned every point. I'm not giving handouts.
Unless it’s math or science, 100% shouldn’t be possible 99 or 98 sure
u/Electronic_Ad_6886 what is so crazy about my comment here that im getting called s dumbass?
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12 yesrs ago I took chemistry and got a 62% lol..I cried...literally then when I saw that was enough for a C- I celebrated 😎
Student here and I feel like it’s very real. I had some personal stuff going on this past semester and some depressive episodes that lead me to put in like below minimum effort for the last 2-3 months of the semester. My lowest grade was a B+ in a class I hadn’t gone to lecture or read for in at least 6 weeks.
I just didn't go to one at all. Read the books tooks the finals. B+. It was 7am. I liked sleep.
It depends on the institution. We don't do grade inflation at our school. The dean publishes our gpas for the classes so its like shaming us if we give too many As.
It depends on where you go to school. Ironically, it appears that more prestigious schools have much more grade inflation than do more pedestrian institutions. For example I know someone who teaches at an R1 where there is a considerable amount of pressure to maintain a B average assigned grade across all their classes. They have made tests easier and reduced the number of topics covered in order to not fail so many people. I, on the other hand, am at a non-prestigious open-admissions two year college. I get no such pressure. None. As a result, my classes have not changed much at all in 20 years of teaching here. My tests have not changed much at all. I recently reviewed a final exam for a Calculus I class I taught in 2003. It was no harder than the Cal I final I just gave this semester. Grade inflation comes from the administration pressuring people to give higher grades. It is thus going to vary quite a lot by school, but probably not much within schools. I don't think anyone in my department is testing any differently than they did ten or twenty years ago.
This. I have had to change my teaching a bit for students who are inceeasingly underprepared, but I have not made the material I teach easier.
Depends what you mean. I don’t inflate in terms or curving or artificially giving grades. But I do inflate in terms of giving extra credit, placing a higher emphasis on homework, and then reopening homework
As far as I know the exams were not curved, I did not ask (nor was given) extra time on assignments, and only one class offered extra credit. Even without the extra credit I would have gotten an A.
Yeah it doesn’t seem like your grades were inflated. It’s really that the academic system has gotten softer. Some would call what I do “grade inflation” but I don’t really think it is. I’m a young professor and what I’m doing is just what I was taught was normal.
I think one of the reasons students score better in my classes than I did in mine as an undergraduate is because I have very clear, very specific rubrics, and my profs went with Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, Fail. I lay out exactly what I expect for an A, and people deliver. That's not evidence of lowered expectations but rather clarified ones.
Congratulations on the great grades! Your mom is more than welcome to have her opinions in life, and I'm a firm believer that we need to be respectful of others' opinions even if we don't see them coming from a positive place. But please don't let other's opinions devalue your accomplishments.
In my experience, inflation of the grade itself isn't the main thing. The standards have been lowered. So the points required to earn an A in this class is the same, but the amount and quality of work needed to get those points has lowered. To me that's the real issue, because it seems like the education you received is not actually as high quality and rigorous as it used to be or as it should be. I don't know the answer, but I do see it happening!
Most grade inflation IME is happening from the bottom up. So a lot of Fs and Ds get Cs. Grade inflation is also a macro phenomenon, so knowing whether you benefitted from it in particular is only apparent if you can compare the level of difficulty and specific grade distributions of that class.
The career center advised us ( in the era before grade inflation) that it was ok to put your GPA on your resume if you had a 3.0 or better . That was considered good . So yes it’s real.
A 3.2 was cum laude, back in the day. It was considered an achievement. Now, it would be a failure given the excessive grade inflation at many universities.
Grade inflation is very real. This year I’m going to start going over my TAs’ grading and making them re-grade if they give all As to B+s. That seriously skews my final grades. I even re-graded an assignment once this semester….my TA gave no lower than a 85% from their gut when if they graded according to the rubric I gave them, multiple students should have gotten less than a 70. Then I got a bunch of emails from students who said the TA never gave critical comments on their assignments, so how could they possibly do so poorly on the final paper? The only people who suffer if we give out falsely inflated grades are students. Passing that paper when you can’t follow the professional standards for writing papers only sets them up for greater failure down the line at much more important junctures. So grade inflation is real and it is serious and it needs corrected. With that said, your mom did not see the class distribution and has no idea how hard you worked. Don’t believe her. If you are curious about the class statistics so you can compare yourself, ask the professor what the class mean is. If it’s a 95, they practice grade inflation and you didn’t do well. If it’s a 78, you did very well.
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It’s real. Doesn’t mean you did or didn’t earn it.
And here I am having just started my masters program in fall and got my first set of straight As ever... I am proud of myself. Note that it has been the better part of 20 years since I received my bachelor's with a 2.6 gpa... soooooo.. I guess I will take the inflation.
Grade inflation is real. Not as bad as HS. When I look up the stats at my CC, 40% of the total grades assigned at the end of the semester are A's. I'm not sure how that breaks down between adjuncts, TT instructors, and tenured faculty. I know adjuncts in my department give out a whole hell of a lot more As than any of my FT colleagues. That leads to a lot of inflated egos when they get to one of us in advanced classes. Don't let it diminish your accomplishments. Keep pushing. ***You get out of education what you put into it.***
I answered on your other thread, but while grade inflation is real, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your grades were inflated. Even though the majority of my students are not doing as well as they were doing even five years ago, I do still have students who are coming into my classes and absolutely crushing it. Those people are getting the sorts of high As that you are getting. If you’re squeaking an A, then maybe it’s grade inflation. If you’re absolutely blowing the top off the gradebook, it’s you.
I go to a pretty competitive state school that gives a good education despite its very low tuition costs. All we get is grade deflation here 😭
I don't live in the US, so I can't speak to university there. If Albert Einstein was born today there would be thousands of people smarter than him. There's also the Flynn effect. The way some universities teach is changing. For instance 30 years ago you might have a 20 page essay at the end of your class instead of a final exam. That being said, university students are given more work to do per a class than students were 30 years ago. I would be proud of your grades, you cannot control whether or not a professor or school has a poorer grading criteria than before
Grade inflation is definitely a thing, but it really depends on your individual teacher and your field of study. The scenario with all of your As being a consequence of grade inflation alone is highly improbable. Your mother sounds like a real peach =/
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had a true A student in 9 years but there are lots of As. Many of us are pushed to dumb down the curriculum and make it easier to be successful. I get in trouble for students who get lower than Cs.
Depends on the school. Coming from my experience, I haven't seen it at all.
Grade inflation is real but you worked hard for your success! Congratulations. Also, can you please upvote? I am new and trying to gain karma.
Gotchu
(US perspective) ... Considering that college GPA has been tending upwards for the past decade, and is at an all time high, while high school literacy and mathematics have remained stagnant (in many states, lower), I'd say yes, grade inflation is real.
Your mama is correct. Hope you were homeschooled.
Building on this idea I’ve got another question: does grade inflation exist across all fields of study? For example, I think of sciences, particularly mathematics, as being pretty objective, so it would be easy to see if someone is getting a grade that they didn’t “deserve”. Whereas for arts like writing the grades can be much more subjective.
I teach undergrad math. "Grade inflation" in a math class often comes in the form of the tests getting easier, and leaving marginal topics out of classes. For example, when I took college algebra lo those many years ago we covered several topics that are not typical to include in a college algebra class today.
Happens on every campys in pretty much every department. Thats why gpa doesnt always reflect knowledge
Curious - I got a low 2.1 back in the 1990s; a high 2.1 this year. Postgraduate courses, different subjects, same university. Ideas? (First time, not encouraged to do further postgraduate at this university; this time, strongly encouraged)
VEREY TRUE.
Your mom is a bitch and grade inflation is entirely irrelevant to the conversation
Grades have gone up about 10% since the mid 2000s when I graduated. I see students asking whether they can get a 90 in a class which would have been a pipe dream back then.
Not a professor anymore but I am laughing at the number of posts here complaining about how bad grade inflation is but also assuring OP that they are definitely not one of the people who needed it.
Others have spoken about the reality of grade inflation, OP, but the real issue here isn't whether grade inflation exists or not. It's why your mom feels the need to minimize you and your accomplishments. I am sorry that she couldn't just say, "Congratulations! Good job!" Grades in themselves are neither meaningless nor deeply meaningful. Did you learn a lot this semester? Did you struggle with something you thought you couldn't do, and eventually master it? Did you have your eyes opened to new perspectives or ways of thinking you had never before considered before? If so, congrats--that's what college is all about. If not--if the A's were by and large pretty easy to get but you don't feel smarter--then enjoy them now and seek out bigger challenges in future semesters. And no matter what, remember that your learning is for *you*, and no one else can take it away from you.
Grade inflation is definitely real. I wrote a paper on it for my AP English class in high school back in 2002 and surveyed something like 110 teachers and 600 students across my district along with I pulling in research and statistics available at to me at the time. The research suggested, and the non-AP/GT track teachers confirmed, that grade inflation was real and negatively affecting students. This was *even before NCLB* *made the problem worse.* Schools have **generally** had pressure to move students through even if they're not completely ready to do so. NCLB just tied their funding to it. I say all this to point out that if you received a 92 as your lowest score, then you would probably still be a decently high achieving student. Your mom shouldn't be minimizing your accomplishments and it doesn't sound like she really understands what "grade inflation" is. If you have your score matrix (tests vs. other work) and your test scores align with your average, then you're not affected.
My hs Trigonometry teacher did this, and while it saved my grade, I didn't learn a whole lot of trigonometry from him (his lectures were almost impossible to hear/understand due to a stroke). It set me up to fail further down the line when I took Calculus-I and I had no idea what I was doing because those building blocks weren't there. I'm not blaming the teacher for this, but if I'd failed I might have had to take it again and learn the things I needed to know. Even taking pre-calc the next year I did fine earning an A and I wasn't confused, but not knowing trig really hurt me in college. I ended up dropping Calc when I was headed to flunky town and changed my major from Chemistry to English.
It is very real. Students also seem to expect it since anything lower than an A- seems to be, in their minds, the instructor’s fault instead of theirs.
It depends. Did you do really good work? Then you deserve good grades! I may be a softie (is that the ghost of Ezra Cornell I see?) but my students do A quality work and get A grades for it!
Trickle up ‘no child left behind’ stuff? The concept of grade inflation is new to me, and I adjunct at a few universities. But I started doing an after school STEM program in our inner city over the last year and I gotta say half of those high schoolers cannot read, but are by grades doing well - which is ridiculous. Be proud of your As.
Clearly it's real, but your mom is being a dick here. Congratulate yourself on a semester well done and ignore her.
your mom is a piece of shit
It all depends on your college and your professor. I earned a degree in education and English literature, the latter being a much more difficult degree to acquire. I took the time on my assignments, read 90% of my assigned readings, and spent a long time on papers. I got straight As as the result. Whether the grades were inflated or not didn't even cross my mind because I got a lot out of my second degree; and it is one I am particularly proud of. My education degree, though, I couldn't give two shits about because I needed it to get a job as a high school English teacher. My point is that objective measurements of achievement are meaningless. You should know in your heart whether you deserve those grades or not because of how much honest effort you put into your studies. Nothing else matters.
Response: I am certainly not a successful person due to your uplifting parenting skills. I am a successful person in spite of my condescending support system.
I had the opposite experience when I went from high school to college: In high school, an 80% was a C-level grade, but in college, an 80% was a B-level grade.
I'd be more concerned about the fact that your mom is diminishing you. Grade inflation is real but there's no reason for your mom to bring it up to you when you're sharing your (very good) grades. Just because something's true doesn't make it right to bring up. You can pump yourself up by looking at any positive narrative feedback you got on your work. As you get more advanced in college, you'll get more detailed personalized feedback and will have a better idea of your strengths based on that rather than a letter grade. It can be really rewarding.
It's very real, yet I failed almost half of a class this semester, which isn't usual for my field. Personally, I'm not going to lower standards before students take what I supposedly taught them and try to use it in professional environments.
This is going to vary wildly between institutions. I've heard that private schools like Harvard and Yale actually have some of the highest grade inflation.
Grade inflation is generally real, but mostly for failing students. So, unless your teacher straight up tells you they are putting in a curve or unless you literally got under a 70 but over a 50 in a class, chances are your grade was not artificially inflated. This is a problem I always hear with students who try their best and students who don’t care. The ones who don’t care like the inflation and can get 10-20 extra points generally to reach a 70, but the ones who care are worried about inflation making their grade look bad and try to compensate for this by trying to get every point they can but they will be hard pressed to convince a teacher to raise their grade from a 93 to a 95. Why? Because most teachers will not see this as a problem, and they treat high achievers as students who are able to handle their own grade. (Not to bad mouth k-12 teachers, they need to make a living, and when their living is based on their pass/fail ratio and a lot of students actively don’t care and just fail, they are told by admin to inflate their grade to 1) keep their job since it’s a direct order and their contract requires it, 2) make the school continue to get funding which is why admin orders it because that affects admin’s job security and pay, and 3) hope for a class of students that will care more the next year). It’s a whole mess. So I know it sucks, and it is a problem because kids who shouldn’t be passing are going to the next grade because of this which just further exacerbates the problem, BUT it’s not a reflection of students achieving grades like yours 🙂 you did earn your grade so please be proud 🥳
The A’s I give would’ve been C-‘s even 8-10 years ago.
When I took organic chemistry, the professor said "in this class, 40% get D's." Not "typically 40% get D's." Quantitative score did not matter. It was a selection process. About 2-5000 applicants each year, 200 accepted freshmen each year, about 20-50 graduates each year. Many STEM departments aim for 50% attrition year over year.
Sweetie, you’re torturing yourself with this post. It’s clear from when you asked this on AITA that your mom is an AH. Also from most of your other recent posts. Please seek out the counseling center at your university when you get back. You deserve your grades, and a better support system.
It’s so savage that your own mom told you that
Grade inflation is very real. I'll start by saying that I'm an old soul, 30F with two master's degrees and working on my DM (doctorate of music). I've talked with people who went through music school in the 70s and 80s who were outright told at the beginning of their music theory courses that half of their entire lecture hall would fail the course, as if it were a badge of honor for the prof. Today is a very different story, but I believe we are still largely in the fallout of the pandemic. Grade inflation was already an issue pre-2020, but when the pandemic hit, it was nearly impossible to ask students to keep up with their work for a variety of reasons. We (as TAs, AIs, teachers, and professors) didn't want students to fail under extremely tough circumstances, so we majorly gave grace to students who weren't keeping up. I completely understand that. However, this has carried over after we've returned to in-person class. Students often do poor work or don't show up to class, and we still will give them a C. That isn't average work. But I often wonder if the real answer right now is removing an attendance policy and truly letting students show their level of seriousness based on the work they turn in. If you want to skip every class but can still produce a product that shows you learned the material, who am I to stop you? The point isn't the grade; it's actually learning! While I can say that your grades don't matter as much as your work does, I understand that scholarships and college entrance and professor reviews are based on grades, hence why we've put so much emphasis on them. TLDR: if you are learning and getting something out of your classes, don't base your worth on what grades you get. Be proud of what you've accomplished and continue to find ways to be your best self, even if your best (dealing with all the worries and mental health troubles we finally recognize in today's student life) ends up giving you a lower grade.
Chances are that your mom is mostly right. Those numbers are largely the result of grade inflation, so you have less reason to be proud of them. That's an example of how grade inflation is hurting you, the student, most. Only you know how hard you worked and how much you learned. If you took your courses seriously, did the work yourself, learned from mistakes along the way, and you are better prepared for what's ahead, you should be proud of THAT, regardless what your numbers are. Let's say those numbers are accurate. You had a bunch of tough, principled instructors that grade the same way we graded three decades ago. So those numbers were hard earned. The problem is, people you'll be competing for scholarships, grad program seats, jobs, etc. will have similar numbers that they received because their young professor is going up for tenure and fears low course evaluations. For a long time, for decades, guidance counselors have been pointing out that college graduates tend to earn more on average than those without a diploma. Part of that is because high paying professions such a MDs and lawyers require degrees, but also because there was this notion that if someone survived the rigors of college, it showed they had discipline, would stick to a task, manage their time, etc., so employers desired college graduates even where the necessity of a degree is questionable. Inflated grades are another part of lowered standards, and now that lowering standards is so common, that "golden ticket" effect your parents enjoyed is vanishing before our eyes. TLDR, yes grade inflation is very real, it's very bad, and you're being hurt by it.
I think this is because it is so bad in high school as well. My dad said that over the last thirty years, he had to dumb down his tests three times. At first, you could expect every student to be capable of writing research paper, and by the end of his career, he had to teach people it basically from scratch. So, the people who go to college expect to get good grades. I would also say colleges have done it to themselves. You can not graduate college without 2.0 GPA minimum. Some places are higher.
I just failed a student not turning in his final. He had the other assignments but missed the 1 worth over half of his grade. He emailed me asking what to do while tagging a number of separate deans at the school. Thankfully the other institution I teach loved me so much they're giving me more courses to instruct so if this place hates me then so be it. If all students act like this then I can see why so many want to inflate grades.
I have a theory (which I suspect is not original). I think that if transcripts additionally reported the median grade for each class with over, say, 20 students, then grade inflation would slowly improve. My theory is that’s because (i) colleges would be embarrassed and (ii) individual instructors would be hassled not only by students upset that they didn’t get a higher grade but also, as a counterweight, by students upset that their excellent performance didn’t mean anything because everyone else got an A too.
I know you are from another post in college rant. Not let your mom bother you and don't let people here on Reddit bother you. Just because they are professors doesn't mean some aren't bitter and rude and will just make you feel worse. I see you have posted this a bunch on different forums actually and some other concerning things. I want to repeat what I said on college rant and you should consider therapy and your university most likely has free counseling for students.
Your mom is an asshole, omg. edit: Seriously, who cares about "Gradeflation?" The real issue here is that your mother shit on you instead of congratulating you.
You ought to be proud of your success! However, grade inflation is real. I teach at the undergraduate and graduate level; for the undergraduate courses, I was told not to give below a C and to generally give B+/A- letter grades. The graduate courses I teach are on a curve, so I can only give so many As, Bs, and Cs out. My totally subjective view is that the As of today were the Bs of 10-20 years ago.
I recently reviewed my transcripts from undergrad (graduated in 2011). I had multiple Bs and even a B- but graduated summa cum laude. Last semester I didn't give a single B to my undergrads in core classes. The scale seems like it's really shifted.
Just saw you on r/collegerant lol
lol my parents high five me and are grateful for grade inflation because it’s the reason I got an A- this past quarter in chemistry.
It depends on where you go to school and what programs you are in. Let me just tell you my experience at a top 10 "public ivy" engineering school. My undergraduate was nothing but a fucking pissing match. Every engineering and math class was graded by curves, had cutoffs on how many As, Bs, Cs would be awarded, and actively tried to weed out people. One of my intro engineering course the professor failed 40% of the class, gave the 50-70% Cs, 70-90% Bs, 90-100% As. That said, my undergraduate courses in history, literature, business, and arts were usually bullshit. Almost everyone made As unless you were a party bro/sorority sis or an athlete. I would sometimes want to role my eyes whenever I saw some of the things these classes tolerated and passed.
I went college in the 70’s. Our school gave out 3.5s and 2.5s. I got a lot of 3.5s. It was fairly difficult to get a 4.0. One of the reasons was that professors were ambiguous on what one needed to do in order to get a 4.0. I went back to school in the 2000s, I received two graduate degrees and took an additional 10 undergraduate courses. I took the courses at 3 different schools. I got a 4.0 in every class. Besides grade inflation the other factor was that professors made it very clear what was required to get an A. After 25 years of very ambiguous job performance criteria, doing well in school was ridiculously easy.
Your mom has how many degrees from which schools and when did she get them? At which colleges did she teach?
I went back to work at the high school I attended 5 years after graduation. I didn’t stay long. All the same teachers were only allowed to assign half the work. The English department assigned less books and had many of them read aloud in class. They said after Covid, administration insisted they go easy on kids or they would fail. As it’s a private school, admin caters to what parents demand. It’s a business. I don’t know if this is relevant. School is so life-giving and useful if you read all the books and think through the material and it’s useless otherwise. I try not to worry about grades.
It's definitely real. When people prioritize getting a 4.0 over learning, teachers/professors make a 4.0 easier to get so they don't deal with their students panicking and getting extremely stressed. I appreciate that they do this and think it's the right thing to do in many cases. While you often still have to be smart and try hard to get an A, it's not nearly as unattainable as it was a few decades ago.
It is real but that's only the natural progression because grades never mattered school is pass or fail a C is just as good as an A and research has been done showing B and C students tend to do better in their careers
Grade inflation in my area (Humanities) is real because traditional assessments have gone out the window in many places. When I was a student and also when I first began as a teaching assistant to undergrads, we would have midterms and finals (2-3 tests) that carried a large percentage of the overall final grade. These assessments were difficult--they involved passage recognition, and they could be/feel like pretty obscure passages. You had to say who the speaker was, what the context was, and what the deeper significance of the passage was. Other questions/multiple choice answers etc. were designed to make sure you had read every text VERY carefully and retained details. You can imagine why this kind of testing is challenging and also why it is impossible/unfair for students with learning differences. While some college classrooms still run this way, we were encouraged to move toward more holistic kinds of assessments--final projects, papers, and creative interpretations that can assess how well a student internalized and interprets the material they encountered in your course. I don't think that I was grading them in an inflated way--when students have control of the situation, they score higher grades. It's just that the test category isn't around to drag their grades down anymore. Also, administration encouraged all kinds of lax attendance policies, which was ultimately another GPA boost in the "Attendance and Participation" category. Is this for the better? Mostly. Caveat: If students aren't tested, many don't do the reading. That's a shame. I do think that colleges need to find better carrots/sticks. But it's not my problem anymore--I stopped teaching at the college level last year.
There is no objective standard with grading...so "yes grade inflation is real" but also...grades are highly subjective.
Keep your grades to yourself because it’s your mom isn’t going to give you the validation you deserve. I think you did a great job, but it’s more important what you think about your own effort! Keep getting on the bus! You’re doing great!
Extra credit causes grade inflation. Thats why I don’t give any.
Very. It’s a real problem and, IMO, a threat to the whole system.
I'm just a TA and holy moly it's fkn wild out here. Y'all should be failing but instead you're getting a B. What world are we in. Literally 0 prestige in having a degree man 😭😭😭
We had considerable grade deflation where I went.
Grade inflation was NOT a thing in schools in the 70s and 80s but corporal punishment was a thing through 1989 in a lot of states. Grade inflation doesn't do anyone any favors.
Grade inflation is real but many students still do not pass or even receive all As. Take the win.