Most common grade now awarded in college classes: A
As one University of Minnesota undergraduate student explained the rising GPA trend when evaluating a professor known as a rigorous grader, “We live in a grade-inflated world.” That University of Minnesota anthropology professor Karen-Sue Taussig suspects that today’s “grade-inflated world” can be traced to the growing cost of a college degree, i.e. today’s “tuition-inflated world.” As Taussig told the Star Tribune, “They’re paying for it, and they worked really hard, and they put in time, and therefore they think they should get a good grade.”
Last year, Professor Rojstaczer and co-author Christopher Healy published a research article in the Teachers College Record titled “Where A Is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading, 1940–2009.” The main conclusion of the paper appears below (emphasis added), and is illustrated by the chart below showing the rising share of A letter grades over time at American colleges, from 15% in 1940 to 43% by 2008. Starting in about 1998, the letter grade A became the most common college grade.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
A’s keep the parents happy and keep the tuition money flowing.
120pages on May 28, 2012 at 10:08 PM
My GPA is 3.1 right now. I purposefully take harder classes, as my college career is better served by learning than by getting a high GPA.
vegconservative on May 28, 2012 at 10:14 PM
I would like to see grades plotted as a function of student age, because I busted my hide in grad school to maintain a 4.0.
Undergrad, I was floating around 3.0.
DarthBrooks on May 28, 2012 at 10:20 PM
Which is why, even twenty years ago, I insisted upon job-seekers undergoing an application exam. Their college grades were no indication of aptitude.
OldEnglish on May 28, 2012 at 10:30 PM
Not at my Purdue Engineering classes, I can assure you.
AbaddonsReign on May 28, 2012 at 10:33 PM
I would be interested in the sampling type used here. Was it voluntary response? Does it resemble a simple random sample? I have worked as a math instructor for over 10 years at the college level. Mode grade in my classes ranges from 1.5-2.5. You might say it’s because I’m a bad instructor. I personally think it’s because nobody does any work outside of class and they don’t do nearly enough practice. I don’t know what other courses are like, but I get the impression that many students expect that their in-class time should be sufficient to get a 4.0. For some it might be. For the vast majority it’s not even close. I would be interested in also seeing a breakdown of these results my major.
Goldenavatar on May 28, 2012 at 10:35 PM
for which majors? what an effin’ scam edu is.
newrouter on May 28, 2012 at 10:35 PM
Fine. Establish that “A” level of work as the new “C” (average) and trim the herd.
We must begin failing students who can’t perform at the college level, not adjusting “college level” down to whatever poor-performers can manage.
It’s not healthy academics and will come back to haunt us very, very soon. Heck, ask most HBCUs. If they’re honest, their “A”‘s shouldn’t even adequately translate to other non-black universities in the same state program these days.
Way to go, (D)s. Well played.
rogerb on May 28, 2012 at 10:38 PM
I have noticed that many of the older students (late 30′s and older) generally do perform better than the kids (25 or lower). Although there are exceptions to be sure. The one group of students which very consistently scores better than their counterparts: those with military experience. Of course this is just my personal experience.
Goldenavatar on May 28, 2012 at 10:38 PM
I was on double secret probation the whole time I was in college.
Moesart on May 28, 2012 at 10:43 PM
Not in their mathematics or physics courses, either. I must have gone to college too soon. Got plenty of B’s, but those A’s were few and far between.
The whole time? You mean the dean never pulled you aside and explained how fat, drunk, and stupid was no way to go through life, son?
JimLennon on May 28, 2012 at 10:50 PM
I think the most common grade is whatever Obama got.
Whatever that was.
profitsbeard on May 28, 2012 at 10:51 PM
Yeah, but the graph showed that F’s now outnumber D’s.
Little Boomer on May 28, 2012 at 10:51 PM
LA schools combat dropout rate by dropping standards
Florida schools won’t be held accountable for low FCAT writing scores
Hell, they’re failing at the High school level.
BallisticBob on May 28, 2012 at 10:53 PM
Just so long as the R’s outnumber the D’s come November 6…
JimLennon on May 28, 2012 at 10:56 PM
They already do that in high school. 5.0 gpa for honors or AP classes and sometimes even 6.0. I know you are kidding, but idiots will be idiots.
Fenris on May 28, 2012 at 10:56 PM
I’m a math professor at a state university. At my school, the math and chemistry departments usually share “honors” in some order for the lowest grades by department. At the undergrad level, departments with a lot of service courses usually have the lowest grades. Everybody has to take some math course, and most students take chemistry. So those departments, and others like them, have to work with the generic undergrad population, which is rather weak academically (for example, about 30% of our entering students place into remedial math). Other units such as the college of business use us as a screen; they don’t touch students until they have gotten through the basic courses. So they get to work with a higher brand of student. On the other hand, some departments in the college of education have GPAs on the order of 3.9 — pretty much everyone gets an A (they are mostly grad students but still if they have any academic standards I can’t see any evidence of them).
My department’s most common grade is certainly not A. But for my school as a whole, I could believe it.
jwolf on May 28, 2012 at 11:00 PM
Interesting. I saw the grade inflation, and figured that A’s are no longer luxuries, but necessities, so I took the easiest classes I could find that fit into my area of focus, and then just worked harder than everyone else in those classes. So, I got the experience I needed out of going the extra mile on projects, while taking a lower risk of not getting an A. I just graduated with a 4.0 (although that’s only because my university doesn’t count transfer credits into GPA).
Kind of Machiavellian, I suppose, but I wanted to make sure the education section of the resume looked as good as possible being that the economy is what it is, and employers can afford to be very selective…
thirtyandseven on May 28, 2012 at 11:01 PM
They already do that in high school. 5.0 gpa for honors or AP classes and sometimes even 6.0. I know you are kidding, but idiots will be idiots.
Fenris on May 28, 2012 at 10:56 PM
Not every school. I transferred high schools halfway through my junior year when our family moved to a neighboring state. Old school added 1.0 to the GPA for honors courses; new school didn’t. Your A in AP Calculus was worth just as much as your A in Phys Ed. Saw my GPA drop nearly half a point and my class rank fall from 4th out of ~450 to 20th out of ~400. Since I was looking to apply to some extremely selective universities, this really ticked me off. Two of the college interviewers I met even flat out said “it’s unlikely they’d take someone with as low a class rank as yours. Perhaps if you were still in the top 5 in your class…”
JimLennon on May 28, 2012 at 11:03 PM
I’d like to see that broken down by degrees. I went to Purdue Engineering as well and my A’s we’re earned the hardway… In the hard sciences if the answer is wrong… It’s wrong. But I found my english and philosophy classes were graded on a subjective basis. They have to be somewhat, but it seemed to me if the professor liked you that that went a long way towards your goal.
Skywise on May 28, 2012 at 11:06 PM
Everybody’s excellent in their field, and each year our GDP shrinks.
Almost seems like, you know…a flawed concept.
MadisonConservative on May 28, 2012 at 11:11 PM
I sympathize with your situation, but that doesn’t mean you’re not surrounded by idiots. And I mean mostly the school officials, including people responsible for the college admitting process.
Fenris on May 28, 2012 at 11:13 PM
Grading and testing should be done by organizations independent of the universities.
Grade point averages are almost meaningless at this point.
WisCon on May 28, 2012 at 11:16 PM
Good for you. I went to college with the same ambition, to learn, not necessarily to ‘get a degree’. While in retrospect, it has hampered me some, it has also been very fruitful when you find employers who are truly looking for good people.
cntrlfrk on May 28, 2012 at 11:16 PM
“We live in a grade-inflated world.”
We live in an increasingly stupid world.
Schadenfreude on May 28, 2012 at 11:29 PM
Bah. Water under the bridge now, since it’s been nearly 20 years since I graduated high school. Back in the good old days when 1600 was a perfect SAT and we hadn’t yet rescaled the test to increase the national average to 1000 (It was 920 or so back then I think, in the early 90′s)
Now I’m the high school math teacher. The wonderful old question of “when will I ever use this?” has now been teamed up with “but why do I need to know this when I can probably find an app that will do it for me?”
Hey, speaking of mathematics, remember when Greece was the home of the greatest scientific and mathematical minds of the ancient world and not a raging clusterfark of bad debt and left-wing agitators? Good times.
JimLennon on May 28, 2012 at 11:30 PM
They can all become president of the U.S.
See current resident.
Schadenfreude on May 28, 2012 at 11:32 PM
This article rates a solid B+.
This is why grades are totally worthless. First, they started curving the grades to make the idiots feel a bit better about themselves, but the average C wasn’t quite good enough for the retards who thought they deserved solid B+’s, like the idiot in the White House, so then they raised the curve average to satisfy the morons who never should have been in school. Now, we have all these fools running around with diplomas from joke schools, such as Harvard Lawn School, who are taken seriously by normal people because this scam of the schools printing up diplomas like the Fed prints dollars hasn’t quite hit the public conscious, yet. And the damage these damaged minds have wrought on our nation is beyond any reckoning.
And for those who can’t even achieve the super-ridiculous decent grades … we have “disparate impact” represented well by the perjurer, Kagan, and her sister-in-arms, the empathetic, wise, yet adjectiveless Latina sitting on the SCOTUS waiting to tell us all how knowledge is not really worthwhile compared to petty feelings.
We deserve what we are getting and we deserve it hard.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on May 28, 2012 at 11:38 PM
Since you decided to go there, I wonder if AA was to some extent responsible for breaking the grading system.
AA for inbounds means AA for outbounds, that’s inescapable. Otherwise you have very different graduation rates and that gets ugly.
slickwillie2001 on May 28, 2012 at 11:57 PM
When I went to Georgia Tech in the mid-80′s, the all-men’s average was typically in the 2.4-2.5 range… no BA degrees… Every student not in the architect or management programs took two years of calculus…
phreshone on May 29, 2012 at 12:00 AM
It wasn’t until I got to grad school that I realized 98% of the undergraduates were illiterate morons. Grading the typical undergrad exam was like having a tooth pulled without anesthetic.
Dack Thrombosis on May 29, 2012 at 12:03 AM
Back in my college days, an “A” was as rare as hen’s teeth…especially in Engineering, Math, and the hard sciences.
Apparently colleges have recently become deeply confused about the difference between performance and attendance!!!
landlines on May 29, 2012 at 1:07 AM
Here’s the issue. As the private schools inflated their grades (schools like Stanford had the students actually select their own grade for a while), the public sector schools felt it necessary to “keep up”. After all, if Johnny from Stanford has a 3.89 and Billy from Public School has a GPA of 3.13, but both have a B.S. in Finance, it looks as though Johnny is smarter because he has the higher GPA. So to make up for that deficit, schools started nudging professors to be more lenient in grading so the gap between GPAs would close and make the GPAs and Degrees equivalent.
Education colleges recognized that they needed to pump out the students, so grades were a far second to actually graduating.
As a result, the only disciplines evaluating student work were mathematics and the physical sciences, as both of those required the ability to problem solve. Also, professors who teach Gen Chem, Gen Physics, Organic Chem, and Calc realize that pre-meds and pre-pharms were going through their classes, and they don’t want to have the guilt of having some unqualified dolt passing the class and going on to kill 40 people through malpractice.
Our department (chemistry) was doing a great deal of hand-wringing because test scores have plummeted in Gen Chem. The question was: why aren’t we doing a better job teaching? The question should have been: We’ve been teaching at this level for years, yet the students are performing worse and worse: why?
It could all be summed up in an evaluation critique given by one of my esteemed pupils who was failing the class. “Teacher Better.”
Nethicus on May 29, 2012 at 2:17 AM
how come this isn’t true for me?? =( i almost never make A’s in college!! although in high school and below, it was a different story. i was actually doing pretty well in school until i got to college and then i struggled a lot. most of you don’t know what you’re talking about.
awesome, then my not-so-great college grades wouldn’t matter to you at all i guess?
i mean most people might be a little disappointed in a person with those grades but it’s good to know you wouldn’t mind. 
yeah they did that at my school, giving out higher GPA points for honors and even higher for AP classes. (not that i ever got an A in an AP class -___- ) but i’m glad they did that- harder classes deserve a bigger reward.
problem-solve… and what do students in the other classes do, sleep and play games or something? kinda hating this attitude everyone has on here that if you’re not in a math or science major, your classwork is easy. i have taken a variety of classes in college and no matter the subject, almost all of them have been hard for me. because… college in general is difficult. it’s not like certain subjects are easy and others are hard. again, most of you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Sachiko on May 29, 2012 at 2:54 AM
You get an F for that faulty conclusion. The clear implication is that grading in the hard sciences or math is generally objective while grading in other subjects is highly subjective and, therefore, more prone and susceptible to professors tweaking the numbers to make them and their students look and feel better.
Perhaps you just need to suck up to your instructors? Grades in fields outside of math and the hard sciences are far more political than intellectual.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on May 29, 2012 at 3:21 AM
OH GOD YES! YES! A MILLION TIMES, YES!
Thank you, Minnesota brother, for having the guts to speak up and to do so publicly, to jam a stick in the eye of the administration who care so little about the integrity of a degree, and to begin to shine the light of truth on the reality that not everyone is the next Einstein who is going to med. school no matter how much they and their parents might want them to.
alchemist19 on May 29, 2012 at 4:01 AM
It ticks me off to see this. I would LOVE to go back to school… family gets in the way along with paying bills… of course I am a middle aged white male so that knocks me off the books for “grants”.
What is even worse, I stink at English. Really bad. Spell check was created for people like me because I spell as it sounds. Always have always will.
Yet, give me math or science, I eat that stuff up like no tomorrow.
Heck, when I was going into the navy, I did well enough to get the privy to take the Nuke test… got 21 right somehow. I had any job in the navy I could dream of outside of the physical limitations.
Add in the fact I can not learn spit reading it out of a book. I am a “observe and then do” type of person. I think that is why I am good at most jobs I have tried ( except drive up at McD’s… )… I just have that nack.
To see these people get grades like this with little to no work, then have them get picked over me because they have some stupid piece of paper… disgusting.
With that said, would I want to change my past? Heck no, made me into what I am now today. Not a bad person. Great father, good husband…. would I like the chance to go back to school? Sure I would, but now I fear these idiots have devalued any kind of advanced education I may get.
/rant
watertown on May 29, 2012 at 4:24 AM
Irony impaired.
Mitoch55 on May 29, 2012 at 6:43 AM
A STANDARDIZED test is the only way to objectively determine a person’s knowledge of any given subject.
Whenever the test is written by the same professor who lectured the class, the results will always contain a subjective component. To one extent or another, the student isn’t “taught” so much as he’s trained, like a seal, to respond to stimuli. The best thing about this process (from a purely academic point of view) is that it provides no externally measurable quantification regarding the knowledge of the student or the efficacy of the institution. It’s a completely self-contained feedback loop. In other words: a liberal’s Paradise.
logis on May 29, 2012 at 7:31 AM
Four additional things I see that may have contributed to this trend:
0) Ribbons — everyone gets one, no matter the fail, before they get to college. Sets their personal expectations low. So student feel they can get by with little or no effort and still succeed.
1) Student evaluation of instructors which have a high impact on teach er salary. And in that evaluation set, the administrators are concerned with non-learning issues that focus on retention rather than education. As well as asking someone while they are in class how they “like” the class is similar to asking a sailor in Boot Camp how they “like the Chief” before they’ve graduated and had some of the lessons from boot come back and serve them.
2) Sesame Street education: student expectations to be dished up learning in itty bitty pieces in an entertaining way, a la Sesame Street, instead of adult expectations. Sort expecting to have dinner waiting instead of learning how to fish/hunt, dress, prepare and cook, which is what college is about.
3) “Social sciences” aka Soft Sciences. Where standards are flexible. Even the Fine Arts is more rigorous, since performance is actually expected to meet certain standards.
ProfShadow on May 29, 2012 at 7:36 AM
Thank you liberalism for destroying higher education.
tom daschle concerned on May 29, 2012 at 7:41 AM
We just hired one of our interns full time after he graduated. I was APPALLED at what passes for American History being taught at the local university (Marshall). He had to do a paper on “The Rise of Reagan”, which of course interested me. It’s a subject I am most familiar with, and of course, I LIVED through it, so I offered to help.
To my SHOCK, he was told by his “professortrix” that ONLY HER WRITINGS were allowed to be used as a source. Really? A paper with ONE source, and that being written by a vile lesbian (not the attractive kind) Marxist? I read what she called the history of the 1980′s and it certainly wasn’t the decade I remember living through. I guess you remember a different “reality” when you DON’T pass through a decade stoned and on acid.
wildcat72 on May 29, 2012 at 7:46 AM
Oh really? And what’s the most common grade if we exclude the grades that are awarded (and I use the term loosely) to sports players and minorities? I bet THEN it won’t be “A”.
Three quarters on my schools Dean’s List and I d@mn well earned it…
MelonCollie on May 29, 2012 at 8:10 AM
Wow, all “A” students huh? This is great news! Now we can finally cut school funding!
Dollayo on May 29, 2012 at 8:36 AM
I’ll bite.
Grades do not indicate the intelligence of a student. Not very often, in my experience as a HS teacher.
I get hammered quite a bit by the admin bcs I’m too hard.
Whine whine whine.
I have a standard & that’s IT. I don’t take pride in failing students.
They choose that for themselves. Period.
I noticed one thing in the 3 colleges I went to.
Courses I received As in where I did no work & just basically took easy tests were classes that were not part of my major. You know those pathetic undergrad courses you’re forced to take.
The others I got a whole range: A-C.
I worked really hard for my B+ in Calc I.
Never showed up for Calc II classes except to take tests (bcs the teacher was Chinese & I couldn’t understand anything she ever said) & got a C+ & I was happy.
Worked my a$$ off for my C+ in Structural Geology & so on.
Engineering physics one I got the C+. I about died in that class it was so hard.
Then I get to the college where I took my teaching certification classes.
They were so easy I did NO HW. Busy paperwork, but that was it.
And the other future teachers, none whom were science people, would whine how hard everything was.
Pathetic.
The dumbing down of America.
Badger40 on May 29, 2012 at 9:02 AM
Yes, exactly. And for those who don’t have children, the dumbing down starts in elementary school. Padding of grades continues in middle and high school. No wonder colleges have to grade on a generous curve.
hopeful on May 29, 2012 at 9:14 AM
I completed three years of school from 98-01, took time off to work, 9/11 happened, I enlisted, was later discharged, went back to school and finished.
I promise you my last year’s grades were better than my first three – as a function of motivation and maturity.
Washington Nearsider on May 29, 2012 at 9:20 AM
Very interesting topic. I’ve noticed grade inflation as well. I bite my tongue when my friend with 4 kids brags about their all As as I’m not sure how much that means. Sad really, as grades are not everything, they were are generally a pretty good indication of either ability or hard work to master subject material.
My experience seems different. I went to a good engineering college in the 90s and worked hard in all of my classes and typically got As in my major, electrical engineering, as well as the other math and science pre-reqs. A few Bs, but mostly As. However the opposite for anything required not in the hard sciences, mostly Bs, maybe a few As, history, English, P.E. even! I guess I am to conclude I’m just extremely wired for math/science and can be accurately described a geek.
rose-of-sharon on May 29, 2012 at 9:46 AM
My first computer science class in the 90s at Chico State began with the professor walking in late, starting to speak and then double taking at a white board where the previous teacher wrote, “EVERYONE GETS A’s!”
The class started laughing. As he erased it he said in his dry British tone, “Must not be a computer science class”.
Out of 50 students, only 2-3 got A’s.
elfman on May 29, 2012 at 9:48 AM