Canadian universities have a remedy
Grade inflation continues unabated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The average GPA for undergraduate students at Wisconsin’s flagship university increased to 3.48 in the recently completed fall semester — up from 3.28 just 10 years ago and close to the 3.5 midpoint between an A and B average, according to reports available from the Office of the Registrar.
Grade point averages are even higher in some academic disciplines. The average undergraduate GPA in the School of Education, which had more than 2,400 students, was 3.63 last fall. The average undergraduate GPA in the School of Pharmacy, which had only 40 students, was 3.75.
The school or college with the lowest average GPA last fall was Agricultural and Life Sciences, where the average GPA was 3.39.
The problem is not entirely new. A study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy in 2012, “Where A is ordinary: The evolution of American college and university grading, 1940-2009,” found that on average across a wide range of schools, 43 percent of all letter grades were an A, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988.
But the UW-Madison data suggests the phenomenon has grown worse.
Employers and graduate schools often have no way to know whether they are getting an excellent student or a mediocre one in this age of increasingly rampant grade inflation. A prospective employee with an ostensibly impressive 3.5 GPA may well, in fact, be a middling student.
Some Canadian universities, including the University of Toronto, solve that problem on transcripts by including class GPA averages for each course right next to the grade received by the individual. It is immediately apparent how an individual performed in comparison to peers in the exact same class.
That is “at least something to which they (UW-Madison officials) should give serious thought,” said Madison Professor Emeritus Donald Downs. “Absolutely.”
Downs said grade inflation began way back in the 1960s when some professors were wary of flunking students who could then be drafted into the military for service in Vietnam. Reasons for ever-increasing grade inflation, he said, are different today.
Even 10 years ago, when he stopped teaching, “giving a student a C was a tough thing to do,” he said. Students with low grades could cause trouble for a professor, he said, adding that he himself never experienced that. Student dissatisfaction, he added, might show up on evaluations.
There have been other forces at work as well, including a shift in how some universities and professors see their role. Downs cited a forthcoming book by Jonathan Alpert entitled “Therapy Nation” that will document the shift to a therapeutic mindset.
In a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, Alpert noted that the number of students receiving accommodations on deadlines or tests due to a diagnosed impairment such as anxiety or ADHD or depression has surged.
“Recent reporting indicates that nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates are registered for accommodations,” wrote Alpert. “Harvard reports roughly 21%, up more than 18 points over the past decade, with similar increases at Amherst and Brown.”
“Therapy was never meant to function as a governing model for companies and schools,” wrote Alpert. “But its language now substitutes for institutional judgment about standards, expectations and limits for student and employee behavior.”
Downs, a First Amendment scholar, says “political correctness has been replaced by emotional correctness.”
Questions submitted to UW-Madison Interim Provost John Zumbrunnen were answered via an email from Gillian Drummond, the director of public affairs in the Office of Strategic Communication.
“The term grade inflation usually refers to a deliberate practice of course instructors awarding grades that are higher than merited by student academic performance. Over this time period, changes in academic policy, student experience and student support are more likely contributors to increasing undergraduate GPAs,” she wrote.
Drummond noted that a sharp increase in GPAs in 2020 was “was likely due to changes in COVID-era grading options that allowed students to not count certain courses in their grade point averages” and said that when the practice ended, GPAs returned to pre-pandemic levels.
GPAs increased from 3.279 in 2015-16 to 3.477 in 2020-21 before dropping to 3.392 in 2021-22 and then rising gradually to 3.483 last fall.
She added that the semester deadline to drop courses was extended during the pandemic as well and eventually became permanent, allowing more students to avoid completing the semester with a low grade.
A much higher percentage of freshmen are enrolling with prior college course experience, she said, which “may lead to stronger academic performance” and “more familiarity with academic support options.”
University of Toronto officials have long included course average grades on transcripts and are not the only ones to have at least thought of the idea. A Harvard University report is said to have noted that “recording the median grade for every course” on transcripts might help recruiters and “reduce the pressure students currently feel to take easily graded courses, since the benefits of doing so would be less.”
Professors still would have motivation to give higher grades to students who don’t really deserve them, but at least the façade of excellence attached to the kid with the 3.5 GPA would be revealed for what it is: an illusion.
Drummond did not respond to a question posed to Zumbrunnen about whether UW-Madison would consider including average course grades on transcripts next to individual’s grades.
Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute.
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