Grade-point averages rising at many colleges

By Sharif DurhamsKnight Ridder Wire Service Up is winning. A UNC Chapel Hill study this year confirmed grades at the campus keep rising. Forty-one percent of the university’s grades were A’s in spring 2003 compared with 38 percent four years earlier. Chancellor James Moeser pledged to so do something about it, though no major changes have happened yet. Carolinas data are spotty overall, but grade-point averages continue to rise at UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Greensboro and Duke University. The same thing happens at UNC Charlotte, the University of South Carolina and other campuses, administrators say. And this fall, administrators are keeping their eyes on one of their elite peers, Princeton University, which decided this spring to limit the number of A’s professors could hand out because students were earning too many. Students decried the move. But those education leaders are also asking more questions. Are students getting higher grades for the same work- a phenomenon known as grade inflation? And if so, is that a real problem? “I don’t think anybody knows for sure,” said Wayne Walcott, UNCC’s provost. Walcott said he’s sure that if he looked at data from the past several freshman classes, it would show their GPAs rising. But that doesn’t mean the students are getting grades that aren’t justified, he said. Scores on the SAT and high school GPAs are also up, Walcott said. “We’re getting better students,” he said. “Would we expect grades to go up? Sure.” Some critics believe universities are boosting grades because of consumer pressures, both from families paying for competitive schools and students who get to evaluate their teachers.One of the staunchest advocates of a grade crackdown, Duke University professor Stuart Rojstaczer, has documented the rise in grades in his Web site www.gradeinflation.com. His study of 22 schools says the grade-point average rose from 2.94 to 3.09 between 1992 and 2002.At private schools in his study, the GPAs rose from 3.11 to 3.26.Rojstaczer refers to arguments from grade inflation believers that grades rose in the 1960s because of faculty sympathetic to students who were avoiding the draft during the Vietnam War. Grades jumped again starting in the 1980s, Rojstaczer said, due to economic pressures.His Web site also notes, “This conjecture is based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove.” Pinning down a cause for the grade boost is difficult because professors have different goals when they grade students. Some use them as incentives and give students high grades for making vast improvements, even if all the work isn’t excellent. Some argue their courses are tough and that anyone who survives deserves a good grade. Others still believe they do a good job of distributing A’s, C’s and F’s to the students who deserve them..The problem with giving more high grades is that it damages some of these incentives, said Peter Gordon, the UNC Chapel Hill professor who led the latest campus grade study. Gordon believes at least some grade inflation exists and that it has notable effects. He said the university has to keep tightening the standards for students to qualify for the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, or else too many students would be in it.”It’s sort of hard to know how to reward really excellent work, because `A’ doesn’t really mean that anymore,” Gordon said. Duke Provost Peter Lange said Princeton’s decision didn’t raise many eyebrows in his campus. That’s probably because Duke already had this fight. Seven years ago, former Duke statistics professor Val Johnson devised a weighted grading system to calculate grade-point averages. A’s, for instance, would count less toward a student’s GPA if everyone in the class receives an A. The A would matter more in calculating grades if some students received F’s. Gordon said Johnson’s proposal was like ranking college football teams by the strength of opponents in their schedule, although that comparison, he said, is somewhat oversimplified. “There was a major debate, and it was very divisive,” Lange said. He also argued it wasn’t very productive. The school’s grading system didn’t change. UNC Chapel Hill had its own battle four years ago when a report was released that declared grade inflation a serious problem on the campus. The report called for an annual examination of grades, and faculty pushed for an in-depth follow-up this year. That report and Moeser’s call this spring haven’t led to an overhaul in grading, Gordon said. Both Duke and UNC Chapel Hill say faculty regularly look over grade data and talk about the factors that could lead to higher grades. UNCC professors do so more informally, Walcott said. Several administrators said they would have trouble coming up with any standard meaning of college grades. Gordon noted people have enough trouble comparing GPAs at different colleges, or even in different programs at the same college. “If you see a GPA, what it may tell you most is what courses a person chose and when they went to school as opposed to how they did,” Gordon said.