Nationally, scholars have levied accusations of grade inflation – the idea that it is easier to get an A than it used to be – against universities ranging from Harvard to LSU.
According to a study on www.gradeinflation.com, grade inflation declined slowly beginning in the mid-1970s, resurfaced in the mid-1980s and has continued to rise at almost every school for which data is available.
The Web site examines trends at more than 80 schools with a combined enrollment of more than 1 million undergraduate students.
During the last 35 years, GPAs have increased by about .15 per decade, according to the study. The problem is not as simple as curving grades or posting online notes and handing out copies of old tests. Many people believe it is a shift in attitude.
“I think it’s strange because I’ve seen kids fight for As and there’s nothing wrong with a B,” said Kit Smoot, a graduate student in education.
As a freshman in 1968, Smoot said she remembers when five grammatical errors were an F.
At the time people were, in a sense, hiding at LSU from the Vietnam draft, Smoot said. “There was a conscious effort to pull out people who didn’t belong here,” she said.
Smoot sees the change in grading standards as a change not in grade inflation, but in curriculum. However, the outlook is the same – the A is the new B.
Grade inflation and distribution is a hot topic because it could change the atmosphere on campuses across the country. For example, with more attention on how many As professors issue, imagine how midterm grades this week might be much different.
How LSU examines grades
Robert Kuhn, associate vice chancellor for budget and planning, said his office routinely sends grade distribution reports to deans and department heads for administrative use.
Reports from spring and summer 2003 showed higher average GPAs at the Graduate School, the College of Education, the Manship School of Mass Communication and the College of Music and Dramatic Arts than other colleges at the University.
General reports are found online at www.bgtplan.lsu.edu, but detailed reports go to administrators that allow them to look for trends and see if different sections of the same class are receiving similar grade distribution.
“We wouldn’t expect the grades in every English 1001 section to be the same,” Kuhn said.
Bill Demastes, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said grade distribution among multi-section classes can show if the standards are uniform enough, and in some courses, like math, where the grading is not subjective, it also reflects the instructor’s teaching ability.
“The ones that stand out on the high end or the low end we’ll call attention to,” Demastes said.
Sometimes there is a good reason for the grade distribution in one section to be different from the others. For example, maybe it was a 7:30 a.m. class, he said.
Another factor that can affect grade distribution is who is teaching the class, whether it’s a graduate student or a new faculty member, he said.
College of Education Dean Barbara Fuhrmann said she meets with deans and department chairs every Thursday, and if she sees an exam in which a particular faculty member is not discriminating between levels of performance she points it out to the department chair to talk to the professor.
“Grade inflation has been a problem,” she said. “It’s a problem nationally.”
Even good students are making higher grades than in the past, she said. For example, when Fuhrmann was in college, a 4.0 GPA was practically unheard of. In May 2003, LSU congratulated 52 university medallists – students who maintained at 4.0 throughout college.
“It used to be you could graduate college with a 2.0, and in some programs you can’t,” she said.
Fuhrmann believes TOPS may play a factor in Louisiana’s grade inflation. Because students have to maintain a certain GPA as part of the program, she’s heard stories of students going to professors to save their scholarship.
But through his 10 years at LSU, College of Music and Dramatic Arts dean Ronald Ross said he has not seen significant variation in the school’s grade distribution. Therefore, issues such as grade inflation do not generate many questions in his college.
“I can hear and I can see the results of good teaching,” Ross said. “I’m not sure I would be able to detect that from a grade distribution sheet.”
Grading the issue from students’ point of view
Bindu Samkutty, a business sophomore, used to be an English major. Most students change their major because they are more drawn to a career in a different field.
Samkutty changed because people looked at her like a slacker.
“Every time I said what my major was, people looked at me and I was like, ‘No, uh unh,'” she said. “I couldn’t take the looks people gave me.”
The grades students receive can reflect not only the University but also the subject area, hence the idea of a “B.S. degree.”
English is not an easy major because it involves a lot of writing and research, Samkutty said. But she likes to write, so she enjoyed it.
“I don’t think it’s fair to call a major easy, because just because you like something doesn’t mean someone else will,” she said.
Samkutty said she believes everyone has had a class in college where they didn’t try and still made a high grade, but that does not mean LSU has a problem with grade inflation.
“There’s too much stupidity in college for everyone to get an A,” she said.
However, Angela Olivier, a biological sciences sophomore, said she finds her professors tend to give high grades.
“It seems in almost all my classes, they all want you to get As,” Olivier said. “Every so often you’ll get that mean teacher that has to have a bell curve.”
Smoot said she always guessed mass communication was an easy major because it seemed popular among students she tutored at the Writing Center.
Smoot, who already has degrees in English and psychology, said she would imagine that all majors are challenging in their own way.
She said one reason graduate school students have higher GPAs is that the people who go to graduate school are high achievers anyway.
“I think they put so much pressure on themselves in undergrad to get there, it really does carry over,” she said.
The pressure to get into schools after LSU may also be a reason why colleges like Arts and Sciences, where people would typically expect students to go on to post-graduate education, tend to have a higher average GPA than other schools such as engineering where students usually can find a high paying job with just an undergraduate degree.
However, electrical engineering student Irshad Syed said engineering students, especially international students, still have to get good grades to get a job.
“The competition is greater,” he said. “We have to get good grades, otherwise we go back home.”
The pressure to make high grades is one reason Syed said he is considering changing his major to geography.
The number of people in geography compared to electrical engineering is 3 to 1, and Syed said he feels he can make better grades in geography, therefore making him more competitive.
“Good grades are important,” Syed said. “What I want to do is not as important.”
Apples to oranges
In classes where the tests have only one clear correct answer, it is easier to have factual points of demarcation, Demastes said. For example, if one student’s test is an equation and another student has to define tragedy, there is only one answer to the equation, but there could be several definitions of tragedy.
In the arts, there is an element of expression in facts and interpretation, he said.
“It’s that kind of subjectivity that begs the question of inflation,” Demastes said.
Comparing average GPAs in different schools is like comparing apples to oranges. When examining grades in different schools, people should compare them to schools at peer universities, he said.
“All the numbers are relative,” Demastes said. “The numbers don’t matter. It’s the comparison between the people who are going to compete.”
The College of Education is essentially a senior college, because students typically don’t enter until the end of their sophomore year, Fuhrmann said.
“Grades get better because you’ve declared a major,” she said. “You’ve finished with all the stuff you have to take.”
Also, when looking at grade distribution, people have to consider who is in the class, Fuhrmann said. The college requires students to have a 2.5 GPA to be admitted and has the highest percentage of graduate students.
“We’re skewed toward higher grades for different reasons,” Fuhrmann said. “But that’s not an excuse for someone with a 30-person class to have 29 As.”
In education, there is more emphasis on performance than paper and pen exams, she said. Therefore, when students are being graded, professors are looking for their ability to do the job, not to pass a multiple choice test.
Although education is one major that students often peg as easy, Fuhrmann said before they make that assumption, they need to see what these students have to do – such as posters, projects, teaching classes and making electronic portfolios.
“It’s a different kind of expectation that’s geared to a greater variety of assessments than the traditional course evaluation,” she said.
Music and dramatic arts also are areas that are different in terms of grades, Ross said, because students self-select, by deciding if they think they are good enough to make it, and then go through auditions.
“Most music students won’t consider majoring in music unless they’ve taken lessons for eight to nine years,” he said. “Music students know when they walk in the door they are majoring in music.” Theater students are the same way, but tend to declare their major later. Either way, the school starts with higher-quality, more motivated students, Ross said.
“The grades they receive even as a freshmen are going to be higher than someone in a general course,” he said.
That does not mean the classes are easier. Students study with the same teacher throughout their time at LSU, and that constant training leads to higher grades, Ross said. But he said the phrase “easy A” never comes up in the College of Music and Dramatic Arts.
“If you’re in a performance curriculum, you have to demonstrate growth and progress,” he said. “That’s not easy. That means a lot of practice.” The more balanced grade distribution in the school occurs in general education classes, like music appreciation, Ross said.