More Matter What inflation?

Author: Matty Van Meter

"Grade Inflation." Say it and professors get defensive, students get offended and administrators begin throwing figurative smoke bombs. Let us parse the term. "Grade" is pretty easy. "Inflation," in the sense intended by the term, is defined by the OED as "great or undue enlargement; increase beyond proper limits." There it is: great or undue increase of grades, presumably across all groups.

The debate in prestigious institutions about this issue has brought out some interesting preconceptions. The most striking to me is that the focus of the issue seems to be around professors. As with many such issues, there is a negative stereotype, which supplants the actual people in the foci of critical heat. This is the image of a tenured professor, assured in his cushy career at the college and using increasingly anachronistic teaching methods in a course taken by students for an "easy A." This is what academicians fear. There is, especially in highly selective institutions, a drive to bring down the average GPA of the student body, and a perception that those professors whose classes are not murderously hard are somehow not upholding standards of academic rigor.

The truth is, and I think that every person who has attended any school at any level will know this, there are hard classes, easy classes and normal classes. This helps students balance their lives, and affords them more choice each semester. Some professors will always give higher grades, and some will begrudgingly bestow a B+ only upon the anointed few. Students are acutely aware of these realities, and are therefore able to find a comfortable level of difficulty, which allows them to function effectively.

There has been a move recently in some institutions to impose upon classes a bell-curve grading system, in which students are evaluated not only for the quality of their work, but in comparison to other students. Whatever merits this system may have in principle, the kind of individualistic competition fostered by it is anathema to a healthy intellectual community. There is already little enough teamwork at Middlebury. To remove the incentives for studying together and sharing ideas, indeed to create a powerful incentive for personal hoarding of knowledge, is a very dangerous idea.

One may question (I certainly do) whether grade inflation, as a result of professorial leniency, actually exists at all. People often throw around the unusually high average student GPAs at schools such as Harvard, Williams or Middlebury. These numbers have, indeed, been rising over time. Yet is there a more plausible explanation than a slow nation-wide movement towards easy grading? How about the students? With all the focus on the professors, we forget the students. At institutions like Middlebury, the vast majority of students had GPAs well above average in high school, were hard-working, very smart and adaptable. They are the right-hand edge of the bell curve. Are a majority of them just going to become more slothful, while the real "A" students continue their drive upwards? Certainly it happens to a few. But to expect so many students who did exceedingly well in high school to suddenly become "B" students is unrealistic.

We seek an artificial bell curve in a group of students selected to break that very curve. In fact, it is a great credit to the student bodies of the top American institutions that the average grade has risen so much as to become an issue of debate.