College Study Shows Grades Increasing Over Time

According to data released by the Office of the Registrar, grades at the College have steadily increased over the past 10 years.

The data tracked the grade point average (GPA) in every department from the last decade and found that the overall GPA has risen from 3.27 in the fall of 2000 to 3.45 in the spring of 2010.

After students and faculty members first raised concerns in 2004, the Educational Affairs Committee Ad Hoc Committee on Grading was formed to look into the possibility of grade inflation at the college. The committee considered faculty opinions, student polls and the significance of grades for students post-graduation before releasing a final report in December 2005.

The report found that while there was no single reason for rising GPAs, grade inflation was not a major contributor.

“Changes in the characteristics of incoming students and changes in the methods of teacher, assessment and educational environment probably combine to explain much of the observed rise in grades over the past 15 years,” the report concluded. “We were unable to conclude, from the analysis we have conducted, whether grades have risen in an inflationary fashion.”

But Professor of Economics Paul Sommers says that even if increasing grades do not necessarily signal grade inflation, they do raise concerns. Sommers pointed out how a higher average GPA among Middlebury students might make it harder for a committed student to stand out.

“The main question the campus community has to ask itself is whether we are comfortable with an overall average GPA good enough to make Dean’s List,” he said.
In order for a student to be eligible for Dean’s List, he or she must achieve a 3.30 GPA or higher with no grade lower than a B-, for students taking four or more courses. Last spring’s 3.45 average GPA, if maintained over four years, would have been high enough to earn graduation honors — cum laude with a minimum GPA of 3.40.

Now in his 35th year teaching at the College, Sommers says that the increase in grades can be seen in the use of the C grade. Once considered an average grade, the C has become the marker of a poor student.

Sommers’ gradebook distinctly shows this trend. In his fall 1976 introductory Microeconomics course (ECON 0155), Sommers gave a C+ or lower grade to 40.5 percent of his students, but when he taught ECON 0155 in 2003, only 10.8 percent of students received a grade lower than a B- in his class.

In the spring of 2010, 55.3 percent of the grades given were either As or A-, with 94.1 percent of the grades given at the college in the A or B range. Only 5 percent of grades given were in the C range.

Professor of Biology Andrea Lloyd chaired the committee in 2004 and says that determining whether increasing GPAs is due to grade inflation or a host of other factors is nearly impossible.

“I’ve been here for 15 years and if my standards have remained the same, and if admissions tells us every year that the incoming class is the smartest yet, than you’d expect grades to be going up,” she said. “We [the committee] found that the rise of grades tracked the rise in other measures like SAT scores so the cause remained murky by the end.”

According to admissions office data cited in the report, between the fall of 1990 and the fall of 2004 increasing GPAs paralleled an increased number of applications and a decreased admittance rate. In addition, the percentage of students graduating in the top 10 percent of their high school class increased from 61 percent to 77 percent, which the committee’s report says is evidence that students were getting smarter and producing higher quality work.

Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee Georgia Wright-Simmons ’12 agrees that it is difficult to say where the changes come from.

“It is hard to say whether the increase comes from better students, different standards or concerns about the competitive job market,” she wrote in an e-mail. “[Nevertheless,] I do believe that if students stop taking their work seriously, then grade inflation needs to be addressed, but that cannot necessarily be quantified by a specific GPA.”

As part of the report, over 100 faculty members were organized into discussion groups at the annual Breadloaf faculty meeting in 2005 to discuss rising grades. Professors agreed that while students were producing higher quality work, other factors also played a role in the higher grades.

Faculty discussions and student polls show that the culture at the College is becoming increasingly grade-driven, which some faculty members say is creating unwanted side effects.

“Middlebury College has a ‘service for fee’ feeling,” said one professor in the report. “Stories abound about parents’ wealth and how it has helped poor-performing students escape the evaluation they really deserve — the expectation is that we, as producers of a product, should do what they, the consumers, expect.”

According to the report from the meeting, junior faculty members expressed a feeling of pressure to give good grades in order to receive good course evaluations, in which each student fills out a questionnaire evaluating the professor’s performance and which form an important component in determining tenure.

“The ‘system’ should support tough grading, but the perception to junior faculty is that it doesn’t,” noted another professor in the report.

Lloyd says that with the increased importance placed on grades over the last 20 years, pressure on junior faculty members has become a real concern.

“I’ve certainly seen that pressure,” she said. “There are teachers who are notorious for being tough graders and still manage to get students’ respect, but that’s a scary thing to do for junior faculty members.”

Faculty members also said they felt empathy for the cutthroat job market their students were going to enter upon graduating and did not want to jeopardize the student’s future.
“Students have to compete to get into graduate school, medical school, law school, to get jobs, and faculty don’t want to put them (students) at a disadvantage by giving lower grades,” said a faculty member in the report.

Teachers who give students either a D or an F must fill out reports as to why the student is receiving that grade. Faculty members widely agreed that these reports acted as a disincentive to give low grades even if they were deserved.

“They (the reports) created a situation where faculty felt very defensive about giving low grades,” said Lloyd. “I don’t think the reports were ever intended as such, but when that form exists in a culture where grades are so important, faculty feel beleaguered about giving low grades.”

Provost and Executive Vice President of the College and Professor of English and American Literatures Alison Byerly also suggested a faculty-based change as a potential contributor to Middlebury’s rising GPA. Instead of simply giving out more As, professors may be giving students more opportunities to earn an A with a diverse array of assignments.

“A change in grading standards, here and elsewhere, over time may be one explanation,” wrote Byerly in an e-mail. “It is also the case that a major trend in pedagogy over the last decade has been an increased emphasis on creating multiple opportunities for assessment of student performance, which reduces the risk to students of getting a low grade due to a single unsuccessful assignment … This may mean that a motivated student — and most Middlebury students are highly motivated — can attain a good grade through consistent hard work even in a field that is not in an area of strength.”

While the report discounted grade inflation as an explanation for increased GPAs, it did recommend policy changes to address issues of grade inflation, grade compression and discrepancies in GPAs among departments.

One recommendation was to only require faculty grade reports for Fs, since a D still gives the student credit for taking the class.

“The requirement that we (the faculty) submit documentation before assigning a grade of D seemed to send a clear message of discouragement to faculty assigning low grades,” stated the report.

In addition to eliminating the A+, Lloyd says that the College has increased support for incoming junior faculty members since the report was published five years ago.

“There is a mentorship program now where junior faculty are paired with a senior faculty member,” she said. “Now junior faculty members can say, ‘Kids are saying this about my grading practices, should I be worried?’ and be given context for this feedback from senior faculty members.”

Of the six recommendations made by the committee, two have been adopted in some form. In the future, Lloyd says she would love to see median grades published on students’ transcripts for courses above a certain size to combat grade compression.

“Reporting median grades on transcripts would give people the additional information to know that a 3.14 in this department means this and a 3.8 in another department means this,” she said. “It allows a future employer to look at a student relative to their peers.”

For now, according to Byerly, departmental GPAs are circulated annually at the fall faculty meeting each September.

Looking back on the committee, Lloyd says the greatest accomplishment wasn’t a recommendation or change in policy, but the committee itself.

“Even if nobody acted on any of our recommendations,” said Lloyd, “probably one of the most important things that could come out of it was having a conversation about grades, because they tend to be off-limits here.”

As for the future of the grade inflation investigation, Byerly asserted that the issue has not been forgotten.

“The Educational Affairs Committee is aware that the report recommended a review of the issue [of grade inflation], and may put discussion of grade inflation on their spring agenda,” wrote Byerly.