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June 8, 2005
Grade Inflation
The Washington Post has an interesting article on professorial encounters with grade grubbing.
Grade inflation in a frustrating topic for a few reasons. First, it isn't really inflation. The maximum grade isn't going anywhere. It really just is grade range shrinking. The real range of grades used to be F-A, now it is B-A for most students. Second, the proposed solutions are not effective. They all revolve around a coordination problem. Professors can't control grade inflation because any one professor has an incentive to inflate grades to attract pleasant students with positive course evaluations. When Cornell tried to combat grade inflation by shaming teachers by publishing average grades, it failed. Cornell students simply took the easy classes. The real answer to this problem is to separate the act of evaluating performance from teaching students. We could combine the British model of standardized normal (B level) and honors (A level) final exams (end of semester) for 80% of the grade, with homework being 15% and class participation being the remaining 5%. That way grades are far more objective without being over focused on exams at the end of the year. Then professors can focus on teaching and researching.
Posted by OneEyedMan at June 8, 2005 9:50 AM
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