Making the Grade, Fordham-Style

To discuss. However, it helps to understand that grade inflation is merely a symptom of a system where the prestige of a college degree is eroding. This is where GPA comes in. With everyone going to college, expecting to go to college or having already earned a college degree, it is one metric that is used to differentiate one college student from another.

Fordham College (not necessarily CBA), while not pronounced, does have some form of grade deflation in place. It is not prominent for marketing reasons, but it certainly is implied. The college considers a 2.3 or C+ to be "average level of performance," according to the bulletin. It may look good when you are around fellow Fordham alumni, but others may be skeptical that Fordham is a harder school than most other schools. Much of the incentive to do little about taming grade inflation stems from economic reasons.

Even though colleges consider themselves to be non-profit or tax-exempt institutions, their business model resembles private corporations'. They understand the cycle of karma which plays into endowments and national rankings, so nurturing student sentiment is essential so, in some sense, students won't resent them (i.e. lower alumni donation rates, poor scores on college surveys etc). As the cost of college gets more expensive, more of the bargaining power shifts to the students. Colleges, however, will go through all phases of the business cycle since they have the cultural cushion to back their business models. Even if a person did not go to college and is as well read as a college graduate, he or she will not have as much credibility compared to someone who went to college.

The notion of reducing grades to a curve might appear frightening, since GPA cutoffs are often employed by employers and admissions committees when reviewing applicants. It follows that if students are given better GPAs, this will cause them to get better jobs and get into good graduate schools. In turn, alumni donations are expected. This trend will persist so long as "schools believe that granting higher grades gives alumni an advantage," according to an article in the New York Times.

The article cites a study conducted by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy who found that the average GPA had risen from a weighted average of "2.52 in the 1950s" to about a "3.11 by the middle of the last decade." In some schools, grade inflation is more prominent than in others.

Perception-wise, even if it is true that some schools are harder than others, a 2.2 GPA from a difficult school, on the surface, does not look as good as a 3.2 in an easier school. However, some of the schools that placed very high in the U.S. News rankings are not necessarily difficult schools, as most would think. If you glance at the schools in the rankings, a lot of them have inflated GPAs.

The schools which most suspect to be doing little to curb grades and doing much to contain them, are spot on with expectations. At Harvard University, the average GPA in 1995 was a 3.36, but in 2005 that figure rose to a 3.45. This is close to a 2.67 percentage increase. By contrast, Boston University, which is known for its strict grading, had an average of a 3.1 in 1998 but in 2004 that figure dropped to a 3.04. This is approximate to a 1.93 percentage decrease. Princeton, which three years ago implemented a grade deflation policy, seeks to limit the number of As to 35 percent across all departments.

 Even if colleges were to back their rigid grading practices on a transcript, admission committees at professional schools do not want to take the perceived risk of factoring a 2.2 into their advertised median scale of a 3.47, even if the 2.2 is demonstrated to be on par with the performance of a 3.7 at some other school. There are large volumes of applicants for a few spots and there is little time to evaluate the gravitas of that 2.2.

Like excessive government regulation, too much grade deflation can actually be a bad thing. As an artificial control, grade deflation can hinder academic innovation. Grade deflation as a tool starts to blur boundaries when it comes to the liberal arts, or subjects which require heavy essay writing.

In a liberal arts subject, where a majority of the marks assigned are derived from subjective assessments, it can sometimes come to the point where the grade one can get is based on what the instructor feels, especially if there is a need to maintain a curve.

The problem with grade deflation is that it can push the instructor to rely on arbitrary reasons by prompting fickle circumstances. Assuming that each individual in a class has his or her own linguistic signature and is equally intelligent, it may compel the student to write a paper that is reflective of the writing style and convictions of the instructor him- or herself. Take an example in a political science class. A student may be a traditional conservative and believe in lower taxes, minimal government interference and a non-interventionist foreign policy, while his or her instructor is a neoconservative and believes that democracy can be exported and that a more expansive foreign policy is better.

With a grade curve and tons of kids in the class, it will be tough to press his or her case with a result for a higher grade. This is because it costs too much time to evaluate the soundness of an opposing viewpoint than it is to evaluate those which are in line with his or hers. To an extent, it is instinctive to favor something which already is closer to the student's set of values or inclinations. Thus, an instructor can be more picky in choosing which students in a distribution curve would get As and which would get Cs.

Grade deflation is not without its merits. By forcing kids to work diligently for their grades, colleges can send the signal to students that life does not revolve around the more hedonistic pleasures in life, things which would make even Caligula himself grin in delight. From a marketing perspective, no one wants their college to be a top party school. It just does not look good.