Study finds grade inflation at Chapel Hill
Eric Ferreri
(Raleigh) News & Observer
Posted: Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009

CHAPEL HILL At UNC-Chapel Hill, students are getting great grades.

And that's a problem.

A new report on grade inflation reveals that about 82 percent of all undergraduate grades at UNC-CH were A's or B's in the fall of 2007, and more A's were given than any other grade.

Now, some faculty fear top students aren't getting the recognition they deserve as the line between them and the rest of the class blurs.

"We think it is a problem," said Donna Gilleskie, an economics professor who analyzed more than 1 million grades since 2000 in writing the report. "It's a disservice to students. Sure, students would all like to get A's. But you want to reward students who have mastered the material."

The new report comes nine years after a similar study found 77 percent of the grades issued to undergraduates were A's and B's. That report prompted lengthy faculty discussion but no changes, and the trend has worsened since.

The new report is a draft that can change as Gilleskie adds data and controls to it. But it shows that the average undergraduate grade-point average has increased steadily, from 2.976 in 1995 to 3.2 in 2007.

The inflation appears greatest in some humanities departments, where grading is often more subjective than in the hard sciences or math. But there was a significant spike in medical-related schools as well, the report notes.

Across the country, grades have been on the rise for years. At UNC-CH, Provost Bernadette Gray-Little said there are no formal plans for a broad examination of the issue.

Many of the more than 50 UNC-CH departments analyzed have had average GPAs of at least 3.0 dating back to 1995. Since then, the averages in most departments have risen steadily.

A couple of examples: In 2000, the average GPA in environmental science and studies was 3.15. By 2007, it had risen to 3.72. The percentage of A's given in that department rose over the same time span from 36 percent to 76 percent.

In the exercise and sports science department, 94 percent of undergraduates received A's in the fall of 2007, according to the data, up from 83 percent in 2000.

The inflation could help explain increases in membership to academic honor societies such as Phi Beta Kappa, which had 110 members in fall 2004 at UNC-CH and 176 this past fall.

Higher expectations

But even as grades climb, students aren't always satisfied.

Andrew Perrin, a sociology professor and chairman of the faculty committee that produced the new report, recalls one student who, upon receiving an A-minus for a final grade, asked him what she had done wrong. That sort of outsized expectation may be part of the problem, Perrin suggests: Students expect great grades, and some professors are becoming less willing to be "judgmental" and critical in grading, he said.

"Virtually everybody entering UNC now is used to getting an A on everything," Perrin said. "The sensibility of people in humanities and social sciences is pretty anti-hierarchical and inclusive and tolerant of all kinds of expressions. It's difficult not to apply that to grading practices as well."

Although changes to the classroom dynamic may contribute to grade inflation, faculty members say there are plenty of other possible reasons. Students, by some measures, are smarter today. In some departments, smaller classes lead to more effective learning. And many professors see high grades as evidence that they're doing a good job teaching.

Grade inflation is not unique to UNC-CH. At Princeton, faculty members have tried to control grade inflation by setting quotas, allowing departments to award A's to no more than 35 percent of students. At Seton Hall University, grade inflation diminished after faculty members confronted the issue by talking about it in detail with each other.

At UNC-CH, little has been done to date. Recommendations in the 2000 report, such as introducing a new grading standard to roll the average GPA back to the 2.6 range, were discussed but never adopted. And in 2007, a proposal to the Faculty Council to adopt an Achievement Index -- a different sort of GPA that factors in differences in grading practices in various courses -- was narrowly defeated.

'Worse than in 2000'

"The situation is considerably worse than it was in 2000," said Boone Turchi, an economics professor who conducted the 2000 study. "The faculty, as a whole, has not really been willing to come to grips."

Over more than three decades in higher education, Ed Neal saw a slow shift in the makeup of the UNC-CH student body that may be connected to the current grading phenomenon. Neal is a former director of faculty development at UNC-CH's Center for Teaching and Learning.

Thirty years ago, male students comprised 60 percent of the college population. Today, females, who traditionally get better grades than males, account for more than 60 percent of the students.

But there are plenty of other factors, Neal argues. For one, universities work harder today to keep students in school, he said.

"We used to give students D's and F's and flunk them out," Neal said. "Now, we're more humane. We counsel them. If they're doing badly in a course, they drop it."

Also, more faculty rely on relatively inexperienced teaching assistants to grade papers, and they may not be as critical as they ought to be. And in some departments, only students with a serious interest in the subject enroll in it, he points out.

"Who dares to take Mandarin?" he said. "Someone on a lark? You have to be motivated to take that course."

The average GPA in Chinese in fall 2007 was 3.41.

Jeremy Ford, a UNC-CH senior majoring in biology, said he gets good grades and is proud of his work. But his accomplishment would be lessened if he found out that most of his classmates received high grades as well.

"It doesn't carry the same weight as it would if I was part of just 5 percent who got an A," he said. "That's not the real world. If you don't perform well at work, you're going to get fired."

High grades helpful

Perhaps Ford shouldn't worry. Grade inflation may actually help him and others get a job, said Marcia Harris, who recently retired as director of UNC's career services office.

Although some employers don't care about a student's GPA, many -- in such fields as computer science, banking, business consulting and science research -- look at it when deciding whom to interview. For many, the cutoff is 3.0.

"Twenty-five years ago, 3.0 eliminated half the senior class," Harris said. "Now, it may eliminate maybe a third. So [grade inflation] actually gives more students a shot, at least, at an interview."

To Todd Dalrymple, a UNC-CH senior from Cary, grade inflation makes him less likely to boast of academic achievement.

"It makes you think twice about what that Dean's List distinction means," he said. "It makes you think twice about putting it on your resume."

Gilleskie, the economics professor who crunched the data for this new grade report, has struggled grading in an honors-level economics course that involves a great deal of tough written research. In a class of 15 honor students, the work ranges from very good to "really bad," Gilleskie said. But it's very difficult work, so should she give C's to students low on that ladder?

She gives mostly A's, she acknowledged.

"They're undertaking a task that very few others have done, and the fact that they got through it is an accomplishment," she said. "But is that right? That's what I struggle with."

Perrin, the sociology professor, hopes that the grades he gives reflect his students' true work and abilities. But he fears that if something doesn't change across the university, grades will become meaningless.

"The good-performing students can't distinguish themselves," he said. "It's also bad for students just checking classes off the list because it doesn't give them the incentive to do better."

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/breaking/story/495210.html

1/26/2009 1:14:13 PM

I, too, read the Sunday N&O.

1/26/2009 1:15:21 PM

durrr

[Edited on January 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM. Reason : by me and i knew that ... durr]

1/26/2009 1:16:26 PM

they're owned by the same people now. wouldn't be suprised if this article ran in both.

1/26/2009 1:17:47 PM

at least it's becoming public knowledge

1/26/2009 1:18:03 PM

Quote :

""Virtually everybody entering UNC now is used to getting an A on everything," Perrin said. "The sensibility of people in humanities and social sciences is pretty anti-hierarchical and inclusive and tolerant of all kinds of expressions. It's difficult not to apply that to grading practices as well.""

That pretty much sums it all up.

It's the politically correct, don't offend anyone or hurt someone's feelings type of culture that results in this kind of shit.

1/26/2009 1:18:54 PM

rofl, its the same story

Isn't this what we know intuitively? It's fairly common knowledge around here that UNC is harder to get into and easier to stay in.

Having said that, it very well could be that the difficultly of the course material hasn't changed, and if the demand for a UNC education from top students across the country (world) has gone up, then they would collectively have students that shift the scale up the curve compared to the past. The drawback for UNC is they have failed to seize on this influx of great talent and haven't taken their institution to an even more elite level than it is now.

1/26/2009 1:19:08 PM

Does UNC do the 3.67 for an A-, 4.0 for an A, 4.33 for an A+ thing too???

1/26/2009 1:26:25 PM

Quote :

"Today, females, who traditionally get better grades than males, account for more than 60 percent of the students."

I'm SURE that's the real reason behind it.

1/26/2009 2:08:17 PM

I BET IT IS ALL OF THE CHINESE IN MATH AND THE INDIANS

1/26/2009 2:24:28 PM

UNC Law has a very strict curve system. Where a certain percentage of students get A's, then the bulk get B's, and so on. So, you can get 95% of your questions right and still end up with a B if ~15 people scored 97%. It's an interesting system.

1/26/2009 2:36:09 PM

I know people that went to UNC for Engineering, because they could not survive at NCSU.

1/26/2009 3:24:38 PM

A lot of "nice" schools are like this. It is not a surprise.

1/26/2009 4:07:35 PM

Quote :

"Does UNC do the 3.67 for an A-, 4.0 for an A, 4.33 for an A+ thing too???"

I have the feeling that they don't do the 4.33, but they do all the others.

1/26/2009 4:56:40 PM

doesnt surprise me.

i do training in a business environment now-a-days and we generally do not baby people. sometimes half the people that take a test fail it the first time. most people take this in stride since it is pass/fail, but some trainees (straight from college) become insanely flustered, not being used to failing anything.

i know it upset me when i failed one of our tests when i got hired, but it wasnt hard to pass it the second go round.

1/26/2009 6:42:31 PM

Doesn't surprise me. I've heard that they have recitation sessions for most classes, whereas we usually just have them for freshman math and science classes. They also allow final exam exemptions for a lot of classes.

This kind of stuff pisses me off when they claim to attend a more academically well-rounded institution.

1/26/2009 7:06:23 PM

They get gold stars and cookies, too!

1/26/2009 8:00:23 PM

Everybody must win and all must have prizes!

[Edited on January 26, 2009 at 9:18 PM. Reason : .]

1/26/2009 9:16:59 PM

A friend of mine last night (went to state transferred to ugly) said that at UNC most students only get about 4 hrs of a sleep per weeknight because of the heavy workload.

So, are they all working hard enough to get good grades?

[Edited on January 26, 2009 at 9:17 PM. Reason : dude]

1/26/2009 9:17:10 PM

^sounds like he used curry math to come to that conclusion

1/26/2009 10:11:24 PM

haha, Boone Turchi (the guy who conducted the 2000 study) is notoriously one of the hardest professors at UNC. He would curve tests downward if too many people made A's. It doesn't surprise me that he'd find that professors were grading too sympathetically.

Despite the fact that I got an A- in Turchi's Microecon class, I remember thinking specifically when I was at UNC in '98 how hard it was to make an A; I was a solid B+ student. I'd agree, though, with some of the reasons for higher overall grades given in the article; college kids nowadays--at least the ones i come across--seem a lot smarter than i was at their age.

1/26/2009 10:20:33 PM

A friend of mine last night (went to state transferred to ugly) said that at UNC most students only get about 4 hrs of a sleep per weeknight because of the heavy load of dong they suck.

[Edited on January 26, 2009 at 10:31 PM. Reason : fixed the quote]

1/26/2009 10:31:22 PM

^I see what you did there

1/26/2009 10:58:01 PM

Quote :

"A new report on grade inflation reveals that about 82 percent of all undergraduate grades at UNC-CH were A's or B's in the fall of 2007, and more A's were given than any other grade."

stopped reading there. christ.

1/26/2009 11:43:42 PM

Quote :

"Does UNC do the 3.67 for an A-, 4.0 for an A, 4.33 for an A+ thing too???"

No A+'s at UNC-CH. They complain about it.

1/27/2009 1:40:33 AM

lulz

1/27/2009 1:30:39 PM

Study finds sand often present on beaches

1/27/2009 5:52:26 PM

I really dislike this grade inflation. I went to a small private school up North and got a 3.3 when the average GPA on campus was 2.9 or so. I took a class at Ohio State over a summer once for credit and thought the grading scale much easier, Im sure some of it had to do with the fact it was summer session but (unintelligent) people seemed to have incredibly high GPAs. /done ranting

1/27/2009 6:15:12 PM

i would be interested to see the numbers on a study at NCSU. i have a feeling that they would be a lot lower, as a whole, because we are such a mathematical & science oriented school.

either you go the answer, or you didnt.

the beam broke, or it didn't.

there's going to be a lot more subjectiveness in humanities programs. I busted my ass for 4 years here and i got A's, but i also got some C's in a few engineering classes that were just hard as balls. So I don't think there was much, if any, inflation in the College of Engineering.

grades always seemed to be linearly correlated to effort, with a R value of .99

2/13/2009 11:12:34 AM

^inorite? My roommate was bragging about the D+ he got on an aspect of his senior design project.

2/13/2009 11:48:13 AM

ive had plenty of ME classes with healthy linear curving (although i've also had plenty with none or bell curving)

2/13/2009 11:53:06 AM

2/13/2009 4:30:40 PM

^^ i had ME classes where, in the final grade distribution, 40% of the class got a D or F.

I had a professor tell us that he failed if anyone aced any of his tests (a Ph. D engineering student in our undergrad did manage to ace one test. needless to say, nobody aced the next one.)

i went to a professor's office hours for some help with an assignment one time. after waiting outside for 20 minutes for him talking on the phone, I asked a question, and he said "You've got the notes. Go home and study it."

I had to take Thermodynamics 2 three times. I know another guy who had to take solid mechanics FOUR times, and now he works at NASA on space shuttle re-entry.

It kind of irks me that UNC talks a big game and enjoys somewhat of a premier reputation, yet they're handing out good grades like candy.

2/13/2009 4:45:48 PM

Quote :

"I know another guy who had to take solid mechanics FOUR times"

he was supposed to have been kicked out of the program for that due to the three strike rule. i got kicked for failing a class, then having two medical withdrawals due to crazy mono and the resulting problems that required surgery. (didn't care though, was planning on changing to biological anyway)

2/13/2009 5:20:02 PM

that must be a new rule. i've never heard of that.

there would've been a significant number of people kicked out for that when i was ME. i guess there are now.

2/13/2009 5:22:41 PM

^ nerd, i took calc II and thermo 3 times, and organic II twice over the course of 7 years

2/13/2009 5:23:19 PM

Engineering anecdotes aside, I'm willing to bet that grade inflation here at NCSU is just as bad as UNC-CH on the broad scale.

2/13/2009 5:36:31 PM

Quote :

"I had a professor tell us that he failed if anyone aced any of his tests (a Ph. D engineering student in our undergrad did manage to ace one test. needless to say, nobody aced the next one.) i went to a professor's office hours for some help with an assignment one time. after waiting outside for 20 minutes for him talking on the phone, I asked a question, and he said "You've got the notes. Go home and study it.""

Lol that sounds like Dr. T.W Alexander from the Electrical Engineering Dept.

If anything i'd say electrical engineering is suffering from the exact opposite from grade inflation. India and China send the brightest of its students, who would be MIT caliber here in america, to NCSU for engineering. These kids do nothing, while living on their gov't subsidy, except sit in the library to study engineering 24/7. Anyone in electrical can tell you that the US citizens stick together, the indians , the chinese, than you have your randoms. It is funny how everyone i talk to about test scores got D's and F's yet the test average is a 78.

On a serious note though these foreign super nerd students make it a lot more difficult for a normal bright intelligent American student to excel in engineering while maintaining extra-curricular activities or a social life.

If i was a professor i'd surely be assisting and showing leniency towards the American students versus the study robots that come over from Obligdush India and sit in the computer lab til 3 am every saturday.

[Edited on February 13, 2009 at 6:38 PM. Reason : ;]

2/13/2009 6:36:38 PM

just imagine how supernerd the ones at MIT are!

2/13/2009 6:49:15 PM

Quote :

"On a serious note though these foreign super nerd students make it a lot more difficult for a normal bright intelligent American student to excel in engineering while maintaining extra-curricular activities or a social life."

Maybe some of these 'bright intelligent American' students aren't as bright and intelligent as they think they are?

2/13/2009 6:54:43 PM

I say the foreign students in EE have an advantage, since all the TAs can speak their native tongue.

2/13/2009 6:57:44 PM

lol

2/13/2009 6:59:37 PM

^^^ in his dickheaded xenophone way, he's saying that it's kinda like being on the Olympic basketball team for Poland or Nepal or something. In the grand scheme of the things, you're an extremely good basketball player. Up against our Dream Team, you're going to look like a scrub.

2/13/2009 7:10:16 PM

i wouldn't doubt the same can be said for the engineering courses at nc state. people when i was in school didnt take anything three times. I know the humanities are skewed though. How the hell else did i get through english

2/13/2009 7:12:53 PM

all i'm sayin is, as much as i paid for an education, i feel like i got fucked because non english speaking ta's taught half my classes

2/13/2009 7:13:49 PM

Quote :

"I say the foreign students in EE have an advantage, since all the TAs can speak their native tongue."

This does not help either.

Mind blowing it is at my graduation that only 2 of 9 PhD candidates that graduated were American. Yet we wonder why we have so many problems in this country.

2/13/2009 8:04:58 PM

^Yeah, man, the fact that people from other countries come to the US to get a good education really highlights how fucked up we are.

2/13/2009 8:31:56 PM

You obviously lack enough depth to understand why something like the statistic i gave of 2 of 9 could be problematic .

2/13/2009 9:14:18 PM

When I was doing Pre-ce 10+ years ago, the ta who taught the calcII (ma241??) lab class was a sweet, shy chinese girl. i could maybe make out every other word or so. (so you take the dee-riv-a-tiv...). It wasn't her fault, but it made class pointless. But I made it through the curriculum, with plenty of other difficult-to-understand-or-talk-to-professors, and made my only "d" in Kleinstreuer (sp?) the Destroyer's thermo class as my engineering elective.

2/13/2009 10:03:21 PM

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2/13/2009 10:06:15 PM