Second, I’m interested to know what you think the actual “problem” of grade inflation consists of.
Doesn’t this eliminate some of the problems of grade inflation? Now that every grade is published next to a median grade, it’s much easier to interpret a B+/B- (earned/median) as more significant than an A-/A, for example. Thank you for your comment, Professor! I have two questions and a brief comment.įirst, Cornell has started publishing median grades along with received grades on all students’ transcripts (class of 2012 and younger).
I’ll add university-wide totals for Cornell to my web site in the next few weeks. I now have historical grades for all schools at Cornell. As can be seen above, Arts and Sciences grades are about the same as those for the university as a whole. I think what is happening in terms of people’s skepticism is that they have these preconceived notions about grading – I work very hard and A’s are so, so tough to come by – and when real data shows that those notions are false, they tend to get very irrational.Īt the time I posted the Cornell data, Arts and Sciences GPA’s were what I had. In Fall 2004, the percent A’s awarded (relative to all letter grades awarded) as a function of school were as follows:ĭata come from the Cornell “Student Data Records Mart.” At least one person has made the claim that I included Arts and Sciences data only on my grade inflation web site to make Cornell grades look higher than they are. Student caliber is also high relative to national averages. Grades at Cornell are on the low end of what is found in the Ivy League, but grades are high relative to national averages. This type of misperception on the part of students is common nationwide. For some reason, Cornell students are under the impression that the school grades tougher than it actually does. The Cornell dean may have been referring to grades for first year students only, which are considerably lower than those for all undergraduates. The 3.1 GPA number for Cornell is not correct. Throw in A&S students taking engineering courses and you have a bigger mess on your hands. It’s easy to see how the average student’s GPA would be much lower than the average of mean grades awarded. The 3.34 figure represents the average of mean grades awarded, not the average grade point average of a student in A&S.Ĭonsider a stylized example: Cornell A&S offers 10 classes, one of which has 100 students and a median grade of a C, and the other 9 have 5 students each and the median grade is an A. There is one aspect of the calculations that may be responsible for these discrepancies, and it’s the same issue that I highlighted in my recent post on median A&S GPAs for different majors. I remember that during freshman orientation week (2008) the advising Deans told us that the average GPA of an A&S student was around a 3.1– this actually seems pretty reasonable to me, and I’m not sure why they would lie about this figure to a group of 1000+ new freshmen. According to these Cornell-specific data, the “mean GPA” for A&S in 2006 was a 3.36. And even if this is just Arts and Sciences, the figures seem a bit high. One thing to note, though, is that it’s not clear whether these grades are reflective of Arts and Sciences schools/colleges or entire universities. This graph also confirms that some of our Ivy League peers are getting off the bell curve hook a little easy: It’s all about grade inflation, put together by Stuart Rojstaczer, “a former geophysics professor at Duke who now studies grade inflation.” It’s a highly recommended read. While reading through a NY Times article on Law Schools retroactively raising their students’ GPAs to make them more competitive job market candidates, I stumbled upon this site.