<story><title>Grade inflation at UC Riverside, and institutional pressures for easier grading</title><url>http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2024/02/grade-inflation-at-uc-riverside-and.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bradley13</author><text>Prof here. Grading is not &amp;quot;stack ranking&amp;quot;. when I give out a grade to a student, I don&amp;#x27;t care how the other students did. I would happily give out nothing but A&amp;#x27;s (those would be 6&amp;#x27;s here), if all students deserved them. On the other hand, I have taught classes where 3&amp;#x2F;4 of the students failed, because they deserved to.&lt;p&gt;Giving out unjustifiably high grades devalues them. Why should a top student apply themselves, if everyone is going to get an &amp;#x27;A&amp;#x27;? A student putting in low effort needs to get a wake-up call by failing exams or assignments.&lt;p&gt;Grades tell the school how a student is doing, and may serve as a basis for admission to particular courses or projects. Grades tell the student how they are doing, and where they need to invest more effort. Grades inform potential employers where a student&amp;#x27;s strengths and weaknesses are.&lt;p&gt;Ok, stepping back: one possible reason for undeserved high grades can be found in the school administration. Students who fail too many courses must leave the school, and that costs the school money. Administrators tend to think of this year&amp;#x27;s finances, and don&amp;#x27;t care a whole lot about long-term reputation. Professors and instructors have to push back, have to insist on maintaining a level of quality. No one wants to teach for a diploma mill.</text></comment>
<story><title>Grade inflation at UC Riverside, and institutional pressures for easier grading</title><url>http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2024/02/grade-inflation-at-uc-riverside-and.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>SamuelAdams</author><text>This comes from a few recent changes in college admissions. Less students are enrolling in college, and this trend will likely continue for the next 10 years. Part of this is due to there being less people 15-18 years old compared to previous years, so colleges need to be more competitive to retain the same number of students. The other part is rising costs of colleges, to the point where many who would normally consider it are pausing and asking if it is worth it.&lt;p&gt;In a normally competitive college market, students are pressured to do well academically. If they do not, they receive low grades, then get put on academic probation, then get dismissed from the college and are replaced by a more  academically capable student.&lt;p&gt;For top level schools (MIT, Berkeley, etc), there will always be more students. But for state level universities and community colleges, there is not always another student to take their place due to factors above.&lt;p&gt;So, grade inflation seems like a natural solution to the immediate number of enrolled students problem, however the long-term tradeoff is that it devalues the institution&amp;#x27;s image by not holding new graduates to the same standard that graduates 5-10 years ago were held to.&lt;p&gt;You see this all the time in FinTech - some firms only hire from Stanford, Yale, etc because those colleges are great at creating students with a certain baseline standard of education. The amount of time it takes to ramp up students from those universities compared to others is significantly less.&lt;p&gt;So in general, grade inflation is a short-term fix that might have long term consequences.</text></comment>