Making (Up) the Grade

Grades are thoroughly arbitrary. And that's OK. Or is it?

Hand wringing over grade inflation appears to continue unabated. I'm of at least two minds on the issue personally. If grade inflation brings with it erosion of standards and the expectation we place on students then I'm staunchly opposed. But does it really in most cases? At a minimum it must make the most marginal students somehow less aware of their marginality, and that could be bad. But not all institutions' marginal students are created equal of course. If even the most marginal students in a given class at a given institution are capable and competent, then what difference does it make if the mean is a C or a B+? Aren't we putting on too fine a point? Aren't we squarely in narcissism of small differences territory?

But the trouble is it's a slippery slope. There was a time I daresay when, say, Harvard students were consistently the sons of Harvard students and the sons of magnates, barons and captains of industry. Their GPAs were of precious little consequence; their future prosperity beyond reproach. And their mean GPAs undoubtedly hovered steadfast in 2.0 territory. But things are different now. Talented students of very modest means are counting on their GPAs to grant them access to those white shoe investment banking jobs. GPA becomes deal-breakingly important. So why not give your students a smidgen of a break, particularly relative to their peers at other schools, by easing off grade-wise. This pressure alone seems sufficient to grease inflationary gears.

But what, if anything, is the cost of this inflation? It's easy enough to cluck our tongues, but what are the actual consequences? In Econ 101 I learned that the costs associated with most inflation are really modest, manageable "shoe leather" costs (although mind you I took it 20 odd years ago).

If, however, like me you find yourself in an open enrollment institution, grade inflation starts to matter, starts to sting. The least capable students in an open enrollment context fall, frankly, far short of any reasonable minimum standard of competency one might hold out for college graduates. And as a consequence of grade inflation the least capable increasingly are making it to graduation, not because they are getting the remediation and gaining the skills they need, but because grade inflation causes our tenuous standards levees to break. The system begins to stink of decay. The value of a bachelor's degree is made dubious, which leads to costly credential inflation. Guileless students spend years and make enormous sacrifices studying in good faith, in the process graduating many tens of thousands of dollars in debt and no more capable of getting or keeping a job than when they began. This problem is real, this problem is getting worse and this problem is driven by grade inflation. How for-profit colleges and universities can possibly keep the issue at all in check is beyond my fathoming. Perhaps they don't.

There exists a straightforward but entirely unpalatable remedy to rampant grade inflation, but I'll save that fairly wide ranging discussion for another post.