Colleges and Grades

July 14, 2011

Grade inflation. You’ve heard the term. But exactly how bad is grade inflation among colleges? The answer, points out Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, is pretty clear — bad. In their research in which they collected grade data from 200 four-year colleges, it is quite evident that more students are receiving A’s than ever before, that B’s remain pretty high, that C’s have declined, and D’s and F’s remain quite low (and have even declined).

According to a post by Catherine Rampell on the “New York Times” “Economix” blog, “Most recently, about 43 percent of all letter grades given were A’s, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988. The distribution of B’s has stayed relatively constant; the growing share of A’s instead comes at the expense of a shrinking share of C’s, D’s and F’s. In fact, only about 10 percent of grades awarded are D’s and F’s.”

Universities and Grades, College Grades, College Grade Inflation, University Grade Inflation, College Grading, Ivy League Grade Inflation

Ever wondered how bad college grade inflation is? Here's your answer.

Check out this chart to the left by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy from the “Economix” post on college grade inflation. And have you ever wondered if private colleges are more likely to inflate grades than public universities? Your suspicions were right. Private colleges give out more A’s than public ones. In fact, there has been a lot of research on grade inflation at Ivy League colleges in particular. We’ll be covering that another time! In the meantime, check out this post on high school grades and college success. Let us know your thoughts on college grade inflation by posting below!

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Colleges and Grades

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