A recent report says Northwestern grade point averages have increased significantly since the 1980s, a trend some denounce as grade inflation but others say reflects a better-prepared student body.
Average GPAs increased from 2.99 in 1982 to 3.32 in 1998, according to a November report by the Provost’s Office.
Though the number of B’s remained the same, professors have been giving far more A’s than C’s, the report concludes. In Fall Quarter 1998, 84 percent of Music grades were A’s, said Stephen Fisher, associate provost for undergraduate education.
“Grade inflation just means that the grades have gone up,” he said. “I don’t know whether that means it’s a bad thing. But in a case where it’s difficult to substantiate a reason for the higher grades, the faculty have to ask themselves, ‘Why are we giving so many A’s and so few C’s?'”
In the School of Music, for example, the average GPA increased from 3.49 in 1982 to 3.767 in 1998. The average GPA rose from 2.86 to 3.21 in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Fisher encouraged professors to re-examine their own grading patterns. Though the higher grades might reflect performance accurately, he said, they also make it more difficult for outstanding students to rise to the top.
“It hurts very good students,” he said. “They have trouble distinguishing themselves when the average grade is a B-plus.”
Across the country elite colleges are admitting students who are more prepared for high-level work than ever before, Fisher said. He said Duke and Yale universities, for example, also have noticed a trend of rising scores.
Economics Lecturer Mark Witte said if grades continue to rise, top marks soon will become meaningless.
“Once upon a time, an A meant excellent,” he said. “Now it might mean excellent, or it might just mean good. You really don’t know.”
Witte said his class grades follow a curve with a B-minus average, which he said ensures fairness. He also suggested that the university report each class’s average grade on student transcripts to show how a student measures up.
In grading students, professors tend to compare them to college students countrywide instead of only to their classmates, Witte said. Though NU students might do higher-quality work than most other college students, Witte said, not all of them deserve As.
Sociology Prof. Marika Lindholm said the higher grades might be the result of a difference in expectations between private and state colleges.
After coming to NU seven years ago from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Lindholm said she faced pressure from students and colleagues to give more A’s and B’s. She said colleagues told her she should not grade too harshly, and that students were “totally appalled” by her low grades.
Although state schools expect a certain number of students to fail, NU students are so career-oriented that they constantly push for higher grades, she said.
“Northwestern has a culture of grade inflation,” she said. “I found I was giving similar work to state school students and private school students, but when I tried to give a similar distribution of grades, it didn’t work.”
Lindholm said she is concerned that some departments grade more strictly than others, making students in more relaxed departments appear more qualified, she said.
And once they hit the professional world, students from a university with grade inflation will have a marked advantage over students from schools where C still means average, she added.
“It’s a reproduction of inequality,” she said. “Private universities are making sure that their students get to go on or do better. At a state school, you expect that some students will fail.”
Though a trend of higher grades should create discussion about grade inflation, Fisher said, they might simply reflect improvement in the student body’s academic preparation. From 1982 to 1998, NU students’ average Scholastic Assessment Test score increased from 1210 to 1365, the report indicated. Also during that time, NU students’ average high school percentile rank rose from 91st to 94th.
Still, other professors argued that faculty members should raise their grading criteria when faced with higher-performing students. Hispanic studies Prof. Laura LaBauve-Maher said she uses grades to challenge students to meet higher standards.
While her students sometimes feel frustrated by their inability to earn A’s, she said, they often say they learned a lot from her classes.
“If I can make my students understand that my grades are not arbitrary, and that I expect certain things from them, I walk away with a sense of accomplishing something positive,” she said.
“They know that they’re not just going to get an easy A. Serious students know that when they walk away from an easy teacher, they’ve missed an opportunity,” LaBauve-Maher added.
But if students cannot earn the grades they want, they often get discouraged, LaBauve-Maher said.
“I have a lot of students who freak out when they get papers back from me,” she said. “There’s so much pressure on students and faculty that the grades are going to be higher.”
Fisher said students might be more likely to write positive comments on Course and Teacher Evaluation Council surveys for professors who give them higher grades. And these evaluations play a role in faculty tenure decisions, Fisher said.
But Ken Bain, director of the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, said the correlation between high grades and high evaluations is not so direct.
“It’s not that a professor can buy higher rankings with higher grades,” he said. “Students don’t tend to give high rankings for fluff courses. They give high rankings because they like the class, or because they’ve learned a lot and feel like they’ve been treated fairly.”
Though some professors grade on curves to hold down inflation, Bain said, many students and professors consider the practice unfair.
“If an overwhelming number of students learn an enormous amount, they would wonder why they don’t all get A’s,” he said. “If students are arbitrarily assigned to failing grades simply because every student in the class did exceedingly well, many academics and students wouldn’t feel that was fair.”
University President Henry Bienen, who occasionally teaches political science classes at NU, said he prefers to grade for performance, rather than on a curve. He said he attributes some of the rise in grades to higher-quality students but he said many other factors, such as a change in the value of certain letter grades, play a role.
“I don’t think it’s anything devious: ‘Oh, I want to give students grades so they’ll love me,'” Bienen told The Daily last week. “The standards shift over time. I’ve given grades all my life and I’ve seen it happening to me.”
