Grade Inflation

Read a newspaper article recently about a Harvard professor who gives each student 2 grades. The one goes on their transcript, and then he hands out a little slip of paper with their "real" grade (what, in his eyes, they really earned). He had problems because he was giving too many C's and the administration got after him. So if they give gift-grades at Harvard because they have to, the trickle down effect will be such that everyone gets A' and B's.

additionally,

with the advent of student-based teacher reviews, and the administration actually taking these into consideration, many faculty have found it beneficial to THEM to give out higher grades (or, in some way, inflate grades ... easier tests inflate grades automatically) because it improves their position (especially if untenured) in the pecking order of higher ed. if an insitution is trying to sell itself, it's hard to throw, "our professors are hard-arse nit-pickers who'll fry your brains and give you a C+ for it. but don't worry, it'll make you tougher in the end," on a promotional pamphlet. much prettier to say, "an overwhelming majority of our students give our professors at least an A in overall teaching ability. think puppies, kittens, rainbows. this place is just for you."

I get what you are saying, but (at risk of carrying the analogy too far) the question isn't whether the bum gets anything, its a question of whether he gets ENOUGH. Without a system like welfare (speaking of government programs that need reform), he probably won't unless he's lucky. Make sense?

I agree that a free market will ultimately benefit everybody. But a free market doesn't magically happen just by eliminating regulation, taxation, and government spending. You also need perfect information and freedom of opportunity (i.e. no barriers to entry/exit.) I would argue that it IS the role of government to try to provide these. And education is a big part of both.

You are incorrect. I certainly do not assume the government does a great job at running the post office, utility regulation, and so forth. Such a thing is not stated anywhere. In fact, there are numerous problems inherent in these publicly run entities. This still does not detract from the fact that the government becoming involved in such institutions is better than the alternative. However, there are numerous things the government could do to make these programs and organizations much more economically effective (though I'm not really going to go into detail on these).

If the government did not regulate utilities, numerous people would not receive water, electricity, etc, as it would not be cost effective for the companies to provide the pipes or electrical lines to the houses of those who live far from urban areas. Also, assuming such utilities were available, companies would charge these people a lot of money. Also, if utility companies were not regulated, they would be able to use their monopolistic positions to jack up prices to very high levels (the demand for water, electricity, etc is fairly price inelastic, similar to medicine). These are problems the free market has great difficulty in solving, because the extraordinary startup costs associated with going into the utilities business prevents much competition from emerging, and existing companies are able to utilize their position as monopolies to cut prices for a small amount of time, forcing the startup companies out of the market.

In regards to postal service, at one point in our country, this was the only true means of contact between people living in distant areas. If the government did not run the postal service, numerous people at the time would have either not received service (wouldn't have been cost effective) or the costs for the service would have been very high. Therefore, the government felt it necessary to run and regulate the industry. It is more difficult to defend the existence of a government-run postal service now, yet it does still exist. It continues to provide people with a fairly inexpensive form of communication, much cheaper than companies such as FedEx and UPS, especially in regards to smaller articles such as letters, bills, etc, the mailing of which would be prohibitively expensive in an entirely free market system.

You claim that various methods to fund the education of the poorer classes would emerge in the free market to provide them with the means to allow them to attend school. You give the example of citizens directly providing money to those wishing to attend school, apparantly as a form of charity. While it is true that charitable donations have decreased somewhat since the instituion of government welfare programs, enough charitable donations would probably not emerge to replace the aid provided by the government (as judged by the amount and proportion of private charitable donations before high levels of government involvement). Therefore, it seems unlikely that enough money would emerge in this manner to fund the educations of many children. Also, this has to do with the fact that one of the major assumptions of economics is that people act in their own self-interests. Perhaps it is in everyone's best interests that people receive an education. However, such interests are generally not directly seen or acted upon by citizens. There are numerous economic studies examining things such as this, where something is in a person's general interest, yet they do not act because it isn't a direct interest (example: it is in everyone's interest to prevent poverty, as poverty rates are highly corollated with crime rates), yet you do not see high levels of charitable giving or many people voting to increase their taxes for governmental welfare programs). This is because most people think in the economic short run (what benefits am i going to directly see from helping this person?), not the long run, and many feel such actions have a high opportunity cost (they rather act in their own self-interests and get that new car or boat). Certainly there are some people out there who receive some kind of intrinsic benefit from donating money, and that is why they do so. However, this would not be enough to fund education. Also, you say children could get a job working at the school to provide for their education. Such an idea may have merit for those in middle and high school, however it would be economically inefficient for younger students (K-3rd or 4th grade) to do so. What skills would they have, what jobs could they perform that would make such an idea worthwhile for the school? It is doubtful they could even do a good job at janitorial work. It may be feasible to backload their work (free education for the first few years, and make them work hard towards the end of their education to repay it. However, you'd probably see a lot of problems emerge in such a situation (children simply no longer attending the school, which would leave the schools with debts incurred by the students. It'd probably be tough for the schools to recoup their losses from the students in courts too.).

A complete reliance on the free market is generally foolish. It is something hardcore political libertarians believe in, but then can provide scant true economic evidence or arguments to justify. It is true that the "invisible hand" of Smith takes care of so many things, yet government involvement is still sometimes justified.

I imagine my refuting your ideas and arguments could go on for a while, so I'll just stop now. In the future, try not to get into an economics argument with a student earning his PhD in econ at one of the best schools in the country. Hell, most of my professors graduated from the University of Chicago, and even they believe that the government is sometimes economically justified in becoming involved in the economy. Problems emerge because the government often does not do so in the most efficient manner. It is important to find a balance between an economy completely free of governmental controls, and one with extreme governmental control (such as Mexico's ISI programs which existed until the late 1980s/early 1990s, and the USSR).

Haha, I apologize for the above post being so damn long. I just started typing, and didn't realize how much I put down.

Excuse me, but I just don't understand the faith that people hold in a "free market". It's as if a free market solves all problems. I see little difference between this blind belief and any other religion. "The Market" has become the religion of the 21st century. I see lots of examples in everyday life where the free market doesn't produce higher quality products, lower prices, increased access to products and/or services, and the like. And please, spare me the econ 101 arguments and let's not throw around words like "ideal" as a modifier. An "ideal" almost anything works great. That's why they're called "ideal".

Back the topic at hand, grade inflation is one more reason why I believe that anyone who thinks a GPA reflects the capabilities of individuals with 2 to 3 digit accuracy is fooling themselves. I often tell my students that when everyone gets an A, no one gets an A because an A will have become meaningless as a mark of distinction.

ugggh....the article is a little long. I fowarded it to myself so that I can read it when I get home.

One thing I found apauling about the math ed's is how bad most of them are at math. I know PA requires a 36% to pass the Math Specialty area test to become a teacher. What is even more amazing is that 50% fail!!

I did have a good discussion today about the American attitude toward school. The general consensus was that we are kind of spoiled. We know that we can drop out of school and still do ok in this country, so the same incentive isn't there that is there with alot of foriegners. I'm sure alot of it is culture too.

Currently I work my butt off, but when I was 20 I was quite the slacker. I pretty much managed to get through school without ever studying. Now I am amazed at how much I learn when I study.

Son, daughter-in-law doing/did grad work at Ivies. In one case, when TA'ing, graded a paper that wasn't on topic, didn't have references, wasn't well written, wasn't even spell-checked, and was handed in late: D-. The professor changed it to a B-.

Daughter of family friends claims the only person she ever heard of getting a C when she was at Yale was one of the Bush twins.

I would hire people out of the Ivies because the schools are hard enough to get into that only smart kids get in, and the schools give them plenty of work and don't make them less smart. At this point, that's just about as true, though, for Cal or UCLA, with the added advantage at the latter that you can fail. Two job applicants - 4.0 at Harvard, or 2.0 at CalTech (where you can not only fail, they try to make you) - I wouldn't hesitate an instant.

just some fun reading

http://www.mises.org/story/1508

You've got to be kidding me. That was not a particularly informative article. Yes, the government's funding and running of the current education system is far from perfect. As I said before, this is generally due to the fact that the government does not often become involved in the economy in the most efficient manner, least obtrusive manner. This does not mean the government should completely remove itself from markets. On top of this, the vast majority of Americans would not stand for complete deregulation of the school systems.

I love how in the article Murphy offers absolutely nothing as a replacement for the current education system, instead opting to say "the proponent of massive deregulation in education is at a loss to describe exactly what the market would erect if the State's propaganda centers were allowed to crumble. After all, that's one of the strongest arguments for liberty: We just don't know what improvements will be discovered by clever entrepreneurs." Pure genius. Unless these clever entrepreneurs can somehow offer an education at close to no cost, numerous people will go through life uneducated. I would imagine it would be extremely difficult for a completely deregulated system to offer for a price much lower than parochial schools, as these schools maintain very low tuitions under the belief that Catholics ought to be able to have low cost access to education (most of these schools often do not make profits, in comparison to their private counterparts). This low tuition education is thanks to subsidization by dioceses, and donations from community members. At the same time, the educations honestly are not very cheap. They are generally between $3-6,000/year (depending on location, school level, etc). Obviously, these costs are extremely prohibitive for the majority of people. Competition can only drive prices down so far, below a certain price level, goods and services will cease to be offered. I honestly doubt deregulation and competition can take prices very far below those of parochial schools.

If deregulation cannot do this, then it makes the idea of total deregulation an unfeasible way to provide education to the children of the US (with the idea of every child having access to the opportunity of an education something the vast majority of Americans believe in, which would also deregulation extremely unpopular).

I was a GTA at the University of Kansas in the mid-90's. I was given the thankless task of grading "book reports" written by students in a history of Journalism class. One third of the work was absolute crap, clearly C or D work. The professor made it clear to me I had to assign all A's and B's to the papers... the only way to could give a C if it was clearly a failing paper. I ended up giving out one C. At about that point I realized I really didn't want to teach journalism at a University.

One other thing I noticed, the print students could write, the tv majors by and large couldn't... which hurts since I've worked in TV for 30 years.

It is a free market that has in part caused grade inflation. Students shop for the highest grade obtainable with the minimum amount of effort. Has anyone ever met a parent that sought out the most demanding teachers who assign the most homework, and have the highest standards? They exist, but are rare.

Grade inflation perpetuates itself, therefore it has become a runaway train that can't be stopped. Unless we scratched the grading scale as a whole.

I ask this; Can someone come up with a nation that has a better educational system?...........ok, that wasn't really the question. Can someone come up with a nation that has a better educational system that is NOT government run?

Grades in the liberal arts at least have become useless for employers trying to determine the worth of job candidates. Scrap the grading system altogether. I like the idea of confidential reports from teachers. At the end of each term, the teacher would write a paragraph describing the student's performance. These would be kept confidential so that the teacher would not feel the need to inflate these reports too. I can see there would be problems with this -- say you have a REALLY liberal professor who can't stand anyone wearing a "W" pin. But it would be a start.

Cornell - not so much grade inflation.

We are discussing the wrong question. Our question should now be about how grades are assigned, it should be why they are assigned.

Grading as a sorting and ranking mechanism is at least a century past its prime.

math dude wrote:

For 23 years I have been teaching college-level math to math, physics, engineering, chemistry, computer science and math-ed. majors. The worst whiners are always the math-ed folks. They are also the least concerned about being competent at math.

My university - Bowling Green - is recognized as a leader in teacher training. The math portion of my undergrad curriculum was only one class different than those who got a mathematics degree from the college of arts & sciences (and I took that extra class anyway). Now, it's entirely possible that math majors at BGSU are complete idiots, too, but at least no one patted us on the head and let us do nothing simply because we were going to be teachers. People rise (or fall) to the level of expectations.

The school I teach at has no grade inflation of which I'm aware. No one has ever put pressure on me to change a student's grade. Typically one-third of my Algebra 1 students fail and no one bats an eye, and this is the first year that I haven't failed a calc student (but the year isn't over). Almost universally, the blame is put on the stuent when they fail to live up to standards. I did have one student who honestly thought she should get a passing grade for doing nothing. This was in summer school, and during the regular school year she went to a local snooty private school.

In the working-class community where I teach, the prevailing ethic is that you achieve through a combination of talent and hard work. (Salt of the earth. The common clay of the new west. You know, morons.) Funny that the well-off suburban folk are the ones who have a sense of entitlement, that their children are "owed" privelege. I could never live somewhere so full of shit!

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