Inflation: Statistics

By Karen Albrecht
Daily Bruin Reporter

Average grades are on the rise at all academic levels. But is
today’s Bruin really more intelligent than students 30 years
ago?

Many professors don’t think so.

Over the same period grades were inflating most rapidly
(1965-1980), average SAT, ACT and even GRE scores were dropping,
said Bradford Wilson, executive director of the National
Association of Scholars in a 1998 report.

At the University of Washington, the average GPA in 1964 rose
from 2.31 to 3.12 in 1996. Berkeley, over a 10-year period saw the
GPA rise from 2.95 to 3.10 in 1996, according to Ben Gose’s
1997 report in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“The highest purpose served by the grading system, is that
of making distinctions; distinctions between excellence and
competence, and between competence and incompetence,”
Bradford said.

As grades increase, and averages approach an A-minus, these
distinctions in competency dissolve.

It is then more difficult for graduate schools and employers to
determine which students are better qualified, said Steven
Landsburg, author of “Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach
You About Economics, Values and the Meaning of Life.”

Inflation is apparent in high schools as well, partially due to
weighted advanced placement and honors courses.

More than 34 percent of incoming freshmen in 1999 reported
earning an “A” average in high school, compared with
12.5 percent in 1969. The trend was reversed for “C”
average students, according to a national freshman survey conducted
annually by Linda Sax, professor for the Higher Education Research
Institute at UCLA.

Discrepancies between the number of advanced placement courses
offered at high schools make it difficult for students at some
lower-income schools to compete with others in the undergraduate
admissions process, said Thomas Lifka, assistant chancellor of
Student Academic Services and interim director of undergraduate
admissions.

Universities are facing a similar issue with their
graduates.

Some faculty members claim colleges have been forced to raise
their GPAs to remain competitive with other schools.

In the late 1960s, fewer Dartmouth University graduates were
accepted to good graduate schools than the faculty thought deserved
to be admitted, according to Noel Perrin, environmental science
professor at Dartmouth.

Forty years ago, he said, the only grades given were A, B,
C-plus, and C-minus, with the expectation that most students would
earn average C grades. Dartmouth students were only compared to
each other, not to other schools.

When it was discovered that fewer Dartmouth students were being
accepted to graduate schools, administrators and faculty began to
systematically inflate grades.

“We imagine our students at a mythical Average U., and
give the grades they would get there,” Perrin said.
“The old “˜C’ became the new
“˜B.'”

The grade inflation phenomenon has its roots in the Vietnam War,
according to one theory. Radical students in the 1960s made demands
that their higher education be politically relevant to their desire
to avoid the draft and end the war, Wilson said.

And students are reporting record levels of academic
self-confidence with increasing grade inflation, according to
Sax.

UCLA INCOMING FRESHMEN GPA Average GPAs have
increased from 3.92 to 4.05 over the last 10 years. SOURCE: Office
of Academic Planning and Budget Original graphic by VICTOR
CHEN/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by MONICA KWONG/Daily Bruin Senior
Staff