EDITORS' CORNER
Grade inflation makes it harder for future employers to differentiate students’ merits: researcher
The evidence has been well established that many undergraduate students have been getting better grades than they deserve in recent years. But less researched is the issue of grade inflation at the graduate and doctoral levels.
A new study in the journal PLoS ONE offers some of the first pieces of evidence that grade inflation is a problem at the graduate level, too, Nature reports.
“In parallel with prior research on undergraduate education, our results suggest that graduate grade inflation exists and that its extent varies across different academic programs,” the study states. “Grade inflation appears to be more pronounced at the master’s level than at the doctoral level.”
To examine the issue, researchers at the University of Minnesota looked at more than 40,000 master’s and PhD students’ grades from 1999 through 2020, according to the report:
Over these two decades, students’ cumulative grade point average (GPA) — the average grade earned during their programme, measured on a scale of 0 to 4 — increased. The mean GPA for master’s students climbed from 3.70 for those admitted in 1999 to 3.82 for those admitted in 2020. Among PhD candidates, it rose from 3.74 to 3.82 over the same period.
“What’s really striking is that we are seeing grade increases, even though 20 years ago grades were already high,” co-author Vivien Lee, a psychology researcher at the university, told Nature.
She said the impact of grade inflation is significant for employers and other academic institutions where the students may go next.
“As grades get closer to the top of the scale, they become less useful for differentiating students, and that’s what grades are typically used for,” Lee said.
The study concluded by noting a “critical gap” in research on grade inflation in graduate schools. Lee and her fellow authors called for more scholars to examine, in particular, whether the problem is worse in certain academic disciplines.
At the undergraduate level, widespread concerns about grade inflation recently prompted Harvard University to take action.
In February, a Harvard faculty committee proposed capping the number of A grades that professors give in each class, The College Fix reported.
Harvard created the committee after a report published last fall found a 35-percent increase in A grades across the past two decades. It also found that 60 percent of all undergraduates’ grades are now As.
Similarly, a 2023 Yale Daily News report found nearly 80 percent of undergraduates’ grades at Yale University were As.
One scholar blamed the problem on “whining” and “incessant emails” from irate parents who believe their children deserve better grades.
