As you can see, Pomona's grades stay with the other colleges until the mid-to-late 90s. Could this coincide with President Oxtoby's tenure? It looks as if Pomona's average GPA is a 3.5!
That graph is from this blog by Stuart Rojstaczer, a statistician who researches grade inflation. You should check out his blog post in which he posted this graph.
Here's what he's written on the problem of grade inflation in liberal arts colleges. [Emphasis is mine]
the educational quality of small private colleges likely has been compromised by grade inflation. Not every student in a class is self motivated. It's hard to motivate those that aren't self-starters when they know that they will likely get a B+ for just showing up and going through the motions. If ten percent of a class consists of students with attitudes like that, you can still teach the rest well. But when the percentage creeps up to thirty percent, the entire educational process drags and becomes uninspiring. That's what I believe is happening at most small colleges today.
A chilling thought, indeed!
We'll try to get more covered on this in the next issue of the CI, but until then!
7 comments:
The tough question is how to solve it. Curves? Is that fair? What effect will it have on student collegiality in their studies (think, for instance, in comparison to a cutthroat environment like Johns Hopkins).
There seems to be very little legitimacy in his study--in fact, it's not so much a study than a compilation of arbitrary numbers taken from a source that is not referenced.
Grade inflation at Harvey Mudd? We have no curve. You get what you get. If getting a B+ was as easy as going to class and showing some bit of effort, I wouldn't be afraid about doing poorly in most of my classes (neither would the rest of the Mudd population). Get your facts straight--maybe talk to Mudd and Pomona students (more than ones you know)--before posting a sensationalist headline like, "Grade Inflation: A Very Serious Problem at Pomona and Mudd."
Anonymous, the source of the data was someone from Mudd. Do your homework next time and actually do a little reading on the guy's site.
Who cares what the average GPA is. If the average GPA was a 1.5 because NOBODY could get more than a C in any class, would that be the most competitive, productive school? Fuck no.
Same goes for putting a curve. Grades reflect the percentage of the material a student has mastered. If every student is showing proficiency above 90%, should some of those kids still get C's to "even things out?"
Also why the fuck do we have a 12 point scale
The previous posters are amusingly naive. The idea that nearly everyone in college does excellent (A) or near-excellent (B) work is a joke. Grade inflation is bad because it encourages students to slack off, and because it unfairly rewards mediocrity, diminishing the distinction of students who actually do good quality work. To paraphrase The Incredibles, if everyone is special, no one is.
the headline is only a problem because it implies that CMC, Scripps, and Pitzer don't have very serious problems with grade inflation as well. Way to bury that down in the text.
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