Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Note: The following appeared in Western News on March 25, co-authored with Anton Allahar. It is based on my previous two posts, but includes new data on grades going back to the mid-70s. I will keep readers posted on local reactions and whether the university adminstration takes up our challenge.

http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/PDF/2010/WNews_Mar25_10.pdf

Grade inflation has become the “elephant in the room” of education. Few people want to admit it is there, and even fewer want to discuss it. We believe it is time for the Western community to discuss this issue. Before presenting data on rising grades at Western, however, it is useful to put our grading practices into a historical context.

The “unofficial” grade guidelines used in some departments at Western dating back to the 1970s are presented in the Table 1. We were handed these guidelines when we began teaching here, and they were compatible with what we had found at other Canadian universities, although they are a bit higher than traditional standards in the British system where only about one third of grades are As and Bs (Firsts and Seconds).

These guidelines were likely instituted because of inflationary pressures felt at the time. Indeed, it appears that system-wide pressures to inflate undergraduate grades date back to the early 20^th century when professional schools began to require B.A.s for admissions and then used undergraduate grades as a selection mechanism (Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present; see also Harry Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul for data showing the rise in grades at Harvard from 20% As and Bs in the 1920s to the current level topping 90%).

How well has Western done in preventing grade inflation since the guidelines were issued? Table 2 shows the changing grade distributions at Western over the past 35 years (provided courtesy of Western’s Office of Institutional Planning and Budgeting; statistics are available online from the UWO Databook for each year since 1991/92 at http://www.ipb.uwo.ca/).

It can be seen in Table 2 that for 25 years grades were relatively stable in each of the three Faculties, and in two Faculties hovered just above the guidelines presented in Table 1. We provide a note in Table 2 identifying the period during which a policy known as “bums-on-seats funding” was introduced. Since the late 90s, departmental budgets depend on how many students are enrolled in their courses.

Ten years later, grades are higher in all three faculties, with 10-20% jumps in the As and Bs awarded in first-year courses and 10% jumps in As and Bs awarded overall. Additionally, the three Faculties are converging in their inflated grading distributions. Although other factors may be involved, it is plausible that the Enrollment Contingent Funding policy may have inadvertently affected inflationary pressures by providing an incentive for departments and faculties to compete with each other to attract and retain students.

The stewards of Western’s academic standards were concerned enough in the mid-70s to recommend guidelines, albeit “unofficial” ones. Should the current stewards of Western’s academic standards be concerned with this rise in grades?

We think so, and those of us attempting to maintain meaningful standards could use some relief from the growing number of students requesting arbitrary grade increases. For example, the Sociology Department has a distribution 10% below the new Faculty norms, and these requests often come from students in other departments where the grades they receive are routinely higher. Indeed, there are significant variations among departments in the three Faculties, some in the magnitude of 20%. It is little wonder that students often voice confusions about grading standards, commonly dismissing the grades awarded by their professors as “subjective.”

An example from the Department of Economics highlights the problems now experienced by individual faculty members and their departments. Economics held first-year grades below 40% for the entire 32-year period between 74/75 and 05/06, but in 2007 decided to do something about the dramatic plunge in their first-year enrolments, which fell from 2000 students in the 70s to about 850 in 2005/06. Because we reported in Ivory Tower Blues that Economics was the last department in the Social Science Faculty maintaining traditional standards, a colleague in that department sent us an e-mail message explaining their new policy of allowing grade distributions to follow the higher Social Science Faculty norms. This colleague wrote:

The decline in enrolments naturally causes us some anxiety because we operate in an environment where the funding formula equates student numbers with dollars. For students who do take our courses, the relatively low marks have caused some dissatisfaction, and this is reflected in the workload for our faculty members, Chair, and Undergrad Director and Coordinator, as well as in our departmental teaching evaluations, which are lower than average for the Faculty.

This example shows how grade inflation can be like an arms race, where departments can compete for students by making their courses easier. Like an arms race, everyone involved becomes increasingly impoverished. The convergence of grades in the three Faculties to higher levels suggests that we are now in this situation, and that it is likely to worsen unless collective action is taken.

The stewards of Western’s academic standards should also be concerned that two-thirds of students (three-quarters in some departments) are now routinely awarded at least a B in their courses. When the average grade is a B and Honours standing is defined as having an average of 70%, what is the meaning of “Honours.” Are we not misleading those students who are in fact “average” by heaping this unwarranted praise upon them?

It is now incumbent upon our stewards to clarify how the notion of “Honours” is to be understood in terms of these new grade distributions. For example, should the cut-off for Honours standing be raised to 75%, or even 80% (but then what do we do with the Dean’s Honours List, which uses the 80% cut-off—raise it to 90%)? We think not, because this will simply continue the arms race of grade inflation.

What solutions might the stewards of this system adopt?

First, instead of feeding grade inflation, we recommend that Western reaffirm grading standards similar to those from the 1970s for those Faculties where they are appropriate. Western can do this without hurting its students’ future opportunities by developing a new institutional brand based on “quality education,” and building a reputation as a school where the grades it awards are meaningful.

Second, we encourage Western to provide leadership by convincing other universities to adopt similar standards. For example, Western could rally other universities that consider themselves “élite” to stand together in terms of common grading standards (instead of a G10, a Q10, for example).

What the stewards of the system should not do is to deny there is a problem. If they do, we challenge the administration to put their money where there mouth is. For example, based on reviews of their job performance every year faculty members are evaluated for “merit” on a scale ranging from 0 to 4, with the mean score set for each department at 2.2, the equivalent of a C. Scores of 3s and 4s would represents Bs and As. If the administration is happy with 60-70% of students routinely being awarded As and Bs, then it should award a comparable percentage of faculty members 3s and 4s for merit, adjusting their annual salary increases according. After all, if we are going to tell most of our students that they are above average, then professors should be entitled to the same ego massaging.