Inflation watch: Interpreting increases in grades awarded at Western

In my last post (February 26), I provided the statistics for the grades awarded in The University of Western Ontario’s largest Faculties for the past two decades. In this post I discuss salient aspects of those statistics.

First, it is immediately obvious that higher grades have been awarded in all Faculties, although the Arts Faculty has a longer history of awarding inflated grades. The greatest increases are evident in the Science Faculty for both first-year courses and courses from ‘all levels.’ For first-year courses, awarded grades rose from about 43% As and Bs to about 63%, while grades for ‘all levels’ rose from 52% to 68%.  At the same time, the percentage of Fs fell from 16% to 7% for first-year courses, and 11% to 6% for all courses.

Should the stewards of Western’s academic standards be concerned?

Well, the difference between 43% and 63% is not merely a 20% increase in the number of these grades given – it is a 47% increase (with 43 as the denominator).  And the difference between 16% and 7% is not merely a 9% drop in the number of failures, but a drop of over a half (to 44% as many Fs).

Second, there are great (within) variations among departments in the three Faculties in the awarding of As and Bs, in the magnitude of 20% in the case of first-year Classical Studies compared with first-year English. It is little wonder that students often voice confusions about grading standards, commonly dismissing the grades determined by their professors as “subjective.”

But what is going on the Physics and Astronomy Department? The percentage of first-year As and Bs has increased by 76%, and by 50% for ‘all levels,’ while Fs have decreased by 500% in first-year courses and 367% for ‘all levels.’ When failure rates are at the low level of 3-4%, it usually includes only students who “flunk themselves” by not handing in assignments or sitting for exams. Apparently, standards were higher two decades ago when one in six students could not pass introductory physics and astronomy courses; now, it appears that standards are such that everyone who puts out the effort of completing assignments and sitting for exams can pass.

So, yes, the stewards of this system should be concerned. At the same time, they will need to clarify how these new grade ‘norms’ should be viewed in terms of how the notion of ‘Honours’ is to be understood.

That is, when two-thirds to three-quarters of students can earn at least a B in their courses, what is meaning of “Honours”? It has been defined at Western as achieving an average grade in their courses of 70% (Bs at Western range from numeric marks of 70-79% and As are 80% and above)? Students can apply for “honours standing” when they have a 70% average, and we have “Honours-level” courses, but I cannot find any substantive definition from Western’s Calendar or from my colleagues of what this now means. Should the cut-off 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%)?

Several further observations are in order.

(a) The Department of Economics was doing well in keeping with the traditional guidelines until a few years ago, when it decided in 2007 to do something about the dramatic plunge in their first-year enrolments, from about 2000 in the 70s and 80s to about 850 in 2005/06. Because we reported in Ivory Tower Blues that Economics was the last department in the Social Science Faculty sticking to the traditional standards (we cited the minutes from a 2003 meeting in which this was re-affirmed), a colleague in that department sent me an e-mail message about this change of standards:

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.

Accordingly, the Economics Department adjusted their grade guidelines to match those of the overall Social Science Faculty. The enrolment levels have apparently begun to recover.[i]

This example shows how grade inflation can be like an arms race, where departments (and faculties, and ultimately schools) compete for students by making their courses easier. Like an arms race, everyone involved becomes increasingly impoverished. A quick check of the grades currently awarded overall in the three Faculties indicates that  grades are now converging at higher levels in the three Faculties, presumably as a result of a competition for students, who have been arriving at Western with increasing ‘grade expectations’ nurtured by inflated grades in high school.

(b) Why are grade distributions allowed to be higher in upper-year courses? If one adopts the logic that a C grade anchors the rubric of ‘average,’ there is no reason why grades should be higher in upper year courses because the standard for ‘average’ should simply shift to match the criterion group (e.g., even in a hypothetical class of geniuses, there will still be average geniuses). However, even the ‘traditional’ guidelines I provided from the 1970s built in allowances for higher grades in upper courses. This was likely to keep upper-year students happy, but also likely had something to do with entrance requirements for graduate and professional schools.

The long-term consequences of this practice, however, seem to have contributed to grade inflation to the point where grades are now compressed in graduate schools at the A level. For example, at Western, graduate students must have an incoming average of 78% to be “fundable” and must maintain this average to keep their funding. This rule came into effect some time in the late 80s or early 90s, if my memory serves me. But, looking back at the 1970s’ standards (see my last post), the guidelines specified that grades in 500-level (Masters) course should have an average of 73-77%. This is obviously unsustainable now, but only because of the arbitrary rule made by the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Weestern. Not only would professors face an insurrection among their graduate students if they normed their grades around a B average, but most of their students would lose their funding. Now graduate grades cluster in the A range, making them almost useless in providing accurate feedback to students and as indicators of quality for granting agencies, other graduate schools, and future employers.

I end this post by relating the sentiments of my colleague from Economics:

Frankly, I would prefer to keep our grade guidelines unchanged, but it is not workable to do so when surrounded by substantial, long-term grade inflation in the rest of the Faculty and university.  Maintaining grade guidelines requires collective effort at the Faculty or perhaps university level.

I agree wholeheartedly and renew my call for the stewards of Western’s standards to set university-wide grading standards. Ideally, this move would inspire other universities to adopt similar standards so that we eventually develop system-wide grading standards for both secondary and post-secondary institutions, putting these inflationary pressures to rest.

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[i] Developments like those in the Economics Department made it difficult for me to select which departments have the lowest and highest distributions.  For example, my own department, which has had ongoing discussions of how to resist grade inflation pressures for a number of years, could be argued to have a better record than Economics when the last few years are taken into account. Sociology has inflated its grades less than economics over the past couple of decades, but had a higher start point for courses from “all levels.”