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A MINORITY VIEW
BY WALTER WILLIAMS
RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2009
Fraud in Academia
Soon college students will come home and present parents with their grades. To avoid
delusion, parents should do some serious discounting because of rampant grade inflation. If
grade inflation continues, a college bachelor's degree will have just as much credibility as a
high school diploma.
Writing for the National Association of Scholars, Professor Thomas C. Reeves
documents what is no less than academic fraud in his article "The Happy Classroom: Grade
Inflation Works." From 1991 to 2007, in public institutions, the average grade point average
(GPA) rose, on a four-point scale, from 2.93 to 3.11. In private schools, the average GPA
climbed from 3.09 to 3.30. Put within a historical perspective, in the 1930s, the average GPA
was 2.35 (about a C-plus); whereby now it's a B-plus.
Academic fraud is rife at many of the nation's most prestigious and costliest
universities. At Brown University, two-thirds of all letter grades given are A's. At Harvard, 50
percent of all grades were either A or A- (up from 22 percent in 1966); 91 percent of seniors
graduated with honors. The Boston Globe called Harvard's grading practices "the laughing
stock of the Ivy League." Eighty percent of the grades given at the University of Illinois are A's
and B's. Fifty percent of students at Columbia University are on the Dean's list. At Stanford
University, where F grades used to be banned, only 6 percent of student grades were as low
as a C.
Some college administrators will tell us that the higher grades merely reflect higher-
quality students. Balderdash! SAT scores have been in decline for four decades and at least a
third of entering freshmen must enroll in a remedial course either in math, writing or reading,
which indicates academic fraud at the high school level. A recent survey of more than 30,000first-year students revealed that nearly half spent more hours drinking than study. Another
survey found that a third of students expected B's just for attending class, and 40 percent said
they deserved a B for completing the assigned reading.
Last year, the Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) published results of
their national survey titled "Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History
and Institutions." The survey questions were not rocket science. Only 21 percent of survey
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respondents knew that the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people"
comes from President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Almost 40 percent incorrectly
believe the Constitution gives the president the power to declare war. Only 27 percent knew
that the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States.
Remarkably, close to 25 percent of Americans believe that Congress shares its foreign policy
powers with the United Nations. Other questions asked included: "Who is the commander-in-
chief of the U S. military?" "Name two countries that were our enemies during World War II."
"Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power
of the federal government?" Of the 2,508 nationwide sample of Americans taking ISI's civic
literacy test, 71 percent failed; the average score on the test was 49 percent.
Possessing a college degree often does not mean much in terms of basic skills.
According to a 2006 Pew Charitable Trusts study, 50 percent of college seniors failed a test
that required them to interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the
arguments of newspaper editorials, and compare credit card offers. About 20 percent of
college seniors did not have the quantitative skills to estimate if their car had enough gas to
get to the gas station. According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the
percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31
percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic
skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving.
The bottom line: To approach truth in grading, parents and employers should lower the
average student's grade by one letter, and interpret a C grade as an F.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out
more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and
cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.