Grade Inflation: It’s Much Worse Than You Think

Rob KoonsProfessor of Philosophy: University of Texas at Austin

Visiting Research Fellow: James Madison Program, Princeton University

The average college graduate is doing very

well.What about the marginal ones?

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates, University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Struggling graduates Two years out of college: 7% unemployed, 3%

working fewer than 20 hours, 12% in unskilled jobs (in which majority have fewer than 1 year of college).

53% are either unemployed or earning less than $30K.

According to a 2014 report of the Federal Reserve bank of NY, 44% of recent college grads are in jobs not requiring a college degree, as are 33% of college grads in their 30’s.

24% of recent grads still live with their parents, and 74% still receive financial help from them.

College graduation is a poor predictor of

learning Arum and Roksa’s 2011 book, Academically Adrift:

Limited Learning on College Campuses, relied upon the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a tool designed to assess critical reasoning and problem solving. Used by over 300 universities, including UT-Austin and Texas Tech. Arum and Roksa worked with a large sample (over 2300 students).

Nearly 45% of all students showed no measurable gain after 4 years of college. Critical thinking on average improved only eighteen percentile points (from 50 to 68). Over 1/3 did not gain a single point.

OECD International Assessment of Adult Competence: US below average, despite high and rising college graduation rates.

Colleges demand increasingly minimal

efforts The average student in 2011 spent 13 hours of week

on studying, less than one-third of the time spent socializing, and less than half the amount of time spent on studying by the average student 20 years. ago.

37% of students spent fewer than 5 hours a week studying.

50% had not taken a single course in the prior semester that required more than 20 pages of writing.

Of all European countries, in only one (Slovakia) did students spend as little time studying as in the U. S. A.

Soft grading and low expectations

The average GPA of students who spent fewer than five hours a week studying was 3.2, a B+.

The percentage of grades A- or higher has grown from 7% in 1969 to 41% today (according to Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, Dec. 20th, 2013).

For nearly all colleges and universities, grades in natural sciences and math are on average 0.4 lower than grades in the humanities, 0.2 lower than grades in social sciences and engineering.

Low expectations driven by the consumer model

Since the 1920’s, American colleges have increasingly adopted a student-service-oriented, therapeutic model, in contrast to the older model of in loco parentis and respect for authority.

Accelerated in the 1970’s with the introduction of student evaluations.

When college students are asked to describe their “worst teachers”, 50% chose “expectations too high” (Paul Trout, Montana State University).

Studies over 30 years demonstrate that giving high grades to poor students significantly improves student ratings, as does lowering work requirements.

What’s the Harm? Unrealistically inflated expectations. Failure to identify one’s own strengths and

weaknesses: wrongly telling them that they’re doing everything well.

Deprives students of the incentive to apply themselves with assiduity to their studies, with significant results for their transition to adulthood: Those scoring low on CLA had nearly twice the

unemployment rate of those with high scores (9% vs. 5%), twice the chance of losing their job (10% vs. 5%) as well as 50% greater chance of being in unskilled jobs (15%).

An Existential Threat to Higher Education

Extrapolate forward another 20 years. Number of A’s rises to 65% of all grades. The average number of hours spend studying falls to

6 a week. 90% of students show little or no improvement in

cognitive skills, written communication. Will such a system be able to sustain itself, given the

cost of a degree in the $200K to $400K range?

How we are making the problem worse

Unfortunately, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and political allies are making the problem worse by focusing attention, not on actual educational outcomes, but on graduation or “completion” rates.

Graduation is an arbitrary certificate, awarded after the completion of 120 academic “units”, with no disinterested, third-party measures of actual accomplishment.

There is only one way to ensure a rise in graduation rates across all demographic categories: lower standards.

The Wizard of Oz Fallacy

The Right Solution Texas must create and mandate the use of learning

assessment tools. These should be low-stakes for students and high-stakes

for institutions. No minimum score for graduation, but test results (with

percentiles) should be included prominently on student transcripts.

Institutions should be evaluated for their valued added (using entrance exams, like the SAT or the STAAR test, as a benchmark).

The tests should measure the full range of ability, not just some bare minimum (unlike the TAKS test).

Useful Tools Already Exist

The Collegiate Learning Assessment Critical Thinking Assessment Test (Tenn. Tech) ETS Proficiency Profile: measures critical thinking, reading,

writing, mathematics. GRE Subject Exams: biochemistry, cell and molecular biology,

chemistry, physics, math, English lit, psychology CLEP exams (33): useful for measuring learning in first two

years. As is the CAAP (developed by ACT). Texas could create new exit exams, modeled on the Honours

Examinations used for generations at Oxford and Cambridge.

Advantages of Measuring Learning

1. We can reward reality rather than mere appearance, making better use of limited resources.

2. Universities will be motivated to raise standards and expectations.

3. Grade deflation will occur as a natural consequence of higher standards, without arbitrary dictates.

4. Students will value teachers and programs that enable them to maximize their own potential.

5. Students can be directed to programs and teachers with proven record of success with similar students.

More Advantages6. Closing the grade and expectation gap between the natural

sciences and other subjects will mean that more American students will choose science. Conversely, putting more emphasis on graduation rates could actually result in fewer scientists.

7. Better match of students to colleges, and better extra-institutional measures of academic success will put a lower premium on admission to elite universities, reducing the arbitrary power of admissions administrators.

8. By providing students in humanities and liberal arts with a reliable measure of cognitive skills, the testing regime will encourage a return to liberal, rather than narrowly vocational, college majors.

9. By raising the expectations for academic efforts, students will have less time and energy to spend on alcohol, recreational drugs, and the hook-up culture.