Grade inflation failures
W hen an institution of higher education adopts a dumb policy, it reeks of irony. Such is the case with Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri. WUSL administrators have come to a decision to institutionally inflate grades. The decision is shortsighted and other similar institutions ought not follow WUSL's lead.
Grade inflation is a bad thing. It bunches up information about students' performance and obscures distinctions among students' performances in their classes. Grade inflation makes high marks less meaningful and low marks nonexistent. WUSL's remedy to grade inflation elsewhere is to embrace grade inflation at home. This is a cockamamie solution to WUSLs' graduates' competitive disadvantage in the job market.
By the new policy, Washington University School of Law will center its mean score (what it considers a 'B+') at 87 as opposed to 83, where it was fixed before. That way, when compared against other schools, WUSL students at the mean would appear to be on par with peer schools where the mean is reflected in a grade of 'B+.' WUSL administrators must wake up from their self-delusion.
By virtue of the fact that they're announcing this policy change widely as nothing more than a nominal change in the predetermined average score, employers and graduate school admissions' departments likely would discount WUSL graduates' grade point averages by this expected advantage. In short, the policy could hurt the very graduates it aims to promote.
One study released Friday by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences explored the issue of grade inflation across many schools. The report suggests that more student-centric approaches to education are the reason grade inflation is on the rise. The study also shows that student course evaluations, which were rare until the 1970s, are correlated with grade inflation. This comes as no surprise - professors seeking tenure want good student evaluations. Students want good grades. Giving students what they want gives teachers what they need. And although this is discouraging, nothing can be done about it.
Grade inflation cannot be combated on a widespread scale. For that to work, schools would have to collaborate on restricting the number of good grades they give out. Just like cartels that have every incentive to cheat on their agreement, schools can boost their graduates' competitive advantage by feigning an interest in curbing grade inflation, yet subtly undermining it. An agreement to curb grade inflation only would rearrange unwittingly who the winners and the losers are in the competition for academic reputation.
WUSL's effort to re-center its mean score relies on the false hypothesis that employers and graduate schools automatically treat all schools as on par with others. If they don't - which they don't - then two different persons with two different GPAs aren't comparable in any meaningful sense. Harvard's stronger reputation - albeit only slightly stronger - probably will have more play in an employer's decision to hire a Harvard student over a University student than the fact that the Harvard student's GPA could be more inflated than the University student's GPA.
WUSL's plan smacks of the same level of intelligence involved in breaking windows to make business for a glassmaker. It's whack.
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