Ian Eisner ieisner@media.ucla.edu
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Not too long ago, earning an “A” grade in college
actually meant something. But today, a growing number of
universities are relaxing their standards and acting like students
are somehow entitled to only the highest marks of achievement.
This outbreak of grade inflation has made it exceedingly
difficult to separate the great students from their mediocre
counterparts. And while some universities ““ including UCLA
““ are doing an admirable job bucking the trend, their
legitimate grading policies may become too painfully honest for
students with graduate school admissions on the horizon.
A recent study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has
shed some light on this grade inflation epidemic. According to the
study, the number of “A” grades earned by university
students across the country has skyrocketed from 7 percent in 1970
to well over 26 percent. The slackened standards have also resulted
in only 10 to 20 percent of students receiving the satisfactory
“C”.
Though widespread, grade inflation has not impacted all
universities equally. It is this disparity, however, that serves as
the true basis of the problem. While college-grading standards used
to rest on a relatively equal plane, the last two decades have
witnessed a staggering divergence in how universities measure
student performance.
The practical implications of this are troubling, especially for
students attending universities that have kept the grading bar at
the same level. This shrinking group includes UCLA, whose average
student GPA hovers around 3.1 ““ modest compared to the
national average of 3.34.
The GPA gap, not unique to UCLA, becomes problematic as students
from universities with differing levels of grade inflation compete
for limited space at a given graduate school. And while there is
something to be said about an individual making the grade at a more
demanding college, it won’t always convince a graduate school
admissions board.
This is largely because most graduate schools, barraged by an
over-abundance of applications, rely on GPA-based index systems to
weed out underqualified student-hopefuls. While some admissions
boards do attempt to gauge the integrity of a particular GPA in the
filtering process, the task is a difficult and largely unscientific
one. It involves not only the consideration of a student’s
academic performance, but also an attempt to reconcile a particular
university’s academic measuring stick with some kind of
universally applicable scale.
This convoluted process comes as a result of college
professors’ increasingly subjective and self-serving grading
policies. In a likely attempt to curry the favor of their pupils,
avoid the ire of student evaluations, or evidence the results of
top-notch instruction, professors have bestowed undeservedly high
grades upon students. These motives, all disturbing, indicate the
need for some kind of reform.
Department-imposed grading standards is the first step. Though
professors will likely resist any restriction on their autonomy,
common-sense guidelines will ensure greater consistency in grading
and, thereby, shrink the GPA gap.
More emphasis should also be placed on standardized tests. Amid
the subjectivity of professor assessment, standardized tests like
the LSAT and MCAT provide a more unfiltered look at student ability
and inject a level of objectivity into graduate school index
systems. While standardized tests do not paint a complete picture
of a student’s characteristics, they are currently graduate
schools’ most objective measuring tool.
This is not to suggest GPA assessment should be abandoned
altogether. In addition to practical reasons, such as the
prevention of attendance anarchy, grades have the unique ability to
speak about a student’s work ethic and mastery of course
material.
But in order for grades to serve these purposes, college grading
policies must be reformed. It is about time that universities set
rigid standards, even it results in the bruising of student egos.
As long as grades are dealt out with little reverence to standards
or consistency, the usefulness of GPAs as admissions criteria is
severely undermined. Despite the wishes of many universities, not
everyone can be the best and the brightest.