Straight As aren't the status symbol they used to be. A new report finds that college students are getting better grades than ever, but not because they are smarter or learning more. Rampant grade inflation is instead giving young people a false sense of accomplishment and setting them up for failure after college. "In the early 1960s, 15 percent of college grades were As," says Dr. Tom Lindsay, higher education policy director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). "Today, almost 50 percent of college grades are As, and A is the most common grade you get in college."
The new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that grade inflation in high school and college leads to poorer study habits and attendance, and weaker earning potential after graduation. Lindsay, who was not involved with the study, says the results are predictable and consistent with what he has seen in the education system. He notes that the average high school GPA has risen nearly half a letter grade over the past four decades, at the same time student test scores continue to decline.
"These universities now present themselves where their graduating class is 80 percent As or Bs," says Lindsay. "A or B means above average, so they're telling us that 80 percent of their graduates are above average...that's a statistical and a moral impossibility."
The solution, according to Lindsay, is more transparency. He touts a bill proposed in Texas that would require schools to note the average grade of the entire class next to individual student grades, to better expose and discourage mass grade inflation.
Ultimately, he argues this feel-good grading, which allows students and professors to pat themselves on the back, is doing far more harm than good. "Grade inflation teaches children that life is easy, then they go out in the real world and get punched in the face by reality," says Lindsay. "And they think it can't be my fault, because I've gotten participation trophies since I was five years old, so it must be the system."
"So we're breeding not only bad education and worse earnings, but we're breeding discontent."
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