Student Evaluations, Grade Inflation, and Declining Student Effort

There will be no change until administrators actively support faculty in the maintaining of university-level academic standards. In my experience, and in that of many of my colleagues, administrators allow students to complain about faculty without presenting any evidence whatever to back up their complaints. Such unfounded complaints are accepted by administrators with wide-eyed credulity, and the professor is always bullied into lowering standards. Real university-level standards are regarded by administrators as “bad for business,” interfering with their precious student retention and graduation rates. I know: This is one reason that I am now retired from academe. And the reality is that students cannot bring themselves to perform at the real university level. (There is one and only one such university level.) Departmental chairs will scowl at the offending professor and say, “We’re not Harvard.” And…? My guess is that such administrators chafed and struggled to obtain their degrees and blamed their professors for this “suffering”. And these people feel that they want to protect their students from any similar “suffering”.”If it doesn’t hurt, it won’t stick.” –E.A.C.

Another factor that would help explain grade inflation is the use of plus and minus grades–supposedly to convey more precise information but really muddying the grading system. If there were only five grades there would be much less tendency to “grade up” via plusses. I suspect we would reverse a good deal of inflation if we returned to this scale:A = Excellent.B = Good.C = Average or Acceptable.D = Marginal but passing.E or F = Not Acceptable.This is really about as discriminating as one can be. Add in plus and minus grades and you suddenly have thirteen possible grades rather than five, and I don’t think that on reflection anyone honestly can believe it is possible to grade that precisely. Instead the grades slide up the scale and you get inflation.This system of course would be hardest on the real “B” student (who now is always hoping for a “B+” or “A-”) but would be more honest. Probably the only way to do this would be by a nationwide agreement. It would have to be all or nothing. No plus or minus grades on any assignments or for final course grades.

While I completely agree with the trends this article points out, my belief is that student evals and grade inflation are both symptoms of the victimization of our culture. I am fond of saying (of the K-12 world) that “it’s not our schools that are failing our kids… it’s our society that is failing our schools.”A strong sense of entitlement, lack of work ethic, and instant gratification have all been learned by our kids. How has this happened? That is what I want to know.

One other factor in grade inflation in recent decades is the extension of course withdrawal deadlines. The elimination of course withdrawal quotas likely plays a major part as well. For example, my institution allows students to withdraw from a course with as little as 3 weeks left in the semester, allowing the students to drop courses merely because their likely final grade will not be a B or higher. It is routine to examine student transcripts here and find students with cumulative GPAs of 3.3 or higher, but who have withdrawn from 10 or more courses in their educational career.

Perhaps we could eliminate grade inflation simply by eliminating grades. Grading is not a very precise way of measuring how well students do in a course. Consider #4′s proposal, to make it more acceptable by making it even less precise. Institutions are already moving toward a criterion-referenced model in which we evaluate student performance against descriptions of the skills and knowledge students should evince at a course’s end, relative to course learning objectives. We normally see numbers assigned to each progressive level of mastery of outcomes (e.g., 0-5). However, one might as readily assign letters. So to mirror #4 above:A = Describe what skills that includes.B = Describe what skills that includes.C = Describe what skills that includes.D = Describe what skills that includes.E = Describe what skills that includes.F = Describe what skills that includes.One might also audit faculty evaluations by third-partiers or perhaps even have somone other than the faculty member evaluate student work against this system.Imagine if we switched to such a system. If one saw grades increasing over time, would not the conclusion be that students are achieving more? I am less concerned with number of hours per week studying than with improving student learning and achievement. Normally the two go hand in hand, but why focus, as Vedder does, on inputs like hours studying? Why not focus on what grades should measure, which is achievement?

Three comments.First, commentator # 9 wrote, “I don’t find means of 45 on an exam to be demonstrative of anything other than the professor failing to teach their students what they wanted them to learn.”This comment reflects a serious confusion between teaching and learning. The professor might have taught his or her students well. But perhaps the professor does not have a winning personality. Or, heaven forbid, maybe the professor has an Asian accent.Professors have a clear responsibility to set a standard of rigor at a level that they believe is right for the subject they are teaching. It is NOT the job of the professor to write exams that are easy enough that the mean will be 75-80 regardless of how little students prepare. Yet that is what many do, and that is the primary cause of grade inflation.Second, following up on the first comment, there might be several reasons why professors aim to give their students higher grades. (1) To improve their anonymous teaching evaluations which are considerations for tenure and promotion.(2) To make sure that students at their university are not placed at a disadvantage for graduate school, medical school, etc.(3) To minimize the grumbling, constant trolling for points, and vicious ad hominem attacks on web sites like “Rate My Professor”, so-called “serious conversations” with the Dean, or the condescension of professors who get higher teaching evaluations and enjoy flaunting it.Third, the amount of time spent studying is easy to measure by a simple poll. But what about the quality of that studying? During an hour of studying, how often did the student answer his phone or text a friend? Was the TV on? Are they able to read a couple of pages of a textbook at a time without “taking a break”, and are they able to grasp concepts from that reading, or just transfer phrases to flash cards?Fourth, a couple of commentators pointed out that students often have to work to put themselves through school. I sympathize. But does that mean that the baseline expectation for studying should be lowered so that anyone, no matter what their extracurricular obligations, can graduate “cum laude” with a bachelor’s degree? It seems rather obvious that someone who is able to devote all of his or her time to studies should perform better. That playing field will never be level, nor should it be.Finally, I have to comment on “This is not Harvard.” Students will say, “My professor thinks he is teaching at Harvard.” Well, trust me, no I don’t. First of all I’m perfectly aware that I’m not talented enough to be at Harvard. Moreover, if students at Middle State University want to compete with Harvard graduates for the jobs that are out there, they need to work _harder_ than the kids at Harvard. Fortunately, many students (and professors) do take that attitude and it shows in their academic achievements and in their careers. The problem is that the kids are Harvard ard there because they are accustomed to working hard, and they have developed the skills necessary to build quality into their study time, and by the time one is in college those skills can be very hard to learn.

One more thing. Each grade should be accompanied by a ranking. You got a B in English 322, but your rank was 30/40. That speaks volumes about how the professor grades and it adds valuable context to the transcript.

Interesting how in the first 12 comments only the third commenter chose to address one obvious issue here. The 1960′s/1970′s comparative data offered in the article is from an era where college costs, as a percentage of family income, were a fraction of the same costs/family income percentage today. Thus, it was not nearly as necessary for students to be working back then the same number of hours many now are working in order to be enrolled in higher education at all. Also, back in that rosey era of federal student aid, the ratio of aid offered was roughly 75% grant aid, 25% loan aid. That ratio is now fully reversed. If you take the time to speak with a variety of current students, many working a huge number of hours just to meet their tuition and living expenses, PLUS enjoying financial aid packages that feature massive student loan debt relative to their need-based grant funding, it might help you to better understand the “academic effort” that you do (or perhaps do not see) flowing from their performance in your classrooms. Interesting topic to chew on, perhaps, but please, place it within a realistic, comparative context.

Not precisely on topic, but I just want to note that the use of Harvard to illustrate what rigorous teaching and grading should look like is way off-base. The grade inflation at Harvard is well-known, as is the coddling that undergraduates receive during their education. So, you know, maybe we should find our exemplars elsewhere.

There are a lot of great comments on this issue. In addition to all the really relevant points already highlighted, I wonder whether there is also too much on an emphasis on all comers going to college, no matter their level of emotional maturity, intelligence, life experience, or interest. I have had numerous students, who, when I meet with them to dicuss their poor class performance, freely admit that they have no real desire to be at college and/or don’t really know what they want to do with their lives. Many parents expect (and sometimes demand) that their children will attend and graduate college right out of high school. I can’t help but think that this myopic fixation on an immediate attainment of a four-year college degree without consideration of whether it best serves the career/life goals of the student (a) exacerbates grade inflation, (b) contributes to a sense of entitlement on the part of students and parents and (c) ultimately devalues the worth and purpose of a college degree.

I agree with many of the points made by Richard Vedder. Before I return to these, I do feel it is relevant to note a political agenda as well. Google Richard Vedder coupled with Wal-Mart as well as with Tobacco Institute as well as with SourceWatch. This point made, some commentary on the issues he raises follows:1. I recall my first teaching assignment in Spring 1971 when student evaluations were a kind of student tool to advise peers about which classes to take and which to avoid- friendly advice although “Buyer Beware”2. This has evolved, unfortunately, into an administrative device. I recall a Dean who loved seeing evaluations to two decimal places coupled with graphs, etc. Other versions involve “minimum tolerable” numbers (for tenure? for avoiding further explication? for merit?)3. As a former department chair and a college dean, I have read literally thousands of these evaluations and student comments. It may come as a surprise to many, but the attempts by students tend to me overwhelmingly constructive. This said, it is also very clear that smaller, upper-division courses are more highly rated than large lower division courses and high grades (“customer satisfaction”) creates higher student evaluations. There are certainly many demeaning comments that must be stoically endured.4. I take at face value Professor Vedder’s comparison of student hours spent in-class PLUS out-of-class work: 40 hours/week (1961) and 27 hours/week (2003). These numbers are actually far more alarming than they appear. If one assumes 16-18 hours/week in actual class time during 1961 as well as 2003, study/preparation time has declined from 22-24 hours to 9-11 hours. That is very alarming and I am convinced this comparison is quite valid based upon surveys I have seen about how students budget their time each week.5. Only two bloggers seemed to note how many students have been forced to work at part-time (even full-time) jobs to pay for college. Yet this is a very serious issue and the major cause is not to support a “lifestyle” but to pay for increased costs. I worked during college but found that if my hours exceeded 12/week during the academic year it was negatively impacting my studies. Where are these increasing costs coming from? Certainly, the changing nature of what is demanded of colleges (far more remediation, far more accomodation for disabilities) than in the 1960s- but one result has been more open access and greater opportunity for those previously denied. In the 1960s there were few accomodations for a smart student with cerebral palsy wishing to major in chemistry. Rapidly rising health costs and (for publicly-funded colleges) declining State contributions have required increases in tuition. Let us not forget that at most universities, sports programs are net money losers yet are demanded by students, parents, alumni and local fans. Similarly, if a university is heavily subsidizing research- that can play a role.6. Still, there is no escaping the point that “customer satisfaction” is increasingly becoming dogma at many colleges and universities that will be battling for a declining population base of students. There is no question that our “customers” feel (and are) empowered by these student evaluations and that these in turn place pressure on faculty to reduce standards. The “For-Profit” institutions such as University of Phoenix add to the competition for “customers.”I suspect that it will take a crisis of some sort to reverse the trends Professor Vedder addresses. I frequently review applications from foreign universities and find that grade inflation does not appear to be a major factor (yet) in Asia, for example. The crisis will come when it becomes clear that the downward pressure on our expectations of students and the upward pressure on grades (“customer” expectations) cause our degrees to be worth much less than they claim.Art Greenberg, Durham, NH

perhaps some of these comments already covered this, but there is another way to interpret the decline in hours spent studying/working on coursework: a rise in efficiency.in 1960, there was no internet, no digital library, no word processing. now, students can locate an article in thirty seconds that would have taken them 5-10 minutes to find in a library–if the library had it–back in 1960. i’d also imagine the average typing speed of a contemporary student outpaces a student in 1960. you also don’t have to transcribe a type-written paper from a handwritten paper or re-type a ten page paper because you screwed up a sentence, etc. perhaps students are learning more, or the same, as students did in 1960 but in 1/2 the time. if we want to make students study more, then Vedder’s suggestions would work: grade harder and assign more work. assuming the subjective “intensity” of their studying hasn’t increased–even if the amount learned has–then forcing greater studying time seems like a good idea. but, these studies alone don’t demonstrate that students are learning less–just that they’re spending less time studying.perhaps students are better at gathering and categorizing information now than they were in 1960 but are less able to critically analyze the information they gather? part of this isn’t entirely students’ fault: what would your average college student have to learn–on top of their coursework–to function in the social environment of 2010? even extremely hard-working, bright folks find it hard to deal with the data overload of an IT culture.

Another elephant in the room – financial aid, particularly institutional “merit” discounts that are often tied to a 3.0 average, thereby making every grade below a B a de facto vote on the worthiness of the student for a significant chunk of their institutional financial aid. Until the “car salesmanship” component of tuition discounting is eliminated, there is even more institutional pressure on faculty to grant not just passing grades, but high passing grades.

I want to give 2 perspectives on this issue.The 1st is personal. Until recently I was adjunct at CC. I tried to have standards and yet be fair. I curved to reflect what I considered to be the rigor of the material. Those students who applied themselves get good grades while those who don’t get average grades. I was recently let go after 7 years teaching business statistics because the chairperson said that my evaluations were decreasing and not what they should be. I was even told of student who complained of getting C+ even though missing a test (wanted a B). The chair decided to change the grade. I said the chair could change the grade without my consent.The 2nd is about my daughter. She just finished her 1st year at Williams College. She found out that getting A wasn’t easy. In her Organic Chemistry course the prof gave tests on material not covered in class or reflected in the homework. She had 85+ average which was better than most of her class. She only got B in the course. This trend was seen in other courses. Even though she had best average in those courses the best she could do was either B+ or A-.

I did my undergraduate & PhD in Australia in the 1970s. Much of what the article says and what correspondents say equally apply to here. I think undergraduate standards have declined and marks have been inflated. The dead hand of successive governments who confuse training with education carry a lot of the blame. There are two culprits:(#1) Race-to-the-bottom economic rationalism has forced contact hours to decline by about 25%. There are many science subjects which are very difficult to learn by reading a book. For me Biochemistry and Molecular Biology come to mind. What about engineering?(#2) Students now work on AVERAGE about 20 hours per week during semester time. Conservatives think that is great but it has a dark side. Students turn up on campus only for compulsory things such as tutorials and practicals. After the first weeks of a course you never have more than 1/3 to 1/2 of the students at a lecture. Lack of time shows in their reports and exams and skills level.My personal experience of Student Evaluations are that they are used by Heads-of-School to bang you over the head with if you try and be too intellectual with the students.

Grade Inflation and working to pay tuition, R & B –While we have all noticed the amount of time that students are spending on studying is less than when “we were in school,” the reason for that has as much to do with rising tuition costs and declining state support as it does lack of individual rigor. For every dollar in school-attending costs that the state doesn’t supply, state-school students (most of them) have to work more hours to pay for necessities. More work time, less study time, and hence the student pressure on faculty to get more (a better grade) for less (academic time). The high cost of low grades could mean loss of student loans and certainly scholarships. So, when the various states reduce their own support for higher education, blame the grade inflation on the “budget savings” they think they are creating; it’s a bogus savings.JVK

“Alternatively, colleges could by mandate or the use of financial incentives encourage faculty to become more rigorous in their grading.”If Vedder would reread the actual article he refers to, he would learn that teachers who got higher evals from their students in this study did not give easier grades to their students. Grading was done collectively, so an individual teacher could not be more or less rigourous than their peers. The students of teachers who got higher evaluations legitimately got higher grades in the courses — that is, they performed better than the students of teachers who got lower grades. The question is not really about teaching evaluations — this is a bit of a red herring, I believe — other than, in this particular case, student evaluations actually correlated pretty well on how well students learned the material given the method of assessment for the class. (Whether that method accurately reflects learning is another matter). The study is interesting, but it raises more questions than it answers. Did students give their teachers higher evaluations because their teachers explained exactly what they were doing, why they were doing it, and what the positive results would be? Did students perform better on the contemporaneous course because their teachers were “teaching to the test” or because they actually did learn more? Did those who performed better in the follow-up course actually retain more information from the previous course, or did they increase their effort to make up for a poorer grade from the previous one? etc. etc. etc. I think the problem with most discussions about the validity of teaching evaluations is most people have already made up their mind about them, and then don’t even bother thinking about the issues actually raised by a study.

There are two problems with the current system.1. There is a desire to run universities as a business. Thus revenue generation is king. Good teaching evaluations = higher revenue (that’s the belief, whether or not it is true, I do not know). There is a nearly universal view that the more entertaining a class, the better the educational experience. Put in those terms, few would agree with me, but it summarizes reality. Making students work for their grade tends to reduce the entertainment value.2. Most of the costs of relaxed standards are paid by businesses and alumni, not the students who fill out the evaluation forms. “I thought that a top student from university X would perform well, but boy, was I ever wrong! Biggest waste of time since I started the business.”"I see you have a degree from university X. Graduates of that school aren’t worth a darn. Not even the ones with a 4.0 GPA.”The mistake is that university administrators apply the model of a shoe store when that model doesn’t really work.

My experience with this confirms the findings on the pernicious effect of student ratings. I taught a less-commonly taught language (Tamil) which always had low enrollments, and the administrators were always pushing me to up my enrollments, the measure of which somehow turned into capital for them. Higher enrollments, more value. But to up my enrollments I would have had to inflate grades, and I did not agree to do this. Similarly, in my lecture classes, I always required research papers, rather than exams, and this also tended to undercut my enrollments–as soon as the first version of a paper was due, students started dropping the course. This was a no-win situation, but I was not going to compromise my principles. H. Schiffman

This comment is probably reflective of several before me, but here goes anyway:The underlying problem that I see is a mentality that students are now “customers” and that higher education (or education as a whole) is a commodity – which lends itself more readily to “Customer Satisfaction Surveys” (which student evaluations were actually called on one campus) and the idea that “The customer is always right” (which various students over the past 14 years have reminded me – right after demanding As and Bs for barely passable work). If our goal is to maintain the rigor we claim we offer in the classroom, then the occasional disgruntled student comment will not be given much credence; however, if our goal is increased retention at any cost, then our teaching and our grading will be affected by the fear of verbal retribution.

I find it hard to believe that elite colleges are failing to work their students harder. How can a student do a decent senior thesis without previously taking learning seriously?There are a lot of OK colleges out there that attract bright students. Given how they are “taught,” it would be easy for these bright students to game the system, work minimally and do well.These middle of the road, OK colleges do not require a senior thesis or other rigorous proof of learning. These colleges provide numerous clubs, encourage large amounts of community service, and encourage or require internships. Their graduates do pretty well, many rising to some sort of prominence. At these OK colleges students take many survey courses, and most course grades are based on a few tests, with many or all of the questions provided by the textbook publisher. There may or may not be a brief research paper or a project/case/presentation in these courses. But the professor’s goals, in most cases, is efficiency: a minimum amount of time spent grading, reading/evaluating/observing student work, and providing some specific feedback.Yes, the college “teaching” (not learning) system described above is easily made subject to efficiency on the part of the student as well as the professor: minimum study and preparation, maximum recreation or career preparation outside the class room, and maximum output (grades) for the minimum input.

Responding to commentator No. 37, who asked whether professional societies could come up with syllabi and standardized exams.Here it is …American Chemical Society Examinations Institutehttp://chemexams.chem.iastate.edu/

I find these arguments and counter-arguments in this space interesting and productive. Despite limited interactivity, this message board really adds to the conversation.FWIW, I tried to summarize many of the questions an arguments presented here in a mindmap:http://www.slideshare.net/joelkline/grade-inflation-commentary-4586715Many of the “conversations” that occur on CHE boards are more valuable for providing perspective than certain conferences, seminars, and conventions.

Nowadays, student evaluations are a political rather than an academic tool and, unfortunately, they promote corruption and lack of integrity in academia. Using arguments of poor performance, Deans and Chairs at my state university use student evaluations to terminate those professors (lectures or tenure track) who they dislike. Complaining students represent more workload for those administrators, so the solution is to get rid of the professor based on strong arguments such as: “This is not an Ivy League!” “He is not helping our students.” “This professor does not fit.” “We want our students to succeed.” Success is a passing grade regardless of the quality and quantity of the work the student accomplished.This kind of university hardly uses those evaluations for discussion on how to address better teaching, how to address the lack of respect for the new generations of diverse faculty, or how to address the skills students lack as global citizens. If an unwanted professor has “bad” student evaluations, and she/he is not liked, he will lose his/her position, regardless of how good a professor she/he is. If she/he is wanted, then administrators will interpret “bad” evaluations in a more benign light. It depends on who the professor is, who the students are, who the administrators are, and what kind of university is. Only one comment mentioned the issues of ethnicity and linguistic racism that some students exhibit towards Asian faculty. We have not mentioned questions of gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, race, age or national origin.

I feel compelled to add another note. Over the years I have used student evaluations to improve my work in the classroom. I take the evaluations seriously. I am frustrated by the lack of student work, but I went to a public elite and now I teach at a community college. I forget all the students who didn’t do well at my alma mater: the partiers, the scofflaws, the ones who spent their time socializing, etc. My friends were people like me. So if I make comparisons, I must accept that memory is selective and there may not have been a golden age. After all, when I was an undergraduate, our older professors lamented that we were nothing like the serious, deicated, well behaved and respectful, students of the 1950s and 1960s!

Commentator 48 also makes a good point. “student evaluations are political.” To this I would add that they certainly allow adminstrators, Deans and Chairs to shift responsiblity for learning to the individual instructor. The responsibility for learning, however, should surely be with everyone from the library, to the bookstore, to the admissions office, to the planning of programs, to the physical state of the classroom, to scheduling and even to the quality of the other students in the class.Smaller classes, for example, are often evaluated much more favorably than larger ones. Yet the instructor doesn’t normally have choice in the size of the class. I’ve yet to see a student evaluation that takes into account the broader learning environment (e.g. “the Chemistry department offered a comprehensive set of courses,” the “the class size was optimal for learning,” “the other students in the class made useful contributions” “the classroom was clean and all the audio visual equipment worked well” etc.It would be interesting to see if university administrators would still be as enthusiastic about student evaluations if, indeed, they were the ones being evaluated.

Based on teaching medical students, I am quite frightened of what we are creating in medicine. I know that many of the students are cheating their way through medicine and this is becoming a kind of norm, mostly ignored so that it won’t become a blight on the escutcheon of the med school. Far too many medical students are in it because they consider it a license to make lots of money. And since the great secret of quack medicine is that most of the time you can do virtually anything and the patient will survive, our “cheating doctors” do just fine. In other words, I think we are churning out a generation of quack doctors (or a generation with a huge percentage of quacks).

I assume some of the “blame” for lack of student motivation, dropping standards, etc, must be placed on high schools. I am a fairly new adjunct instructor teaching at various colleges, and and am continually amazed by the general lack of competency I am faced with. Why were these students allowed to graduate from high school when they cannot even write a coherent sentence, much less an actual paper? An alarming number of 18-21 year-olds seem to be completely unfamiliar with the very concept of “being a student” – they don’t take notes, don’t read (or sometimes even purchase) the textbook, have no idea how to do simple research without plagiarizing from the internet…yet they fully expect to pass the class just by showing up! I can only assume that they developed these habits in high school, and “did fine,” i.e. they got through in 4 years, and now they are bringing that mediocrity to the university level. As an art historian, I have no training in teaching 9th-grade English, but that is what I end up having to use precious class time for, if I don’t want to read 35 “F” papers. What is going on????

Exactly so! So happy to see the situation laid out so efficiently and convincingly.

Dr Chakravarty (comment #1),You have absolutely assessed the situation correctly, in my opinion. I find it interesting that no one else has directly followed your line of thinking here. Research is important to higher education but not more so than teaching.