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A’s Represent 43 Percent of College Grades, Analysis Finds

July 13, 2011, 5:33 pm

Although grade inflation affects all types of colleges, its influence varies by the type of institution, the academic field, and even by region, according to a recent article on college grading. The piece comes from Stuart Rojstaczer, a frequent critic and scholar of grade inflation, and his colleague Christopher Healy, and it includes the most recent data on the pervasiveness of grade inflation—such as the fact that A’s represent 43 percent of letter grades, on average, at a wide range of colleges. According to their analysis, “Private colleges and universities give, on average, significantly more A’s and B’s combined than public institutions with equal student selectivity. Southern schools grade more harshly than those in other regions, and science and engineering-focused schools grade more stringently than those emphasizing the liberal arts.”

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  • coco_rico

    I think people need to relax about grade inflation. There are worse things to worry about than the prospect that 43% of students are meeting the expectations of their professors.

  • mbelvadi

    It depends on whether those expectations are lowering over time – that would be something to worry about. The only solution, however much most people hate it, is a standardized assessment system (aka high stakes test) across institutions that takes control of assessment away from the instructor who has the incentive to “cheat” to make themselves look good.  Many other countries have such a model, and several professional fields within the US do too, especially in health fields. 

  • thomascanderson

    coco, meeting the professor’s expectations is the definition of a C, not an A.

  • rab60

    Or is it Professors meeting the expectations of their students?

  • koufax33

    Whatever happened to the “gentleman’s C?” (a new gender-neutral term, of course, would replace that, but still, the concept!).

  • jffoster

    Not as many gentlemen anymore.  Young men who wear their baseball caps indoors are not gentlemen.  And when they wear them backwards, they are either hind catchers or U Boot Kapitans.  

    But you want more reflective grades?  Start by getting rid of student evaluations and Associate Deans for Hand Holding and turning college into grades 13 – 16 of Dumbed Down Ding Dong School.

  • conservative

    It makes sense that private colleges and universities give out more A’s.  They have a significantly higher academic admissions standand then public schools.  They even turn away students with 4.0 GPA because they are not well rounded or have not taken classes that warrant the 4.0.  These students, for the most part, study harder and are better prepared for college.

  • nyhist

    When I first started teaching, I tended to grade students on the basis of 4 elements only: a midterm exam, some kind of a term paper, a final, and class participation. In recent years, given students’ poor writing and research abilities when they arrive in college, I have started to assign a series of short papers and/or preliminary steps to a term paper to prepare students for the challenge. I find that my grades have gone up not because my standards have changed but because the students learn more about how to reach them. With more grade elements, esp. the short papers (which my students prefer, because part of the assignment is to revise them after I have read and commented on their initial versions) their grades don’t depend primarily on their performance on 2 exam days, when they might have been out of sorts for one reason or another. This past year, one of my best students in terms of class participation, short papers, and the term paper, did poorly on exams, but his sterling performance on the other elements brought him up to an A-. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. I find that I can read & grade the short papers relatively efficiently and they really do help the students learn, which is the whole point, after all.

  • waward

    One of the factors for some state universities has to be the transition in state funding formulae “…from direct funding of university budgets to funding student households…” via tuition scholarships that require the recipients to maintain “B” averages. (This transition in funding also contributes to rising tuition rates at public universities, but that is another topic.) I get e-mails and phone calls at the end of practically every semester from one or more students who did not achieve an “A” or at the least a “B” in one of my classes informing me that — because of me (interesting assignment of responsibility) –  they will lose their scholarships and, as a result, their parents will face higher costs for the remainder of that student’s college education.

  • lastclass

    You missed the line in the article where it stated:

    “Private colleges and universities give, on average, significantly more A’s and B’s combined than public institutions with EQUAL student selectivity.”

  • grward

    According to the article above and to the abstract of the actual report, the comparison made was between private and public institutions with “equal student selectivity”. I can’t say how they established that criterion (I haven’t been able to download the full report yet), but they seemed to be trying to control for differences in admissions standards.

  • bernardjsmith

    Why not get rid of grades altogether. Students study a subject and either they make sense of what they are learning or they don’t. The idea that anyone – ANYONE  – can parse in ANY meaningful way –  student work that deals with complex ideas or distils arguments or offers critiques or presents hypotheses for an award of points or percentages or letter grades whose actual differences are apparently so finely discriminating that this smacks of arrant nonsense. And if 43 percent of students receive “excellent” grades (A’s)  then our expectations are low, our ability to teach is incredible or our students must come from Lake Wobegon

  • 11182967

    It will be interesting to see what effect the increasing focus on “outcomes assessment” will have on traditional grading practices.  It’s pretty clear that the only reasonable way to measure an “online credit” will turn out to be some sort of holistic measure of course outcomes.  This will lead to either more pass/fail (or pass/didn’t pass) grading or to grading/scoring in which letter grades are more closely tied to rubric-based assessment (a la ETS).  And whichever direction this goes, there will be increasing convergence of grading/assessment practices among institutions as assessment measures become more open and standardized.  We probably won’t see a single national exit exam for associate or baccalaureate degrees, but we will see more use of standardized exit exams for at least some major fields, especially in STEM areas.  Whether or not we’re relieved of the necessity to obtain all those state permissions (and surely there are too many institutions with a dog in that hunt for that not to be resolved), there will be rapidly expanding use of transient credits taken through online instruction from distant institutions.  The day has passed when an institution can hide a lax grading policy from other schools or accreditors.  Of course there will also be increasing hue and cry about the now more universal “dumbing down” from the defenders of “real standards” in grading, but I suspect that greater opportunities for open comparison of grading practices among institutions is more likely to lead to tightening up than loosening.

  • facdevelop

    Please remember that grade distributions are not the same as “grade inflation.”  Grade inflation is an _interpretation_ of a distribution that infers that the higher grades in a distribution are undeserved.  Before we accept that interpretation, we really need to treat it as an hypothesis to be tested.  There are any number of reasons why grade distributions might be skewed, including that students are learning, that students are meeting standards set by faculty, and that standards are set too low (or even too high).  But before accusing a faculty member of handing out undeserved high grades, it would be best to look at grading standards and evidence that might support the grades assigned.  Interestingly, the push for student learning outcomes assessment could provide data that support or refute accusations of grade inflation by focusing on gathering evidence of students’ learning.

  • conservative

    Not missed at all – just ignored.  I can only think of two public institutions whose academic admissions standards are high enough to be considered EQUAL.  Of course there may be more.  Sorry, I don’t believe it is academic arrogance on my part since I graduated summa cum laude from a public university.  However, I have worked for a private university for 15 years and have watched as the applicant pool gets higher and higher, making it almost impossible for the “average” student to be admitted.  That is not to say that students with 4.0 don’t attend public univerities.  It is just that private universities and colleges keep raising their applicant pool so it makes perfect sense to me that they, in turn, would increase the number of A’s given in any semester. 

    I also am not saying I agree with this mentality….just saying the report makes sense to me.

  • lastclass

    Your statement assumes that all private institutions have higher standards.  That is easily proven not true.  However, the article suggests that given equal student selectivity the privates award more As.  Simply look at admissions standards and find a public with x criteria and find a private with that same criteria….the article suggests the private will award more As. There are over 4000 colleges, trust me, more than 2 have similar student selectivity.

    Now, whether the findings are true is another thing…but based soley off the brief paragraph provided, there isn’t much to be left up to interpretation.  It contains the disclaimer that it is when comparing institutions with “equal selectivity.”

  • lewandowski

    What happened to the bell curve?  If we are giving that many A’s than the students in this country are just getting more brilliant and should be switching more over to on-line courses ASAP to reduce educational cost OR the exams and course work are just to damn easily these days which would explain why many students are not ready for the real world!  Comments?

  • icbomber23

    When it comes to grade inflation, I’ve always wondered about the difference between tests with true/false and multiple choice answers and papers, projects or tests that leave the “correct” answer up to interpretation.

    Is the course content perhaps too simple, thus resulting in the creation of non-challenging exams that are easier to do well on? Or are we simply being too lenient in the types of mistakes we let go unpunished (in a grading sense)?

  • fulrich

    If there is such high admissions and all the students are high achievers, shouldn’t the grading scale reflect a higher expectation from the professor?  Perhaps, then, an average student in the high achiever schools should still get a C, or there is no purpose of grades to distinguish achievement.  Of course, none of those students turn out to be lazy, distracted or troubled to the point of not paying attention to the classroom.  Some of my brightest students underperform seriously.

  • victorl

    Private schools have a quite pragmatic reason for needing to award more pleasing grades to their attendees.  Their tax-dollar garnishing is not equivalent to public institutions, so they must make up for what they do not receive in this revenue stream with donations & gifts from their grateful and happy alums.  Public universities do all this, too, of course, but it stands to reason that private schools must pay special attention to providing not just an educational experience, but a *rewarding* experience.  For all parties concerned!  I’m not surprised if for this reason alone that, selectivity being equal, a private institution will be more obsequious and accommodating to its attendees.  To a greater degree (so to speak), it has to.

  • unusedusername

    Well, you can’t just ignore it!  There are plenty of private institutions that have very low acceptance standards, and plently of selective public ones.  There is a large overlap in the selectivity of public and private institutions.

    Since private colleges get most of their money from tuition and donations from alumni, there is a much larger pressure on them to pass students through.  Public colleges get most of their money from the government, so there is not as much pressure.  Although, now that it looks like state legislatures are going to start awarding money based on retention rates, grade inflation looks to get even worse.

  • unusedusername

    At last, someone from the assessment movement is openly admitting that the purpose of assessment is to standardize courses everywhere.  Unfortunately, this would be a disaster for education, as the example of K-12 education shows.  Elementary teachers now use standardized lesson plans, and students take standardized tests.  The quality of education has not improved.  In fact, it has gotten worse because anyone with any creative ideas gets stifled.

    The shortage of K-12 teachers in the STEM subjects is caused by the high turnover rates in those jobs.  When asked, the number one reason why K-12 science teachers quit is lack of autonomy.  You need smart people to become good professors and teachers, and smart people don’t like to be micromanaged.

  • manhire

    Why not get rid of grades altogether? I think public outcry against doing this would be prohibitive. It seems to me that most everyone wants grading – provided it is inflated. Grade inflation has essentially become a covetous competitive amenity. It seems to me to be more about customer satisfaction than anything else nowadays.

    “Most everyone knows grade inflation is a sham but few seem ashamed of or even embarrassed by it….and despite claims to the contrary, un-inflated grades are now unwelcome in America….and while it’s always been an easy target for criticism, there has never been the critical mass of concern about grade inflation needed to stop it (a national character flaw perhaps, but a fact nevertheless).”

    Source: Grade Inflation in Engineering Education at Ohio University

    http://sdsu-physics.org/sdsu_per/articles/GradeInflation.pdf

  • gauche

    Let’s be honest. How many of those A’s actually showed that students learned anything at all? There is such a pressure for students to earn “good grades” in their classes that they aren’t evening learning the material. And I don’t count memorizing all the questions and answers for the test and forgetting them the day after as “learning the material.”

  • katisumas

    So what attire do you think would make a “gentleman”?  Why not a suit of armor?  Or how a whig with lots of white powder on it, or how about a toga?

    If you judge people by their outward appearances (by the way their wear their caps!) and particularly by ever changing fashions you’re in trouble (perhaps there’s a museum of clothing in your neck of the woods?)

    If “gentleman” has any meaning today, it will have to be focussed on the “gentle” part, you know someone who’s compassionate and altruistic and considerate…..

    If you happen to be bald, try wearing a cap indoor, you’d be so much more comfortable.  And be sure to wear it backwards so that it will not  obstruct your field of vision. 

  • mtboots

    For so many A’s being handed out in college, I sure meet a lot of C’s and D’s.

  • katisumas

    There are several colleges in the US (Hampshire –private– Evergree –public– and probably others) who are not using a grading system but professors are expected to do detailed evaluations and require students to do their best.  This includes making them rewrite, their papers, this  sometimes several times. 

    The students coming out of these schools are doing better in grad schools than others, and they might be doing better overall.  Check out these colleges’ websites.

  • marcelgj

    You seem to suggest that your school will eventually give nothing but A’s.  I think teachers should adjust their level of teaching to continue challenging the students.  As fulrich said, there is no point to grading if it makes no distinction among students.  Teachers can’t just give up and say, “Well, you’re too smart for me.  Here’s an A.”  Challenge them!  Make them struggle for that A.  The ones who want to learn (and deserve the A) will thank you for it.  Maybe you are doing exactly that, but I doubt all of these professors handing out A’s are increasing their rigor to keep up with their students’ quality.  I personally hand out more W’s (to those who quit rather than risk their GPA) than I do A’s.  But, the B and C students thank me for the amount they’ve learned.

  • 11182967

    To unusedusername:  I’m certainly not someone from the assessment movement, and my comments don’t advocate anything.  My intention was to note the direction in which assessment (in the broadest sense, which would include grading as one form) appears to be going, and to wonder whether, to put is somewhat differently, the arguments about grade inflation will be made moot by widespread adoption of other forms of summary assessment, especially in light of the need to redefine credit hours–or whatever we come to call the unit(s) of measurement of academic accomplishment. 

    I would note that traditionally faculty tend to fall into either one or the other of two grading camps, the “what’s important is what the students learn, not the grade” camp of instructors who often don’t want to have to make the commitment to a judgement implied by the assiging of a grade (more typically found in the holistic graders in the humanities and social sciences), and the “students should get exactly the grade they earn and I’m an expert at making the precise discriminations implied by each grade” camp of instructors who believe all individual students can be arranged on a single spectrum (typically found among the STEM and business graders-on-the-curve).  Interestingly, both camps share a focus on the power of the instructor as grader–one camp hates it, one loves it–rather than on the relationship between assessment and student performance. 

    There’s a lot of talk in this interchange about expectations (ie, of the instructor) and about grades but not very much discussion of possible workable alternatives–and is that ever a tough subject!  But to give the assessment movement its due (assuming that term refers broadly to those attempting to find some workable alternative), persons involved seem to be looking for ways to make meaningful measurements of knowledge, skills, and performance without sticking us with something like the standardized national exams which many legislators and businesspeople seem to think are appropriate.  Better we all apply our inventiveness to this effort than to leave major decisions to non-academicians.     

  • willismg

    What really irks me is how higher education has degenerated into making excuses for students who are not capable of attaining acceptable performance without myriad types of scaffolding.  If  these students REALLY learned, as you believe, they would do well on exams, as well as the assessments that they perform outside of your view.  Being personable in class shouldn’t be an acceptable substitute for performance on individual exams.  Unless, of course, your subject area is one in which graded exams were always a mismatch.

    In my opinion, it is indeed a bad thing to give students small bite size chunks of assessment when they are typically merely unwilling to put the time in outside of class to do an actual college level assignment.  It’s really no different than preemptive extra credit.  I’m not saying that going through the process is bad, only the assigning of grades to the preliminary steps.  They should do these steps in order to truly deserve their final grade on the term paper, not to rack up points so they can blow off another type of assessment.

    How on earth did we survive before the days of baby steps to a BS.

  • va_adjunct

    Is there a direct and strong correlation between professor grade distribution and student evaluations?

  • jffoster

    Katisumas, read what I actually wrote in my second sentence, which is the only place I used the word ‘gentlemen’.   Johnny Bench was generally thought a gentleman when he was hind catcher for the Cincinnati Reds and he wore his cap backwards behind the plate.  

  • tdb489

    I am impressed with the verbose albeit meaningless speeches designed to impress.  You should get A’s in English and D’s in logic.  You may make all of the eloquent speeches you like, but I am 100% certain that life is a bell curve and only 10% of of the students earn an A.  I am also 100% certain that if one designs an exam with 10% high difficulty, 20% moderate difficulty and so on, the average grade will be a C.  I am also 100% certain that any teacher who takes the time and effort to design an exam that produces bell curve grades with be unemployed next year. 

    In short, don’t give me any ### that 43% of our students are geniuses when I am reasonably certain that at least 43% of them are down right stupid.

  • Unemployed_Northeastern

    It is amazing how many people think that admissions rates are not manipulable, when in fact it is among the most controllable of the major USNWR rankings factors.  Several universities have been actively mailing thousands of (slightly) subpar prospective students application fee waivers and glossy brochures and letters of encouragement, knowing full well that they will reject them when they apply.  Admissions rate plummets, rankings soar.  I’m sure most of you can think of a middling private university or two who have suddenly halved (or more) its admissions rate, and jumped dozens and dozens of places in the rankings as a result.

    Yes, some colleges are that cynical.  They tend to be the ones whose presidents make public proclamations that their institution will crack the USNWR Top 100/50/25/whatever in the next five years.

  • Unemployed_Northeastern

    Since no one else has mentioned it, I thought I would post a link to gradeinflation.com, which has managed to compile the changes in grades over years/decades at most “top” universities and liberal arts colleges.

  • edwoof

    Just as some anecdotal evidence, I recently received a resume from a law student which stated he was in the top 25% of his class. He was ‘way too honest though and told me his lawschool GPA and class rank was shared by 20 other people out of a class of +/- 150 students. Because of grade inflation, there is significantly less grade differentiation and many students will share the exact same GPA and Class rank.

    I used to jokingly say that “grade inflatiion won’t stop until 90% of the students are in the top half of the class.” I never thought this would become a reality.

  • amnirov

    If you hand out more than 10% A level grades, you’re an embarrassment to our profession. Seriously, you’re a god damn joke and you should be ashamed of yourself.

  • 12094478

    Since when does “meeting the expectations of . . . professors” equal an “A”? I thought that was a “C” in common academic parlance. B’s and A’s were supposed to be for “exceeds expectations.” coco_rico, you just illustrated the problem.

  • 12094478

    I’ve taught writing and literature at both public and private. The private institution I taught at had students who had the benefit of wealthier parents and matriculation on campus; the public institution had students who were working an extra job and had to commute or were living in less-than-ideal situations. That was the biggest difference I could see. The private students fit the college mold better than the public students, but their writing and insight was not superior. Perhaps the reason “conservative” has to turn away “exceptional” students is that they know how to play the game better, and they come from high schools whose own grades are inflated. I sit on an admissions panel for gifted students, and some of them have 4.8/4.0 GPA’s just because they took AP or dual credit classes that are weighted more heavily. They aren’t any more intelligent than I or my cohorts were two decades ago with our 3.5-4.0 GPAs!

  • Unemployed_Northeastern

    That’s quite interesting.  I am going to assume that the resume came from a student at one of the better law schools.  At the “lesser” (lower-ranked) law schools, the trend is to enforce a rather harsh curve, at least during the first year.  This is done so as to knock merit scholarship students below the GPA level needed to keep their merit scholarships.  The students on merit scholarships, of course, tend to have higher GPA and LSAT scores, so the law schools offer big money to get them to come to their school instead of a higher-ranked school.  This improves the GPA and LSAT averages of those lower law schools, and hence improves their rankings.

    The problem is this: some law schools set the GPA threshold and forced curves in such a way that 1/2 or more of the merit scholarships will be lost every year, regardless of how well the students perform.  Some schools even put most of the merit scholarship recipients in one section of the class, so as to make the competition to keep the merit scholarships even more difficult.  It is a bait and switch of sorts (luckily, my law school did not engage in these tactics, which is probably the nicest thing that can be said about it).  This phenomenon was discussed in the NYT about two or three months ago in a very extensive piece, and has been deemed serious enough an issue that both Senators Barbara Boxer (D) and Chuck Grasseley (R) have written formal inquiries to the ABA.  Grasseley’s beef can be found at http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/grassley_seeks_answers_on_abas_law_school_accreditation_process/

    Sorry for the lengthy digression; I just thought you may find it interesting in light of the resume you received.

  • twocommonwealths

    I think one of the issues afoot here is the fact that an undergraduate degree is no longer the end of the road, in my circumstances.  While many students used to worry about their high school grades and proudly assert “D equals diploma” when it came to college, more and more feel compelled (or required) to attend graduate or professional school.  These students put pressure on institutions to award “good enough” grades to gain admission into selective grad programs to further the positive reputation of the undergraduate institution.  This pressure is often passed onto professors.  With some ratings systems of undergraduate institutions including greater information about graduate programs attended, colleges are faced with mounting pressure to get their students into selective advanced programs.  I distinctly remember the president of the small private liberal arts college I attended saying to me, “You were accepted at Vanderbilt?  That’s terrific news for OurCollegeName!” — not terrific news for me, but terrific news for our school.  I don’t think this is an excuse for grade inflation, but merely part of the big picture explanation.

  • nccechucedst

    One thing that I noticed that has not been noted in the comments (if it has, I apologize for my oversight) are student expectations in the classroom.  As many of today’s college students are from the generation that have a sense of entitlement, they expect good grades whether or not they have earned them.  Unlike many of us, we started as college freshman with grade goals of “Bs” and “Cs”, especially the first term or year–just to prove we were going to make the cut in the long run.  They expect the “A” and “B” if they just do the work–and, supposedly, do the best they can.  I have had students argue with me over their grades on assorted assignments, and that’s fine.  However, more times that I care to remember I have been told: “Well, I did the best I could, and, at least, I turned something in.  You’re just being too hard, and it’s not fair.  It’s not like yours is the only course I am taking.”  So, something has transpired over time that makes students feel that just turning something should be appreciated by the instructor and they should be “rewarded” accordingly. 

    I think we have deteriorated to the point that students feel they should be rewarded for doing the work instead of their work being evaluated and them being assigned the grades that they’ve earned.  As a result, the instructor who holds to his/her principles sees the student’s dissatisfaction reflected in his/her course evaluations.  And, with the appearance of performance-based budgeting in higher education and affecting departmental budgets, these “meaningless” course evaluations are gaining weight.  For as an instructor, your “worth” to the department (in regards to budget consideration) may be reduced to (at least, in part) the revenue (FTEs) your courses bring into the department.  It’s sad–it’s tragic, but it’s a new reality in higher education.  Consumerism is just getting way out of hand, and that counters the academic freedoms and the pursuit of scholarship we’ve enjoyed as educators.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I advocate and support our being held accountable to interested stakeholders.  Yet, if we don’t hold students accountable for their learning, what can we be held accountable for?

  • edwoof

    Thanks for your post. The problem is that the GPA for the curve gets higher and higher, and after the first year, it really is “all skate.” I trust you’ve kept up with the articles on grade inflation in http://www.abovethelaw.com (see http://abovethelaw.com/?s=grade+inflation). The stories include law schools which have set the curve higher as well as Loyola Los Angeles retroactively adjusted all of their students class grades by .5). This of course is done on the assumption that the higher the grades, the more chances their students have of getting a job and thus helping the law school’s US News ranking. In reality, it means that the law schools are punting on one of their fundamental tasks, which is to assess a student’s performance which will be reviewed by perspective employers. There is more of a disconnect in the US than other countries between law students and the practice because most other countries actually require some sort of apprenticeship. When prospective employers cannot rely on a law school’s assessment, the disconnect becomes greater and then the value of the law school is further eroded. 

    As another anecdotal example, when I graduated from law school (a top 50 law school) just over twenty years ago, cum laude was 3.0 and was roughly the top third. Now, cum laude is over 3.3 and I find that this is the case at other law schools as well. Some of the inflation has to do with the introduction of the A+ for which a student will receive 4.5 in a particular course, but there is still the assumption that there is a 4.0 grading scale. As I have written inj other post, we have moved from college as a provider of education to college as the seller of an educational experience and we are fast approaching a situation where college is a purveyor of educational fantasy. This is certainly becoming the case with legal education.

  • jimsantafe

    I am happily retired and have been for quite a while. I spent over 30 years in private Higher Education as Prof (in Zoology) and Dean. I haven’t kept up with this topic for quite a while. My only comment:  it’s as if I never left! The issue, related concerns, etc haven’t changed! I could be back in faculty discussions on the topic, NorthCentral Assn annual presentations or annual meetings of the Council of Independent Colleges. Maybe the “problem” is with the system of evaluation. That has always been one topic discussed, perhaps ad nauseam. If 20 students in a class received “Bs” are they equally competent in what they have actually learned and their ability to express their competency? It’s a conversation/debate that will always be there and that is a very good thing. 

  • Unemployed_Northeastern

    Yes, grades certainly do tend to creep up. I went undergrad at a NESCAC liberal arts college that prided itself on not having the grade inflation of, say, Amherst (to choose the worst offender). The trouble is that my UG alma mater wasn’t Amherst or Williams or Wellesley, which are the only liberal arts schools that really mean something in the Northeast when the chips are down. The grade inflation at Amherst and the like -schools already perceived to be a better school than my own because they are ranked a few places higher – only made it harder for us to find gainful employment after graduation. Which might be why every single person I know of from that institution has gone for an advanced degree; they can’t do anything else. Of course, the GPA has been creeping up over the last several years, so now we even look worse in comparison to newer graduates.

    Don’t even get me started on Northeastern Law School (where I also went), its evaluations, and how well that plays out with employers not already intimately familiar that system.

  • manoflamancha

    No, it’s the other way around: 43% of professors are meeting the expectations of their students.

  • manoflamancha

    Sorry, I just scrolled and found your comment, which I also put forth after you.

  • manoflamancha

    Lacking finesse, but so true.

  • patrickstrother

    I think you are introducing other very important symptoms of the college bubble. Not only is the cost inflating toward an irrational level, but the grade inflation has made the measurement standards far less valuable. Students are essentially over-paying for the expectation of receiving an A, which has now lost its value as a marker of exceptional performance.

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