Inflation- in prices and in G.P.A.s

Another story about the increase in G.P.A.s over the past fifty years.

Plenty of debate about what this means- but it should be noted that G.P.A.s are calculated after a student's actual numerical score in a course is converted to a letter grade.

In our private liberal arts college "Regular grades are defined as follows:

A - Superior

B - Above Average

C - Average

D - Below Average

F - Failure"

Most schools have definitions along these lines.

Since B represents a 3 on a 0-4.0 scale, an average G.P.A. of 3.3 (in private schools) can be interpreted to mean that the "average" student (based on the mean G.P.A.) in these schools is somewhere between Above Average and Superior in performance...which seriously begs the definition of "Superior" and "Average" in the grading scheme. The entire grading scheme is a real academic performance. Interestingly, back in my engineering days at IIT (India) our report cards just showed our "actual" performance...the % achieved in every course.

Want a Higher G.P.A.? Go to a Private College - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com: "Over the last 50 years, college grade-point averages have risen about 0.1 points per decade, with private schools fueling the most grade inflation, a recent study finds.

The study, by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, uses historical data from 80 four-year colleges and universities. It finds that G.P.A.’s have risen from a national average of 2.52 in the 1950s to about 3.11 by the middle of the last decade."