Grade Inflation

Amy Lutz, commenting on grade inflation

Congratulations, young America, you’ve reached the threshold of academic perfection. Recent studies have shown that an “A” is now the most common grade for college students in the United States. It’s nice to know that my generation is so well educated. Or perhaps not. Based upon a mountain of contradictory evidence and the environment I see all around me as an American college student, I hesitate to declare victory too soon. When you dig deeper the facts show that grade inflation is what really fuels our college students’ higher GPAs, and A today might be equivalent to a C forty years ago.

Despite the outward appearances of academic perfection, today’s students are not on an upward trajectory toward academic success. Last year, a USA Today report showed that college students make little academic progress in their first two years of college. In fact, 45 percent of students showed no significant gains, a figure which contradicts academia’s goal of educating students. College Students are more likely to focus on their social lives rather than their academic record. Professors caught up with their own research are less likely to pay attention to such habits. Additionally, students spend 50 percent less time studying now than they have in past decades. Fifty percent of students also said that they had never taken a class in which they wrote more than 20 pages in a semester. Good study habits must be developed early through hard work and challenging courses for academic success to be achievable. Even though grades may superficially be rising, good academic habits which produce long term success are lacking among today’s college students.