Our institution serves a segment of the population that is increasingly deficient in one or more skills necessary for learning. That is, over 50 per cent of incoming students test into remdial English, reading or math and a large number of these students test into all three areas. That said, the rising grade level seems odd given the increasing decline in incoming preparedness of the majority of our students. I wonder if this dynamic is present only at my institution or shared by other segments of higher education.
Higher education can be viewed as consumption, signal, investment and/or entertainment.
Higher education has evolved over time in many ways - evaluation in the form of grading is certainly one of the most obvious and this change may play a role in the mix of consumption, signal, investment and/or entertainment both perceived by society and the participants.
Source: http://gradeinflation.com/
This web site is an outgrowth of an op-ed piece that I wrote on grade inflation for the Washington Post, "Where All Grades Are Above Average" In the process of writing that article, I collected data on trends in grading from about 30 colleges and universities. I found that grade inflation, while waning beginning in the mid-1970s, resurfaced in the mid-1980s. The rise continued unabated at virtually every school for which data were available. By March 2003, I had collected data on grades from over 80 schools. Then I stopped collecting data until December 2008, when I thought it was a good time for a new assessment.
Out of curiosity
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