Publisher’s Note: When interviewing a candidate at your business in the CSRA, do you expect their GPA to be a true indicator of how dedicated and intelligent he or she is? Students’ grades are up across the country from a while ago until now by 10-20%. But why? Dr. Rick Franza takes a look at an academic challenge that needs course correction.
Grade inflation has been rampant on college campuses for decades, particularly since COVID, when this trend became exceedingly evident and problematic. Having done my undergraduate work in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, graduate work both in the early 1980’s and the early to mid 1990’s, and then being part of academia as a faculty member and administrator from the late 1990’s to today, I have had a front row seat to this phenomenon for over forty years.
As I noted in this space in my April column on performance reviews, the mean undergraduate grade point average (GPA) has risen from 2.8 to 3.15 in that time, while the median GPA has risen from 2.7 to 3.28. As I noted in that column, the median is more instructive to us than the mean (average), as medians are less impacted by extreme values. The median tells us that half of the students matriculating as undergraduates in college have GPAs of 3.28 or higher; so, the average student is achieving approximately a B+ overall grade. Academia has become a present-day Lake Wobegon, where “all the children are above average.”
Are students simply smarter?
While we could look at the bright side and think college students today are more gifted than those of the past, my experience has been that students are not that much different from one generation to another. While today’s college student is clearly much better at accessing information and more tech-savvy than those of previous eras, on average, their critical thinking and analytical skills are not as good. Anecdotally, my sense it is pretty much a wash; that on average, today’s students are very similar talent-wise to those I shared classes with in the 1970’s and 1980’s and those whom I taught in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. If that is the case (see Harvard example below), then we have a very serious case of grade inflation. The implications of such grade inflation are both symptomatic and a cause for the future erosion of the United States’ competitiveness and its economy.
Unfortunately, I believe grade inflation is a symptom, like “participation trophies,” of a society more concerned with individual self-esteem than with actual achievement. While I do believe self-esteem is a critical component of an individual’s development and well-being, it needs to be based on real achievement, and that self-esteem and achievement can be developed. However, if individuals are rewarded for “just showing up” or “trying,” but not actual achievement, that self-esteem becomes a delusion.
How grade inflation hurts the employer and employee.
In my years as a professor in higher education, such a reward, provided through grade inflation, leads to a sense of entitlement and less willingness to put in the work/effort required to achieve. While this is not true of all or even most students, it is an issue for a sizable percentage of students today. Therefore, grade inflation undermines our country’s overall competitiveness in a number of ways:
- Less Qualified Workforce: Grade inflation causes erosion of standards, which can lead to a decline in student effort and, therefore, a decrease in learning and skill acquisition. Also, the incentive to work hard for a good grade is diminished. So, we end up with a workforce that has less skill and with less work ethic.
- Uninformed Employers: Companies use grades as gauges for candidate knowledge, skills, and diligence. As grades become less meaningful through inflation, they become less useful as a screening tool in the selection process.
- Job/Employee Mismatch: As grade inflation increases, the link between degree and actual competence/skill is weakened, providing a dysfunctional feedback mechanism for matching an employee with an appropriate job.
- Hurts the High Achievers: Grade inflation provides less opportunity for the best students to separate themselves from the better jobs and better post-graduate degrees. If less capable students receive the same grades as the best, the better students may not be rewarded for their hard work and talent, and therefore, may be disincentivized to continue working hard.
While I am doing my best to combat grade inflation in my little corner of the world, it certainly is not enough. I tell my students that the grade they earn in my class (importantly, not “the grade I give them”) tells future employers how well they mastered the material in my class. However, I am concerned that my students may lose out on opportunities that may go to students from other institutions who inflate their grades.
Changes are being made.
For true change to occur, it cannot occur just at the individual professor level, but, more importantly, at the institutional level.
The good news is that institutional effort may be starting. This month, Harvard University released a report on its undergraduate grade inflation entitled, “Re-Centering Academics at Harvard College: Update on Grading and Workload.” In this report, Harvard owns up to its problem (A’s have increased from 24% of grades assigned in 2005 to 60.2% in 2025) and identifies some initial ways to address it. Most importantly, Harvard identifies what it “owes its students: “Specifically, we owe them grades that send clear signals, that give them a good sense of their strengths and weaknesses, and that communicate their areas of distinction to employers and admissions committees.” I think this is an outstanding start, but the proof will be in holding their faculty accountable for what the institution is trying to achieve. Hopefully, other institutions will follow suit and take aggressive action to stop grade inflation rather than just looking at how many students are progressing and graduating through their programs.
Grade inflation is both a sign and a cause of the undermining of U.S. competitiveness in the world, particularly economically. Hopefully, others will follow Harvard’s example and help unleash what really has made America great.
