Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education

The Irascible Professor.com, June 23, 2003
Grade Inflation is an important book. It should be read by every faculty member who serves on a personnel committee

Education Update, October 2003
...anyone teaching at...any American college/university—must give themselves a flunking mark if they have not read this book.

International Higher Education, Fall 2003
...it is one of the most detailed studies of grading that has been undertaken.

Book Description
Grade inflation runs rampant at most colleges and universities, but faculty and administrators are seemingly unwilling to face the problem. This book explains why, exposing many of the misconceptions surrounding college grading. Based on historical research and the results of a yearlong, on-line course evaluation experiment conducted at Duke University during the 1998-1999 academic year, the effects of student grading on various educational processes, and their subsequent impact on student and faculty behavior, is examined. Principal conclusions of this investigation are that instructors' grading practices have a significant influence on end-of-course teaching evaluations, and that student expectations of grading practices play an important role in the courses that students decide to take. The latter effect has a serious impact on course enrollments in the natural sciences and mathematics, while the combination of both mean that faculty have an incentive to award high grades, and students have an incentive to choose courses with faculty who do. Grade inflation is the natural consequence of this incentive system. Material contained in this book is essential reading for anyone involved in efforts to reform our postsecondary educational system, or for those who simply wish to survive and prosper in it. Valen Johnson is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan. Prior to accepting an appointment in Ann Arbor, he was a Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University, where data for this book was collected. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

About the Author
Valen Johnson is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan. Prior to accepting an appointment in Ann Arbor, he was a Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University, where data for this book was collected. He is co-author of the graduate statistical textbook, Ordinal Data Modeling.


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"Within any college or university, several different approaches to grading are used to evaluate students. Disparities in grading practices have serious consequences for both students and faculty, the most obvious being inequitable evaluations of students. More serious effects include a reduction in the number of science and mathematics courses that students take and a general degradation of academic standards. Recent efforts to reform grading practices have been thwarted by the claim that higher grades simply reflect higher levels of student achievement." Professor Johnson provides evidence that this claim is not true. He also shows that student evaluations of instruction are affected by an instructor's grading practices, grading practices significantly alter student enrollment patterns, and grades assigned in an unregulated academic environment do not have a consistent and objective interpretation across departments and institutions. This book challenges many myths about grading, and exposes the negative influence that grades exert on our eduational system.


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