The university grade inflation debate is going global

From Ireland to India, rising grades at universities and colleges continue to grab media headlines. No longer confined to a few countries, the grade inflation debate has gone global. This typically leads to allegations of falling standards and that qualifications are being devalued.

In the United States, Grade Point Averages have been rising for several decades. Long-term data on 400 schools and colleges, analysed by Gradeinflation.com, shows a 5% to 6% rise in the number of ‘A’ grades awarded each decade, meaning they are now three times more common than in the 1960s.

More top grades have also been observed at US Ivy League universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Cornell. In 2001, a committee at Harvard noted the median grade was an A- while the most frequently awarded grade was an A, calling grade inflation "a serious problem". In 2004, grades and grading policies also gained prominence when Princeton decided to overhaul its grading system to tackle the problem of inflation.

Significant evidence of grade inflation is also found in Canadian universities such as the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo, where rising grades appear to be the norm and academics are reported as being under pressure to accept the status quo.

Grade inflation is also highly topical in the United Kingdom, where official data shows nearly three-quarters of all UK undergraduates are now being awarded first- or upper second-class honours – a 15% rise in the number of good degrees awarded over the past decade.

Similar trends have also been noted in Germany, where grade inflation in university diplomas is officially reported by the German Council of Science and Humanities. A 2012 report found nearly 80% of students gained one of the top two grades compared to 70% in 2001, which brought a focus on the marking practices across German universities.

The value of a degree

In the southern hemisphere, a 2002 Australian government review found that media allegations about ‘soft marking’ and assessment practices have cast doubt on whether effective assessment practices are embedded in Australian universities. Moreover, in New Zealand anecdotal claims of grades being bumped up have led to similar commentaries on the value of a degree.

Grade inflation is not confined to university systems in Western societies. A 2015 study by the South Korean Ministry of Education and the Korea Council for University Education highlighted that nine out of 10 university graduates from 178 universities in South Korea received grades of at least B or above. The Korea Times reported that the faith students place “in learning at universities is at risk” and “it is a problem without a quick solution".

There have also been reports of rising grades in the Philippines, leading to the chancellor of the University of the Philippines Diliman offering the reassurance that there is no grade inflation, just new effective teaching methods.

What is behind rising grades?

Beneath the media reactions to rising grades lies a series of complex issues – some specific to institutional and national contexts, some universal. The first key issue is understanding to what extent rising grades are from genuine improvements in student performance against consistent criteria and to what extent they are merely inflation through the softening of standards.

For example, rising grades are not proof that grade inflation exists. There are valid reasons – including improved teaching, better learning resources and students being motivated to work harder. Some point to the Flynn Effect, where the average IQ of each successive generation increases, to account for rising educational achievement.

However, it has been argued that grade inflation is a sign of how the international commercial market has corrupted higher education.

In an age of intense global competition for students and where rankings continuously measure institutional performance, universities regard students as consumers. Here, critics argue, the grading process has been compromised as universities are incentivised to meet the demands of their customers and graduate more students with top grades to boost their institutional ranking.

High grades leading to higher employment rates are also used by universities to strengthen their value-proposition and their position in a competitive market. Graduate employment rates are also used in some countries to allocate government funding. Some argue that inflated grades are necessary to help students get ahead in a competitive job market.

However, grade inflation may leave graduates at a disadvantage with their grades providing degraded information about their real achievements. Thus, the signalling power of grades can diminish in the labour market over time.

This leads us to a second key question – what do grades mean and who are they for? Are grades a measure of skills and a mastery of content? Or are they a way of signalling to future employers the performance of students relative to their peers?

Who should address the problem?

A third key consideration is, when rising grades question the integrity of higher education, whose responsibility is it to address this and ensure confidence?

The UK government now believes universities left to their own devices will not tackle grade inflation and has challenged the sector to address the problem. And the new regulatory body in England, the Office for Students, has powers to take action against universities failing to comply with sector agreed standards.

Defenders of university autonomy may be uncomfortable with government intervention, but it is not in the interests of any university acting alone to reduce its grade profile while its competitors’ grades are rising – so a sector-wide approach may be the only solution. If successful, other countries may seek to learn from the English example.

Dr Andrew Gunn is a researcher in higher education at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, and was previously Worldwide Universities Network visiting researcher at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Follow him on Twitter: @ASGunn. Priya Kapade is a doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, and has over 15 years of experience in higher education administration. Follow her on Twitter: @PriyaKapade