For the past year-and-a-half, grade inflation has been stirring controversy on campuses across the country. The debate has now materialized at Oberlin.
While many professors deny that grade inflation exists, some, like economics professor Robert Piron, say they are outraged by attempts to gloss over the issue.
“My position is that our average grade is a sick joke that cannot be told any more if we are serious in our quest to rise out of the muck of the second-raters,” Piron said. “When I arrived for the ’61-’62 academic year, I came to a top-five school and have, since the late ’80s, witnessed it slowly sink to the bottom of the top 25.”
History professor Steven Volk, who chairs the College’s Committee on Teaching, disagrees.
“When people speak of grade inflation, the underlying suggestion is that somehow students are not just getting higher grades, which is a statistical reality at most selective schools, but they are getting higher grades than they deserve,” Volk said.
“It is not hard to show that the former is true at Oberlin, Harvard, and other places,” he continued. “What no one has shown is that the fact that grades are rising is due to ‘inflation,’ i.e. undeservedly high grades, or to the fact that selective institutions are increasingly getting a better prepared group of students.”
The issue of grade inflation began to receive national attention with concerns that too many Harvard undergraduates were receiving A’s. Responding to these concerns, a faculty committee at Harvard launched a campaign to restore “the honor of the B-plus,” ultimately resulting in a variety of policy changes.
The higher education community remains divided on the issue and studies have proven inconclusive.
Last summer, the U.S. Department of Education profiled 16.5 million undergraduates. They found that more than a third of them received grades of a C or below; only 14.5 percent received A’s.
But the American Academy of Arts and Sciences issued another report, describing grade inflation as a major problem, especially at Ivy League and highly selective institutions.
Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences Jeffrey A. Witmer argues that Oberlin’s rising grades can be attributed to its rising selectivity.
“We keep track of grades awarded and how this changes over time,” he said. “Oberlin has experienced some grade inflation over the past 15 years, but we’ve seen SAT scores and other measures of incoming students rise at the same time, so it is hard to say whether grade inflation at Oberlin is out of line with what one would expect.”
Indeed, Oberlin’s Office of Institutional Research has released statistics, showing that increases in the average grade between 1970 and 2001 have corresponded with increases in average SAT scores.
In the past decade, the average grade has risen from just above 3.20, a B, to the current 3.35, a B-plus. During the same period, SAT scores have risen from around 1220 to 1270.
Last December, Oberlin faculty organized a forum entitled “What DOES that ‘B’ mean? Thoughts on Grading, Learning and Communications.”
Prior to the event, they circulated an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, tellingly titled “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation.” The report contrasted recent concerns over grade inflation with nearly identical complaints from faculty employed by the institution in the 1890s.
“No one has ever demonstrated that students today get A’s for the same work that used to receive B’s or C’s,” the report read. “We simply do not have the data to support such a claim.”
Rather than consider questions of grade inflation at Oberlin per se, the Committee on Teaching has chosen to focus on the communicative aspect of grades.
“How do students understand the grades we give?” Volk said. “What messages do we send with grades? Are they the same ones that students receive? Are grades a good or poor way to ‘communicate’ with students?”
Piron, however, remains jaded about the abilities of today’s students.
“The average academic quality of our students has fallen perceptibly,” he said.