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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
GRADE INFLATION
THURSDAY, APRIL 21. 2005
Average
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Rachel Sevmour/KANSAN
"I had in fact, one mother, some years ago, say to me that 'this essay deserves more than a "C" because I helped my daughter with it,'" said Paul Lim, English professor at the University.
Josh Moore, Tulsa, Okla., junior, searches the 4 1/2 west stack at Watson Library for an extra credit project article with fellow student, David Laya, Venezuela junior. Moore said students pressured professors into curving grades because students were less willing to work for the higher grades.
This kind of pressure isn't unusual because of the emergence of consumer culture in education, Roistaczer said.
Students and parents are paying more for education every year, and they want the reward of good grades, he said. Professors are willing to comply.
Professors are not the only ones to blame, but some administrators as well, Rojstaczer said.
"They talk about students as customers, and they talk about keeping the customer happy," he said. "Universities should be about education and learning and creating a culture of learning — and not a product."
The college degree has become a commodity and not a symbol that indicates the person has been committed to intellectual discovery, he said. Students expect good grades these days, some educators said. "If I were to say to you where I feel the most pressure from, the students or the administration, I would say I feel the most pressure from the students," said Bill
Skepnek, honors Western civilization instructor, "I feel that It's become a situation if someone gets a 'B' there's a lot of disappointment." Some students think because they're in
Source: Office of Institutional Research and Planning
"Even if you agree that the best and brightest come to college, work that earned an 'A' in high school doesn't get an 'A' in college." Manning said.
An attitude that some students have is that if they do the minimum requirements, they deserve an "A," he said.
Attitude adjustment
There's another explanation for rising GPAs: Professors are letting lower quality work slide by.
"We what we are dealing with is a willingness to accept a range of different performances as more or less equal," said Michael Johnson, director of the Freshman-Sophomore English Program. "It's the Lake Wobeon effect."
Johnson is referring to the Garrison Keillor novel, "Lake Wobegon Days," where all of the children in the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minn.
"I'm paying money to be here.I would hope our education standards aren't going down just for high GPAs."
Christopher Volek Lawrence freshman
college, they're better than average and are entitled to good grades, said Jimmie Manning. Liberal doctorate student who teaches communications studies and women's studies classes.
are treated as above average
Teachers sometimes think about what would happen to the students' future if they gave them a low grade, said Jorg Meindl, Speyer, Germany, graduate student who teaches intermediate German classes.
That's an attitude that some students from their teachers.
that some students have seen from their teachers.
"Educators want us to have degrees," Iefan Thompson, Topeka freshman, said. "Things have changed so much in the past 20 years. You didn't used to have a college degree; now you
do. There's a lot more jobs that require it now."
Chancellor Robert Hemenway sees a change in professors' attitudes about grading.
About 40 years ago, professors focused more on the negative aspects of student work, he said. Now teachers are more focused on student success.
"I can remember when I was in graduate school, professors delighted in making brutal remarks about inadequate construction, grammar and ideas that didn't seem to hold much water," Hemenway said. "I think as a profession we discovered that those nasty remarks about the inadequacy of a student are counterproductive and actually impede
learning."
Some professors are lowering standards because high school students coming into college aren't as prepared for academic life as students were before, said Holly Storkel, assistant professor of speech, language and hearing.
That's something that students should be worried about, said Dan Bernstein, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, an organization that promotes better teaching practices at the University.
ply lowered standards, privately giving away good grades and the students aren't learning much, then the students should be unhappy."
Lower standards aren't what Christopher Volek, Lawrence freshman, wants his money to buv.
"If the instructor has very high standards that are publicly verified and students are performing very well, students should be happy," Bernstein said. "If the instructor has sim-
Brandon Grimm, Shawnee freshman, listens for the word about teachers who grade more easily from his friends. He said he had two friends who took the same class with different teachers. In his opinion, they did the same quality of work, but one
was pulling "Cs" while the other
not higher grades.
"This semester I had an English teacher who was asking outrageous things of me," he said, "so I dropped the class. I like to keep my options open before I have to commit, depending on how the teacher grades."
Stop those grades!
One department at the University is tackling increasing GPAs head-on.
The Freshman-Sophomore English Program is trying to stop grade inflation through a method called "self-correction," said Michael Johnson, director of the program
In 2000, Johnson studied the average GPA for freshman and sophomore English classes and realized it had increased 13 percent since 1990.
Johnson estimated that in 2018, the average grade would be an "A."
He then created grade summaries that showed the grading patterns to English teachers.
By making them aware of what was happening to grades overall, teachers started to analyze their own grades and started self-correcting, Johnson said.
A grade summary provided by the Freshman-Sophomore English Program shows the average GPA for the freshman-sophomore English classes dropped three percent since 1990.
About 25 percent of KU undergraduate students took a freshman-sophomore English class in Fall 2004. The average GPA last fall was 2.71.
Bernstein proposes one way to ensure that students are learning and earning high grades: Make teachers' methods public and open to criticism like their research.
What someone needs to look at is the quality of what the students were asked to do and the quality of how the students performed, he said.
As a violin performance major, this concept isn't new to Grimm.
What he learns equals how well he plays, he said, and how
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