1. seed
  2. A is for Average

A is for Average

By milhayser on August 12, 2011.

On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, Dr. Isis solicits hypotheses for the increase in the number of A's awarded to students at American universities. In 1960's, one out of six students got an A (and C used to be the most Common). Now an A is most common, and the number of C's (and D's) has fallen by half. Dr. Isis says, "It's interesting that the real change in grading appears to have occurred in the period between 1962 and 1974, probably coinciding with the increase in conscription for the Vietnam War." Mike the Mad Biologist offers, "I think it's pretty obvious what happened: increased competition for graduate school slots put (and still puts) pressure on faculty to not give C's and to give more A's." Chad Orzel has a different theory, saying "blame the Baby Boomers. First, as students, they got a gigantic bump in grades [...] Then, as they entered the faculty ranks, they continued the upward trend." Regardless of the cause, more students now get a passing grade than ever before, and close to half of them get an A. B is the new Below Average—and C the new Crappy.

Tags
education
History

More like this

Collegiate Grade Inflation: It's All About Supply and Demand
By way of Dr. Isis, we come across this post by Catherine Rampell about the rise of grade inflation in colleges: Dr. Isis observes: It's interesting that the real change in grading appears to have occurred in the period between 1962 and 1974, probably coinciding with the increase in conscription…
Grade Inflation? Blame the Baby Boomers
A lot of pixels have been spent discussing this study of grade inflation, brought to most people's attention via this New York Times blog. The key graph is this one, showing the fraction of grades given in each letter category over the last fifty years: Lots of effort is being put into trying to…
The Evergreen Topic of Grade Inflation
There was a flurry of re-shares last week for this article about Yale shutting down a site that aggregated student course evaluations, which is fine as far as it goes, but repeats a stat that really bugs me: About 43 percent of college letter grades in 2011 were A’s, up from 31 percent in 1988 and…
Death Dealers
On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, Dr. Isis reports that drug-maker Lundbeck "will no longer provide Nembutal to prisons in states where lethal injection is legal." Nembutal is a barbiturate used in conjunction with two other drugs to execute capital offenders, and an alternative to…