Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Grade inflation: Ballooning out of control?

(Dreamstime/TNS)
(Dreamstime/TNS)

In 1973, the average GPA of students at four-year colleges was 2.9, and only 30 percent of grades given out were A’s. In this era, many hard-working students still only managed to get B’s, or even C’s. But in 1983, a phenomenon known as the era of “Students as Consumers” began. As the cost of college began to increase, students felt the higher price they were paying entitled them to higher grades. Colleges began to feel more pressure to distribute higher grades in order to attract and satisfy their student customers, thus beginning the practice of grade inflation.

By 2013, the average GPA at four-year colleges was a 3.15 and A’s were the most popular grade given out. In an interesting twist, the average GPA at private colleges in 2013 was a 3.35. From this data emerges a clear concept; as students pay more for college, they expect and receive higher, artificially inflated grades. While this may seem straightforward, it poses a dangerous problem. After all, aren’t grades supposed to be awarded based on merit not entitlement?

Inflating grades initially sounds like a win-win. In an ideal world, everybody could get A’s and be happy. But the reality is that grade inflation poses several obvious and impractical challenges to modern day college graduates. When everybody gets an A, or at least a higher GPA than they deserve, it devalues GPA as a benchmark of learning and achievement. The result? A higher emphasis on non-objective criteria when applying for graduate school and jobs.

Graduating from institutions with grade inflation, the high GPA you spent hours to achieve will no longer be enough to secure you admission to law school, medical school or even land you a job interview because other people who didn’t deserve higher grades got them anyway. Instead, more weight will be given to your standardized test scores (the fairness of which are controversially debated) or personality and less weight to your academic accomplishments. But beyond the practical, there is a more nuanced argument against grade inflation, the argument that despite the current trends of society, not every kid deserves a trophy.

People have long characterized millennials in the workplace as lazy, entitled, sullen, disinterested and worse. In fact, according to a CBS study, 46 percent of Chief Financial Officers at major corporations said that millennials have “an attitude of entitlement” and more than half of CFOs said that millennials made less loyal employees. With this in mind, is it any surprise that CNBC reported millennials make up over 40 percent of the unemployed, and that there are 4.6 million young Americans out of work?

I’m certainly not arguing that there’s something about millennials that just naturally makes them worse. Instead, I point you to grade inflation and a general culture of placation that plagues the lives of our nation’s young people today. How can we expect millennials to do well in the workplace when in the past they weren’t judged on their own merits? When they didn’t have to work as hard to achieve in school? Can we really be surprised by this generation’s attitude of entitlement when they’ve lived their lives going from participation trophies in Little League to A’s being handed out like candy in college?

Millennials are just as capable as any other generation, but with practices like grade inflation that coddle us, not only are we left unprepared for the real world that awaits us after graduation, we are belittled. Millennials are smart, ambitious and tech-savvy, and we deserve to be judged on our own merits.

Bradley Polumbo is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].

View Comments (4)
More to Discover

Comments (4)

All Massachusetts Daily Collegian Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • E

    Ed CuttingFeb 1, 2017 at 4:14 pm

    Remember too that the first standardized test, the SAT, was created to address racism — bigotry against Jewish students, who weren’t graduating from private prep schools.

    Reply
  • E

    Ed CuttingFeb 1, 2017 at 4:09 pm

    This actually is a return to what Higher Ed was a century ago, B.C. (Before Computers).

    There weren’t laser printers back then, or even photocopiers — universities simply couldn’t provide copies of transcripts and hence didn’t. That’s why students were given a diploma, hand-signed by the top administrators.

    In essence, college was pass/fail — you either graduated or you didn’t. All your potential employer knew was that you either had a diploma or you didn’t, and if you did, what your degree was in.

    Giving everyone an “A” is just a return to that bygone era — returning to the diploma being the relevant credential.

    Reply
  • Z

    Zero GJan 27, 2017 at 10:31 am

    This article is spot on. It has nothing to do with Millennial work ethic. Grade inflation is a sham perpetrated by the uber-capitalists running this nation’s universities. After decades of de-emphasis on standardized testing, it has ironically become MORE important, in part due to the factor of grade inflation. As a student of a mid-level ranked law school in the 1990’s, I witnessed this first hand when I took classes at the revered NYU Law School. While my law school classes handed out a miniscule (10%) amount of A’s per our school’s policies, I noticed that NYU was handing out A’s like Halloween candy. The Ivy’s have been notorious for this for many years. So the standardized tests mean more than ever.

    Reply
  • A

    AJan 25, 2017 at 5:41 pm

    Only nothing about your analysis of Millenials is true.
    https://hbr.org/2016/08/millennials-are-actually-workaholics-according-to-research

    Reply