We all know grade inflation is a reality, but according to a new study using historical data from 80 four year colleges and universities it’s happening faster in private schools. The study, by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, found that until the 1950’s or so grades in private and public schools rose more or less at the same rate. But starting in the 50’s, grades in public schools started to get higher. Equally qualified students (based on SAT scores) got significantly higher grades at private schools than they did in public institutions.
The average GPA today is 3.3 in private schools and 3.0 in public ones. That’s considerably high than the average GPA in the 1950’s, which was 2.52.
Authors of the study point out that higher grades given by private institutions may explain the why more private school graduates get into top medical, business, law and Ph.D. programs. Though Rojstaczer and Healy make a strong argument against most grade inflation, there is one area where they think that harsher grading actually hurting the United State’s higher education system. Science.
According to their findings, science departments grade .4 points lower than humanities departments and .2 points lower than social science departments. This disparity has been around for at least 40 years, according to the study. The authors of the study argue that these harsher grading standards discourage students from pursuing the sciences.
“Partly because of our current ad hoc grading system, it is not surprising that the U.S. has to rely heavily upon foreign-born graduate students for technical fields of research and upon foreign-born employees in its technology firms,” they write.
