Grade Inflation issue5 min read

Reading Time: 4 minutesReading Time: 4 minutes

According to the Cambridge dictionary, Grade Inflation is a process in which students give higher grades than in the past. Grade inflation has swept over universities and schools during last 60 years. Although, today’s high grades aren’t always showing successful mastery of the material by a schoolchild or student, sometimes it tells us about problems in organizing processes of the quality assessment system. At least minimal consequences include more excellent survival rates for those who don’t learn enough for high performing, after that it devalues diplomas of successful students over time. Grade Inflation issue calls for a review of fair grading mechanisms, a systematic analysis of best implemented practices at universities and schools, and students opinion research.

Universities try to struggle with Grade Inflation by setting an allowable limit of excellent (and/or good) grades. This decision is a source of student’ dissatisfaction because this measure may induce an artificial understatement. In the UK, the National Union of Students (NUS) believes that universities shouldn’t penalize students for high performance in their system. A more equitable measure would be to rank students based on course results or an element of control and to give them grades in accordance with results of other students. Such an evaluation policy can stimulate opportunistic behavior, but it can also motivate the best ones, who will be followed by the rest of participants during an educational process. Data declare that 38% of students in the United Kingdom received the highest grade in 2020-2021, a year earlier it was 36%, while the figures reached 45% in the United States against 15% in the early 1960s. Experts say the pandemic “cannot be used as an excuse to allow a decade of unexplained grade inflation to be baked into the system”. Universities have been criticised by ministers and the higher education regulator for year-on-year increases in the proportions of top grades awarded, that’s why the share of top grades there may fall by nearly 25%. In recent years, applicants had a chance to enter a good university, even if they didn’t receive high marks. According to the Guardian’s article, competition in leading English universities is increasing: more than 10,000 school leavers have predicted three Bs in their A-levels this summer and haven’t got a firm offer at any university. Universities fear over-enrollment in 2022 after enrolling more students during the pandemic and the demographic surge of 18-year-olds. About 38% of students in England were awarded a first-class degree in 2021, which is 9% more than before the COVID-19 crisis. Therefore, Universities UK and GuildHE, representing institutions across the higher education sector, have jointly announced plans to return to pre-pandemic levels of firsts and 2:1s being awarded over the next two years. Professor CBE Steve West warns that higher education regulators should be careful “not to assume that students with lower entry grades, typically from more disadvantaged backgrounds, cannot achieve first-class degrees”.

Russia took seriously the problem of increasing Grade Point Average (the same as Grade Inflation) in early 2021, when depletion of the scholarship fund became noticeable. Since February 2021, the Education Quality Committee (EQC) began investigating the causes of this problem. EQC is a subdivision of the Students Council at the leading Russian university Higher School of Economics, called to carry out comprehensive monitoring, support the university’s educational policy and protect student’s community rights and interests. The Committee proposes to establish a recommended framework for the distribution of grades per course, to develop an educational and methodological track for teachers, and to separate monitoring of assessments by type of discipline (for example, to separate the evaluation of practices and online courses and to track progress in these different groups). It is important to note that the assessment in HSE takes place on a 10-point grading scale, according to which an “excellent” assessment begins from 8. One proposal to regulate inflation estimates was to change the scale and make points 7, 8 and 9 rated as “good” and only 10 as “excellent”.

The Higher School of Economics is known for the quality of student admission, which often enrolls students with very high scores for exams or winners of different olympiads among schoolchildren. According to Sergey Roshchin, Vice Rector of HSE and Head of the Labor Market Research Laboratory, educational programs for talented students should be structured according to their level to master complex material and gain competitive knowledge. Sergei answers questions from HSE students about the Inflation Rate: “Any estimates are relative, not absolute. Therefore, there can be no artificial understatement, it’s about the rating scale, which should reasonably weigh in relation to those efforts that are necessary for understanding the material. In this case, a score 10 is an ultra-high score for demonstrating a certain creative talent, innovation and the ability to create new knowledge”.

There is no effective solution for solving Grade Inflation problem, that’s why specialists are at the stage of discussing this problem in various academic teams. The high performance of students and pupils could tell us not only about the cons of an education system organization but about hard work during the educational path of excellent students with notable results as well. According to Mike Nicholson, deputy head of education services at Cambridge University, many universities “saying one thing about what grades they will accept, and then in reality being prepared to drop the grade if they want someone”. This certainly doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to all admission criteria, but it still reminds us of the flexible approach to evaluate results.

GIF by Pinterest