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Grade Inflation & Curving

Binge Artist

Binge Artist

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Are there really schools where the course average must be fixed as high as 87.5% ???

In most (American) schools, that would be a very high "B", with the end result that the student who is just barely above average would have straight A's. And if this were the case, how would you distinguish the exceptional, or even good, students???
 
Binge,

Right, this is a policy which assumes the students are well-motivated, knowledgeable, and intelligent--and that if, for example, the average grade is failing, or borderline passing, or just barely passing, then there is likely some problem with the course itself. The curve is useful for courses without a standardized set of knowledge to cover, since the grade will reflect performance in the class relative to peers. Otherwise, someone without a particularized knowledge of what Professor Binge was teaching that year in his "Proving the Riemann Hypothesis" may not be aware that the subtitle of the course was "Do it or Fail" and will therefore lack the context to appreciate what a borderline passing grade actually means. :)

It's also a way to discourage course shopping based on easiest course, so that a student taking "Retarded and Advanced Waves in Theoretical Physics: A Particle Approach" won't be penalized by a lower overall average than the student taking "Sarah Palin's Policy Proposals: A Short Course."

Not all courses will have this kind of curve, and in some places very few do. When there IS such a prescribed curve, though, in my experience it's been set in the B+ range; I could be wrong about the particular school here.
 
Oh, I have no problems at all with a curve. The reasons you gave for having them are fine.


But I think grades would be a better measure of student performance if schools set their averages at the good ol' "gentleman's C" instead of a B+, regardless of how intelligent and motivated their respective student bodies were.
 
^Most definitely. I can clearly see why schools resort to grade inflation.



But, just to be an obstinate asshole, I feel compelled to give one more argument (meh, more of a "sentiment" actually) in favor of a lower overall grade average. In classes where scores tended to be very low, I was always VERY motivated to do my best and prove myself. Had an economics test once, where the prof posted every single score on the board (without the names, of course). And I must say it was quite a rush to have a 98 when the average was in the lower 60's, and the second highest score was in the mid 70's.
 
Binge Artist said:
But I think grades would be a better measure of student performance if schools set their averages at the good ol' "gentleman's C" instead of a B+, regardless of how intelligent and motivated their respective student bodies were.
Click to expand...

But then the meaning of a D or F will be different in each class depending on the normal distribution.

All other factors being equal I think the mean should be adjusted to 80ish.
 
yougene said:
But then the meaning of a D or F will be different in each class depending on the normal distribution.
Click to expand...

Ya, it would be like taking the ACT and the SAT as classes. Both give bell-curve results, albeit they are different beasts in nature. Imagine if 50% of students got above whatever 87.5% translates to on the SAT scale...I mean that's a good example of keeping scores normalized as a good measure, IMO.
 
I think 80% is a pretty high average to scale to. The university I teach at scales first year students to 70, second years to 72ish, and third and fourth years to about 74. If you scaled students to 80 here, the average mark would be the highest 'grade' or whatever you can get (so I guess for American unis it means the average mark would be an A).
 
RedLeader said:
Ya, it would be like taking the ACT and the SAT as classes. Both give bell-curve results, albeit they are different beasts in nature. Imagine if 50% of students got above whatever 87.5% translates to on the SAT scale...I mean that's a good example of keeping scores normalized as a good measure, IMO.
Click to expand...

See, damnit RedLeader, you had to go and add more fuel to my soap box fire.

The good old SAT.

Back in the early 90's, it didn't matter how shabby your high school grades were; if you cranked out a 1500, you pretty much had your pick of any Ivy League instution (an episode of Saved by the Bell comes to mind...).

But NOW, if you get a 1500 (or whatever the equivalent on the three part version is...2250?), you would be VERY lucky to get into ANY Ivy, even if you were valedictorian.

Not to derail the thread to high school standards, but the same principal applies: If you make B+ the average score, then there's more way to differentiate amoung below average students (ie F, D-, D, D+, C- C, C+, B-, B) than above average students (who are either A-, A, or A+).

Following this line of reasoning, I actually think it would be better to make D+ the average, and thereby essentially turn the tables.

And by all means, I'm well aware that this probably wouldn't be a wise move from the "business end" of universities, because...lol...who would want to apply to a college where the average grade (which i imagine correlates fairly well with the average student allowance as a percentage of the parents disposable income)
is a D+? :)
 
Redleader said:
^ Do you know what the average undergraduate GPA would be in Australia? I mean on the 1-7 scale? Just curious...or would you say the variation between Unis is too significant to really guess this? I like the way the Aussie grading system is set up.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with any kind of 1-7 scale. The grades at the uni I teach at are as follows:

H1 (the best): 80-100. Around 10% of students will get this grade at an undergraduate level. And if you don't have any H1's they will tell you to bump a few of your best H2A's up.
H2A: 75-80
H2B: 70-74 (the average range)
H3: 65-69
P: 50-64

And then anything below a 50 fails.

The university I did my undergrad degree at had a different system, going from High distinction (80+), to distinction (70-79), to credit (60-69), to pass (50-59), to fail (anything under 50).

But I'm pretty sure both universities scaled to an average of about 70 (although not all departments scale, and some don't do it in a very exact manner.)

Binge Artist said:
And by all means, I'm well aware that this probably wouldn't be a wise move from the "business end" of universities, because...lol...who would want to apply to a college where the average grade (which i imagine correlates fairly well with the average student allowance as a percentage of the parents disposable income)
is a D+?
Click to expand...

This is completely true. You can't have students getting bad marks at prestigious universities because people will start to wonder what's wrong with the institution. It's a complete wank really.
 
BA, I think you'd like the Aussie system more. They do 1-7, with about an average of a bit over 5..and only give out a few 7's per course. MUCH harder to get a 6.8GPA in Aus than a 3.8 in US.

My point was meant to be, though, that the average SAT score has not changed over the years (median's been around 1000 on M&V) for 30 years. And it's a good measurement of a student's ability, IMO. Grades have inflated, though, due to politics (like you said, where do you want to go? How many kids can a school move on to grad school? And so on...). I wish grades were distributed like SAT or ACT scores. Then you wouldn't have this madness of 3.8PGA landing you 55th in class rank...

I get what you're saying about HS grades, and I agree. I killed the SAT and got rejected by 2 Ivies. Though I think it was because I had NO extracurricular activities and was just too generic middle-class white male....
 
satricion said:
I'm not familiar with any kind of 1-7 scale. The grades at the uni I teach at are as follows:

H1 (the best): 80-100. Around 10% of students will get this grade at an undergraduate level. And if you don't have any H1's they will tell you to bump a few of your best H2A's up.
H2A: 75-80
H2B: 70-74 (the average range)
H3: 65-69
P: 50-64

And then anything below a 50 fails.
Click to expand...

I don't know if this helps at all, but I did my exchange at UQ, and they explain their grades here. Look at page 4 at the bottom specifically. That's what I was referring to. Guess it's not nationalized.
 
Yeah that's totally different to any uni I've ever been to or taught at. I taught at another university last year and they had a similar system to the second one that I posted above.

I mean, going on the UQ system, does it matter if you get a 2 or a 3? They're both really shit marks...

I think it's really difficult to fail here in Australia actually. I mean, you pretty much have to hand in work that is totally unrecognisable as assessment for the course. It needs to be a complete train wreck. This is in the social sciences though where unlike some disciplines there's no unambiguously wrong answer. Germany it's completely different, a third of their students or something like that regularly fail courses.
 
Im in still in high school and can say my high school is EXTREMELY academically oriented. We were rated top 50 in america by newsweek (east chapel hill high school). we have a 7 point grading scale so a 92 is the lowest A you can recieve, and 85 is the lowest B and a 77 is the lowest C. The pressure to over-acheive here is pretty fucking crazy. My good friend has an unweighted[[/I] gpa of 3.97 and he is like 47th in our class:|
 
satricion said:
I think 80% is a pretty high average to scale to. The university I teach at scales first year students to 70, second years to 72ish, and third and fourth years to about 74. If you scaled students to 80 here, the average mark would be the highest 'grade' or whatever you can get (so I guess for American unis it means the average mark would be an A).
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if we're thinking in the same scales. Anything below a 70 is failing in America.
 
Oh right.

I wonder how that influences people who are transferring from an Australian university to an American one, or applying for graduate study in the US with an Australian undergrad degree.

Here, an average of 80 would be considered excellent and very few people would have more. An average of 70 wouldn't get you into a grad program, but would be relatively well regarded by most employers and is about what most students would end up with.
 
Here are our grading guidelines. I go to law school in America.

First Year Courses
Average Grade: 2.70 - 2.80
Target Range
A 7% 2-12%
A- 10% 5-15%
B+ 12% 7-17%
B 17% 12-22%
B- 20% 15-25%
C+ 14% 9-19%
C 11% 6-16%
C- 4% 1-7%
D+ 2% 2-10%
D 2%
F 1%

Upper Level Courses
Average Grade: 2.90 - 3.00
Target Range
A 11% 6-16%
A- 14% 9-19%
B+ 16% 11-21%
B 20% 15-25%
B- 12% 7-17%
C+ 11% 6-16%
C 10% 5-15%
C- 3% 0-10%
D+ 2%
D 1%
F 0%

I'm pretty sure my university's guidelines are pretty much the same at other law schools. It's really competitive... especially the first year. To be honest this increased level of competition was pretty foreign to me as my undergrad was much less competitive/ the courses were considerably easier for me. It wasn't hard to get A... just do my work and show up to class. Work was never that much of a big deal for me however as I enjoyed studying history immensely.
 
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