Grade inflation as a a consequence of the Flynn effect?

Productivity gains may be only half of the story, Herr Doktor Drezner--it could also be a result of a massive increase in inputs caused by the shift to a more meritocratic, tournament-model education system.

Trying to calibrate grades across generations is as fruitless as comparing Shoeless Joe Jackson to Reggie Jackson.

The main problem with grade inflation, as information theorists will tell you, is that they now don't serve to differentiate between peers since everyone is getting an A or A-. If everyone graduates summa cum laude, doesn't the award become pretty meaningless?

- Mike

The previous commentor, Weiksner, is a tool. He points to a study he didn't even read. A quote from the study's author: "This study is evidence against the claim that grade inflation has made a huge difference in the grading system," Felten said. "There has been a decrease in the content of grades, but not as much as one would think. These numbers argue against making changes to the grading system."

PS. Felten is not an "information theorist". He does computer security.

Could some of the rise in grades be attributed to the expansion of course offerings? Avoiding disciplines that are not favorites could easily raise the GPA...

I'll take issue with the idea that it's fruitless to compare Shoeless Joe Jackson to Reggie Jackson. With adjustments to normalize for era and home ballpark, one can readily compare players of different generations.

I have an interesting perspective on this. I attended the U of Chicago in the late 70's but never finished my BA. Now, having sold the business to my partners, I decided to finish my degree.

Though many things have changed, I am not averaging higher grades than I received originally. And this includes retaking two core courses to finish "Incompletes" from '76. So far I've taken 10 courses over the past year and my grade average is about the same as it was in '78.

And after 25 years, I'll graduate the end of Summer Quarter. yee-haa!

Our Political Science Department collects grade distributions from all instructors to police against grade inflaction. We are the department in our college that has a reputation as holding the line against grade inflation. When the college averages are released, we have lower average GPAs than all other departments, especially the departments with reputations as "easy." This trend has not varied over the 6 years I have been reading these reports. Likewise, anecdotally, the grad students in our department tend to report higher average grades than anyone else. The other results are hard to generalize across rank, and seem to correlate more with personality (hard ass vs. cupcake) type than anything else.

Another generational effect is the greater number of students going on to grad school. Today a college degree has much the same importance that a high school diploma had 40 years ago. Higher demand for grad school leads to higher undergrad grades, because acceptance into grad school is highly dependent on undergrad gpa.