A for Average: Reversing University Grade Inflation

An A in a college class used to mean achievement. Today, an A means the average.

Grade inflation—the phenomenon whereby universities increase students’ average grades without a corresponding increase in achievement—has been a persistent issue in American education since at least the 1960s. Grades matter because they are the primary metric intended to communicate a student’s mastery of classroom material to faculty, graduate schools, and employers. But grade inflation distorts the signaling value of grades, making it difficult for people evaluating from the outside to distinguish between average and exceptional students.

It is possible for universities to address grade inflation. This brief finds:

• Universities that institute some kind of grading reform, such as Wellesley and Princeton, successfully reversed some grade inflation.
• Reforms that directly address grading standards, such as caps, are effective at addressing grade inflation. Reforms that disclose grade distributions should be viewed as transparency measures, but transparency alone does not stop grade inflation.

Reversing an established habit or culture of grade inflation, however, is difficult for an institution. While individual instructors confer grades, faculty face many pressures from university administrators and students to maintain high averages. Universities also face a collective-action problem: it is not enough for a handful of universities to adopt stricter grading policies if peer institutions continue to inflate.