Educators on the right and left condemn grade inflation in K-12 and universities. Inflated grades mark the transformation of education from actual learning to credentialing.
Grade inflation at America’s universities is a national scandal. GPAs were already inflated in the 1980s. According to a 1991 study, GPAs increased from 2.38 to 2.91 between 1962 and 1985 in select departments at eight prominent schools. Only 13 percent of course grades were above a B+ in 1962, a number that doubled by 1985. In 2012, 42 percent of grades were A’s. More than 50 percent of students routinely exceeded B+ in their classes in 2020. The median grade-point average for college graduates increased from 2.7 in 1987 to over 3.25 in 2020.
In 1962, there was nearly half a grade-point gap between “high-grading” departments such as English, political science, philosophy, and art and “low graders” such as chemistry and math. A gap remained until at least 2010, when one study revealed that 71 percent of education-class grades were A’s, along with 67 percent of music grades, while only 29 percent of math grades were A’s. This gap has narrowed or disappeared today. Average math GPAs have spiked above 3.25, and engineering averages were 3.17 in 2020, according to Best Colleges. Both figures were higher than social-science GPAs. The Covid spike has taken grades even higher across the board.
If only one university tries to address the grade-inflation crisis, its students are at a significant competitive disadvantage. Several actors have tried to solve the problem. If only one university tries to address the grade-inflation crisis, however, its students are at a competitive disadvantage. Princeton put a cap on the number of A’s that could be earned in each class. As a result, Princeton undergraduates generally had lower GPAs than undergraduates at other Ivies. This was deemed unacceptable, since students were thought to be less competitive for graduate school, law school, or high-end jobs. Princeton abandoned its experiment.
The first step toward a national solution is a comprehensive clearinghouse for grade inflation. Even the idea of studying grade inflation at the state level puts students at a competitive disadvantage. Pres. Trump’s HUD Secretary, Scott Turner, when a freshman in the Texas House, sponsored the Honest Transcript bill to “contextualize” grade inflation by requiring that the average grade for the class appear on the transcript next to a student’s individual grade. Though the bill overwhelmingly passed the lower body in 2013, it died in the state senate. The same has been proposed several times since, to no avail. It makes sense that Texas would not want to go it alone on this. Texas students would be at a competitive disadvantage, since the GPAs of its students would look worse given an implicit admission that Texas inflates grades.
Grade inflation requires a national solution. Studies of grade inflation have, to this point, been haphazard and voluntary. The website GradeInflation.com, established by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, is the most comprehensive guide to the subject. Yet, as Beckie Supiano, a reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education, said in a recent podcast, “It is kind of surprising that there doesn’t seem to be a more national, comprehensive look at this.” The first step toward a national solution is a comprehensive clearinghouse for grade inflation.
Thus, every university or college receiving federal aid must be made to submit an annual grade-inflation report. The first report should go back as far as the school has data, but at least to 2000. The report should have two sections. First, every course grade earned by every student should be a data point: the total number of course grades with an A, with a B, etc. These should be used to compute the institution’s collective GPA as well as the percentage of grades that are in the A, B, C, D, and F ranges. Sub-reporting should include the total GPA for all 100-200-level courses and for all upper-division courses.
Second, every course grade earned by every student should be broken down by the academic department or discipline where the credits were earned. Those departments or disciplines should be categorized by college or school, as well. The report should make clear what the trends in grades are by department over the course of time.
Every university has these data readily available. Reports could be modeled on similar Yale reporting from 2023 but with more extensive trend data. Ninety-two percent of all women’s studies grades at Yale were A’s in 2022-23, according to the report. It would be good to know if this is a nationwide trend or if Yale’s program is uniquely prone to giving almost all A’s.
The gathering of grade-inflation data—when combined with return-on-investment numbers and other factors—might form the spine of an additional effort at higher-education reform. If grades no longer serve as a signifier of mastery at certain universities or in certain disciplines, institutions could be forced either to drop those disciplines or to develop pre- and post-tests as external checks on accomplishment. Perhaps exit exams could be required to earn a degree in certain disciplines. Accreditors have dropped the ball on this.
What is clear is that universities and states will not address the grade-inflation scandal without external prompting. Even transparency is a bridge too far. The problem of grade inflation has been manifest for three decades at least, and efforts to address grade inflation have been halting and desultory. Professors know that it is a scandal, but none, acting alone, can do anything about it. Individual schools are in the same boat. A national study can set the stage for a solution. It is 30 years overdue.
Scott Yenor is senior director of state coalitions for the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life and a professor of political science at Boise State University.
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Scott Yenor
