Analysis documents college 'grade inflation' over decades

Grades awarded to U.S. undergraduates have risen substantially in the last few decades, and grade inflation has become particularly pronounced at selective and private colleges, a new analysis of data on grading practices has found.

In "Grading in American Colleges and Universities," published Thursday in Teachers College Record, Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University professor of geology, and Christopher Healy, an associate professor of computer science at Furman University, illustrate that grade point averages have risen nationally throughout most of the last five decades. The study also indicates that the mean G.P.A. at an institution is "highly dependent" upon the quality of its students and whether it is public or private.

"There's no doubt we are grading easier," said Rojstaczer, the founder of GradeInflation.com, where he's built a database of grades at a range of four-year institutions since 2003. The findings are based on historical data dating back at least 15 years at more than 80 colleges and universities, and contemporary data from more than 160 institutions with enrollments totaling more than 2,000,000.

Since the 1960s, the national mean G.P.A. at the institutions from which he's collected grades has risen by about 0.1 each decade — other than in the 1970s, when G.P.A.s stagnated or fell slightly. In the 1950s, according to Rojstaczer's data, the mean G.P.A. at U.S. colleges and universities was 2.52. By 2006-07, it was 3.11.

Though there's "not a simple answer as to why we grade the way we do," Rojstaczer speculated on several reasons why mean G.P.A.s have increased. One factor, he said, is that faculty and administrators "want to make sure students do well" post-graduation, getting into top graduate schools and securing jobs of their choice. Particularly since the 1980s, "the idea that we're going to grade more leniently so that our students will have a leg up has really seemed to take hold."