Grade inflation is rampant at colleges and universities. It’s a natural consequence of several issues:
- Colleges and universities now treat students as customers, and those customers are unhappy unless they receive what they “pay for” — namely the highest available grades. Given the “customers are always right” mentality active at most colleges and universities, there are negative consequences all around for less than stellar grades.
- Assigning serious, meaningful grades is hard work and instructors are not rewarded for that hard work. Instead, they are rewarded for making everyone happy, including students, parents, and administrators.
- Meaningful grading assumes that student work can be accurately and quantitatively assessed, a notion that isn’t always true. Grading isn’t always a good measure, but giving its importance to pedigrees and credentials, it’s always a good game to be played.
- Politics, particularly identity politics, makes assigning meaningful grades dangerous for instructors and institutions. Awarding high grades to everyone is a safe choice.
I’m sure that there are other causes for grade inflation, but those are enough. In this era of grade inflation, I would encourage everyone to ignore transcripts, grade-point-averages, and everything associated with these inflationary measures and judge people on their own demonstrated abilities and merits. Degrees and transcripts are a game and a huge fraction of the population (in the USA) are playing that game. They’re all winning and losing at the same time. It’s wasteful, expensive folly. Instead, ignore degrees and transcripts and have a meaningful conversation with anyone you want to assess.