Grade inflation on the rise

Statistics show that getting a B on your transcript is a little easier than it used to be. \nAccording to information from the Office of the Registrar, the grade point averages of IU students have been on the rise during the last 8 years. In 1994, the Bloomington campus had a GPA of 3.03, which has steadily increased since then, reaching 3.11 in the first semester of 2001.\nWhile this might not seem like a large increase, the amount of B's received by students has increased significantly, while the amount of A's received has gone down. As of last semester, a little more than half of IU students scored a 3.0 GPA or higher, while less than 1 percent maintained a 4.0.\nStatistics such as these suggest grade inflation is on the rise. Maintaining a 3.0 is often a requirement for students who wish to keep scholarships. For example, out-of-state students who receive faculty scholarships from IU must maintain a cumulative 3.0 GPA each semester to retain their scholarship. Professors who might feel sorry for students or think they deserve extra points for extra effort might raise a student's score so the student can keep his or her B.\nOf course, it's also possible that IU students are just studying harder, and that grade inflation doesn't exist -- but sophomore Devin Lawson said she doesn't think so.\n"I know it exists because it happened to me," Lawson said. "I got a C on a paper, and (the associate instructor) said if I went to his office hours, he'd give me a higher grade."\nLawson said she didn't have to rewrite the paper -- she simply had to show up to the AI's office hours to discuss it with him, and he raised her grade to a B-. She did not reveal the AI's identity, explaining that if she said who the AI was, he might adopt a harder grading policy, and she didn't want to "ruin it for everybody else." Still, Lawson said, she doesn't think that grade inflation is a good thing.\n"Obviously, I didn't deserve the grade," she said. \nBut sophomore Dominique Kizer disagreed.\n"I earn all my grades fairly," she said. "But I do think grade inflation is a good thing. I mean, grades are going up, and that means the teaching is getting better. It's just better."\nIvy League schools tend to be much more affected by grade inflation. At Harvard, for example, 25 percent of the grades given to students are A's. Harvard professor Harvey C. Mansfield, known as "Harvey 'C-' Mansfield" because of his reputation as a tough grader, earned fame last fall for changing his grading policy. Instead of giving students the grades he felt they deserved, Mansfield decided to give each student two grades: an 'inflated' grade based on factors such as effort and participation, which would go on the student's transcript, and a grade for the student's own private information, which reflected how well the student had really done in the course. \n"I definitely didn't want to inflate my grades, but I also didn't want to punish students for taking my course," said Mansfield. "It's hard to say if it's really going to change anything, but one immediate change I've noticed is that the number of students who've enrolled in my course has doubled since I started the new policy."\nMansfield said he often hears arguments for inflating the grades of Harvard students because some professors feel that since the students have made it to an Ivy League school, they shouldn't be sent into the job market with lower grades than students who went to schools where A's were easier to obtain, and that bumping a student's grade up a little bit shouldn't be such an issue. But Mansfield said that he doesn't buy the argument.\n"It's not just a little bit, it's a lot," said Mansfield. "It's a whole lot. And it's false flattery. Students have to learn to compete, and being in Harvard means they deserve a bigger challenge. This isn't high school anymore, where everything was easy."\nMansfield, who also said that he doesn't think students are simply getting smarter every year, chalked grade inflation up to carelessness on the part of professors as well.\n"The trouble is that everyone's telling them (the students) they're so damned smart all the time," Mansfield said. "Everyone just keeps praising them, and you should never praise students in their presence. That's something students should never, ever hear. Well, maybe once in a while"