Rethinking grade inflation

Back in the 2000s, when I was studying at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Medicine, a tiny plaque in Calderon Hall was enough to put the names of the all of the summa, magna, and cum laudes—etched in brass plates since its founding in 1905. Today, Josh Siscar, chair of the UP Medicine Student Council, tells me that the plaque is no longer updated.

In 2010—the year I graduated—there were 236 magna cum laudes and 25 summa cum laudes in the UP Diliman; last year, there were 1,196 magnas and 305 summas. In all, 67 percent of class 2023 had Latin honors.

Such observations will doubtless be recognized by many as manifestations of “grade inflation”—that is, the trend of ever-increasing grades given to students in academic institutions over time.

This is not unique to the UP system, or even the Philippines; recently, Harvard University had a major faculty discussion on what to do with this issue, amid reports that 79 percent of all grades given were “A-range,” indicating not just grade inflation, but—as in the case of UP—also “grade compression” or the narrow concentration of grades.

Grade inflation has been around for some time, and has been attributed to a variety of factors. As early as the 1970s, this phenomenon has been a problem for researchers, suggesting that changes in grading (e.g., the option to take a course as pass/fail) as an explanation, alongside an “anti-elitist” philosophy that views grades as contributory to discrimination and exclusion. Others point to the pressure—often intense—from students and parents for higher grades—which they see as a currency for college admissions and professional jobs.

The advent of the information age is also a factor, as is the failure of educators to keep up with this new knowledge environment and still apply the same evaluative standards.

More recently, there has been more attention toward—in the language of the Harvard report—“market forces.” Simply put, teachers want higher “grades” too (that is, faculty evaluation): the better grades they give students, the better evaluation scores they get, and the better evaluation they get, the higher their chances are for tenure and promotion. Some also cite the urge to be generous to students at a time of difficulty amid learning adjustments due to COVID-19.

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One way to understand how grade inflation has traditionally been problematized is by taking the economic metaphor of “inflation” seriously. Just as monetary inflation means that money itself diminishes in purchasing power, grade inflation means that grades lose their value—and Latin honors lose their meaning. As a Taguig-based human resource officer told me: “In the past, when we saw a cum laude from UP, we would immediately hire [them]. But now we’re more discerning. It’s no longer a guarantee.”

With grades no longer a trustworthy measure, some argue that grade inflation has led students to resort to other ways of distinguishing themselves—e.g., membership in fraternities, participation in extracurricular activities (e.g., doing an elective abroad)—unduly placing a burden on them and potentially perpetuating systems of privilege, given that such opportunities require more financial and social capital.

The more serious critique, however, is how grades have gotten in the way of learning itself. Grade inflation both reflects and exacerbates “grade consciousness,” which means students are afraid to take academic risks such as taking a difficult course, or writing a more challenging paper; the grade becomes the end in itself, and the fulfillment of a scholarly pursuit is cast aside. It also engenders anxiety, further adding to the mental health burdens of being a student today.

Over the decades, some institutions have proposed various solutions to grade inflation, including setting quotas to certain grades or “deflating” grades by introducing higher values (e.g., A++). But there’s also a growing movement that challenges the need to address grade inflation in the first place, since the real problem is how our society glorifies academic achievements measured by numbers. “Grades are currency for a capitalist system that reduces teaching and learning to a mere transaction,” as critical pedagogist Jesse Stommel concluded, adding: “Grading is a massive coordinated effort to take humans out of the educational process.”

Toward this end, some have proposed giving (or emphasizing) qualitative instead of quantitative feedback, and letting students grade their own performances, as part of the “ungrading movement” which counts Stommel as one of its pioneers. “In their experience,” as Randy David wrote of these efforts a couple of years back, “nothing seems to restore the joy of learning better than abolishing grades altogether.”

But such innovations can only realize their promise if grades are decentered not just from the academe, but from society-at-large, from job hiring to the way we define achievement, especially among young people. If we can move toward this direction, then it will be much easier for schools, teachers, and students alike to focus on what Paulo Freire points out are the real goals of education: to liberate and to humanize.

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