Inflated GPAs
 

Since I'm nosey, I tend to look up scholarship reports from Greek Systems on different campuses. Last night I quoted a campus GPA and thought it seemed low in comparison to other schools that I look at. It wasn't until another GCr mentioned GPA inflation that it really made me think about it.

When I was in school (both high school and college), we went on a straight 4.0=A GPA system. A 4.0 actually meaned something! And, while we did get interrim marks for A- or B+, chapter GPAs rarely exceeded the 3.3 range, with most hovering around 3.1. What are your thoughts about chapter GPAs with inflated systems where A is greater than a 4.0?

I don't know if I would call that an "inflated system," as much as I would say that it's just a different scale. For example, my undergrad had grade "deflation;" I guess that in past years the GPAs had been too high, and in my time there the administration encouraged professors to give lower grades. Grade "inflation," in that case, would be campuses where everyone gets A's and high B's. I know of campuses where a large majority (2/3 to 3/4) of the class ends up with some sort of honors, for example.

I don't know what it's a big deal - the Greek organizations (and grad schools, etc.) will understand the applicable scales and will be able to evaluate accordingly.

I think you're probably right, but I think what ends up happening is that in really inflated systems, it's hard to tell people near the top apart since a bunch of people have 4.0s. So professional school exams end up being huge.

When I was a UGA, the overall term GPA was around a 2.7 as I remember it, and it was a huge deal when a sorority broke the 3.0 barrier as a group, now the average GPA is a 3.18 (3.3 all Greek).

Some of this is because the HOPE grant keeps better kids in state than it used to, but when you look at how the GPAs at all university system of Georgia schools went up, you kind of suspect that some of it is that Bs kind of became a default grade too. (The colleges probably don't want to lose that revenue stream.) Truly, the average GPA shouldn't have moved if grades were a relative measure of performance on a standardized curve.

I think that studies have actually shown that teaching evaluations used in the tenure process reward teachers who give high grades, so it's hard for individuals to resist letting things creep up.

I don't think grade inflation is a huge negative problem that has to be corrected, but it does make knowing how to evaluate a PNMs grades or comparing one campus to another pretty hard.