Grade inflation threatens the quality of students’ education and mental health.
Nearly 80 per cent of all grades given to undergraduate students at Yale University in the last academic year were an A minus or A. Inflated grades are a trend originating early in the COVID-19 pandemic and surviving the transition from virtual to in-person classrooms—across far more universities than Yale.
The Health Sciences program at Queen’s is infamous among its students for similar grade inflation. In the program, it’s routine for nearly 50 per cent of students in classes of hundreds of people to receive an A plus as a final mark.
Grade inflation decreases the quality of education students receive. Honest grading points out areas for improvement and growth. When students receive high marks with ease, they aren’t pushed to learn as much as they could. This isn’t only detrimental to the students’ learning, but to the health of the industries they graduate into, particularly in the case of Health Sciences students who want to become doctors.
The skills grade inflation limits aren’t always program specific. Written communication is vital to everybody’s personal and professional lives. Attending university is supposed to refine writing, but when students don’t receive adequate , they don’t improve that skill either.
Academic validation, wherein students base their self-worth on their marks, is already a tremendous problem for much of today’s youth. Grade inflation only magnifies it. When students only ever receive extremely high marks, they come to expect them. Suddenly, perfectly acceptable marks like A minuses or Bs start to feel like the end of the world. Placing this kind of pressure on students is detrimental to their mental health.
Expecting such high marks equally encourages students to focus on the outcome of an assignment rather than the process of working on it, which devalues critical thinking and genuine engagement with course concepts.
Even for students whose grades aren’t inflated, grade inflation has a negative impact.
Students with inflated grades can spend less time on course work and more on extracurriculars. As the number of students with inflated grades and long lists of extracurriculars grows, it places an expectation on other students to match the same standards if they hope to compete for entry into grad school, research positions, or careers.
When so many applicants’ marks are so high, issions committees must place additional weight on extracurriculars. That way of evaluating disadvantages students who dedicate most of their time to working on their classwork or who must work to earn a living.
Professors can limit grade inflation, but without from their universities, they’ll be condemned as harsh markers and have theirs and their TAs’ inboxes filled with complaints.
The bar can only be raised so high before no one can squeeze above it. Grade inflation must be stopped, and academic institutions must call for a culture shift away from the pursuit of impressive marks over impressive work.
—Journal Editorial Board
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