Grade Inflation at Yale

[Langue_doc]

Nearly Everyone Gets A's at Yale. Does That Cheapen the Grade?
A report found that close to 80 percent of grades were in the A range last academic year.

Here's the article:

Nearly 80 percent of all grades given to undergraduates at Yale last academic year were A's or A minuses, part of a sharp increase that began during the coronavirus pandemic and appears to have stuck, according to a new report.

The mean grade point average was 3.7 out of 4.0, also an increase over prepandemic years.

The findings have frustrated some students, alumni and professors. What does excellence mean at Yale, they wonder, if most students get the equivalent of "excellent" in almost every class?

"When we act as though virtually everything that gets turned in is some kind of A — where A is supposedly meaning 'excellent work' — we are simply being dishonest to our students," said Shelly Kagan, a Yale philosophy professor known for being a tough grader.

The trend has scrambled the very meaning of grades themselves, he said. Students no longer think B means "good." An A is the new normal.

Yale's cluster of A's and A minuses has been rising for years. In the 2010-11 academic year, 67 percent of all grades were A's and A minuses, the report found. By 2018-19, 73 percent were in the A range.

That figure spiked during the pandemic. In 2021-22, almost 82 percent of Yale grades were in the A range. Last academic year, that figure was about 79 percent.

The new statistics come from a report by Ray C. Fair, an economics professor at Yale. His work was first reported by The Yale Daily News, the student newspaper, which shared the report with The New York Times. Dr. Fair declined to comment on his findings.

Grade point averages have been rising, too. Yale's average G.P.A. was 3.7 last year, compared to 3.6 in 2013-14, the report found. In 1998-99, Yale's average G.P.A. was 3.42, according to a 2013 report on grade inflation.

The sharp post-pandemic spike in grades is not unique to Yale. At Harvard, 79 percent of all grades given to undergraduates in the 2020-21 year were also A's or A minuses. A decade earlier, that figure was 60 percent. In 2020-21, the average G.P.A. was 3.8, compared to 3.41 in 2002-3.

"Grades are like any currency," said Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who tracks grade inflation: They tend to increase over time.

It's not just elite schools. G.P.A.s have been increasing at colleges nationwide by about 0.1 per decade since the early 1980s, he said.

Private colleges tend to have higher average G.P.A.s than public schools, Dr. Rojstaczer said. In 2013, the average public school G.P.A. was about 3.1, compared to 3.3 to 3.4 at private schools. Yale's and Harvard's averages are even higher.

"They are actively championing their students by giving them higher grades than the national average," he said, of elite schools. "They want their students to have a competitive edge."

Pericles Lewis, the dean of Yale College, said students could be overly concerned about their G.P.A.s.

"I don't think many people care, 10 years out, what kind of grades you got at Yale," he said. "They mostly care that you, you know, you studied at Yale."

But students — and graduate programs — do care about undergraduate grades. And Amanda Claybaugh, Harvard's dean of undergraduate education, worries that grade inflation could ultimately hurt students' mental health.

"Students feel the need to distinguish themselves outside the classroom because they are essentially indistinguishable inside the classroom," she said, adding, "Extracurriculars, which should be stress relieving, become stress producing."

Dr. Claybaugh plans to disseminate more information about alumni outcomes, to reassure undergraduates that "students who get B pluses at Harvard still do fine in life."

But Harvard is part of an ecosystem, and employers compare resumes across schools. What if Harvard decided to intentionally limit the number of A's awarded — as Princeton once did? How would its graduates compare to Yale's, or Stanford's, in such a competitive job market?

"We don't want to move alone," Dr. Claybaugh said. "We don't want to disadvantage our students."

Maya Fonkeu, the vice president of Yale's student body, urged caution.

"Students here work very hard and are, oftentimes, very deserving of their grades," she said.

To many Yale students, the report was unsurprising.

Some noted the divide between science and math classes and those in the humanities. Less than 65 percent of grades in economics, mathematics and chemistry, for instance, were A's or A minuses, compared to more than 80 percent of grades in English, African American studies and the humanities.

"It is a different academic experience," said Jonah Heiser, 20, a mechanical engineering major, adding, "There's a common understanding that they're kind of different scales."

Others worried about Yale's grade inflation becoming public knowledge. They feared it could cheapen their degrees — or obscure their hard work to skeptical employers.

"If Yale and other Ivy League institutions start getting these reputations for grade inflation, students who were already feeling pressured to get these high G.P.A.s will then feel that their work is sort of devalued," said Gustavo Toledo, 20, a junior who is majoring in political science and hopes to go to law school.

"This obviously doesn't help," he said.

[Wahoo Redux]

Grade inflation, why should Yale be any different?

[bio-nonymous]

Yeah, I agree, its the same everywhere. When I look at admissions (graduate programs, medical/health), most of the students have 3.75-4.0--whether from small or large universities. Granted for a few majors and some schools (e.g., flagship publics and hard science majors) the trend is lower-which hurts those students since admission strongly takes into account GPA. Why take an engineering, biochemistry, or organic chemistry major when you can take basketweaving and get all A's (which then cover up your lower pre-req grades...)? Granted, the students applying to our programs are supposed to be "the best"--but it is telling that normally their science GPAs and pre-req GPAs are usually much lower than their overall GPAs (other than the plethora of 4.0s, of course). When everyone gets an A, who cares if anyone got an A? We have been integrating holistic admissions policies for a variety of reasons, but for me, one is to help distinguish between individuals who all have "excellent" grades.

[marshwiggle]

Yeah, I agree, its the same everywhere. When I look at admissions (graduate programs, medical/health), most of the students have 3.75-4.0--whether from small or large universities. Granted for a few majors and some schools (e.g., flagship publics and hard science majors) the trend is lower-which hurts those students since admission strongly takes into account GPA. Why take an engineering, biochemistry, or organic chemistry major when you can take basketweaving and get all A's (which then cover up your lower pre-req grades...)? Granted, the students applying to our programs are supposed to be "the best"--but it is telling that normally their science GPAs and pre-req GPAs are usually much lower than their overall GPAs (other than the plethora of 4.0s, of course). When everyone gets an A, who cares if anyone got an A? We have been integrating holistic admissions policies for a variety of reasons, but for me, one is to help distinguish between individuals who all have "excellent" grades.

I've heard a Dean of engineering say this to a student thinking of doing bio-med engineering before applying to med. school; since med. schools only care about GPA, not undergrad program (which is REALLY weird!!!???), it makes more sense to take basketweaving rather than bio-med eng., even though the latter is way more appropriate to medicine.

[Ruralguy]

Keep in mind that some schools just genuinely have worse students. Its not even that they don't achieve as well on exams or papers, its an issue of skipping many assignments, not having much of any skills, missing a lot of class. Its hard to give a student an A when they skipped the final, or got a 40 on every paper or problem set. I get that this might happen at yale as well, bur probably more prevalent as you go down a few rungs. So, in a way, at lesser schools like mine, some students make fighting grade inflation easy: they don't do the work/and or can't.

I get that you can always adjust your scale to fit the skill level and behavior of your students, but it genuinely *can* be difficult in some classes if the differences are more nuanced.

[Caracal]

Grade inflation, why should Yale be any different?

I would assume it's much worse at Yale and other elite schools. I don't know what the average GPA is at my school, but the the average grade in my classes is in the 3.2, 3.3 range. I've never gotten the impression from evaluations or student feedback that I'm considered either particularly tough or particularly easy.

Some of this is because I imagine I have more students who just vanish at some point in the semester and fail themselves than at Yale. Even a few of those for every class can push down the mean GPA significantly. Then I have a lot of other students who have family and work obligations and are happy to just get a B. Some of these students are engaged and smart, but they just are being pulled in a lot of different directions and are making reasonable choices about where to put their energies.

The point is that as long as I have appropriate assessments and reasonable standards for grading them, it's easy to have a good grade distribution. I imagine what happens at Yale is that a larger proportion of students have a lot of their identity bound up in doing well, come in to college with a lot of skills and preparation and have fewer things to deal with in their lives. If you want to avoid giving everyone As, you're going to have to ask them to do more difficult things and have higher expectations-which is trickier to manage.

[onthefringe]

Grade inflation, why should Yale be any different?

True! A Harvard professor proposed the "A+ with garlands" over a decade ago!

[Sun_Worshiper]

Keep in mind that some schools just genuinely have worse students. Its not even that they don't achieve as well on exams or papers, its an issue of skipping many assignments, not having much of any skills, missing a lot of class. Its hard to give a student an A when they skipped the final, or got a 40 on every paper or problem set. I get that this might happen at yale as well, bur probably more prevalent as you go down a few rungs. So, in a way, at lesser schools like mine, some students make fighting grade inflation easy: they don't do the work/and or can't.

I get that you can always adjust your scale to fit the skill level and behavior of your students, but it genuinely *can* be difficult in some classes if the differences are more nuanced.

Grade inflation, why should Yale be any different?

I would assume it's much worse at Yale and other elite schools. I don't know what the average GPA is at my school, but the the average grade in my classes is in the 3.2, 3.3 range. I've never gotten the impression from evaluations or student feedback that I'm considered either particularly tough or particularly easy.

Some of this is because I imagine I have more students who just vanish at some point in the semester and fail themselves than at Yale. Even a few of those for every class can push down the mean GPA significantly. Then I have a lot of other students who have family and work obligations and are happy to just get a B. Some of these students are engaged and smart, but they just are being pulled in a lot of different directions and are making reasonable choices about where to put their energies.

The point is that as long as I have appropriate assessments and reasonable standards for grading them, it's easy to have a good grade distribution. I imagine what happens at Yale is that a larger proportion of students have a lot of their identity bound up in doing well, come in to college with a lot of skills and preparation and have fewer things to deal with in their lives. If you want to avoid giving everyone As, you're going to have to ask them to do more difficult things and have higher expectations-which is trickier to manage.

This lines up with my experience as well. If all my students showed up consistently, completed the assignments responsibly, and participated actively, as I assume most Yale students do, then the average grade for my class would be quite a bit higher - probably in the B+/A- range, which is about what it seems like Yale's is.

[apl68]

Yale is a highly selective school, and for all the complaining about legacy students they probably no longer have a large contingent of fraternity doofuses who just seek a "gentleman's D" and trust that their family connections will take care of them when they hit the career world.  So it's plausible that their average student performance would be quite high. 

Should expectations at Yale be made higher and grading more rigorous to keep grades from creeping upward?  Beats me.

[mythbuster]

I would just be curious to see what qualifies as C level work in some of these courses. It's one type of problem is  the C at Yale is an A at SW Rural State U. But my guess is that's not really the case.

If you read the comments section of the NYTimes article, many Ivy profs write in about how no one ever fails because of how the admins intervene. At least for the well connected students.

[dismalist]

Grade compression cum inflation takes away egg sorting authority from faculty and gives it to administrators. It's becomes the school, not the course or the instructor's grade that attests quality. That means where one attended college rather what one studied becomes determinative for students' later prospects. I'm quite sure administrators are aware of this. Put briefly and bluntly, student success becomes determined by the admissions office!

Alas, this strategy cannot work in the quantitative subjects. I heard of a final exam in an aeronautical engineering class at MIT. Students were given paper, glue and an egg. One task only: Construct a gadget, into which you put the egg, that will land the egg safely on the ground after you throw it out the window!

Any college that can teach the material to the students it admits to make such construction possible will succeed.

[Ruralguy]

I can just imagine some professor  taking some paper out of the printer on his way home, buying a dozen eggs at the store, and then conducting some experiments.

Even with this though, you can imagine a version of this prof who says "30% of the grade is your effort in construction, monitored by the TA, 40% is success of the mission, and 30% is explaining what you did." So, in this second version, many previous failures are just barely passing at 60%, assuming the rest goes well.

There are a million ways to inflate grades. Its not all just about assigning A's to everyone on the first day. 

[eigen]

I've heard a Dean of engineering say this to a student thinking of doing bio-med engineering before applying to med. school; since med. schools only care about GPA, not undergrad program (which is REALLY weird!!!???), it makes more sense to take basketweaving rather than bio-med eng., even though the latter is way more appropriate to medicine.

This is only partially true. There's core coursework you have to take regardless, and medical schools separate your "science GPA" from your "cumulative GPA" and really only pay close attention to the SGPA.

So while you aren't doing yourself favors taking super hard classes outside of those required, your performance on the core classes pertinent to medical school are important, and don't depend on what you major in. Also, your basketweaving grades don't cover up poor performance in physics, calculus, or organic chemistry.

And from a medical schools perspective, performance in the sciences outside of what's required to succeed in schools isn't necessarily more important for making someone a good doctor, especially not relative to communication skills, language skills, etc.

[Ruralguy]

A number of years ago a close relative of mine was on a med school admissions committee. Although he only occasionally won the day, he said that when ever he got the chance to choose someone who was well spoken and spoke a lot to really wanting to be a doc, he'd argue for accepting them over someone with slightly better grades and some research experience.

[Langue_doc]

I would just be curious to see what qualifies as C level work in some of these courses. It's one type of problem is  the C at Yale is an A at SW Rural State U. But my guess is that's not really the case.

If you read the comments section of the NYTimes article, many Ivy profs write in about how no one ever fails because of how the admins intervene. At least for the well connected students.

This is true of non-Ivy institutions as well. I've had students complain to the dean about the grading policies (determined by the department) the number of assignments (again determined by the department), not being availble on weekends for an immediate zoom appointment, not being available after the end of the semester, and a host of other issues. Dean doesn't read the emails, but instead wants me/the department to handle the complaints immediately. I've also had students wanting higher grades because they "worked so hard", they had to "concentrate on their majors", and similar excuses.

You might recall that pre-med students at NYU complained about a highly-regarded professor, claiming that the course was too difficult resulting in the non-renewal of the professor's contract.