A's and B's had comprised 52.1 percent of all CAS grades during 1968-69, 61.5 percent in 1973-74, and 58.2 percent in 1974-75.įaculty also called on the dean's office to publish, in the FAS Gazette, undergraduate grade distribution numbers for each term - a practice that ended after spring 1998 current dean's office personnel say they don't know why. "An immediate goal is to reduce the number of A and B grades in undergraduate courses to no more than 50 percent of the total on average," one resolution read.
#Igrade inflation university full
I have at least as often been concerned about people grading harshly as grading leniently."Īt a full faculty meeting in 1976, FAS approved a series of resolutions aimed at reversing grade inflation. "As chair of the chemistry department, I was occasionally concerned about equity in grading because sometimes you can have a faculty member, especially a new faculty member, who miscalibrates by grading a little too easy or too hard. "Within my personal experience, I haven't seen much problem with grade inflation," Cooper added. "It may be something that we should look at," Cooper said, "but we have been rather wrapped up with the College of Arts and Sciences curriculum review during the last few years, and we haven't prioritized at this point. John Cooper said: "Grade inflation is one of those areas where there tends to be a lot of anecdotal concern, but we have not instituted any systematic study of it during my time at Pitt." Cooper joined the Department of Chemistry faculty in 1986, and chaired the department for five years before becoming dean in 1998. Especially as we recruit more Honors College-eligible students, wouldn't one expect to see more A's?"Īrts and sciences Dean N. To simply pull out grades and say, 'We're awarding more A's, so there must be grade inflation' is both simplistic and inaccurate.
Toni Carbo, outgoing dean of the School of Information Sciences, said: "It's troubling to me that we're not looking at all of the factors that may go into what is called grade inflation. (Among the Pittsburgh campus's 15,367 full- and part-time undergrads last fall, 9,583 were enrolled in the arts and sciences.) Provost James Maher called grade inflation "an important issue" but not an urgent concern here. Pitt has not looked broadly at undergraduate grade patterns here since the 1976 arts and sciences study. Last week's Chronicle was referring to two recent reports: a well-publicized Harvard University study showing that, in 2001, half of its undergraduate grades were A or A-minus, and a report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that presents statistical evidence of grade inflation at U.S.
Some say the controversial issue never went away, following an initial wave of reports such as the one by FAS's committee on grading, showing a pattern of inflated grading since the mid-1960s. "Grade inflation is back in the news," noted an opinion piece in the April 12 Chronicle of Higher Education. 2, 1976, report by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee on grading. It has been variously identified as 'grade inflation' and 'grade erosion.'" "There has been a steady increase in high grades (A's and B's) over the past eight years at the University of Pittsburgh and at most universities in the United States….High grades should be used only to symbolize outstanding academic achievement and not to reward students for satisfactory work or to compensate for a variety of non-academic factors….This phenomenon of rising grades has been widely recognized and reported in many media including the daily press.
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