Interesting. I'm surprised at some of the schools that have less grade inflation than Mudd.
I think part of our perception on grade inflation has to do with the fact that virtually everyone who comes into Mudd had much higher grades in highschool. There's an expectation that, if Mudd weren't beating us down with really high standards, everyone who does any work for their classes would be getting a 3.5 minimum.
I think the big unknown factor in this discussion is relative student quality. Has the percentage of the population getting any post-secondary education expanded during the course of this survey? Even if many of these students are attending community colleges and attendance at four-year colleges has remained constant, this may be a sign that education has become more democratized, with more people who are good at school (as oppposed to just being children of middle- or upper-class families) getting degrees and raising average student quality. For Mudd in particular, it's almost impossible to assess how much of this is grade inflation and how much improved student quality. Anecdotal evidence indicates to me that getting into "selective" colleges has become much more competitive in recent years, which should mean the students doing so are better; but there are lots of possible confounding factors, and I don't have any hard evidence. As to whether this phenomenon has increased Mudd's average student quality, who knows?
I'm leery of the author's explanation that grade inflation is all due to easier grading and coursework, but I definitely think that's part of the explanation. Requiring colleges to both teach and evaluate the results of their teaching creates an obvious conflict of interest, and I'd be shocked if the results weren't very biased.
This study (as far as I can see) doesn't specify that the GPA refers to classes taken at Mudd. For all we know, it could be a rise in off-campus classes taken that results in the rise in GPA. I know that I've gotten A's in nearly all of my off-campus classes, and that's really brought my GPA up. I'm not sure if this has any effect on the data presented, but I can only imagine that as the humanities restrictions decrease, the average GPA will increase for that reason. I think I'll talk about this with Dean Guy, since it's a pretty interesting topic.
That could be a possibility. However, I think most off-campus classes Mudd students take are introductory-level, so I'd think we'd tend to get good grades in them regardless of the campus. I got really good grades in my off-campus classes, but I did just as well in my on-campus hums.
Bear in mind that to graduate, you need 128 units, and for those taking the minimum, at most 5 courses (15 units) will be off campus, so only abour 12% of your classes are off campus. If you look at the grade inflation of pomona over the same period of time, you get +0.4 GPA, which would account for only around 0.05 GPA units for a typical Mudder. Of course, this isn't a rigorous calculation, but it seems like it should be mostly accurate.
Also, since around 1980, Mudd's median GPA has increased around 0.2 to 0.25 points, so it's unlikely that Mudd's GPA has been soley affected by Pomona's (or other 5Cs, assuming they are similar to Pomona) GPA.
I'd be interested to hear anything you discuss from Dean Guy.
So i'm slow in getting to this, but take a look at the actual numbers for Mudd. (Theyre on the website). The highest average GPA recorded is in the middle of his 'inflationary period'. There is nothing exceptional about the GPAs of the last 5 years. And to get an increase of .25 GPA per decade you have to basically subtract the lowest GPA ever from 2001's GPA. I find his claims about grade inflation at Mudd suspect, and think its position on the graph accurate rather than 'spuriously low due to grade deflation in the 70s-early 80s'.
Compare to Harvard, whose GPA is virtually monotonically increasing in the period he has data for. I could run some real statistics if anyone really cares...
Fact is, Mudd's GPA bounces about a bunch. It happened to have a sequence of 4 good years at the end of this particular string of years. But those years aren't exceptional in the context of the previously demonstrated range of GPAs. There is nothing in that dataset to suggest those 4 years weren't just a chance occurrence rather than a trend to increasing GPAs. I think a spearman rank-order correlation test would probably be non-significant (year vs ave GPA).
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-05-07 08:09 pm (UTC)I think part of our perception on grade inflation has to do with the fact that virtually everyone who comes into Mudd had much higher grades in highschool. There's an expectation that, if Mudd weren't beating us down with really high standards, everyone who does any work for their classes would be getting a 3.5 minimum.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-07 08:36 pm (UTC)I think the big unknown factor in this discussion is relative student quality. Has the percentage of the population getting any post-secondary education expanded during the course of this survey? Even if many of these students are attending community colleges and attendance at four-year colleges has remained constant, this may be a sign that education has become more democratized, with more people who are good at school (as oppposed to just being children of middle- or upper-class families) getting degrees and raising average student quality. For Mudd in particular, it's almost impossible to assess how much of this is grade inflation and how much improved student quality. Anecdotal evidence indicates to me that getting into "selective" colleges has become much more competitive in recent years, which should mean the students doing so are better; but there are lots of possible confounding factors, and I don't have any hard evidence. As to whether this phenomenon has increased Mudd's average student quality, who knows?
I'm leery of the author's explanation that grade inflation is all due to easier grading and coursework, but I definitely think that's part of the explanation. Requiring colleges to both teach and evaluate the results of their teaching creates an obvious conflict of interest, and I'd be shocked if the results weren't very biased.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 06:45 pm (UTC)Also, since around 1980, Mudd's median GPA has increased around 0.2 to 0.25 points, so it's unlikely that Mudd's GPA has been soley affected by Pomona's (or other 5Cs, assuming they are similar to Pomona) GPA.
I'd be interested to hear anything you discuss from Dean Guy.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-31 08:49 pm (UTC)Compare to Harvard, whose GPA is virtually monotonically increasing in the period he has data for. I could run some real statistics if anyone really cares...
Fact is, Mudd's GPA bounces about a bunch. It happened to have a sequence of 4 good years at the end of this particular string of years. But those years aren't exceptional in the context of the previously demonstrated range of GPAs. There is nothing in that dataset to suggest those 4 years weren't just a chance occurrence rather than a trend to increasing GPAs. I think a spearman rank-order correlation test would probably be non-significant (year vs ave GPA).