Part II of the Amazing Grade Inflation Blog Series; in which the principle theories of grade inflation are enumerated, their signature characteristics adduced, and their various foibles exposed.

In Part I of the Amazing Grade Inflation Blog Series (see my June 5 blog), I discussed Harvard's new grading policy, and showed in a local, pragmatic way why it will not address grade inflation so much as offer a panacea to those who want to believe that grade inflation is being addressed (this includes professors themselves, who, in designing Harvard's new system and voting it into being, showed themselves as eager to appear--and perhaps to feel--that they are addressing the dire problem of grade inflation as they are not to actually change anything about how they design their courses and how they grade).

In this blog, I turn to context, looking at how grade inflation has historically been explained--and at times explained away--in order both to exonerate Harvard a little bit (by showing how what is happening there is symptomatic of trends everywhere) and to blame Harvard all the more (if any one school ought to be leading a serious campaign against grade inflation, it should be the peerlessly prestigious Harvard). What follows is an annotated list of reasons why grade inflation exists (or, more precisely, of reasons people are fond of giving for why grade inflation exists). Some of the reasons are historical, some are philosophical, some are just silly. But they are all regularly offered to rationalize grade inflation. In Part Three of the Amazing Grade Inflation Blog Series I will talk about why the reasons for grade inflation tend to function as rationalizations for it; in other words, how it is that explaining the problem has become a way of excusing it.

The Encyclopedia of Grade Inflation; or, methinks we do protest too much

Vestigial Draft Dodge Theory: This theory ties the birth of grade inflation--especially at Harvard--to Vietnam. In order to help men students avoid the draft, the theory goes, the professoriate began dealing out high grades in order to make them look like serious scholars who deserved to stay in school. According to this theory, the academy simply never recovered--or tried to recover--from the exemplary leftist good will of 1960s professorial resistance. Under this logic, grade inflation is a symptom of something we might call Post-Traumatic Protest Syndrome; it is academe's vestigial reminder--a flashback, if you will--of activist days gone by.

White Guilt Theory: This theory says that as affirmative action began increasing the numbers of minorities on college campuses, professors relaxed their grading systems in order to cover over the fact that these populations a) were not as prepared for college-level work as their white male counterparts, b) did not, as a group, perform as well as their white male counterparts. Predictably, people who espouse this theory are labelled racist--Harvard's Harvey "C-" Mansfield is a case in point. But according to the Harvard Crimson's own in-depth study of the origins and history of grade inflation, the theory actually does hold water.

Vulnerable Teacher Theory: This theory links grade inflation to the disproportionate amount of teaching graduate students have been doing since the 1960s. In this theory, novice teachers give exceptionally high grades in order to avoid being challenged by grade-grubbing students and in order to bribe their students into giving them positive course evaluations. The idea is that grad students sell out because a) they lack the experience and the training to handle grade-grubbing students, and b) giving honest grades could hurt their job prospects by hurting their evaluations.

The Vulnerable Teacher Theory has two important correlatives:

Corollary A: A theory that has great currency today is that grade inflation is perpetrated in disproportionate amounts by adjunct lecturers. Hired--and fired--by the course, adjuncts have no job security. There are also infinite numbers of them; they are eminently replaceable. The theory is that they hand out high grades in order to keep their jobs--to create the impression that they are teaching successfully and to avoid disturbing or displeasing the students on whose good opinion they ultimately depend. According to conventional wisdom, an adjunct who grades harshly is a troublemaking adjunct. A troublemaking adjunct is, in turn, an unemployed adjunct.

Corollary B: In an era when all college teachers are subject to anonymous student evaluations, all college teachers--even eminent full professors--are Vulnerable Teachers who risk all by giving low grades, and who are thus pressured by the system into giving exceptionally high grades. Those who argue this tend to be marxist theorists who are inordinately impressed by the notion that the corporatized university system has co-opted their agency. An aside: When I hear them expounding on this theme, I am less impressed by their--or my--co-optation than I am by the lengths to which they will go to theorize their way out of personal responsibility for their questionable pedagogical ethics.

The Commodity Fetishism Theory: As the cost of education skyrockets, this theory goes, so do students' (and parents') expectations about what they ought to get with their money. Education has become a commodity, universities sell a product that students consume, and students willingly pay for high status educations: designer degrees cost several times what serviceable ones do, without reliably offering much more in the way of quality. In this logic, the customer is always right, and the customer also has the power to dictate how she wants her product delivered. $30K+ for a year at a top private college, the consumer says, ought to be good for a few A's (which will, like any good investment, pay dividends in the form of job interviews or admission to grad school). Virginia Postrel explains in compelling detail how the massive grade inflation and tuition hikes that characterized the 1980s and 90s were created by an increased demand for education in a market with static supply.

The Degeneration Theory: This school of thought sees grade inflation as a sign of a much broader and deeper cultural degeneration, one that includes the decay of morals, the erosion of family values, the displacement of meritocracy by affirmative action and political preferment, the death of taste, and an overall decline in standards. The degeneration theory of grade inflation is more nostalgic than diagnostic; it is not invested in identifying causes or proposing solutions so much as it is in hearkening back to the good old days when men were men and the gentleman's C was a badge of honorable mediocrity.

The Status Quo Theory: A monument to the stasism that inevitably arises from "consensus-based" (i.e., bureaucratic) approaches to change, this theory says that no one can stop inflating grades because everyone inflates grades. The logic is that no one can change unless everyone does, because to do otherwise would be to penalize some students unfairly. Because there is no way to get everyone to agree to stop inflating grades all at once--or to ensure that everyone deflates grades in the same way and to the same degree--grade inflation must be allowed to persist as the lesser of two evils (the greater evil being a scenario in which individuals address grade inflation in their own way according to the dictates of their imaginations, consciences, and experiences).

Closely tied to the Status Quo Theory is the Why Bother Theory, which argues that since grades are meaningless, a) they can't be inflated, b) it doesn't matter what grades we give, and c) therefore we might as well give out all A's.

Which is closely tied to the Denial Theory, which argues a) that we don't need to use the full grade scale in order to differentiate among students; b) that through its array of A+'s, A's, A-'s, B+'s and B's the inflated scale tells us all we need to know about a student's performance; and c) that therefore grades are not actually inflated, and the grading scale is as rigorous as it ever was.

To be continued...

Coming soon: the Wordsworthian Genius Theory of grade inflation, the James Brown "I Feel Good" Theory of grade inflation, and my own personal contribution to the fray, the Don't Ask Don't Tell Theory of grade inflation.