Grades in the Democrat & Chronicle

This morning, Rochester's city paper, the Democrat & Chronicle, ran a front-page article on grade inflation in local colleges.  (Or, rather, the article's subtitle makes it sound as though it's about grade inflation.)  The print edition also includes a chart that notes the percentage of As & Bs handed out at each school [1]:

SUNY Brockport    63%   
Finger Lakes  Community College    54%
Genesee  Community College    66%
SUNY Geneseo    72%
Hobart and William Smith    63%
Monroe Community College    65%
Nazareth College    82%
University of Rochester    80%
Rochester Institute of Technology    65%
Roberts Wesleyan College    85%
[One liberal arts college, St. John Fisher, did not report]

How to make sense of these statistics? Here we have a Ph.D.-granting university (the U of R), a technical school emphasizing mathematics & computer science (RIT), three community colleges, two  SUNY four-year colleges, and three liberal arts colleges (of which Hobart and William Smith is the toniest).  Some of these things are not  like the others.  The CCs only offer two-year degrees, while RIT offers both two- and four-year programs.  Moreover, the U of R's admissions process is far more selective than that of any other college in the area.  At the same time, the two SUNY schools acquire many of their students from the three CCs. 

Lumping all of these schools together, then, is a little awkward, and certainly makes it difficult to draw overarching conclusions.  If selectivity correlates with higher GPAs, for example, then the U of R at first appears to be on safe ground--but shouldn't its GPAs be higher than those at Nazareth and Roberts Wesleyan? Similarly, some have speculated (myself included) that high tuition rates often lead to grade inflation.  And yet, SUNY Brockport ($4,350/year for in-state tuition) polls the same result as Hobart and William Smith ($30,000/year).  For that matter, shouldn't Hobart and William Smith have the same results as Nazareth, Roberts Wesleyan, and the University of Rochester? In addition, given that RIT specializes in subjects that traditionally resist the inflationary impulse, shouldn't its results be markedly different from Brockport's?

The article, purportedly about "questions," actually focuses on explanations: many students take the independent study option (the U of R); students are now allowed to revise their work extensively (Brockport); students are graded on more assignments than they were several years ago (Hobart and William Smith).  Only Kathleen Kutolowski, chair of Brockport's history department, notes that professors might be tempted to skew grades in order to get better course evaluations.  Overall, however, there's no attempt to actually explain what the percentages might mean.  If the U of R's students are superduperultra good, then are Roberts Wesleyan's superduperultramega good? If Brockport's faculty feel some pressure when it comes to teaching evaluations, do the U of R's feel some pressure when it comes to the yearly tuition? (And are Hobart and William Smith faculty just  endowed with awesome reserves of virtue?)

[1]  Matthew Daneman, "High Grades Given at Area Colleges Spur Questions: Some See Schools Improving; Others See Soft Standards," Democrat & Chronicle 30 Oct. 2005: 14A.

Comments

[AKMA]

Michael Bérubé suggested a way of coping with grade inflation in a story now locked behind the NYT paywall — but the heart of the proposal appears here.

[Ryan]

I have a friend who teaches at one of the 80%+ institutions on that list, and suggests that another factor is to blame, at least for the small liberal arts colleges: retention. If a student is getting C's for 30k/year, why are they paying 30k, instead of transferring to a cheaper state school? So faculty are pressured (by whom, I couldn't specify) to keep grades high to keep marginal students paying tuition dollars.

[JSpencer]

Ryan, marginal students pay 30+K a year for prestige, not grades. Unless they stay in academia, no one will ever inquire as to their grades once they graduate -- but their school will head up every resume. As long as they graduate, Cs at a prestigious school are way better than As at a generic state school.

[Astroprof]

I think that there may be several reasons for the data. Retention is definitely one. I know faculty at an area college who are seriously pressured by their administration to keep student enrollment up. They do this by handing out grades for comparatively little work. We have some of our students go there and then try to transfer the courses. The problem is that they can't pass the courses that follow since they don't have a strong enough background.

Our own stats probably are a bit skewed by the fact that we have a very liberal drop policy. Students can drop any course up to within a few weeks of the end of the semester by simply going to the registrar and filling out a form. Students not doing well are the ones that drop, so the GPA of the remaining students rises accordingly.