If you or your friends have a Facebook, you know the Tom Petty quote about college. It’s too long to print, but it encourages students to stop worrying about GPAs and concentrate on being irresponsible. I’ve always knocked it as an easy thing to say for millionaires, but after four years of observation, I find most of those who followed his advice have just as good GPAs as those who didn’t.
The system seemed broken, and swinging my Eagle press credentials like the pistols they are, I went to string-up every smart kid’s favorite villain: grade inflation.
First stop: the Interwebs. A recent article, “A History of College Grade Inflation,” on the New York Times economic blog reports on the findings of researchers at Teachers College at NYU who study the distribution of grades. The number of A’s given out has nearly tripled over the past 70 years, to the point where nearly half of all grades given are A’s. I shudder to think what the School of Communication’s statistics are, where two comments on a discussion board assure your good fortune. Am I really the über-genius my mom tells me I am? More on that in next week’s column. (Spoiler alert: I am.)
Next stop: disgruntled smart kid, i.e., the victim. I found one in David Park, a senior in the School of International Service, who is intelligent, articulate and brooding — and single!
He echoed the researchers at Teachers College when he said the reason for the inflation is “due to the tacit agreement between students and professors that if we get inflated grades, they will be indemnified with good enough evaluations to keep their jobs.” He then tearfully recapped how grade inflation has robbed him of the chance to differentiate himself from the pack, how it keeps the least challenging professors employed and how that is hastening the decay of the higher education system.
David turned out to be a real downer, but he made some good points. I couldn’t let him write my column though, so to gain another perspective I visited Sue Gordon, the director of career development at the AU Career Center. I was sure she would shed some light on the chaos grade inflation must be playing on graduate school applicants and getting top-paying jobs.
She didn’t — instead shunting my obvious tilt by reminding me how little GPAs matter after your first job, how really only financial and consulting firms set bare minimum GPAs (usually around an attainable 3.0 or 3.5) and how other factors like letters of recommendation are huge in getting into grad schools. My faith in the downfall of American education was shaken.
Grasping for answers and compliments, I called upon Associate Director of Merit Awards and all-around nice lady Joan D. Echols. Her take: it’s terrible, but top students will find a way above the rising tide of 4.0s.
“Beyond the grades, undergraduates can set themselves apart by collaborating with faculty on writing a paper or doing research,” she said. “And it’s a more enriching undergraduate experience.”
She made a lot of sense, and not only because her sentences didn’t include the word “indemnified.” Seeing as how AU produced nine Boren Scholars last year and seven the year before, which is the second most in the nation, it doesn’t seem like the school has felt any negative effects of the grade inflation.
And thus my witch-hunt ended with me deciding the witch isn’t such a bad influence on the neighborhood. If grade inflation forces our top students to do more than memorize facts, to earn their way in their field as an intern or make their mark doing research, then maybe it has been a blessing in disguise.
GPAs have never been a good measure of a student’s ability, just as student evaluations have never been a good measure of a professor’s. As GPAs become more uniformly high, graduate schools and employers will have to weigh them less when considering applicants and find other ways to recognize the best and brightest.
To modify the old Ibu axiom, GPAs should be respected, but achievement should be revered. Or was I the only one who did the African Writing homework, you Petty-listening slackers?
Adam Gallagher is a Senior in the School of Communication
