Any technical solution, obvious and clear as some may be, misses the point. Those with grade inflation are AFRAID to remedy grade inflation because of being called racist, student complaints, ...
Technology is not the solution. The courage to apply good standards is.
At the University of Alberta, where I was an undergraduate, we used the so-called "stanine system". Students were given grades on a scale of 1 to 9. It is also possible that there were zeros as well; I do not recall. Nominally, 8 and 9 were As, more or less. The grade of 9 was reserved for A+. The grades 6 and 7 were roughly Bs. And so on and so forth.
However, they also published the mean grade for each class, and the enrollment in the class. This was so that outsiders could judge the rough distribution of the class and where the student stood relative to the rest of the distribution. Of course, class ranking might have also helped. Standard deviation could have been useful as well.
I am not sure if they still use this system. It was in use when I was there from 1974-1979.
The problem with grade inflation is not that most grades are "above average". In STEM, professors tend to -- and arguably should -- assign grades not for performance relative to other students, but for competency in the subject taught. It should not be surprising that, say, at Caltech, where all students are hard-working over-achievers from strong high schools, they continue to work hard and learn well in college-level courses. It would be insulting to give some of them Cs just because someone else happened to be off the charts even in this overall exquisite group.
The genuine grade inflation, at least in STEM, manifests not in elevated average grades in extremely competitive schools, but in lowered standards in less competitive ones. At the website https://calviz.berkeley.edu/t/OPAP/views/GradesbyCourse/GradesDB?%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&%3Aembed=y one can check grade distributions in many UC Berkeley courses, and find that in math courses, grade distributions don't look hyper-inflated, with a hefty share of Bs, Cs, and Ds. The problem is that grades below A often mean that the recipient simply doesn't understand the subject, and the specific grade just reflects the degree of ignorance.
I just don't see us as capable of helping students get this when we don't get it ourselves. When I talk to chairs at my Uni about annual performance reviews and how the top score (a 2/2) is reserved for *exceptional* scholarship, some tell me that ALL of their people are doing exceptional work! Faculty often deeply resent being assessed and we ourselves are all 'above average'. Are we surprised that our students don't see it as a fair system?
Oh dear, at least in STEM it is the instructor's right and responsibility to assign a grade that accurately reflect's a student's performance - objectively, not relative to others. ("Nature is the boss" I say.) Unfortunately grade inflation can occur when more challenging questions that worked in past semesters don't work any more, and get discarded, making the course easier to do well in.
Adjunct faculty also know full well that their livelihood depends on student evaluations. Every adjunct I have spoken to wishes that was not the case, but they need to put food on the table and are often treated poorly by department chairs, so now wonder their allegiance to "department standards" is tenuous at best.
The easiest way to solve grade inflation is for the government to mandate that any university accepting public money must make available a ranking in the cohort for each student. Hence, an employer could know that a particular student was ranked (say) 8th out of 32 of the students taking engineering at that university that year. They could also be given a traditional grade in addition.
The difficulty of the material has also decreased, of likely did since I graduated in around 1990-1991, started full time around 1984-1985, switched to 1/2 time 2 years later while in staff position at that university (credits up to 6 per semester were in benefits), and the difference in difficulty dropped significantly in those 6 years.
Those that graduated from my class I started in had little trouble getting employed - from the few I stayed in contact with - and I would not have casually excluded them in a list of perspectives to interview, the semester long projects like 'create a macro-assembler for the PDP-11' in Pascal (before C became standard)' in our resumes.
With the thought of doing similar project in C/C++ I checked that courses description and found that it had been removed, and no similar project replacing it. Sad.
I don't understand this scheme, since a complete mapping of the 0-10 scale to letter grades is not given. Personally, I grade on a 0-4 scale with 4=A, 3=B, 2=C, 1=D, 0=F. I suppose, applying this proposed algorithm, if all students do a perfect job on everything, then everyone gets a C. Peachy! 😂😂😁😁 Where do I sign up?
I honestly don't understand why this is so hard. When I was teaching, every assignment had a point value, was listed in the syllabus (so the students knew ahead of time), and at the end of the semester, the total number of points determined the grade. So if the total number of points was 100, 90-100 points were an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60-69 a D, and anything below 60 an F, and this was also announced in the syllabus. I got very few complaints, even from the students who failed. Some semesters, I'd get a few students failing, some semesters none, but that's because no students fell below the 60-point threshold. Most of my colleagues used essentially the same system. Of course, I had to use judgment in some cases (like when a student turned in a plushie she'd made of a fossil animal as her student essay), and I might have leaned toward being lenient, but any leniency was really limited by the point system. On occasion, a class (usually a small class) would have no Ds or Fs. I don't think I ever taught a class where there were just As and Bs, but if a class like that had happened, it wasn't because I inflated the grades, it was because the students all performed that well. This is the counterargument some at Harvard used, that their classes really do perform that well. The forced limitation on As MAY be unrealistic, depending on how grades are assigned. But my method was at least semi-objective.
Any technical solution, obvious and clear as some may be, misses the point. Those with grade inflation are AFRAID to remedy grade inflation because of being called racist, student complaints, ...
Technology is not the solution. The courage to apply good standards is.
At the University of Alberta, where I was an undergraduate, we used the so-called "stanine system". Students were given grades on a scale of 1 to 9. It is also possible that there were zeros as well; I do not recall. Nominally, 8 and 9 were As, more or less. The grade of 9 was reserved for A+. The grades 6 and 7 were roughly Bs. And so on and so forth.
However, they also published the mean grade for each class, and the enrollment in the class. This was so that outsiders could judge the rough distribution of the class and where the student stood relative to the rest of the distribution. Of course, class ranking might have also helped. Standard deviation could have been useful as well.
I am not sure if they still use this system. It was in use when I was there from 1974-1979.
The problem with grade inflation is not that most grades are "above average". In STEM, professors tend to -- and arguably should -- assign grades not for performance relative to other students, but for competency in the subject taught. It should not be surprising that, say, at Caltech, where all students are hard-working over-achievers from strong high schools, they continue to work hard and learn well in college-level courses. It would be insulting to give some of them Cs just because someone else happened to be off the charts even in this overall exquisite group.
The genuine grade inflation, at least in STEM, manifests not in elevated average grades in extremely competitive schools, but in lowered standards in less competitive ones. At the website https://calviz.berkeley.edu/t/OPAP/views/GradesbyCourse/GradesDB?%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&%3Aembed=y one can check grade distributions in many UC Berkeley courses, and find that in math courses, grade distributions don't look hyper-inflated, with a hefty share of Bs, Cs, and Ds. The problem is that grades below A often mean that the recipient simply doesn't understand the subject, and the specific grade just reflects the degree of ignorance.
I just don't see us as capable of helping students get this when we don't get it ourselves. When I talk to chairs at my Uni about annual performance reviews and how the top score (a 2/2) is reserved for *exceptional* scholarship, some tell me that ALL of their people are doing exceptional work! Faculty often deeply resent being assessed and we ourselves are all 'above average'. Are we surprised that our students don't see it as a fair system?
Oh dear, at least in STEM it is the instructor's right and responsibility to assign a grade that accurately reflect's a student's performance - objectively, not relative to others. ("Nature is the boss" I say.) Unfortunately grade inflation can occur when more challenging questions that worked in past semesters don't work any more, and get discarded, making the course easier to do well in.
Adjunct faculty also know full well that their livelihood depends on student evaluations. Every adjunct I have spoken to wishes that was not the case, but they need to put food on the table and are often treated poorly by department chairs, so now wonder their allegiance to "department standards" is tenuous at best.
The easiest way to solve grade inflation is for the government to mandate that any university accepting public money must make available a ranking in the cohort for each student. Hence, an employer could know that a particular student was ranked (say) 8th out of 32 of the students taking engineering at that university that year. They could also be given a traditional grade in addition.
The difficulty of the material has also decreased, of likely did since I graduated in around 1990-1991, started full time around 1984-1985, switched to 1/2 time 2 years later while in staff position at that university (credits up to 6 per semester were in benefits), and the difference in difficulty dropped significantly in those 6 years.
Those that graduated from my class I started in had little trouble getting employed - from the few I stayed in contact with - and I would not have casually excluded them in a list of perspectives to interview, the semester long projects like 'create a macro-assembler for the PDP-11' in Pascal (before C became standard)' in our resumes.
With the thought of doing similar project in C/C++ I checked that courses description and found that it had been removed, and no similar project replacing it. Sad.
God Bless., Steve
I don't understand this scheme, since a complete mapping of the 0-10 scale to letter grades is not given. Personally, I grade on a 0-4 scale with 4=A, 3=B, 2=C, 1=D, 0=F. I suppose, applying this proposed algorithm, if all students do a perfect job on everything, then everyone gets a C. Peachy! 😂😂😁😁 Where do I sign up?
I honestly don't understand why this is so hard. When I was teaching, every assignment had a point value, was listed in the syllabus (so the students knew ahead of time), and at the end of the semester, the total number of points determined the grade. So if the total number of points was 100, 90-100 points were an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60-69 a D, and anything below 60 an F, and this was also announced in the syllabus. I got very few complaints, even from the students who failed. Some semesters, I'd get a few students failing, some semesters none, but that's because no students fell below the 60-point threshold. Most of my colleagues used essentially the same system. Of course, I had to use judgment in some cases (like when a student turned in a plushie she'd made of a fossil animal as her student essay), and I might have leaned toward being lenient, but any leniency was really limited by the point system. On occasion, a class (usually a small class) would have no Ds or Fs. I don't think I ever taught a class where there were just As and Bs, but if a class like that had happened, it wasn't because I inflated the grades, it was because the students all performed that well. This is the counterargument some at Harvard used, that their classes really do perform that well. The forced limitation on As MAY be unrealistic, depending on how grades are assigned. But my method was at least semi-objective.
Fundamental problem is the moral hazard of teachers grading their own students on high-stakes exams:
https://jamesgmartin.center/2026/05/rara-avis-professor-finds-harvards-faults/