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Alana Manning
Professor Babbitt
English 200
February 16, 2020
Does Grade Inflation Make Students Better?
What is grade inflation? Grade inflation is grades continuing to go up regardless of the
quality of education according to Stuart Rojstaczer who is a former professor at Duke University
with a PhD in applied earth science, also who wrote the essay “Grade Inflation Gone Wild”.
Rojstaczer created a website with all the data he collected from different colleges and
universities so that others could find the data. Through the data he learned that, “grades started to
shoot up nationwide in the 1960s, leveled off in the 1970s, and then started rising again in the
1980s” (Rojstaczer 108). Rojstaczer believes that, “Private schools had much higher grades than
public schools but in reality, everyone is experiencing it” (109). He continues to talk about the
specific GPA’s at different types of schools from public to private and even the elites in which
GPA’s range from 3.0 to 3.6 all averaging out to an A. Rojstaczer continues to say that grade
inflation has a “profound influence on college life and learning” (109). That is because students
are going into classrooms with the mindset that they don’t have to put in too much effort because
they know regardless of how much work they do they will get a grade they didn’t earn.
According to Rojstaczer, “Many students study less than 10 hours a week – that’s less
than half the hours spent studying 40 years ago” (109). That was a clear rise in the grade
inflation issue since the 1980s like stated before. The effect of all this is that students are paying
for education that is not worth their money. Rojstaczer says, “With so few hours filled with
learning, boredom sets in and students have to find something to pass the time. Instead of
learning, they drink” (109). He has made a connection between the lack of studying which may
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cause them to drink in their free time. He has even looked at surveys of first year students, that
shown students drink more than they study and from that he thinks if the incoming college
students continue on this path that, “we’ll end up with generations of poorly educated college
graduates who have used their four years principally to develop an addiction to alcohol”
(Rojstaczer 109).
“There are many who say that grade inflation is a complicated issue with no easy fix. But
there is a solution” (Rojstaczer 109). Yet, schools like Princeton University have put things in
place in order to lower the grade inflation problem. “Its guidelines have the effect of now
limiting A’s on average to 35 percent of student in a class and those guidelines have worked”
(Rojstaczer 109). From the guidelines that Princeton has set they have seen a decrease in grade
inflation and “rigor is making a comeback” (Rojstaczer 109). Other colleges like Wellesley and
