Some studies suggest that college students today get more A's than any other grade, even though they spend less time studying.
According to Jenna Ross of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a University of Minnesota chemistry professor has proposed a solution: "to tack onto every transcript the percentage of students that also got that grade." Not unexpectedly, the idea has "has split the faculty and highlighted how tricky it can be to define, much less combat, grade inflation."
Please read the entire article for a glimpse of how this particular effort at transparency has prompted controversy. We have experience with transparency here in Texas as well, of course.
Before going further it should be emphasized that various reports indicate that grade inflation is far less prominent at community colleges than at exclusive universities and private colleges. This stands to reason, partly since "good" students tend to go to more selective schools in the first place. As reported here before, Harvard political science professor Harvey Mansfield is well known for lamenting the demise of what used to be called "gentleman's Cs" at his institution.
When community and technical college faculty members discuss grades, generally they point out that students today tend to fall at both ends of the statistical spectrum. The sainted bell-shaped configuration gives way to a bimodal distribution (often referred to by statistics professors as the Dolly Parton curve). Other teachers report that, for them, there tends to be a flat distribution among all grades—roughly the same percentage of As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs.
Then there are the Ws of various stripes, too often involving students who simply disappear when the real work starts. This is probably the more serious and complicated problem for two-year college educators.
