When Did an A Become Average?

When Did an A Become Average?

            The past few weeks we have been reading and writing about education. I have been focusing on the topic of grade inflation and how it effects students during their school career and even how it effects students within their careers.
            Grade inflation is evident in almost all college campuses across the nation. It is even a very big problem in a huge college like Harvard. In a recent school newspaper, it was stated that about 40% of all grades given at Harvard were A’s. That meant that the average grade at this college is an A-. That ether means that mostly all students are excellent straight A students, or something here is not right.
            When we look at grades at various colleges in the past we see that grade inflation definitely is a huge problem in schools today. In 1969, 7 percent of undergraduates had grades of A- or higher in contrast to 41 percent now. Similarly, grades of C or less have dropped from 25 percent to 5 percent. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/20/why-grade-inflation-even-at-harvard-is-a-big-problem/) As one can see grades have definitely been inflated. Back then, a C was considered the “average” grade and A’s were rare to come by. Even though today, a C still carries the title of “average” with it, does it still really mean average? I for one do not think so. Now a days C’s are frowned upon and I think that has all to do with grade inflation. Grade inflation made the C go from average to not good enough.
            Many believe that grade inflation has not been too much of a problem in the past, but now believe it is a huge problem with today’s undergraduates.  Focusing on studies for the past 45 years, looking at certain groups of students, professors, and deans a lot has been learned. According to deans and professors that have been in the business for a while, they see that each generation of students that they teach are just a little bit different from each other. With the current generation of undergraduates, though, ‘according to deans of students, current undergraduates are more coddled, protected, and spoiled than previous students. They told us, “This is a generation that has never been allowed to skin their knees.” “They all won awards at everything they ever tried—most improved player, fourth runner-up, best seven-year-old speller born on March 8.” Their parents are the “helicopter parents” whose children were “never permitted to fail” at any undertaking. They grew up with an inflated sense of accomplishment and expect to continue to receive awards or at least praise for everything they do.’ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/20/why-grade-inflation-even-at-harvard-is-a-big-problem/) What he is saying is very true. Many kids have grown up and are just handed everything that is given to them. And this starts to show in school when they expect to get an A for minimal effort. It almost seems as some teachers or professors today are afraid of what will happen if they give an F to a student because they know that the student and the parents of the student will blame them for not giving their kid a better grade.
            Looking at all of this, I think that this lack of effort to earn good grades will start to show up more and more often. Some recent Interviews with employers that were now hiring new college graduates were quoted saying that the college grads were “expecting to be rewarded for just showing up” and “asking for a raise after a month of mediocre work.” Some of the employers also talked about how many of these new employees are unable to take criticism. I think that all of these attitudes span out from the ideas of grade inflation and not having to work very hard for certain things anymore.
            One reason as to why employers may find it more difficult to find really great employees now a days is partly because of how grade inflation works. Let us talk about money for a minute. With regular inflation when looking at money, prices can rise to an infinite amount. So a car only a little bit ago could cost ten times less then, than it would today. The differences are substantial. When looking at grade inflation it is a bit different. Instead of the possibilities of inflation being infinite it can only be inflated up to an A. So, looking at this one can make the conclusion that if grade inflation continued to go how it is today, hypothetically, an A+ would be considered a good grade and if it got bad enough, an A- could be considered a bad grade. But lets not go that far into it. Looking at grade inflation now, A’s are almost the average grade to get so that would most likely make a C a bad grade. When employers are looking at new employees they could have a student that is all A+’s that always works as hard as he/she can and have another student that is just an A student that puts in average amounts of work and only works half as hard as the other student but the employer wouldn’t even know it by just looking at the papers that say both students are a students. (http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/12/26/why-college-grade-inflation-is-a-real-problem-and-how-to-fix-it)
            Looking at all of this, one can say that grade inflation is a huge problem and it can greatly affect our future. We need to find how to bring grades back to normal and to how they were created to be so that an A can actually mean an A and a C can actually mean a C.