Again, a point in question in the midst of the massification of higher education is how to retain students that seem to be ill-prepared for university education or face special difficulties as well as a lack of motivation to stay. Empirical studies on student culture do reveal traits and practices that seem to confirm worries expressed by academics, both young and seasoned. For example, an increasing proportion of university students in the United States have inadequate prior knowledge, lack aptitude for studies, and are not really interested in their studies (Arum & Roksa, 2011). Furthermore, the reasons why they claim to be enrolled in a university range from not having a job and seeing higher education as something to occupy their time, doing it because other people are doing it, or doing it because they do not want to be left out of the “knowledge society” for not having enough education, or even because it is a way of securing a job that is ‘not too bad’. For others, it is simply a way of securing a job that previously did not require a university degree (Bok, 2006, p. 2). According to Bok, in the United States “since 1970, the percentage of freshmen who rate ‘being very well off financially’ as an ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ goal has risen from 36.2 to 73.6 percent, while the percentage who attach similar importance to ‘acquiring a meaningful philosophy of life’ has fallen from 79 to 39.6 percent” (2006, p.26). This could be interpreted precisely as a new consumerist attitude, but it could also be interpreted simply as a lack of interest in something young people feel they have to do.
This unfortunate reality is sensed by university teachers. According to Arum and Roksa (2011), 40% of college faculty believe that most of their students lack basic skills required for university level work. This variation in student abilities and interests makes it difficult for teachers to provide a satisfactory classroom experience. Furthermore, the drive for internationalisation introduces other significant variations, such as a lack of language proficiency, a significant difference in basic education contents, and marked differences in specific cultural expectations. This situation means that many university students could be expected to fail in their effort of obtaining a higher education degree. However, this is far from true. Students lacking basic skills, and who do not have a clear purpose and motivation to study, are evidently being able to graduate. In fact, in case of failing to do so, the quality assurance regime does not interpret this as necessarily the student’s fault but blames it on the university’s lack of support or inadequate teaching.
This phenomenon, in which the number of students failing does not reflect the number of students who would be expected to fail, has been identified as grade inflation. The issue has been described not only anecdotally. It is possible to find a variety of empirical studies that have taken a systematic look at the problem. Several have provided good evidence of grade inflation in the United States (see Abbott, 2008; Bar, Kadiyali & Zussman, 2007; Beito & Nuckolls, 2008; and Gose, 1997). These studies consider grade inflation as having occurred when the elevation of grades in a student population coincided with no other indication of any improvement in the students’ capabilities. Another study defines grade inflation as “the steadily improving performance of college students as reflected in the grades they receive despite their poorer academic preparation for course work at this level” (O’Halloran & Gordon, 2014, p. 1006), despite evidence of no proportional increases in achievement (for example, in standardized achievement tests), or of no increases in students’ academic expectations. For the researchers, whenever an elevation in grade point average can be observed along with evidence of students being increasingly disengaged from educationally purposeful activities (such as time devoted to study), this elevation of grades indicates a lowering of standards (p.1007).
O’Halloran and Gordon (2014) uncovered the following causes for the occurrence of grade inflation:
1. First of all they identify the regulatory environment of increased accountability as an incentive for grade inflation. Its calls for the maintenance of “output goals” such as graduation rates, post-graduation job attainment and graduate school attendance, put
pressure on teachers who conclude that by refraining from giving higher grades to students they may damage the attainment of these goals.
2. Another cause is identified in the competitive environment. Everything is compared in order to encourage improvement in those with the lowest scores in any indicator, including grades. When one institution gives generous grades, the other ones do the same thing.
3. A simple reason lies in policies that allow students to withdraw classes and allow them to do so when they obtain poor grading results.
4. Another cause, which has been analysed in detail, is the practice of teaching evaluation.82
5. There are departmental level factors: “The highest grades typically are awarded in courses in the humanities, business, many social sciences, and education, whereas grades in the hard sciences, economics, and engineering tend to be lower” (p.1011). These could also be seen as cultural factors that respond to stereotypes of difficult or easy topics or disciplines.
6. There are also factors consisting of individual characteristics of teachers and their interpretation of rules. One of them is the instructor’s status: “Among tenure-track professors, those with lower status and with less secure positions are more likely to award higher grades than higher status teachers with tenure” (p. 1012) (a study that shows this is Moor and Trahan, 1998;). From this the authors deduce that “the increasing reliance on non-tenure track faculty who may be terminated easily (e.g., adjuncts, instructors, or part-time lecturers) has fuelled grade inflation” (p. 1012). Another factor has to do with the application of grade distribution rules that promote “particularistic practices” meaning students should be evaluated according to their personal characteristics and circumstances. In practice this results in teachers simply improving the grades of students who did poorly. Conflict avoidance is another factor. When instructors know that a poor grade can initiate a conflict, he or she will tend to avoid it by giving a higher grade than what is deserved by the student. Studies reveal that “students tend to overestimate the grades they will receive” (see Nowell & Alston, 2007), and “believe that their proclaimed level of effort should be given significant weight in determining their course grade” (p. 1013). With these beliefs
82 In this matter there are several studies that reveal how the practice of student-teacher evaluation
does influence grades. There are cross-sectional studies (see, for example, Eiszler, 2002) as well as longitudinal studies (see, for example, Clayson, Frost & Sheffet, 2006) that show this correlation. Another study found that, although teaching evaluations had an impact in grading, in contrast they had a weak relation to student learning (Johnson, 2003).
being part of the student culture, a low grade has indeed the potential of becoming a source of conflict. Consequently, instructors who give a low grade need to carefully justify it and be prepared to face the student’s – and sometimes their parents’ – discontent.
7. The lack of attention to cheating is another cause presented by the authors (O’Halloran & Gordon, 2014, pp. 1008-1013).
What is most significant in the above list of causes for grade inflation proposed by O’Halloran and Gordon (2014) is that most of them are a product of, or are reinforced by, quality assurance processes. For Alvesson (2013), grade inflation is a result of the consumer orientation in which satisfied students are a benchmark. He also sees it as a response from universities to students who have become tactical consumers of education, forced to be so by the uncertain value of degrees from non-elite institutions coupled with the competition for attractive jobs. For Alvesson, universities strive to retain these tactical consumers and one way to do so is through grade inflation (p. 93). He sees devastating consequences of this practice that produces “poor and unreliable feedback that reinforces rather than corrects exaggerated self-images in which students regard themselves as clever and destined for high-status jobs” (2013, pp. 87-88). In this view, students are presented as opportunistic and deluded individuals who shop for degrees according to their own convenience and responding to a strategy for job placement. Once again, the university is seen as merely responding to this trend in order to survive in a competitive context. Ritzer coincides with these authors and believes that with the aim of retaining students, universities will deepen the trend of grade inflation and eliminate any possibility of dropping or flunking out in order to allow for the consumption of education. He claims that “the objective will be to eliminate as many barriers as possible to obtaining degrees” (1998, p. 156). Evidently, quality assurance policies do not state that universities should effectively be granting degrees to students who do not deserve them. However they do seem to have this effect by encouraging an intensification of grade inflation.