According to the article How Grade Inflation Hurts Students, critics of grade inflation that say it can potentially hurt students by (1) make the reward for superior performance less desirable, (2) make separating superior performers from the everyday average student more difficult, (3) complicate the process of ranking students’ performance across majors and institutions, and (4) place students at a disadvantage if their school does not engage in grade inflation (How Grade Inflation Hurts Students 1). The article address number one above it says that “excessive rewarding lowers the value of the reward itself. A high grade servers as a reward, motivating students to separate themselves from their peers through high achievement. When everyone receives a high grade on a regular basis, the value of that reward sinks. Scarce rewards are more valuable, so as they become more common, rewards become less valuable” (How Grade Inflation Hurts Students 2). The rewards are the motivation for the students and if everyone is getting a reward for something they did not even deserve than the motivation for the students’ decrease along with their effort that they put into their work. The article why grade inflation (even at Harvard) is a big problem, explains that this generation is coddled. According to the dean of students this generation has never been “Allowed to skin their knees. According to them, dean …show more content…
The article says, grades are not the driving force of a students’ motivation, but they serve a purpose. According to the article the purpose of grades are to measure a student’s demonstrated mastery of material, but it does not tell the student’s intellectual progression if on the report card there is a failing grade, but the student made progress in the subject. According to the article “the power of grades as a comparative metric—between what the student produced and what is good—cannot be overlooked. And, yet, it is just the distinguishing power that is threatened by grade inflation. As artificially high grades are increasingly meted out, GPA’s will steadily become merely an unintelligible number stamped on a transcript” (Editorial Board 1). The consequence of it is that the reductions of grade’s meaning to students and prospective graduated schools and employers weakens the encouragement for students to work earnestly (Editorial Board