Grade Inflation Gone Wild Analysis

Improved Essays
Has anyone thought of school and been like “Hmm, professors might give them a better grade if they complain to her about how they feel they did a better job at that assignment?” Or how about, “Wow there is so much free time from studying that they should just all go get drunk?” Says no student ever. But truthfully after reading “Grade Inflation Gone Wild” by Stuart Rojstaczer and “Doesn’t Anyone Get a C Anymore” by Phil Primack that is apparently the mentality that some people involved in school system has adapted, students and professors; which will be discussed in this essay. Whoever heard of grade inflation? Who really is hurting in that aspect? The teacher or the student? In the long run, it is the student who will suffer from the issue of grade inflation; due to paying a boat load for classes and not being able to receive adequate education for being successful in the career that they want to pursue. …show more content…
By any normal school official that would be taken as an honor or a compliment. But then, someone put it into a different perspective. Students were paying more for college classes but they were receiving a lot less education knowledge that they needed. They had even noticed that students were claiming to even have more free time which most of them resorted to alcoholic drinking. (Rojstaczer 75) So here is college students who are paying up to about $300.00 per credit hour resorting to alcohol while they were in college because they had nothing better to

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    There are a lot of on-going debates about the traditional grading system. Many argue that the system deters learning therefore; it should be overhauled and/or reformed. Alfie Kohn, an American author and educator that speaks and writes about education and parenting is very much opposed to the traditional grading system. In his essay “From Degrading to De-Grading”, Alfie Kohn argues against it, he claim that students are so grade driven that it reduces their interest in learning, creativity and preference for challenging tasks. Not only that, it also encourages cheating, disrupt curriculum and waste teachers’ time.…

    • 604 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s”, Brent Staples explains and questions the reason behind grade inflation in colleges. Primarily, Staples discusses how college professors are stuck between pleasing students and the administration; therefore, being forced to inflate grades for the profit of the college. Staples mentioned that professors inflate grades to escape the pressure put on them from consumer-conscious administrators and to avoid the negative feedback from the evaluations taken by the students (Staples 1-2). This implies that professors are being pressured into inflating grades by administration and students. Next, Staples emphasizes the competition between traditional colleges and online colleges, like the University of…

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The article “From Degrading to De-grading” written by Alfie Kohn, is a very persuasive and informative text. By reading his article you could tell Kohn is intelligent, gets straight to the point, and supports his claims with convincing evidence. Kohn knows how to get his point through text and attacks every idea from different angles. He was particularly obvious that he was against the letter and number grading system. Kohn mentioned many reasons why the current grading system is inappropriate for the student’s education, such as: grades don’t tell much about a student’s knowledge, grades reduce the drive to learn, and grades reduce the drive to challenge…

    • 108 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Even though Nichols doesn't talk about it right away, he makes out a good task of handing over resources to support the grade inflation argument through. I think it’s a rhetorical strategy because of the resources he presents quotes from a book titled The State of the American Mind by Richard Arum. He also presents many instances of other books about grades, for example, Nichols explain “This, a Rampell correctly noted, means that the default grade is no longer the “gentleman’s C” of the 1950’s, but a “gentleman’s A,” now bestowed more as an entitlement for course completion that as a reward for excellence.” Which is taken from another source (pg.…

    • 849 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Lazy A Suzanne E. Fry writes “Some students feel that success is owed to them; after all, they did not spend thousand of dollars a year not to yield results”(Fry 10). In her article, she brings out her view that relaxing grades or the lower performance needed to achieve good grades, cause the quality of education to suffer and teaches student they don 't need to work hard to succeed are completely valid; it is seen in the way student pick classes today and their time spent studying. Suzanne E. Fry in the article, Grade Inflation argues that the inflation of grades going on in higher education is harmful to all involved. Fry points out that when A’s are easier to achieve students are taught that they don 't need to work hard. She shows that…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Countless students and teachers go to school every day and work very hard to meet what is asked of each of them. Teachers work more than 40 hours a week, especially when there are events going on throughout the school year. Students go to class to earn an “A,” not to learn what the teacher is teaching the class due to the fact that students were taught to contently earn a letter grade in that class. However, teachers are not at fault either because the school board and administrators give the teachers a timeline of all the curriculum the students must learn to a certain point in time of each marking period. In “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, he describes how numerous students and teachers go to school and they are just dullness is so…

    • 981 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To Grade or Not to Grade? “The real threat to excellence is not grade inflation at all; it is grades.” –Alfie Kohn, The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation Sullen-eyed, sleepless zombies stagger throughout the endless corridors. Their minds remain blank, except for their one goal: the biggest, juiciest brains. These brains are what they live for.…

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Former professor of geophysics at Duke University, Stuart Rojstaczer is a notable author and coauthor of many studies, books, and articles in his career. He has a PhD in applied earth and sciences and has also created a website on grade inflation, which he has done much research on. Rojstaczer wrote “Grade Inflation Gone Wild”, an opinion editorial in the Christian Science Monitor, which is particularly focused on grade inflation in the United States. Rojstaczer claims that many people, professors, and administrators turn their backs on the ongoing grade inflation at universities and colleges which must be addressed and fixed. Rojstaczer highlights the impact that grade inflation has on students and their education level but does not give adequate…

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Grade inflation "is a huge problem," says former US senator Hank Brown, who tried to make it a priority issue as president of the University of Colorado in 2006”(Primack 1). Grade inflations are inconvenient to an student's advance education. It harms students, staff, advanced education and society overall. For students, grade inflation implies never knowing where they stand and not working as hard as conceivable to arrive. This presents issues with the way of life that requests moment satisfaction.…

    • 944 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Book Smart M1

    • 1771 Words
    • 8 Pages

    It is necessary to keep grade inflation under control and minimize it as much a possible before it gets far worse, even those some students and professors will not be too keen on this. This is crucial in order to keep our education systems’…

    • 1771 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Grade Inflation

    • 500 Words
    • 2 Pages

    It doesn’t teach them that they need to exceed and continue to create better and stronger work in their assignments. Even though the Princeton students may be at a disadvantage the university is doing the right thing by showing them that you need to earn the work that you turn in. Sure the college grade inflation has benefitted students at other universities but did they really earn the grade they receive? Was the grade given to them in the idea to hopefully keep the schools gpa average at a high number, or was it given to them because they continued to nag their professor to give them and A on and assignment.…

    • 500 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Therefore, like pennies, even though letter grades are our tradition, since it is not reflective, schools shouldn’t keep on using it. According to an education expert Alfie Kohn, "letter grades are not only unnecessary but harmful” (Long). Research shows that the students receiving letters and percentage grades do not try to master what they learn, but only seeks better grades. Also, it does not reflect on the students' learning and improvements.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Monitoring The Future

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In a commencement speech to Kenyon graduates, David Foster Wallace metaphorically refers to our routine daily lives as water. If this holds any truth, then the metaphorical beverage equivalent with college is alcohol. Monitoring the Future (MTF) is a 40 year ongoing study at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor that surveys approximately 50,000 students a year. MTF reports that 81% of college students, and 86% of young adults from 19 to 28 years old have tried alcohol and alcohol usage has been identified as a major health problem among the college population. Although studies continue show declining alcohol usage in both the non-college attending and college attending age group, the college attending group consistently had overall higher prevalence of alcohol usage.…

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A formal and an informative tone was used. She tried to get her point across that inflation of grades should not be acceptable and it is happening too often. This was emphasized when she proclaimed, "I had the numbers to back me up, and I wouldn't budge on her grade," after another student asked her if she could bump up her B-minus. Shepard includes experiences from her own life to make this article more personal. The story of even her own son receiving a bad grade helps drive her point that A's aren't always crucial.…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In order to solve to solve a problem of grade inflation I think there needs to be a change in perspective of what a grade really is. A grade should be what the student earns that they work hard for and actually gaining knowledge to do so. A grade is something that should be a hard decison teachers need to make like how kay referred to, “. . . maintaining clear and rigorous standards, making it possible for students to fail while encouraging them to learn…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics