The Distorted Grade Distribution: Inflating Grades Post the 1980s

Abstract

Faculty give grades to provide rewards, punishments, and reflections of academic performance of students. However, there are plainly other motivations at work as well. Average grades in American colleges and universities have been rising since the 1960s. Most agree that significant grade inflation in the United States began in the 1960s due to the Vietnam War, and stabilized in the 1970s. Inflating grades somehow resumed in the mid-1980s and there seems to be no end in sight. We contend that the motivational mechanisms behind inflating grades in the years post the mid-1980s are very different from the pre mid- 1980s. The higher education sector experienced a paradigm shift in the 1980s when the market-oriented approach was introduced to the sector. Many corporate-world practices have been adopted. We believe the production function framework and the human behavior model are insufficient to understand the motivations behind inflating grades. Instead, a conventional Principal-Agent Theory can provide a framework to conceptualize the incentive system that stimulates inflationary grading practice.