I Loves Me Some Grade Inflation

Well, I got my first official grade for an assignment. It was a philosophy paper. I got an A-.

Grades really recede into the background here, as they should. My Arts in Education class is pass/fail, so I never think about it. My philosophy class has two papers and two grades, and I'm waiting for the second. Grades haven't come up once in my poetry workshop, and you get your grade after your final project in neuroscience.

I almost never think about grades. Most folks in the program don't.

As it should be.

In that pass/fail class, we recently turned in a big paper. No one would ever fail the course--unless you never turn anything in. So passing is a foregone conclusion. But when I wrote the big paper, I put in the same effort as I would a graded paper. I thought about it, organized it, outlined it, researched it, wrote it, rewrote it, edited it, and had other people proofread it.

In neuroscience you're not really accountable anything specific. They don't take attendance since it's a big lecture, you're never given a recall exam over the information, and you're never quizzed on the readings. No tests either. And yet, you go to all the lectures, you take notes, you do all the readings. Why wouldn't you? Would you pay thousands in tuition, blow off the work, and then "trick" a professor into giving you a good grade? What kind of sense would that make?

So back to my A-. Probably a classic example of grade inflation. Grade inflation is simply that: no one gets a C (unless you do nothing), and your poorest effort garners you at least a B-. It's not like high school or undergrad.

People who went to school before grade inflation like to complain about the current phenomenon. But really, who cares? Grade inflation is another way to forget about grades altogether, to the student's benefit. It's done me well.

Here's how grade inflation works, as far as I can tell: What used to be an A- is now an A. And what used to be a B+ or B is now an A-. And what used to be a B- or C+ is now a B+. What used to be a C is now a B, and a C- or D+ is now a B-.

By that scale, my A- philosophy paper was basically a B. Just like my grades in high school and college. Some things never change.