In my last Insights column, I explained what grade inflation is and why it’s bad. I also surveyed research showing that grade inflation is a problem at universities in the US, the UK, and Australia.  

What about New Zealand? My report Amazing Grades: Grade Inflation at New Zealand Universities, which was released this week, shows that grade inflation is a problem here too.  

Between 2006 and 2024, the percentage of A grades (A+, A, A-) grew by 13 percentage points, from 22% of all grades to 35%. A grades spiked during COVID, with almost half (49%) of grades awarded at the University of Auckland in 2020 in the A range.  

Pass rates also went up, and are now over 90% at all our universities but one (Auckland) and above 95% at two (Lincoln and Massey).  

Is this just a matter of more students reaching higher levels of academic achievement? Probably not. In my report I looked at four possible reasons students might have gotten better, and none of them hold up.  

Is it just that the students arriving at university have gotten better? Our school system’s dismal results in PISA (the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment) over the past quarter of a century would strongly suggest not. 

Do more female undergraduates have something to do with it? After all, female students tend to get better grades. But though the percentage of female students did grow rapidly in the 1970s and 80s, it hasn’t grown over the past twenty years, the period in which grades have been rising.   

More funding doesn’t explain the rise in grades either. Funding per student did grow before 2019, but fell thereafter, just as grades spiked.  

What about extra support for students in the form of more staff? That idea doesn’t work either, since the number of staff members per student hasn’t grown substantially in a while.  

The upshot? Unless someone can come up with a better explanation for the rise in grades, then what we have are grade rises that are unjustified by improvements in student performance. In other words, grade inflation.   

In my final column in this series, I’ll explain how grade inflation develops, how it has gotten so bad at our universities, and what we might be able to do about it.   

To learn more about James's research, read the full report, watch the webinar and listen to our podcast.