Grades have been inflating at universities across the English-speaking world, including in New Zealand. That was the message of my first two columns in this series.  

But why has grade inflation taken hold at our universities? And what can we do about it? That is the subject of this final instalment. 

Grades have inflated at our universities because of incentives.  

Programmes get funding based mainly on the number of students they have. For academics, getting a reputation as a harsh grader may mean you are out of a job. Many over-compensate, giving out As like lollies.  

Student feedback forms are crucial to whether academics get hired, fired, and promoted. Academics who hand out higher grades get better student feedback. That helps drive grades up too. 

All this points to two simple ways we could combat grade inflation. One is giving student numbers less weight when we hand out funding to academic programmes. Another is paying less attention to student feedback forms when evaluating academics.  

We could also make it harder for instructors to give their students easy As. We could have national exams, like Germany’s Staatsexamen, marked by independent examiners. Or we could have more cross-marking of existing exams – standard practice at British universities.  

More sophisticated solutions exist. One technique would adjust students’ grade-point averages (GPAs) depending on how difficult their classes were. A’s in tough classes would get more points than As in easy ones. Students would then be less likely to shop for easy As, and instructors would be less motivated to offer them.  

Complicated solutions like this can be hard to implement. When Duke University tried to introduce one such technique in late 1990s, it was blocked by humanities professors (who liked giving out easy As) and students (who liked getting them).  

Another difficulty is that any university that dealt with grade inflation would also then have lower grades. In any system where funding follows students, that represents a huge risk.  

Doing nothing, though, would also have costs. Grade inflation short-changes hard-working students, reduces aspiration, and undermines trust in the university system.  

That’s something universities today can ill afford. New Zealand universities would be well-advised to do something – and something fast – about the tide of undeserved As that continues to rise.  

For James’ earlier columns in this series on grade inflation, see Part 1 and Part 2.