If you enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey (either the book or the movie), there’s no guarantee that you will enjoy Fifty Shades of Grades, the research note on grade distribution at New Zealand universities that I released earlier this week. 

Still, I like to think that the latter has enough titillating detail, spanking new analysis, and breath-taking climaxes (if only of series of data) to satisfy most readers.  

For a start, the note contains a full breakdown of how much of the distribution each grade made up at all of our universities over the last twenty years. I’ve even shaded the different grades in different shades of blue and (yes) grey on a graph so that it’s easier to see which grades have waxed and which ones have waned.  

What that graph can tell us is that as As have expanded, other grades have been compressed, or (to use my own preferred technical term) squashed. Bs have been squashed from 47% to 38% of total grades, Cs from 20% to 17%, Ds from 9% to 5%. Only the Es have resisted any squashing, staying steady on 4% of total grades.  

The report also contains another graph that shows how As have long been closing the gap with Bs, which have held the position of Most Common Grade at New Zealand universities over most of the past two decades. It also shows, with alarming clarity, how As are now on course to overtake Bs (probably permanently) sometime in the next few years. 

These graphs give us a fuller picture of grade distributions at our universities than we were able to present in Amazing Grades, my previous report on this topic. 

They also make two things clear. 

One is that at New Zealand universities, it has been the top category (As) that has squeezed and squashed out the other grades. This is similar to the type of ‘grade compression’ that we see in the US, but contrasts with the situation in the UK, where the top two categories (first-class and second-class, upper division) degrees have expanded together, squashing out humbler classifications.  

The other is that if New Zealand universities want to avoid having As as their most common grade (something which is already the case at US universities), they will have to do something about grade inflation in the very near future.  

To find out more, read James' research note "50 Shades of Grades: Grade Compression at New Zealand Universities" here.​