I’ve seen the latest article doing the rounds, saying that 38% of students now get first class degrees. A decade ago it was about 15%. Lots of academics are shouting that there is no such thing - students are getting clever, teaching is getting better. Here for example: https://twitter.com/leonievhicks/status/1525013871060197379?s=21&t=EHTHCDyBfD9iGEGGAWqT7A
Now I know that there are people who only really find their feet at university and excel despite not doing so before. But to assume that people falling into this category (as well as ‘improvement in teaching’, ahem) make up all the people with poor entry grades doing surprisingly well seems so misguided. Of course grades are being inflated. I’ve been at the exam boards where we are told to raise all marks by 10%, meaning that people who haven’t done any reading beyond the textbook are getting 2.1 grades. I’ve been told to give marks in the 80s and 90s, I’ve seen work that would have been a low 2.1 when I was at Uni (only in the mid 00s so not the dark ages) get given top marks.
As for better teaching? While I was taught largely by profs, readers, SLs and lecturers at my RG Uni, nowadays most of the teaching in our dept is by hourly paid GTAs and overstretched teaching fellows. I can’t accept that it’s better than in the past. I suspect the complete opposite. In some places, over recruitment has led to seminar groups of 30+ students. My students certainly don’t work harder than in the past either (it’s a miracle if they’ve done any reading), although for some of them that’s because they have to also work alongside their studies.
Why is there such a drive to deny that marketisation has led to inflated grades? Is it ego (I’m such a great teacher that all my students get brilliant marks)? Or something else? It just annoys me.
Academic common room
Grade-inflation deniers
GCandproud · 14/05/2022 10:15
GCandproud · 30/05/2022 08:07
That sounds fairly horrendous and I’m guessing Oxbridge? I’m not convinced that that sort of thing doesn’t still happen there and it’s quite different to what I am discussing here. I also did my degree nearly 20 years ago and what you describe would not have happened at my large red brick RG institution. Definitely no lecturers sitting on our beds and any talk about black people being inferior would have generated a huge complaint.
I am talking about a gradual inflation in the number of top grades which has coincided precisely with the marketisation of HE and the competition to gain as many students as possible. On many courses, even if entry requirements are high on paper, this doesn’t mean all students on that course meet these. There are hundreds of courses where students are accepted, sometimes with significantly lower grades than the official entry, because they bring in money to the university.
I agree that there is more explicit direction now, how to write an essay etc but I still don’t think it accounts for the dramatic rise in grades. I have also encountered plenty of students who have very very poor writing and research skills yet still expect high grades. Preparation for seminars is also pretty dire and a huge contrast to what I used to do as a student. There is also a belief by many students that they are working extremely hard, when that is evidently not the case. On one module I teach, I had more people with extensions than without this year. I refuse to believe these were all genuine. Throughout my entire time at university, I never once applied for an extension.
I appreciate that it’s probably different depending on where you work. I’m at a mid ranking pre-92, not RG.
SarahAndQuack · 22/05/2022 22:36
I can see both sides of this. Yes, sure, it's not wonderful that overworked/underprepared GTAs and postdocs might teach badly; yes, it could be there's grade inflation rather than genuine improvement.
But, I really do think things are changing for the better. When I did my undergraduate degree, not quite 20 years ago, one of my teachers insisted he'd come to our bedrooms and sit on our beds (there were only two of us, doing a niche language option). He talked openly about how women were inferior to men and black people were more stupid. Those subjects took up far more of his interest than actually teaching us. We had lecturers who simply rambled about their latest enthusiasm, without any attempt to make a link to the actual courses or modules. Several of my lecturers and supervisors openly joked about disabled students' allowances or about dyslexia; mental health issues were treated as a regrettable individual weakness.
I'm sure that sort of thing wasn't universal, but it also wasn't that uncommon.
After I finished my PhD I was hired by my undergraduate institution and spent several years, and it disturbed me to see how little those older faculty members had changed. But, they'd mostly stopped being so active as teachers (as they'd got professorships and grants and retired). They were actively baffled that their younger colleagues (me included) had spent time learning how best to teach neurodiverse students, or had undergone training for working with students who had mental health difficulties. We'd have exam board meetings, and they would be insisting that a brilliant student who wrote a first-class dissertation could not be awarded a first class mark if she or he regularly spelt words wrongly. And we would be pointing out that said student had a diagnosis of dyslexia, and it wasn't fair or right to quibble about spellings.
When people talk about grade inflation, it's those anecdotes that come to mind, and TBH, I am kind of ok with grade inflation if it might mean that more women aren't taught by sleazy perverts sitting on their beds and rambling about racism, or more dyslexic students are rewarded for their arguments and ideas rather than their ability to distinguish 'principal' from 'principle'.
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