Grade Information and Grade Inflation: The Cornell Experiment

Abstract

Grade inflation and high grade levels have been subjects of concern and public debate in recent decades. In the mid-1990s, Cornell University's Faculty Senate had a number of discussions about grade inflation and what might be done about it. In April 1996, the Faculty Senate voted to adopt a new grade reporting policy which had two parts: 1) the publication of course median grades on the Internet; and 2) the reporting of course median grades in students' transcripts. The policy change followed the determination of a university committee that "it is desirable for Cornell University to provide more information to the reader of a transcript and produce more meaningful letter grades." It was hoped that "More accurate recognition of performance may encourage students to take courses in which the median grade is relatively low." The median grade policy has remained to date only partially implemented: median grades have been reported online since 1998 but do not yet appear in transcripts. We evaluate the effect of the implemented policy on patterns of course choice and grade inflation. Specifically, we test two related hypotheses: First, all else being equal, the availability of online grade information will lead to increased enrollment into leniently graded courses. Second, high-ability students will be less attracted to the leniently graded courses than their peers. Building on these results we perform an exercise that identifies the extent to which the change in student behavior resulted in an increase in the university-wide mean grade.

What happens after enrollment? An analysis of the time path of racial differences in GPA and major choice

“…9 Note that the median student is changing across years. 10 See Bar et al (2009) for an analysis of Cornell's program, with developing a theoretical model of how students change their course-taking behavior in response to programs such as this one. 11 In principle there is a lower bound on grades.…”

Business and Academic Interests in the Maintenance of Standards in Online Higher Education

“…Crumbley, Flinn, and Reichelt (2010) feel that student evaluations encourage a range of unethical behavior in teachers aimed at improving ratings without increasing learning. Bar, Kadiyali, and Zussman's (2009) study reports that "in the spring semester of 1998, Cornell University started publishing median course grades on the Internet. Our analysis finds that the provision of grade information online induced students to select leniently graded courses" (p. 107).…”

Work in progress: Understanding migration patterns of engineering undergraduates: The impact of course grades on student major choice

“…We take a decidedly different approach and examine whether students select majors based on their predicted future grades while taking into account students' initial or early major intentions. Since students are more likely to select leniently graded courses when grade information is provided [11], are students also more likely to select a major when they expect that they will receive relatively higher grades in that major? Conditional on major intentions and assuming that students gather data on grade distributions from various informal sources, we estimate the impact of expected performance and previous disciplinespecific grade distributions on student major selection using logit and multinomial logit regression.…”

“…Yet, the relationship between grading distributions, student letter grades, and major choice is complex. For example, when student effort and motivation are taken into account by proxy, letter grades are not necessarily predictive of student major persistence and the effects can vary by student gender [10,11].…”