The provost’s office has recently launched an examination of grade patterns to determine whether grade inflation is a significant problem at RPI, according to Provost Bud Peterson.
“We’re making an investment in the students, and grades are all part of that,” said Peterson.
Since the grade inflation problems at Harvard University were discovered last spring, the subject has become a national debate and numerous articles have been written about grade inflation.
An investigation by Duke University professor Stuart Rojstaczer, for instance, revealed that grade inflation is more widespread among U.S. colleges and universities than many people had previously thought.
Rojstaczer’s examination at his website, http://gradeinflation.com/, of 60 private and public institutions, found an average increase in student GPAs of .15 per decade.
The provost’s office has followed that national discourse, and the potential grade inflation problems at RPI are “something we as an institution are interested in, concerned about, and trying to assess the situation,” said Peterson.
Prior to this most recent investigation, the Registrar’s office has compiled a report each semester that breaks down the student grade distribution by department and professor.
Peterson then distributes that detailed report to the academic deans and department chairs so they can analyze the data over a long time span.
Grade inflation can be difficult to evaluate because it is often tough to determine whether a particular pattern is representative of a significant grade change.
A mathematics class with an average of GPA of 3.5 could only have 11 students registered for it, or the class could be just a small section of a very large class like Calculus I.
“What our faculty try to do is have a skill and work base level that they expect students to achieve in order to earn a certain grade,” said Peterson.
Peter Persans, a professor in the Physics Department, does not believe that grade inflation is a major problem at RPI. “Grade inflation has occurred elsewhere, but I don’t think that it’s a particular problem at RPI.”
He feels that some of the introductory courses have become somewhat water-downed, and sophomores are “shocked at how much harder their major courses are,” said Persans.
A possible reason for grade inflation at RPI could be that the Institute has been admitting a more qualified group of students each year. The average SAT scores of the freshman class has risen about 40 points in the last few years.
“We take great pains to make sure [that] we’re extremely selective ... We think that the quality of our incoming freshmen has been increasing,” said Peterson.
