Grade inflation has risen among private colleges, especially in the last decade. However, my colleagues who teach at a range of colleges from four year to community college to career schools, believe that students have come to expect that because they are paying for college they should be getting—not earning—good grades. Many professors feel that the students have the “you work for me†attitude. You can see how these behaviors, when unaddressed, create problems of expectation and work culture once these students graduate and begin work in a professional environment. Professors can most help students by emphasizing:
1) The extent to which you are challenged—even if you earn a C—is more important than taking an easy teacher where you get An “Aâ€
2) The real-world expects you to challenge yourself in increasingly more complex ways. If you expect your boss to let you off the hook on a non-deliverable or late work, think again. This could cost you a pay increase or even your job.
3) Focus as much on the interesting experiences you can create for yourself as, in the end, these are often more important than your GPA unless you want to become a professor, a research scientist or get into medical school.
4) Ask the question: if you were a manager, would you hire yourself based on these actions?
Bottom line is that we can’t continue to coddle today’s students or we won’t have a strong, resilient, capable and forward-thinking people to solve our greatest problems in business, community, science, and world-wide issues.
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ARTICLE
Want a Higher G.P.A.? Go to a Private College
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Over the last 50 years, college grade-point averages have risen about 0.1 points per decade, with private schools fueling the most grade inflation, a recent study finds.
The study, by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, uses historical data from 80 four-year colleges and universities. It finds that G.P.A.’s have risen from a national average of 2.52 in the 1950s to about 3.11 by the middle of the last decade.
