Students Study Less for Better Grades

A recently published study from University of California, Santa Barbara, led by economist Philip Babcock, concluded that students are studying less than ever. In fact, students attending four-year universities study approximately 10 hours less per week than those in the early 1960s. Why? No, it’s not due to the demise of the Dewey Decimal System and the rise of LexisNexis. It’s a little thing called grade inflation.

Grade inflation is a phenomenon in which, during the last several years, students have been gradually receiving better grades for delivering what at one time would have been considered a lower standard of work.

Babcock found that students expecting an instructor to dole out an A in any given class studied up to 50 percent less than they did for a class in which they were expecting to receive a C. Students spent 2.5 more hours per week studying if they were expected to receive a C over an A.

Meanwhile, the amount of A’s awarded to students at Harvard in 2001 clocked in at a high 49 percent. Compare that to 1985, when the percentage of A’s was less than a third! Did chemistry just get a whole lot easier? We think not.

Grade inflation has become somewhat normalized, if not openly accepted, by a large portion of the academic community. It allows students to put in less effort while still yielding a rewarding GPA -- since the ’60s, the average GPA within the American university system has risen by 0.15 per decade! Where does that leave us now? Today, the average student at a private college has a 3.3 GPA, while at public institutions, the average GPA is 3.0.

In response, certain colleges are taking a stand and refusing to adhere to this unfair practice. Princeton University, Auburn University, Boston University, Purdue University and Harvey Mudd College are some of the select schools attempting to combat grade inflation. At BU, where students average a B and complain about the difficulty in receiving an A, graduating with a 3.5 GPA is considered exceptional.

While no one has figured out a way to effectively measure grade inflation on an established benchmark scale, universities that condemn this skewed academic model are placing heightened importance on course rigor and higher grading standards. Yet because there is little empirical data today analyzing the links among students, teachers and the grading process, there’s not a whole lot that universities can do to fully curtail lenient grading.

Some universities, like NYU’s Stern School of Business, use forced bell curves, which serve to award a predetermined percentage of A’s, B’s, C’s and so forth. By implementing a forced curve, the faculty assumes that competition will rise and students will therefore need to work harder for the grade they desire. Should a class flunk a test as a whole, however, the bell curve still permits a student to reap an A, even though his or her raw test score might have been a C! So while they keep grade distribution intact, forced curves may also fail to reflect a student’s true academic ability.

As students, it’s somewhat beneficial to receive these easy A’s -- after all, between work, soccer practice and social lives, keeping up a decent GPA isn’t exactly our idea of a good time. Nevertheless, being challenged in a university setting prepares us for challenges in the real, working world.

Getting accustomed to just coasting along discredits the fundamental notion of a university’s core purpose and equates superior students with the less competent. For hardworking students fighting to get into law school or conscientious grads trying to score that coveted entry-level position, grade inflation is a disservice.

And with that, I’ll now return to my studies.