Dear college student who's not happy with your grade in my class:

[cab67]

15. We can get in real trouble if we don't accept some level of inflation.

I'm not defending it in the least. However, a colleague at a different university was once called to the provost's office to explain why one third of his class received a grade of D or F. No amount of "But they didn't pass the exams" worked. This was someone who'd taught the course for many years and who encountered an unusually low-achieving group that particular term. He thought (correctly, in my view) that it was disrespectful to students who'd done well in previous terms to assign decent grades to students who didn't earn them.

My institution has an expected grade distribution for large-enrollment undergraduate courses. Suprisingly enough, it has nearly always worked well for students in the C+ through A+ range - most students earning A's are in the 90's (with a few 89's), the B range doesn't fall too far below 80 percent, and most C plusses are in the high 70's. The inflation is all at the low end, which is why I've got students with a class average in the 50's getting D's.

I typically reserve D minuses for students who would otherwise get an F, but whom I know to have tried very hard and had something getting in their way. I can't justify a good grade, but would rather at least give a passing one.

Bear in mind, the inflation starts long before they show up for college. We now have a workshop for first-year students before fall classes start that essentially tells them how to be a student. I mean things like taking notes, actually reading the textbook, paying attention to what's on the syllabus - stuff that, when started college in the 1980's, was assumed to be within the toolbox of every incoming freshman.

I could go on and on about why this is happening. I think the current emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests is partly to blame. When I started in this field, I would have lots of students ask how to study for a test. I still do, but I'm increasingly having students ask me how to take the test. That's a very different question. "By knowing the material" doesn't ever seem to be one of the strategies they've considered.

I'm not an expert on the subject, so I'm sure it's a complex and multifaceted problem. But the problem is real enough.