Grade Inflation

If you are a teacher, whether in a school or a university, ask yourself a simple question: The marks/grades received by your students, do they truly reflect the level of learning of that subject.

I have asked this question to a lot of people in many colleges, and not surprisingly, the answer has been in the negative. If you are an affiliated college, do most students getting close to 100 percent marks a reflection on their level of learning. Nobody would argue in positive there. If you are a university, does everyone getting an "A" grade in final year project reflect the quality of projects done at your university. (Simple test: Would you put up the project report online in a publicly accessible site for all projects who have been awarded an "A" grade?)

And yet, when one raises the issue of grade inflation, the attackers are ready. Anyone talking of grade is giving too much importance to evaluation, and not learning. Evaluation leads to stress and reduced learning. I am going to argue here that having an honest grading would actually support learning.

Another argument one hears is that since everyone does grade inflation, if we don't do it, our students will suffer during placement, which is something that I disagree with.

In an ideal world, we would all have great teachers who have this wonderful command of their subjects, have a great ability to motivate students to learn their respective subjects, and all our students come to college only to learn new things. We probably won't even need evaluations in an ideal world.

In real world, the faculty members mostly know their stuff, but are not able to impress students with their performance in the class. And students have the innate capability to learn those topics, but have been told by their seniors that only a few courses need to be learnt for placement, which can be done in 2 months before the placement season. Yes, CGPA is somewhat important because many companies will do shortlisting based on CGPA. So just worry about a respectable grade, and ignore learning. That can be done, as I said above, in 2 months.

So, in the real world, the only handle a good enough faculty has to "encourage" a good enough student to learn is a grade. Note that some students would learn despite faculty. And some faculty would be able to motivate students despite evaluations. But those are outliers and not the mainstream. And if the only handle you got is a grade, then not using that handle is not just dereliction of duty, but a criminal waste of national resources.

The fear that honest grading will lead to poor placement is far fetched. In fact, opposite will happen. If you insist on hard work, most students will deliver on that and will learn better. You can actually do an experiment. In the final year BTech Project, just give an "Incomplete" grade to a few students and tell them that they are given 15 days to present again. And now notice the amount of hard work they do in those 15 days. It would be absolutely remarkable. After that hard work, in any interview, they will be able to answer any question about their project and will sail through easily.

We should also look at the placement data more carefully. Among the popular jobs, how many students would not have been shortlisted if their CGPA was less by 0.2 or 0.3, and how many of those eventually got those jobs. The number could be non-zero, but will not be large, particularly for technical jobs. And if their technical skills were strong, many more of those shortlisted would have got the job.

A few years ago, I collected data on grades of graduating batch from several institutions. It turned out that the top institutions who are famous for their quality of teaching learning processes had a median graduating CGPA around 7.3. Those which were like just behind had median graduating CGPA around 7.5. And our typical Tier 2 institutions were around 7.9 or 8.0. So it seems that higher the grade inflation, the lower is the placement.

Easy grading is a strong disincentive to learn in the context of Indian institutions, and frankly, it is done not because faculty is concerned about the career of the students, or about comparative grading practices of competing institutions, but mostly because faculty members do not wish to work hard on proper exams and proper grading. As I said above, most faculty members are aware that they are being dishonest in grading. And students are only too happy.