by Rachel Stewart

If you’re going to be enrolled at the highest-ranked college in America things just got a bit harder for you. Why?

Well, this week hundreds of faculty voted to curb what’s described as ‘grade inflation’ or the gradual trend of awarding higher academic grades for the same quality of work over time. It’s a situation that’s been steadily eroding real academic achievement whereby the number of A’s given out has basically made the grade meaningless. It’s the DEI of academia.

It’s been getting worse for a couple of decades, but high overall grades grew out of sight during and since the Covid lockdowns.

Poor babies. I am genuinely worried for those kids though. I mean, when you’re made to work harder and actually compete for the highest marks how much time will you have left over to actually do other leisure activities? You know, like chasing Jews off campus, attending trans rights rallies, and waving Palestinian flags around willy nilly? Changing the world and that sort of thing?

Back here during the “pandemic” nearly half of all grades at the University of Auckland were A’s.

A study completed last year titled Amazing Grades: Grade Inflation at New Zealand Universities by Dr James Kierstead with Dr Michael Johnston found the proportion of A grades has increased from 22% to 35% since 2006 – a rise that is very unlikely to have been caused by improvements in student performance.

An A grade today doesn't mean what it used to,” said Dr Kierstead. “It used to signal exceptional work. Now that meaning has been diluted.”

One of the key findings was finally someone saying out loud something we’ve all known, if we’re honest, for a long time. That the grade inflation at our universities is mainly the result of incentives constructed by the current university system, and notably its emphasis on student numbers, which academics often attempt to boost by giving out higher grades.

This from the report: “Administrations have made it clear that students equal funding,” a University of Auckland lecturer reported. “If your programme is perceived as too tough, your programme may lose students to other programmes.”

A Victoria University tutor described being told to pass all students who handed in their assessments. An AUT tutor received marking guidelines instructing full marks for any “proper attempt” to answer a number of questions, regardless of whether or not the answers were correct.

“Many academics understand what's happening but operate within a system that would penalise them for taking a rigorous approach to grading,” Dr Kierstead said. “We need a national conversation about grade inflation and how to reduce it. Until we change the underlying incentives, academics and universities will continue to hand out higher grades. At the moment, they don’t have much choice.”

So in other words, grade inflation arises from a culture that treats students as mere clients or customers, rewards lecturers for popularity rather than objectivity, and is fearful of any policy that might increase “stress” on students. No wonder universities are universally failing.

But here’s the real rub. Coming out of university with a misguided sense of thinking you know anything real is further compounded by grade inflation. And employers can no longer trust who actually did the hard work or who didn’t. That’s a problem.

How to distinguish between a graduate who takes risks and has initiative or one who’s just your average conformist? Anyway, it probably won’t matter soon because… AI.

But, before I go, have you noticed how common it is to encounter youngish bureaucrats who seem to have all the ideas up here but none of the practical skills to know the first thing about implementing them? Just look at your local councils. That’s a great place to get a feel for how useless academic degrees can really be. We are no longer producing great minds. We appear to be pumping out ever smaller ones.

This is what we’re increasingly up against, and it’s leading us nowhere good. Ole’.

Listen to the full episode of Riding Shotgun.