ABSTRACT
In a statistical study, Professor Valen Johnson demonstrated the impact of grade inflation at Duke University. Grade inflation undermines that structure of common meanings and thereby encourages each professor to make idiosyncratic decisions about upward departures—or, much more rarely, downward departures—from traditional interpretation of grades. Dartmouth professors subscribed to an egalitarian ideology that overrode the view that grading the academic performance of students is a responsibility of college professors, despite the unhappiness that students may feel over bad grades. The best scholars and best teachers may be disadvantaged in competition for tenure and promotions. If this is true, grade inflation not only diminishes student achievement; it can diminish faculty excellence also. Grade inflation continues to characterize not only selective colleges like Harvard but most, if not all, American colleges and universities. Grade inflation distorts the selection process by which undergraduates choose teachers and courses and thereby indirectly results in greater popularity of some disciplines than they deserve on educational grounds.
