Summary of Grade Inflation Gone Wild

Stuart Rojstaczer, the geophysics professor of Duke University, offers a profound

perspective about the grade inflationin educational circles in Grade Inflation Gone

Wild, which was published in 2009s Christian Science Monitor. He claims that

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nowadaysgrade inflation has become a troublesome issue which has huge negative
that isnt used in academic writing.

effects on both schools and students. Although it is tough to fix the problems, the

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universities still get a chance and also need to take efforts to rescue the quality of
to replace take

education in the US.

The author argues that in 1960s, grade inflation firstly became a national

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problem, taking a saddle pattern among the next 30 years. Neither private schools nor

publics school nor anyone can escape the influence of grade inflation. Even nowadays,

with an increasing number of queries about US higher education quality, the grades

still sustain rising. The average GPA of public schools has reaches 3.0 when that of

many top schools in the state is over 3.2.

A recent research of over 30,000 freshmen in the US indicates that, due to the

fact that getting a B+ or better is much easier than before, over half students waste

more time on recreations like drinking rather than learning. Such surveys reflect the

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serious impacts of grade inflationthat if this inflation continues, not only will the
if grade inflation continues you need to work on the
construction. some options are:
students get a limited education, but also will lead to some harmful habits.
of grade inflation, emphasizing that if grade inflation
continues
In spite of the grim situation, the example of Princeton University mentioned in
of grade inflation. The results imply that if grade inflation
continues
the article shows that there are ways around this problem actually. To dampen the rise
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of grade, Princeton issued series of guidelines, restricting only 35 percentages of the not only will:
a) the students get/ b) will lead
students in the class to receive a grade of A. The impressible results demonstrate it is

possible for universities to keep the average of grades back down to normal values. So

do such efforts worked in Wellesley and Reed.

According to the successful cases, Rojstaczer concludes two main steps for the

solution of controlling grade inflation: acknowledging the existence of the problem

and bringing the adaptive policies into force. Unfortunately, few schools have adopted

Princetons rules because of the difficulty of implementation.

As Rojstaczer states at the end of the article, Making a switch will take hard

work, but the effort is worthwhile.It is duty-bound for schools to comeback academic

rigor so that the adverse effects of grade inflation on students can be reduced

gradually. The author draws more public attention, prompting more people to be

aware of the problems caused by grade inflation. In this way, all sectors of society are

able to apply themselves to improve the education from various aspects.