CRITIQUE OF FRADE INFLATION

Critique of Grade Inflation Student Name Institutional Affiliation Critique of Grade Inflation Public and private universities have come under criticism for increasing grades and grade point averages (GPA) for students. The adjustments made are independent of the abilities of the learners. Various scholars have criticized grade inflation. Among them is Brash Walter in his 2012 article titled, “Grade inflation; education degradation.” In this piece, Walter argues that teachers avoid hurting what he calls “the fragile psyche of the students” and hence end up inflating their grades. The author argues that grade inflation continues to make it challenging to distinguish the excellent students from the other average leaners. It is agreeable that the U.S. education system has become dysfunctional due to grade inflation. It has adverse effects on the standards of excellence for students (Tucker & Courts, 2010). Assessing the levels of student knowledge has now become challenging to determine. The author is right that the incompetence of instructors has been a major contributor to this phenomenon. For instance, the desire of instructors to be liked by the students has caused teachers to result in giving higher grades. Teachers hence have resulted in awarding higher grades as a way of getting more students to sign up for their courses. However, Walter fails to recognize why institutions of learning do grade inflation in the first place. Boleslavsky and Cotton (2014) have developed a game theory model to offer insight into the issue. Their model demonstrates that higher-quality institutions inflate grades more. This is because they are aware that their learners possess higher ability on average to conceal the students with lower abilities. Hence, grade inflation does not have a negative implication on...