The professors determine the grade in courses don't they. They deserve the blaim. Shelby T. would never allow that kind of stuff in Polymer Science.

Outside Observer wrote:

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If one did a careful functional analysis of professor grade inflation behavior, I think you'd find, in many cases, that they are simply doing what their employer encourages them to do.

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If a functional analysis revealed evidence of employer encouragement of grade inflation,this should be reported immediately to the appropriate authorities,including the media. I can tell from reading the posts on this board that the faculty is very vocal when injustices occur and I encourage them to rise to the occasion.

Honest Grader wrote:

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Straight Road wrote: Outside Observer wrote: If one did a careful functional analysis of professor grade inflation behavior, I think you'd find, in many cases, that they are simply doing what their employer encourages them to do.  If a functional analysis revealed evidence of employer encouragement of grade inflation,this should be reported immediately to the appropriate authorities,including the media. I can tell from reading the posts on this board that the faculty is very vocal when injustices occur and I encourage them to rise to the occasion. What you suggest is very difficult to accomplish, Straight Road.  I know of a tenured prof who graded honestly for the A, B and Cs but would bend somewhat on the Ds and Fs.  Her introductory science course typically had 55% getting Ds and Fs.  Her evaluation were good, but not excellent. The students with the good grades appreciated a good teacher, but students with poor grades resented being forced to study.  These students didn't even read the evaluation questions, but just gave the prof very low marks on all questions.   The Dean got complaints from parents and asked the chair to have someone else teach the course.  When an untenured faculty member was put in, the grades of the student improved, but the better students said they weren't challenged and were afraid they wouldn't past the  exam they were require to take to get into professional schools.   However, the majority of the class was happy, the parents were happy, the Dean was happy, the chair was happy and the new prof got very good teaching evaluation which helped toward raises, promotion and tenure.

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Egg-zactly!!!

If true grades were given at USM right now with a true national achievement standard measuring stick, only about 30% of USM students would pass. USM's student body has slipped to junior college level and nobody's weeding out because of Shelby's favorite "R" word: Retention.

By definition alone, the vast majority of Mississippi students statewide would be below average. How can the 50th state educationally hope to stack up against states where students actually want to learn?

Disappointed Woman wrote:

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I read these posts with great astonishment and disappointment. Grade inflation is a form of fraud and I see on this board that our honored professors readily confess to perpertrating this act. These men and women who refer to themselves as "scholars" and who pine for "shared governance" and such hide behind the lame excuses that everyone does it and that the administration made me do it. There may be a bigger group of hypocrites than college faculty members but I have yet to find them. Those of you with school children should ask them if it's OK to give students a higher grade than they have earned.

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Please consider, Disappointed Women, the situation a new faculty member is in when teaching at USM.  They hear, "We are not MIT or Harvard" which means to them our students can't perform as well.  However, they still don't know what to expect.  They may think, "Well, I didn't attend Harvard either so I expect the students to perform at about as they did at the state college I attended".  Then they discover that a large percentage of USM students will not do homework and expect to be told what to memorize to pass each test without reading the material.  They are shocked at the large numbers who fail their test.  They hear their Chair, Dean, Provost and President speak about the need for retention.  In the business world this would be a direct order to treat the paying customer a certain way.  They are consumed with getting research done and research grants because they are told they won't get tenure unless they do. 

Now other than start looking for another job, which some do, what would you do?  Some think, "maybe my teaching is too hard and I expect too much".  Others give up and get out.   One faculty member even told me he found a student in his class that didn't graduate from high school.  The student dropped out after a couple of months and six years later got a GED and into a Community College and then USM.   The student was not ready to study university level material, but there he was in class evaluating a professor's teaching.     

Charismatic Instructor wrote:

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Straight road wrote:
The professors determine the grade in courses don't they. They deserve the blaim.
Grade inflation began with the establishment of mandated teacher evaluations to be used in personnel decisions. It's a swap off. Tit for Tat. An unwritten agreement. By the way, an anonymous evaluation is not worth the paper its written on.

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Grade inflation is a fact of life at all universities, including those boasting vines of ivy. When did it start? I think charismatic instructor is right about this. (By the way, Glamser was head of a committee to study grade inflation at USM.) I also think parents are partially to blame, disappointed woman. They scream and yell when their children's self image is damaged by a grade. They think the teacher is to blame when the student is only average in a subject--or when the student didn't work hard enough or wasn't self disciplined enough to do better.

Grade inflation does not start in college. Have you ever seen those "My child is an honor student" bumper stickers? Those are bought in bulk. At one of the large local high schools, sixty percent of the students graduate with honors. Public school teachers who try to grade honestly find that parents and administrators make their lives unpleasant, and they risk being unemployed.

tide has it right. this begins in the public schools, particularly high school. i know a number of hs teachers and they feel pressured from administrators and parents to give students high grades. some teachers give incredible amounts of extra credit, don't require assignments to be turned in time, and allow students to redo assignments until they get it right. work can be done in class, not at home. now there are also some that make them tow the line--typically those teaching AP classes. but students bring these attitudes to universities and faculty are forced to deal with these attitudes--sometimes the change is quite a shock.