A report that Ball State has been inflating grades over the past 20 years has thrown the university into the spotlight, forcing it to examine how to measure grades.
A report written by economics professors Clarence Deitsch and T. Norman Van Cott said a higher percentage of Ball State students received A's and B's in 26 introductory courses in 2009 than in 1990, and that students' grade point averages also increased.
"An ‘A' today doesn't mean as much as it did in previous years," according to the report. "Likewise, ‘A's' at College X and College Y are losing comparability. The same holds for ‘A's' in, say, economics compared with English composition. Decades of college and university grade inflation, proceeding at varying rates across schools and disciplines, have stripped course grades of much of their evaluative content."
Provost Terry King said the professors are intelligent faculty members who are concerned about the quality of education at Ball State.
"I think they have identified a valid observation that over the years grades have increased in some courses, in fact many of the introductory courses, so I applaud them for finding that," he said. "I don't know how much of that increase is due to various factors and that's what would be most interesting to find out."
The report said grade-based honor rolls, deans' lists, graduation honors and class ranks are becoming "ho-hum awards," and Ball State's grade-point measures for cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude have each been bumped up by .2 points..
Sen. Jim Banks, R-Columbia City, wrote a letter to Ball State President Jo Ann Gora after reading the report in the Indiana Policy Review.
"I believe this could be a major issue we should address if evidence concludes grade inflation occurring at our public universities in Indiana," he said in the letter. "If it is a national trend, Indiana has an opportunity to show our integrity in addressing it quickly."
STUDYING FOR THE GRADE
Craig Ladwig, editor of the Indiana Policy Review, which ran the study in its publication, said the university's reaction has been less than stellar.
King told the Muncie Star Press that the report was an essay, not a study, and it just reported an observation.
"They can't say, ‘Well that's not a study' without saying, ‘Well what would a study look like?'" Ladwig said. "We have no desire to combat and battle with the university with it's tens of thousands worth of public relations funding, but we were kind of surprised by the university's response, especially the provost's response— this poo-pooing."
The university is reacting to an academic problem with public relations mechanisms, Ladwig said. But he said Ball State's reaction is changing.
King said he has shown respect and praised Deitsch and Van Cott from the beginning for being intelligent and having the interest of students' education at heart. He said the focus should now be on pinpointing the problems.
"The phenomenon is real," he said. "It has happened, and it's not only at Ball State but across the entire country. Every university I know of has had some experience with this.
The big question for us is, ‘What are the implications of it?' and ‘What can we do to ensure our students are getting a good experience here and a valid evaluation of their performance?'"
FINDING A SOLUTION
Landwig said Ball State needs to find a top down solution — where problems are identified and solved first at the administrative level.
"I can't imagine a solution where the individual professors can solve this, or the individual students for that matter," he said. "It's got to be from the administration and on down."
Grade inflation is a national problem and parents are looking for colleges with grade integrity, Landwig said.
"I think to the degree the study is a suggestion of a larger study that probably needs to be done, but by somebody independent," he said. "Apparently the universities are not capable of policing themselves in this way anymore."
King said the issue of grade inflation has come up numerous times within the past 10 years, and was brought to the University Senate's attention recently.
"I think the university, certainly the administration of the university, is very interested in making sure we have quality educational experiences for our students," he said. "So it's likely that over the summer I'll be putting together a small task force of people to look at this in more detail and come up with recommendations for the university."
One issue, King said, is that the dynamics in the classroom have changed since the early ‘90s.
"Go back many years," he said. "e at universities focused on what we were teaching and then filtering the students appropriately by how much we felt they'd learned what we taught. In the last 20 years, the emphasis has really changed. It's no longer on ‘what do we teach,' as it is ‘what do students learn?'
"That may play a role in grade point averages. I just don't know."
There's at least one thing King and Ladwig agree on — that the spotlight on the university is a chance to recognize a national problem.
"What a wonderful opportunity for Ball State University," Ladwig said. "There's a lot of colleges that made clear they will not deal with it, and they don't have someone like you and me pushing them to do it. If Ball State University is one of those few colleges that addresses it and comes up with a solution — a happy solution for both faculty and the administrators and students — that's a great opportunity."
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