There’s been a fair amount of buzz lately about grade inflation. It’s endemic in our schools—both at high schools and colleges. It’s also present in our society at large in a couple of ways; one of which is merely tedious, the other more symptomatic of the way social relations tend, over time, to undermine “standards,” leading to a broader diagnosis of social decadence.
The first of the social aspects is the superficial dilution of meaning resulting from our media-drenched, advertising-driven society. Superlatives are overused to the point of meaninglessness. We’ve run out of synonyms for ‘bigger and better.’ Merely “super” can’t hold a candle to “ultra,” “hyper,” “mega,” and “ultimate.” I call on the linguists of the world to come up with some new adjectives so we can differentiate the various grades of soap-induced cleanliness, internet speeds, and pizzas. It’s confusing and tiresome, but this is the fluff of our modern consumer culture.
A second social aspect shows up in the titles of people who work in large organizations. There was a time when to be a bank “Vice-President” was a big deal. Now, at the top ten US banks, there are more than 250,000 people with that title or higher. The situation is similar in the government. Before WWII, fewer than 40 people were at the rank of “Assistant Secretary” or higher. By 1975, that number had quintupled and since then, it has tripled again, so that we now have 500-600 senior bureaucrats who are entitled to a 17-gun salute. It’s a similar story in the US military. Before WWII, we had about 160 Generals (or other one-star equivalents), by the end of the Vietnam War we had almost 1200, with a dip since then to about 900. (and the ratio of generals to total troop levels has almost doubled!).
This title-inflation is not new, Samuel Finer, in his macro-study of governments 30 years ago, described this phenomenon as going back thousands of years. We’ve just taken it to a new level. Part of the growth is due to the increased complexity and scope of activity of both commercial and governmental organizations.
However, I suspect that a good portion is due to social dynamics. Everybody likes to have a bigger and better title. It’s almost always easier to “pay” people with a title than with money or actual power. So, instead of populating lower ranks with more responsibility, we give away shiny new titles. Necessarily, these are worth relatively less since there’s more of them and status is usually a function of exclusivity. Then we have to create more senior titles to have room to promote people who used to be what has become a relatively lowly rank of “vice-president;” thus the profusion of “senior,” “executive,” “senior executive,” and similar adjectival enhancements (not to mention the relatively recent spawning of the “C-suite”).
There’s something similar at work in academia. Across the country, high school GPAs have risen from 2.5 to about 3.25 over the past 75 years (mostly in the last 20 years). A recent study at Harvard showed that 60% of grades were “A”s as compared with 25% at the turn of the century. If this were consumer prices, the Federal Reserve would have clamped down a long time ago.
There are multiple dynamics at work here. Public high schools and colleges are under tremendous pressure to “deliver” graduates. So, in a perverse sense, “failure is not an option.” If “barely acceptable” performance is expected to “earn” a “C/C+” in order to ensure that students could graduate, then decent performance would thus be due at least a B- or a B. This didn’t leave very much room to distinguish between different performance levels among the better students.
When I was grading at SF State, I went along with the University average, which was a B-. I wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t going to penalize my students for my (archaic) standards if they were competing with others whose professors were using easier grading scales than I did. In addition, no one wanted to increase the chances of unhappy students or irate parents (they were our “customers,” after all). It was much easier to avoid the potential conflict of rigorous assessment. The entire system was perverted and, in the end, certainly did not benefit students who emerged with an increasingly worthless sheepskin.
At more “elite” schools, the spin is different. There is an inbuilt assumption of student capability. I’m sure at Harvard, they would argue that of course their students did work at the “A” level. After all, they had gotten into Harvard. Regardless, of the rationalization, the result is the same: watering down of standards. I’m reminded of the famous picture from Germany in the 1920s, with people pushing a wheelbarrow full of cash down the street to buy their groceries. Part of the reason that a college degree isn’t worth what it used to (even if it costs a lot more to procure) is that it doesn’t signify as much. Employers are appalled and have to ratchet down their expectations of what a 3.5 GPA would mean in terms of skill level.
Even universities are appalled (at least their admissions offices). High school grades don’t mean much anymore. For a while, standardized testing was seen as a useful complement to GPAs in predicting collegiate success, but those tests were frequently tossed aside over the past couple of decades as being biased against students from more challenging environments. This left college admissions pretty much at sea (or at least at C+!). Lately, however, the tests have been making a comeback, in part because the system needs some standards to evaluate the deluge of applicants.
This can’t end well. If we look at the global history of devalued currency (not just Germany in the 1920s), many countries ended up tossing their old denominations (too many zeros) and recasting their currencies with new names and new banknotes. A central bank could do this since it controlled the entire system. There’s no cohesion across our 20,000+ of high schools or our almost 4,000 colleges. Even if they could get it together, any attempt to institute a new standard would likely be challenged in court and never implemented. As to institutional title inflation, there is even less hope.
I guess it’s pretty normal that older folks bemoan the dilution of the standards under which they (I) grew up. That doesn’t make it wrong.
The first of the social aspects is the superficial dilution of meaning resulting from our media-drenched, advertising-driven society. Superlatives are overused to the point of meaninglessness. We’ve run out of synonyms for ‘bigger and better.’ Merely “super” can’t hold a candle to “ultra,” “hyper,” “mega,” and “ultimate.” I call on the linguists of the world to come up with some new adjectives so we can differentiate the various grades of soap-induced cleanliness, internet speeds, and pizzas. It’s confusing and tiresome, but this is the fluff of our modern consumer culture.
A second social aspect shows up in the titles of people who work in large organizations. There was a time when to be a bank “Vice-President” was a big deal. Now, at the top ten US banks, there are more than 250,000 people with that title or higher. The situation is similar in the government. Before WWII, fewer than 40 people were at the rank of “Assistant Secretary” or higher. By 1975, that number had quintupled and since then, it has tripled again, so that we now have 500-600 senior bureaucrats who are entitled to a 17-gun salute. It’s a similar story in the US military. Before WWII, we had about 160 Generals (or other one-star equivalents), by the end of the Vietnam War we had almost 1200, with a dip since then to about 900. (and the ratio of generals to total troop levels has almost doubled!).
This title-inflation is not new, Samuel Finer, in his macro-study of governments 30 years ago, described this phenomenon as going back thousands of years. We’ve just taken it to a new level. Part of the growth is due to the increased complexity and scope of activity of both commercial and governmental organizations.
However, I suspect that a good portion is due to social dynamics. Everybody likes to have a bigger and better title. It’s almost always easier to “pay” people with a title than with money or actual power. So, instead of populating lower ranks with more responsibility, we give away shiny new titles. Necessarily, these are worth relatively less since there’s more of them and status is usually a function of exclusivity. Then we have to create more senior titles to have room to promote people who used to be what has become a relatively lowly rank of “vice-president;” thus the profusion of “senior,” “executive,” “senior executive,” and similar adjectival enhancements (not to mention the relatively recent spawning of the “C-suite”).
There’s something similar at work in academia. Across the country, high school GPAs have risen from 2.5 to about 3.25 over the past 75 years (mostly in the last 20 years). A recent study at Harvard showed that 60% of grades were “A”s as compared with 25% at the turn of the century. If this were consumer prices, the Federal Reserve would have clamped down a long time ago.
There are multiple dynamics at work here. Public high schools and colleges are under tremendous pressure to “deliver” graduates. So, in a perverse sense, “failure is not an option.” If “barely acceptable” performance is expected to “earn” a “C/C+” in order to ensure that students could graduate, then decent performance would thus be due at least a B- or a B. This didn’t leave very much room to distinguish between different performance levels among the better students.
When I was grading at SF State, I went along with the University average, which was a B-. I wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t going to penalize my students for my (archaic) standards if they were competing with others whose professors were using easier grading scales than I did. In addition, no one wanted to increase the chances of unhappy students or irate parents (they were our “customers,” after all). It was much easier to avoid the potential conflict of rigorous assessment. The entire system was perverted and, in the end, certainly did not benefit students who emerged with an increasingly worthless sheepskin.
At more “elite” schools, the spin is different. There is an inbuilt assumption of student capability. I’m sure at Harvard, they would argue that of course their students did work at the “A” level. After all, they had gotten into Harvard. Regardless, of the rationalization, the result is the same: watering down of standards. I’m reminded of the famous picture from Germany in the 1920s, with people pushing a wheelbarrow full of cash down the street to buy their groceries. Part of the reason that a college degree isn’t worth what it used to (even if it costs a lot more to procure) is that it doesn’t signify as much. Employers are appalled and have to ratchet down their expectations of what a 3.5 GPA would mean in terms of skill level.
Even universities are appalled (at least their admissions offices). High school grades don’t mean much anymore. For a while, standardized testing was seen as a useful complement to GPAs in predicting collegiate success, but those tests were frequently tossed aside over the past couple of decades as being biased against students from more challenging environments. This left college admissions pretty much at sea (or at least at C+!). Lately, however, the tests have been making a comeback, in part because the system needs some standards to evaluate the deluge of applicants.
This can’t end well. If we look at the global history of devalued currency (not just Germany in the 1920s), many countries ended up tossing their old denominations (too many zeros) and recasting their currencies with new names and new banknotes. A central bank could do this since it controlled the entire system. There’s no cohesion across our 20,000+ of high schools or our almost 4,000 colleges. Even if they could get it together, any attempt to institute a new standard would likely be challenged in court and never implemented. As to institutional title inflation, there is even less hope.
I guess it’s pretty normal that older folks bemoan the dilution of the standards under which they (I) grew up. That doesn’t make it wrong.
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