Whose fault is it? Assigning blame for grade inflation in higher education

R. Todd Jewell, Michael A. McPherson and Margie A. Tieslau

Applied Economics, 2013, vol. 45, issue 9, 1185-1200

Abstract: This study attempts to isolate the potential sources of grade inflation and to measure their relative importance. We incorporate existing models of grade inflation into a model of grade inflation at the department level. Our data comprise 1683 separate courses taught in 28 different academic departments by 3176 distinct instructors at a large public university over two decades. Our results suggest that incentives to inflate grades vary according to characteristics of academic departments. However, the vast majority (over 90%) of grade inflation observed in our data is estimated to be a result of either university-level factors or instructor-specific characteristics.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2011.621884

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