 Under pressure: How faculty gender and contract uncertainty impact students’ gradesAmanda L. Griffith and Veronica Sovero Economics of Education Review, 2021, vol. 83, issue C Abstract: Although rising average grades appear to be common at post-secondary institutions in the U.S., there is still little work examining mechanisms driving this increase in grades. This paper uses data from a public research university to examine one mechanism in particular: instructor level incentives that are linked to gender and contract status. We hypothesize that instructors with more job uncertainty due to their rank will be most incentivized to award higher grades, as this may lead to better evaluations of teaching and an increase in retention probability. Our results indicate that students receive higher grades when their class is taught by a female instructor with more job uncertainty than if the class were taught by a tenured female faculty member. These higher grades appear to reflect more lenient grading rather than better preparation for follow-on courses. However, for students taking classes with male instructors, there is no significant difference across instructor rank in grades received. Our results have important implications for thinking about the role faculty contracts may play in affecting grading distributions. Keywords: Faculty contracts; Student grades; Gender differences (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:83:y:2021:i:c:s0272775721000455 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102126 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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