Woebegone

A really revealing piece in Inside Higher Ed, "Woebegone About Grade Inflation," on professorial attitudes toward grade inflation. Authors Janice McCabe and Brian Powell draw four conclusions:

First, most professors believe grade inflation occurs at their university, but few believe it occurs in their department, and even fewer in their own classes. . . .

Second, most professors view student pressure as a key factor fueling other professors' grading practices and grade inflation, but few admit they experience this pressure, and fewer acknowledge they are influenced by it. . . .

Third, most professors assert a link between grades and student evaluations, but they also express faith in their students and their evaluations' ability to distinguish between the best and worst teachers. . . .

Fourth, most professors believe average grades should be lower on campus, but would like to see a higher grade distribution in their own classes. . . .

What do these deep contradictions mean? McCabe and Powell offer a compelling explanation:

These four seeming contradictions provide another illustration of what social psychologists refer to as self-enhancing tendencies: that individuals believe they are better than average and that their situation is distinct from others. This is the social psychological equivalent of the Lake Wobegon Effect, "where all the children are above average." The Lake Wobegon Effect is referred to repeatedly in the public discourse over grade inflation, although in that discourse, students, not professors, are being rated as above average.

The self-enhancing tendency helps explain why professors believe that grade inflation exists but their grades do not contribute to it, why student pressure and student evaluations influence others' grading but not their own, and why grades in their classes should be higher but grades at the university level (and other universities) should be lower.

The entire piece is well worth reading for what it says about grade inflation and for what it says about the self-enhancing (and self-deluding) professorial mind. (Click on the title of the article above.)