美国数学建模竞赛特等奖论文——1998 B O Grade Infation A Systematic Approach【数学建模】.pdfVIP

Grade Inflation: A Systematic Approach 315 Grade Inflation: A Systematic Approach to Fair Achievement Indexing Amanda M. Richardson Jeff P. Fay Matthew Galati Stetson University 421 N. Woodland Blvd. Deland, FL 32720 Advisor: Erich Friedman Background Constantly rising grade-point averages at universities across the nation have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between “excellent” and “average” students. For example, The Chronicle of Higher Education found that the mean grade-point average (GPA) at Duke University was 3.3 in 1997, up from the 1969 mean of 2.7. It also found that Duke is not alone in this trend. Average grades have consistently increased while the system of measure- ment has remained unchanged. Receiving an A in a course does not necessarily denote exceptional performance, since the percentage of students receiving As has increased dramatically over the last few decades. In 1995, the Yale Daily News reported that As and Bs constituted 80% of grades at Yale. According to the New York Times (4 June 1994), nearly 90% of grades at Stanford were As or Bs, and an estimated 43% of grades at Harvard and 40% at Princeton were As. This situation has led many universities to seek new methods for ranking student performance. Some say that expectations and grading difficulty have dropped from the faculty point of view, while others argue that the quality of student has been on the rise. Whatever the cause, a major problem arises when scholarship foundations or graduate schools try to distinguish exactly who deserves to be c The UMAP Journal 19 (3) (1998) 315–322. Copyright 1998 by COMAP, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or c