Noah Carl’s piece today for the Daily Sceptic describes, accurately, the widespread phenomenon of grade inflation at universities – both in the U.S. and the U.K. He reasons, drawing on the work of economist Stuart Rojstaczer, that this is attributable to a “consumer-based approach to teaching” in which academic pay and promotion are linked to student-based course evaluations. As Carl puts it:
Basically: if they’re too stingy with their grades, they’ll receive lousy evaluations, and in addition to the stress of dealing with irate students, they’ll be less likely to advance in their careers.
Now, I don’t know about the situation at American universities. But as regards British ones, this explanation is dead wrong – for two simple reasons, which are themselves highly instructive as regards the state of higher education in the U.K.
The first reason is that academic promotions – certainly from the middle of the university league tables upwards – are almost exclusively based, not on teaching quality, but on research quality. Your average Russell Group Vice-Chancellor couldn’t give two hoots about what happens in the classroom; come rain or shine, they are guaranteed to get all the bums on seats that they need in order to keep the show on the road in terms of student fees. VC pay is linked to performance, and performance generally means improvements in league table rankings, which brings prestige and (usually) an increase in the number of high-paying international students. What improves league table positions? Well it’s down to a range of factors, but the only one that directly relates to individual staff performance is the quality of their research. (Something called ‘teaching quality’ is also often included, but this, importantly, does not actually mean teaching quality in a way a lay person would understand it – more on that below.) Naturally, this makes research quality the only really relevant metric in who gets promoted and who doesn’t – although some universities do have promotional pathways for staff who just want to be good teachers, mainly to keep those staff members happy.
The idea, then, that staff are concerned about student evaluations is laughable. The only effort that most research-active academics at U.K. universities put into their teaching consists of finding ways to avoid having to spend time in the classroom – and this is almost entirely the product of how they are incentivised.
The second reason the Rojstaczer/Carl hypothesis is wrong is that, for related reasons to those discussed above, student evaluations generally take place way before students actually get their grades. Students evaluate course content typically in the last session of the semester, and get their exam results months later. Similarly, they fill in the National Student Survey (their single opportunity to assess their university experience in a neutral forum) roughly in the middle of their final year of study – i.e., months before they get their final degree classifications. The idea that staff are worried about student evaluations when they mark exams simply misunderstands the process – at least as far as common practice in the U.K. goes.
What are the real reasons for grade inflation, then? The main one is, in my experience, cultural. There is a kind of mother hen syndrome at work amongst many academic staff – a feeling that one should err on the side of generosity in all things when dealing with students. This is part of a wider cultural malaise, wherein the pursuit of excellence is in itself looked down upon as somehow harsh, patriarchal or ‘toxic’. I have been in staff sessions in which the opinion has been widely aired that it would be a good thing if all students got firsts – a concept that completely misunderstands the purpose of having exams, but which is indicative of the prevailing mood amongst a big cross-section of the academic profession. If one doesn’t particularly care about the pursuit of excellence, or indeed if one thinks it to be ‘problematic’, then the idea that a small number of excellent students should be set apart from their fellows as high-performers is an anathema. All must have prizes!
A subsidiary reason, though, is structural, and here we come back to league tables. Compilers of league tables can’t go into university classrooms and observe teaching. They therefore can’t actually assess ‘teaching quality’. But they do seem to feel as though teaching quality ought to be relevant in their rankings. So, what are some easy, rough-and-ready proxies for teaching quality? One is something called ‘continuation’, meaning the percentage of students who progress from one year to the next. If students get bad marks then they tend not to continue – or indeed are unable to continue if they fail. What if students get better marks, then? That’s one way in which universities benefit from grade inflation right there. Another proxy measure for teaching quality used in league table rankings is ‘graduate prospects’, meaning the number of graduates who get jobs or are in further study after graduating. What increases the likelihood that a graduate will get a job after graduating, or go on to postgraduate study? A good degree classification will certainly help. So there’s another way in which universities benefit from the grade inflation game.
Grade inflation, in other words, partly results from the weird obsession with driving down standards which is evident in every aspect of our culture. But it is also strongly linked to the desire of university VCs to ascend league tables by gaming the statistics upon which league tables are compiled. And, sure enough, most universities have over the past 10-20 years deliberately incentivised both higher grades (by dumbing down marking criteria) and higher degree classifications (through wheezes such as allowing students to disregard the worst-marked module in their final year when the overall classification is calculated) – with the result that employers now genuinely struggle to know whether somebody they are considering hiring, who has a first class degree, is any good or not.
You might draw the conclusion from this that university league tables are a really stupid and pernicious idea, and that maybe universities would survive perfectly happily without them, much as supermarkets, clothes shops, online retailers and driving schools somehow manage to struggle along and provide a decent service without being comprehensively ranked by the Guardian or the Times every 12 months. And you would be correct to do so.
Busqueros is a pseudonym.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
More delusional reporting about how the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer’s policies have a significant bearing on the cost of UK debt.
The UK is already bankrupt. Like most countries with a bloated overbearing state.
I’m not defending Rachel Reeves or any politician, but some minor policies which represent a drop in our ocean of debt is what wrecked our economy.
That should be “isn’t what wrecked our economy”
My take on the matter:
1.) Any reasonable market analyst or investor must have had strong suspicions about a Labour government anyway, as historically every single Labour government left the economy in worse shape than is had been before they took over.
2.) But they gave Starmer’s government the benefit of doubt. Maybe this time it will be different. You never know.
3.) By now they have realized that their suspicions were well founded, Labour haven’t got a clue and Rachel from Accounts is indeed incompetent.
4.) Borrowing cost up, pound devalued as a result.
Liz Truss may have been a careless driver but was never given a chance to improve. Whereas Rachel Reeves is totally reckless behind the wheel. Her licence to kill our economy should be immediately withdrawn with a life ban.
Rubbish.
Reeves is deliberately trashing the economy, targeting those who Labour hates.
Truss would have been the best Tory PM in 14 years, except she went too fast, too soon and was mugged by the blob. They couldn’t have her fracking, ending ECHR, moving our embassy to Jerusalem, lowering taxes.
Listen to her recent interviews and she, for my money, is leading the charge against the blob that is the real enemy within. She understands and explains how we need a people’s movement, properly led and focused on the 5th Column.
This naive reporting angers me, to be honest.
I agree. In fact this is typical pseudo-journalism. Kate Andrews seeks to make a thesis out of a very straightforward bit of politics, not economics just vicious politics.
Rachel from accounts is acting under orders and those orders are to destroy the British economy and its people. Andrews hasn’t worked this out yet and has sought a hi-brow explanation. The reality is she hasn’t got a scooby and is talking nonsense.
She works for Gove. That’s all you need to know.
Good point.
What was unknown at the time of the Truss budget was that the pensions industry had decided to play casino games with the money in the pension schemes by using LDIs. The Bank of England also neglected to inform Truss or Kwarteng that they selling off a tranche of QE bonds when the budget was announced in what could be seen as a deliberate act of sabotage.
Rachel from Accounts had fucked up all on her own and delivered mortgage rates higher than Truss did.
Let’s not forget that the “necessary intervention” to shore up the LDI pension scheme included the Bank of England’s own pension scheme.
I’m sure the “intervention” was completely necessary and nothing to do with that
That’s more like it.
Interesting (to me) that the thesis in the article alleges that ‘Rachel Reeves is Making the Same Mistake as Liz Truss‘
Surely a more valid comparison would be between Truss and Starmer – what with them both being PM? Or between Kwarteng and Reeves.
I think Starmer is being let off too lightly on the fiscal incompetence argument.
I do not believe there is “fiscal incompetence.” It is inconceivable that so many ministers and civil servants could be acting in a manner so patently fiscally incontinent. They are acting under orders and those orders are to destroy the economy and thus the nation. Nothing these days is as it seems.
I stopped my Spectator subscription because of this person. Needless to say I did not waste my time reading the article.
I suspect that the exchange rate plays more of a role than is discussed here. The govt wants to repay loans in pounds, but why would an investor want to have pounds? The govt is trashing the productive part of the economy, via unnecessary increases in energy prices, taxes, and regulations.
What use will a pound be in 5 years time?
Why would they want to “finance the transition” when “the transition£ is clearly going to destroy our economy since it’s intended to outsource all manufacturing and ensure we have the most expensive energy on the planet?
If the markets (in 22) were mainly reacting to the government’s plan to subsidise energy costs, why didn’t they react two weeks earlier when the announcement was actually made and why didn’t the enormous cost of lockdowns create any panic?
A very simplistic assessment.
Truss’ budget was a lukewarm centrist plan with a strong empirical basis. The energy subsidy was ill advised but despite her plan being thrown out the energy subsidy continued as did money printing and currency devaluation. Furthermore the continuing vast green energy subsidies still continue despite the high debt and low productivity of the UK. The article fails to grasp deeper problems.