Introductory Astronomy as a Measure of Grade Inflation

TL;DR

This study analyzes four years of introductory astronomy scores to assess student performance and quantify grade inflation across majors, revealing significant inflation and linking scores to GPA and SAT results.

Contribution

It introduces an objective grading scale to measure student performance and quantifies grade inflation across different college majors.

Findings

29% of students fail to meet minimal standards

Scores correlate with SAT and GPA

Grade inflation varies by major, up to 0.5 points

Abstract

We use four years of introductory astronomy scores to analyze the ability of the current population to perform college level work and measure the amount of grade inflation across various majors. Using an objective grading scale, one that is independent of grading curves, we find that 29% of intro astronomy students fail to meet minimal standards for college level work. Of the remaining students, 41% achieve satisfactory work, 30% achieve mastery of the topics. Intro astronomy scores correlate with SAT and college GPA. Sequential mapping of the objective grade scheme onto GPA finds that college grades are inflated by 0.2 for natural sciences majors, 0.3 for social sciences, professional schools and undeclared majors), 0.5 for humanities majors. It is unclear from the data whether grade inflation is due to easier grading curves or depression of course material. Experiments with student motivation tools indicates that poor student performance is due to deficiency in student abilities rather than social factors (such as study time or decreased interest in academics), i.e., more stringent admission standards would resolve grade inflation.