I just finished up recording students’ grades for the two classes I taught in the spring 2006 semester. As usual, I and my TAs received our fair share of pleas from students to give them a few more points to bring them up to the next highest grade. This regular ritual prompted me to read about accusations of “grade deflation” at Boston University:

A study in the university’s College of Arts of Sciences found that from 1972-73 to 2003-4, the percentage of A’s and B’s went up by a few percentage points (to 79 from 75) and the percentage of C’s went down slightly (to 18 from 21). Meanwhile, Boston University has managed to attract a student body with far higher grades, class rank and SAT scores than it did a generation ago.

All this has occurred against a backdrop of rampant grade inflation, some of it just across the Charles River. By the early 2000’s, 9 of every 10 Harvard graduates received honors at commencement and nearly half of all undergraduate grades were A or A-minus. . . .

A skeptic could contend that Harvard students are so gifted that the stratospheric grades reflect the collective brain-power, except that in state universities that are far less selective, the same phenomenon holds. At the University of Minnesota’s main campus, 40 percent of undergraduate grades are A’s. The percentage of A’s at the University of Delaware went up by half, to 35 percent, from 1987 to 2002.

The article notes that many students seem to feel that for the $40,000 or so they’re spending at elite colleges, they should be entitled to inflated grades, especially when many count on those grades to give them a competitive advantage when it comes to applying for graduate or professional schools once they graduate.

My take is that no student is “entitled” to any grade -- s/he earns what s/he deserves. The current generation of students are apparently used to and expect immediate gratification in whatever they do. For them, it may come as somewhat of a shock to learn that the academic world and professor’s lives do not revolve around their needs.

Instead, in order to do well and earn a good grade, they need to put in the time, do the work, and be judged by objective standards. After all, that’s what getting a college education should be about.