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Journal of Economic Perspeclives-
5
1
Winter 1991
Paprs 159-170
Grade Inflation and Course Choice
Richard Sabot; John Wakeman-Linn
The number of students graduating from American colleges and universities who had majored in the sciences declined from 1970--71 to
1984--85, both as a proportion of the steadily growing total and in absolute terms (U.S. Department of Education, 1987). This decline has prompted forecasts of a nation of scientific illiterates and a loss of economic competitiveness. The Director of the National Science Foundation, Ernest Bloch, put it this way in a speech at Carleton College (July 13, 1988):
The nation depends upon undergraduate education to prepare not only the small number of students who will become research scientists and engineers, but also the many other students who will have to function effectively in an increasingly technological world. That is a difficult and very important task. . . . The college age population is shrinking. Declines (in science enrollments) are inevitable unless the proportion of students pursuing science and engineering increases-and there is little evidence of that. Somehow, we must persuade more students to study science and engineering.
Other trends in student course choice, like the rise in enrollments in "vocational" courses, have also elicited concern. The most common response by faculty and administration concerned tvith these patterns of demand has been to tighten quantitative restrictions: distribution requirements have been altered with the aim of bolstering enrollments in the sciences.
Richard Sabot is Professor of Economics and Jol n Wakeman-Linn is Assistant Professor of Economics, both at Williams College, Williamstomn, Massachusetts. Sabot is also Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Polity Research Institute, Washington, D.C.
However, faculty bear some responsibility for these patterns of student choice which they bemoan. Students make their course choices in response to a powerful set of incentives: grades. These incentives have been systematically distorted by the grade inflation of the past 2:i years. As a consequence of inflation, many universities have split into high--and low-grading departments. Economics, along with Chemistry and Viath, tends to be low-grading. Art, English, Philosophy, Psychology, and Political Science tend to be high-grading.
As a Yale senior, interviewed by Tke Nem fork Times (1988) for an article on honors and grade inflation, explained, "It's pretty hard...