GPA Rising? Building a Model of Grade Inflation

In this study we examined factors surrounding grade inflation which continues to be a concern in institutions ofhigher education. We argue that while GPAs may be rising, it is due to amultitude of internal and external influencers, including environmentalpressures, student, faculty, program and curriculum variables as well as severalothers, and not necessarily to the awarding of improper grades. We proposed amodel consisting of 13 factors that theoretically have a positive or negativeinfluence on grade point averages (GPAs) and an additional four that requirefurther investigation. We then used historical GPA data from a small universityin the Western United States to test and refine the model. The data consist ofover 8 million data points and cover the period from Fall of 2006 through theSpring of 2020. We found noevidence of rising GPAs in the aggregate data, and found falling and risingGPAs in the two colleges of the case university respectively. We found asignificant negative effect on GPAs for four of our propositions: openenrollment, adjunct faculty, hard discipline, online; and three significantpositive effects on GPA for three others: traditional undergraduate 100-200level, persistence, graduate student. We also show that there are many factorsinvolved in rising GPAs over the past few decades. The question remains as towhether the grades that students receive are indeed reflective of the qualityof work submitted, however the ultimate proof is graduates' success in themarketplace. We provide several suggestions for further research and presentsome ideas to consider if grade inflation is still a concern. We hope thatother institutions of higher education will use and adapt our model toinvestigate potential grade inflation in their own organizations.