Grade Deflation

I had a student drop my class today because she was only making a solid B (85%). We’re one-fourth through the summer semester. She apparently wants to make an A in the class, probably in all of her classes as well. In emails, I’ve told her she’s doing fine and that if she wants to improve her work she should spend more time re-reading the assignments, getting help at the Writing Center, or finding a tutor to help her with her reading and writing. It’s a literature class with quite a bit of reading and writing. And she’s Asian, which means her problems with both reading and writing English (mostly American English, with its allusions, metaphors, etc.) make it that much more difficult for her. I’ve told her, as I’ve told others (full disclosure), that few students in my literature classes receive an A, usually no more than two or three students out of 20-25 a semester. A number of students receive a B, with a few getting C’s, and a very few D’s (the C’s and D’s are mostly from assignments regularly turned in late or off-topic). There’s no quota, but there are standards. And that’s the way it usually works out.

It’s always troubling when I have students who want and expect to receive A’s. And all too often their expectations are based on the assumption that if they just do the work, and work hard, that the A will follow. Their conception of grading is one criterion: effort = A. This is particularly true of Asian students. I’m not sure why this is, but it is. Perhaps they have an inflated sense of grade-point average, that they need a 4.0 to be the best, or maybe there’s a cultural expectation. And maybe they do get A’s in other courses, math and science, disciplines that don’t require an understanding of reading and writing in English. I would be thrilled if I would receive a C in a German literature class (I had four semesters of undergraduate German and one semester of graduate German) and pleasantly shocked if I were to get a B. But I don’t know that I would have been all that grade conscious in the first place. I took courses because they were required or because I wanted to. I did my best, when I wanted to, received the grades I got, and accepted them. And I certainly didn’t end up with a 4.0.

But students are different today (a statement that could probably be made in any generation about something or other (“Those kids today!”)). And I find it sad that the question now is too often not “How can I improve my learning?,” but rather “Why didn’t I get an A?” My student who dropped today didn’t like my answer to the question – basically, “You’re doing well, and if you want to do better you should get some help with your reading and writing at the Writing Center or with a tutor.” – and she bailed. She wanted an A because she wanted an A. She didn’t want to earn it. She’s just like too many other students who I see paying not for an education but for a diploma, a degree, a GPA. The student is the consumer, and the customer is always right. The commodification of education. And I retired just in time.