Grade inflation in UK higher education

Abstract

This paper examines the continual increase in the proportion of ‘good’ honour degrees awarded by UK universities since the mid-2000s. This trend has brought with it the charge of ‘grade inflation’ that may reflect falling standards in UK higher education. This issue has been raised in the national press and in government which brings into question the usefulness of the current degree classification system. Using a stochastic frontier strategy and university-wide data, we find evidence of grade inflation in UK higher education from 2009 onwards after controlling for changes in university efficiency in improving degree outcome and factors associated with degree performance. The data employed allow several other sub-themes to be explored. We confirm the findings from previous research that a student's pre-entry A-level score, region of domicile and previous schooling impact on degree performance. This paper contributes to the relatively thin UK literature that exists on ‘grade inflation’.

Keywords:

• higher education
• grade inflation
• stochastic frontier
• university efficiency

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Barry Reilly, David Lain, Marc Cowling and participants at the WPEG annual conference held at the University of Sheffield in July 2014 and participants at the SRHE annual conference held at the Celtic Manor, Newport, December 2014 for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The author would also like to thank two anonymous referees of this journal for their constructive comments. However, the usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The thresholds delineating the bachelor degree class boundaries across contributory assessments that are typically used by HEIs are: first class ≈ 70% and above; 2:1 ≈ 60–69%, 2:2 ≈ 50–59%, third class ≈ 40–49%, Pass ≈ 30–39% and fail/unclassified < 30%.

2. Mail Online, September 23, 2011.

3. See “Warning Over ‘Grade Inflation’ as First-class Degrees Double”, The Telegraph, January 12, 2012. Accessed December 23, 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/9011098/Warning-over-grade-inflation-as-first-class-degrees-double.html.

4. See, for example, “Universities Fix Results in ‘Race for Firsts’” (Telegraph, July 15, 2013); “How to Get a First-class Degree” (The Telegraph, February 19, 2013); “British Universities Bend Their Rules to Award More Firsts” (Sunday Times, July 13, 2013); “Top Jobs ‘Restricted to Graduates with First-class Degrees’” (Telegraph, July 4, 2012); “University Marking to be Reviewed Over Grade Inflation Fears” (Guardian, September 10, 2009); “Bursting Bubbles; Education Standards” (Economist, September 29, 2007); “Degree Grades ‘Are Too Crude’” (Times Higher Education, May 7, 2004); “Grade Expectations: University Exams” (Economist, March 20, 2004); “Tear Up the Class System” (Guardian, October 14, 2003); “Rise in Good Degrees Not Just Grade Inflation” (Times Higher Education, March 29, 2002) and “Degree Classification is Unfair to Many Graduates” (Guardian, April 18, 2001).

5. It is also possible that graduating students on other undergraduate programmes can take 4 years instead of 3 years to complete, for example, students on sandwich courses are generally required to undertake work placement and some programmes require a year of study abroad, typically this extra year of study is undertaken in the third year. From the information available, it is not possible to separate those who take 4 years from those who take 3 years to graduate. However, the majority of students still complete their degrees after 3 years and we expect the proportion of students graduating from English, Welsh and Northern Irish universities after 4 years to be relatively small.

6. The student questionnaire is available at: http://www.thestudentsurvey.com/,accessed30/10/2013.

7. A ‘true’ fixed effects estimator was also employed but the likelihood function was found to be relatively flat. As a result, parameter estimates become unstable and lack precision. The coefficient estimates did not lead to intuitive interpretation and are not reported in the text.

8. It is acknowledged that student satisfaction may enhance motivation and increase performance in the current year, but it is not clear that students who report a high satisfaction score are necessarily more motivated than less-satisfied students.

9. Smithers (2011) shows that between 1982 and 2012, the percentage of students passing with an A-grade increased from 8.9% in 1980 to 27% in 2011, with a slight 0.4% fall in 2012. The A-level pass rate (grades E to A) also increased, from 68.2% to 98% in 2012. These trends lead to the annual furore over A-level grade inflation reported in the popular media and expressed by government ministers and contended by teaching unions. The important issue here is that if grade inflation at A-level is genuine then A-levels grades may not send the correct signals on students’ ability/quality.