College Students: Grade Inflation

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Grade Inflation
Throughout the twenty-first century college should be a top priority for students graduating from high school, but students who make the next step into attending college are facing a problem that is growing rapidly. The problem is grade inflation transpiring within college nursing programs. Dr. Judith Scalan who is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the Graduate Program and Dr. Dean Care is an Associate Professor and Acting Dean at the University of Manitoba stated that “Grade Inflation can be defined as a student’s grade point average increasing without student achievement increasing” (2). Grade inflation is a re-occurring issue for college students majoring in nursing for many reasons. The reasons for this are the “professors who are instructing class do not know the correct methods of evaluation, part-time professors giving higher grades, and professors giving good grades due to the relationships they have with their students” (Scalan 476). Other reasons why grade inflation also occurs because the clinical practice in nursing programs have no agreement for benchmarks regarding nursing and many nursing schools are competitive which causes the universities to encourage high graduation rates (Scalan 476).
In the future, nursing students are affected by grade inflation because they are not “prepared for the work that is required once they enter the field” (Faurer and Lopez 19), grade inflation making students overly confident about their skills (Scalan 477), and companies failing to trust that a nursing student’s transcript is credible (Faurer and Lopez 20). Instead of allowing grade inflation to continue, college nursing programs should create a valid and strong grading rubric, train professors to have t...

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...eative Nursing 18.2 (2012): 74-77. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Scanlan, Judith and Care, Dean. “Grade Inflation: Should We Be Concerned?” Journal of
Nursing Education 43.10 (2004): 475-478. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
Scanlan, Judith, and Care, Dean. “Issues with Grading and Grade Inflation in Nursing
Education.” Annual Review of Nursing Education 6.1 (2008): 173-201. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Speer, Alice, David Solomon and Ruth-Marie Fincher. “Grade Inflation in Internal Medicine
Clerkships: Results of a National Survey.”12.3 (2000): 112-116. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Sonner, Brenda. “A is for ‘Adjunct’: Examining Grade Inflation in Higher
Education.” Journal of Education for Business 76.1 (2000): 5-8.Web. 11 Apr. 2014.
Zellner, Kathleen M. "An Examination of Grade Distribution Patterns and Grade Inflation at a Baccalaureate Nursing Program." ProQuest. UMI Microform, May 2008. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.

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