Grade inflation and the cult of self-esteem

By David Moscrop, Ottawa Citizen. During the first year of my undergraduate degree, I was given a score of 99 per cent on an essay about the Canadian health-care system. Audacious and invincible, as all undergraduates are, I wandered up to the professor after the class to inquire as to why I’d come up short of perfection. “Well,” he said as he looked over the paper, “there’s a run-on sentence in the introduction. So it’s not perfect.” Indeed.
A recent story in the Citizen exposed grade inflation at Carleton University — a phenomenon, I hasten to add, that isn’t unique to that school. The piece highlighted the apparent proficiency of Carleton’s students, including the fact that one third of every grade awarded is in the A range; also noted is the seven per cent rise in average scores over the last 12 years. Naturally, the university attributes this increase in braininess to better students and instruction. More...