“I thought it was OK that (my professor) was such a tough grader because he knew we were putting in the effort,” Oberg said. “It was constructive criticism to make us better.”

Oberg’s experience bucks a trend that’s been showing up at public universities across the U.S. for the past 20 years — grade inflation.

From the Ivy League to public universities, college grade-point averages have been climbing during the past few decades and the trend has held true at MSU, said Doug Estry, associate provost for undergraduate education.

But the reason behind the jump likely is not because of classes getting easier, but because the university is admitting students whose grades in high school reflect the same climb that’s been seen in college GPAs, he said.

“The students coming to Michigan State over time have much better academic credentials than they used to,” Estry said.

Holding their honors
Two or three years ago, the University Committee on Academic Policy examined MSU’s criteria for students to graduate with honors and high honors, Estry said.

The two distinctions had been set arbitrarily at specific grade points years before, but the policy on the books stated only 16 to 20 percent of students should be graduating with the distinctions, he said.

“We were graduating a whole lot more than that, simply because GPAs had been moving up,” Estry said. “The grade point to get honors and high honors hadn’t been moving with it.”

To figure out the reason why, the committee looked at the admission data from incoming freshmen and found a similar trend — better grades, he said.

The middle 50 percent of freshmen entering MSU in fall 1999 had an ACT score between 21 and 26, said Gabriel Santi, director of communications for the Office of Admissions. In fall 2010, that statistic had risen to 23 to 28.

“We’re getting what the data would say are better students, and, just as you would expect, those students are doing better in terms of GPA,” Estry said.

Ross Emmett, a professor in James Madison College, published a paper in 2009 attesting that the college had not seen grade inflation in the last decade. Since 2000 — and possibly longer than that — about 10 percent of students in the college have earned 4.0s in their classes, he said.

“I have classes where I don’t give any 4.0s and I had one last semester where I gave several,” said Emmett, who teaches classes in political economy and political theory and constitutional democracy. “There’s an academic environment where students chose to be in the college because they had some awareness of what they were getting themselves into.”

Emmett said he benchmarks his students’ work at a 3.0, which requires papers that are “good” — well organized, well written, well sourced and well cited.

“The papers that are 4.0s are very few and they stand out,” Emmett said.

Although some entering freshmen get frustrated in this type of academic environment, professors in the college are known for their willingness to explain the logic behind their grading and help students improve, he said. In high school, if students wrote something good, they got an A. Now, if they write something good they get a B and look to professors for feedback to improve, he said.

“The level of expectation changes,” Emmett said.

More than a number
For many undergraduate students, the GPA they receive when they graduate is the ticket to what kind of graduate or preprofessional school they can get into afterward.

Microbiology junior Christina Hoang said many students in her science classes zone in on their grades so much because they want to become doctors or dentists and need high grades to make that happen.

“I think for those classes everyone just wants a good grade because it’s what determines if you get into (medical) school or not,” she said.

“(Students are) there to learn the material, but they’re more focused on the grades because they know that if they get good grades, there’s some kind of reward for that.”

Journalism junior Bethany Davis can attest that a perfect grade isn’t an easy thing to come by on campus. During her time at MSU, she’s never gotten less than a 4.0 in any of her classes — something she said she’s been “working her butt off” to maintain.

“I probably invest more time in studying than some people,” Davis said.

“It’s the first exam that really sets the pace ­— that’s when you figure out what the professor is looking for.”

But one thing Davis has found difficult is the lack of consistency in grades across departments on campus, she said.

In the arts-oriented classes she’s taken, the grading is much more subjective, she said.
“It can be really hard to deal with when you go from something like that to something more objective like a math or science class,” Davis said.

James DeMates, the director of the ASMSU Student Defenders Program, said the latitude MSU gives professors in terms of grading can be problematic at times.

In any given year, he said his department handles between 30 to 80 grade disputes from students with about a 50 percent success rate — fighting anything from alleged academic dishonesty to — on occasion — the nature of the tests themselves.

“Some courses you could take — (if you had) Professor A you would have a lot easier time than if you had Professor B,” DeMates said. “Some professors just expect more from their students.”

Setting the bar
Tom Wolff, associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of Engineering, said grading criteria vary from professor to professor, but overall expectations for students are set in the introductory courses undergraduate students take.

“From really the first semester, (students) are getting engaged in open-ended problems and having to quantify their work,” he said.

“They start doing the things that engineers do.”

Neither the university or the college have rubrics specifically outlining what constitutes a 4.0, but during his 25 years at MSU, Wolff has found most professors are able to create exams that end up with student averages between 75 to 80 percent, he said.

“In most cases, the students curve themselves,” Wolff said.

Hoang said the same has held true in the science classes she has taken.

Although she doesn’t always get the top grades in her classes, she thinks the grades students receive are a reflection of the work they put into a course — professors keep their grading policies consistent throughout the semester.

“Everything’s black and white for you at the beginning,” Hoang said.

“It’s your fault if you don’t do well.”

For Oberg, earning less than a 4.0 in his beginning reporting class helped him learn critical issues and material that are causing him to get better grades in his more advanced classes now, he said.

A slight sacrifice in GPA for one semester ended up being a gain in his overall academic experience, he said.

“Sometimes focusing on the quantification of the actual material is a little distracting from the message behind it,” he said.

“It’s more about what you learned than the number attached to your effort.”