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A class that appears hard but guarantees a good grade is more appealing to a student than a class that is moderate but no good grade is guaranteed. Considering most grades are inflated, it therefore invites many students to avoid rigorous courses with uninflated grades because such courses lower GPAs (Felton 563).Why? Students are more apt to take classes and participate in clubs and activities that would look good on their transcript over others that they may actually be interested in. “Students want a high grade-point average and a college degree that is a passport to a well-paying job, but they also want freedom from authority.” (Cannato D12).
This freedom from authority is the basis of consumerism. As Edmundson confirms: “A happy consumer is, by definition, one with multiple options, one who can always have what he wants” (Miller 437). At many colleges, students can take classes that appear difficult as pass/fail instead of receiving a grade. Students are more likely to share work because it ensures that both students have a better chance at a good grade, provided they don’t make their assignments too similar. Two heads are, after all, better than one. As a result, students are learning less. The National Assessment of Educational Progress Test claims that “if high school students are taking more challenging courses and earning higher grades, we should be seeing greater gains in test scores.” (Schmidt A32). The amount that students are learning is either the same or decreasing, but the grades they receive for demonstrating their learning of this work are increasing. If anything, this is a definite indication of grade inflation’s occurrence. Each teacher’s grading standards cannot be uniform, because each teacher may have a particular fondness or dislike of a student. As a result, grade inflation is relatively uncontrollable. James Felton of Central Michigan University confirms that grading standards are impossible to control: “Grades are inherently ambiguous evaluations of performance with no absolute connection to educational achievement. It is clear that wide variations in the grades given by different instructors in the different sections of the same course, different instructors in the same departments, differences in the difficulty of subject matter in different areas and differences in the ability of students in different areas seriously undermine the GPA as a reliable measure of education” (562).