The College Fix

About eight percentage points higher than five years prior

A supermajority of undergraduate grades given out at Yale University were an A or A- according to a new report from the student newspaper.

The Yale Daily News obtained a copy of the 2022-23 grades report from an economics professor at the Ivy League university in Connecticut.

The dean of Yale College, the undergraduate branch of the university, acknowledged that professors are not properly grading students. The report shows 78.9 percent of grades given out in the 2022-23 school year were an A or A-. This is a slight dip from the 2020-21 school year when 81.97 percent of grades were above a B.

“As you can see, a large majority of grades in Yale College are in the A range (A or A-),” Dean Pericles Lewis told the student newspaper. “This results in compression, making it difficult for instructors to use grades for their intended purpose of helping students understand areas of strength and others that need attention.”

Professor Ray Fair, who provided the report to the student newspaper, said the inflation is a leftover from the COVID-era. “Some thought [the COVID effect] would be temporary, but it has more or less persisted. [It’s] probably the faculty going easier on students because COVID was a pain,” he told the student newspaper.

By comparison, students in the 2010-11 school year were less likely to earn a graded in the A range. Only 67.23 percent of students that year earned an A or A-.

There is a difference between the hard sciences and the liberal arts, particularly majors such as gender studies and African-American studies.

“In general, STEM subjects seem to have lower percentages of A-range grades, and humanities subjects seem to have higher percentages,” the student newspaper reported.

For example, only half of economics students achieved an A. Meanwhile, 82.21 percent of African American studies students earned an A or A-, according to the reported data for courses with an “[e]nrollment greater than 500.”

The student newspaper also provided data from several courses with lower enrollment. The numbers show 92.6 percent of gender studies’ grades were in this range.

This is not the only Ivy League that has seen high grades. Harvard University gave 79 percent of students an “A” grade in the 2020-21 school year according to data released this semester. This is a 20 percent increase from a decade ago, as previously reported by The College Fix.

Scholars who oppose grade inflation have reportedly found themselves out of jobs as a result of their decision. This includes former Indiana University-Northwest scholar Mark McPhail and Kendrick Morales at Spelman College.

Some professors have explicitly advocated for easier grading in the name of gender equality.

MORE: Brooklyn College ‘anti-racist agenda’ includes addressing too many low grades

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