Grade Deflation at Johns Hopkins?
Across the United States, colleges and universities are being charged with inflating students grades. Universities such as Brown, Harvard, and Rice have been found to have a majority of their professors boosting students’ grades at the end of each semester. Regardless of the reasons behind such actions, one university has been charged with the opposite problem of grade deflation: Johns Hopkins University.
To put this in perspective, the average GPA for undergraduate students at Hopkins in 2015 was about a 3.38. In contrast, other top universities had much higher undergraduate GPA’s: Brown University in 2012 was 3.63; Harvard University in 2015 was 3.65; Rice University in 2015 was 3.55. Among the top schools in America, Hopkins is currently in competition for last place regarding average GPA.
Dean of the Whiting School of Engineering, Nicholas P. Jones, has made a statement in recent years, where he explained that Johns Hopkins definitely does not inflate grades, but they also do not “deflate” them. The statistics and students’ feelings do not support this statement.
Fernando, undergraduate class of 2018, has stated that many of the computer science courses offered at Hopkins give out exams that are overly challenging to the point where the average grade on each exam is about a 73%.
Amy, undergraduate class of 2020, has stated that she has taken several classes where the grading system is severely unbalanced. She provided some examples, where at-home assignments and quizzes consist of only 5% of the total grade, or the first exam is worth as much as the final.
Mason, a current undergraduate, states that how well a student does depends mostly on the department, and even more so on the individual professor.
Balancing issues, whether it be for exam difficulty or the grading system, is a major problem at Hopkins. There seems to be no consistency. What is even more striking is the disregard for fixing these issues. In the past 10 years, the average undergraduate GPA at Hopkins has not even reached 3.4.
For example, Ryan, undergraduate class of 2020, stated that they currently happen to be taking a computer science course at Hopkins. For the first exam in this course, the average grade was a 79% and many students were complaining that the length and difficulty of this first test was overwhelming. The professor had posted a review packet, and one student, having looked at how difficult and lengthy is was, fearfully asked if this was what the exam would be like. The professor’s reply was that it was nothing of the sort, but in reality, it was nearly exactly the same. This made many students underprepare for the exam. In the aftermath, the professor acknowledged the many flaws of the test, but that was it.
For argument sake, let us say that Hopkins is not attempting to deflate grades directly or indirectly, but instead, peer institutions are overly inflating. Even if this were true, employers and graduate programs seem not to care, and thus Hopkins students are at a severe disadvantage in these crucially important areas. While many of the staff at Hopkins have made statements saying not to worry about GPA and that employers and graduate programs know that Hopkins is difficult, Hopkins alumni do not agree. Very few students from Hopkins are accepted into top med schools compared to peer universities, and 2/3 of pre-med students at Hopkins drop out of the program when faced with blocks due to their GPA’s.
This year, Johns Hopkins University has decided to remove the covered-grades policy. This policy hid freshman grades from employers and graduate program recruiters; a policy that almost every other top American institution continues to implement. In the wake of this decision, several protests were carried out on campus, and many students were outraged due to the fact that the removal of the policy is being coupled with grade deflation. Currently, Hopkins staff seem to be ignoring the opposition once again.
Sources:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-how-an-epidemic-of-grade-inflation-made-as-average
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/how-extreme-is-the-deflation-at-hopkins-undergrad.1236167/