<p>@AndrewL: Having a higher GPA average isn’t relevant to grade inflation/deflation.</p>
<p>Grade DEFLATION is like…at Berkeley, in my friend’s Physics class, a 96% is a B+ in the class. The GPA is going to be lower than what you would expect to get, since even a 90% is still not an A. The students at Berkeley actually deserve MUCH higher grades. </p>
<p>If there was no anti-curve, we might expect the average GPA to be like…a 3.7. But since it’s like a 3.2, this is grade deflation.</p>
<p>At Duke, let’s say an 86% is an A-. If the subject was hard, but the students aren’t reaching the full A scale since the environment is more relaxed than Cal, they might push the curve down, resulting in an inflation of grades. The students who got an 86% don’t deserve the A, but they got it anyways because not enough people are getting the grade.</p>
<p>If the average GPA at Duke was supposed to be a 3.3 WITHOUT the curve, with the curve it’s a 3.5 or 3.6. THIS IS GRADE INFLATION.</p>
<p>The general pattern is that, at expensive, high ranked private schools (Cornell, MIT, Caltech being an exception), there is usually grade INFLATION because they want happy alumni who will donate back to the school. Grades are spoon fed.</p>
<p>At underfunded public schools, the professors could care less about teaching since most of their money is from doing research. They don’t care if their students succeed or not. They just make the course hard and give a curve accordingly. If a test was too easy, they adjust the curve against the students. If it was too hard, they curve the test in the students favor.</p>
<p>Since the students know this, the majority of them overwork, memorizing everything to knowing everything. This causes the professor to either make the test even harder or curve upward, which makes getting an A even harder.</p>
<p>The GPA average by itself tells you nothing about the school’s actual inflation/deflation rates. We need to see what the curves are.</p>