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Speaker 1: Now there's a little bit of concern that universities at

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Speaker 1: the moment are handing out A grades too easily. There's

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Speaker 1: a new report out from the New Zealand Initiative which

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Speaker 1: shows the number of grades. Number of A grades given

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Speaker 1: out since two thousand and six has gone up by

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Speaker 1: sixty four percent to basically now constitute close to forty

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Speaker 1: percent of all grades. Doctor James Kirstead is a research

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Speaker 1: fellow at the Initiative and he's with us Hi James

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Speaker 1: Hi that okay, so what's going on here? How prolific

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Speaker 1: are these A grades?

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's between thirty and forty percent of

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Speaker 2: total grades. And where should it be getting to the

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Speaker 2: point now where A grades are about to be the

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Speaker 2: most common grade awarded at New Zealand University, where should

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Speaker 2: it be? I mean, it's hard to say. It depends

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Speaker 2: on the cohort, but I think that most people would

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Speaker 2: think that a's probably shouldn't be the most common grade.

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Speaker 2: That should probably be a B or a C as

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Speaker 2: it was in the past. By the way, if you

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Speaker 2: look at the United States, initially the C was the

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Speaker 2: most common grade, then B, and now for the last

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Speaker 2: thirty years, the AA has been the most common at

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Speaker 2: US universities, So in that sense, we're just catching up

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Speaker 2: with them, but it's not really something we want to

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Speaker 2: follow them in. Because great inflation has been a big

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Speaker 2: deal in the States. It's sort of helped undermine confidence

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Speaker 2: and universities there, and so I think universities here should

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Speaker 2: probably think about doing something about the grade inflation so

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Speaker 2: that doesn't hurt their reputation as well.

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Speaker 1: What do you think is causing this?

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Speaker 2: I think the academics feel I used to be an

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Speaker 2: academic myself, so I know this. They feel a lot

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Speaker 2: of pressure to keep student numbers up because if your

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Speaker 2: student numbers fall, there's a risk that your program's going

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Speaker 2: to get cut, and therefore that your job is going

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Speaker 2: to get cut. So I'm not saying people think about

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Speaker 2: this entirely consciously or completely cynically, but there's a sense

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Speaker 2: that if you get a reputation as a harsh grader,

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Speaker 2: then you probably are going to lose student numbers, and

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Speaker 2: that's going to put you in a dangerous position. The

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Speaker 2: other thing is you want good student feedback because that

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Speaker 2: can help your infromotion, it can help you keep your job,

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Speaker 2: and there's a sense that if you give out good grades,

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Speaker 2: then students are going to give you good feedback. So

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Speaker 2: both of those mechanisms I think are really important.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we just put an employer right, because if

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Speaker 1: you're actually actively if you really really want the smartest

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Speaker 1: of the smartest, and you're looking for a's, this is

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Speaker 1: no longer going to tell you what you need to know.

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Speaker 1: So what do you do?

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Speaker 2: Well, that's exactly right. I mean I've spoken to employers

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Speaker 2: who said that they had to set up their own testing,

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Speaker 2: and in the old days, universities would have been reliable.

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Speaker 2: You know, you could have just outsourced the testing of

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Speaker 2: students to the universities and they would have been able

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Speaker 2: to stamp students with a pretty reliable signal. This is

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Speaker 2: an outstanding student, this is a good student, this is

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Speaker 2: an okay student, This person really doesn't work very hard.

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Speaker 2: You know, only accept this person if you really need somebody.

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Speaker 2: But nowadays, yeah, all it shows now is that all

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Speaker 2: in a shows now is that that student was in

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Speaker 2: the top three or forty percent of the distribution.

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Speaker 1: Okay, what is your what does your gap tell you?

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Speaker 1: Do you think that? I mean, you're warning the universities

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Speaker 1: at the moment that basically their credibility is on the line.

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Speaker 1: But they have all of these motivating factors. What does

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Speaker 1: your gap tell you they're going to do. Are they

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Speaker 1: going to stop handing out the a's or just carry

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Speaker 1: on as they are.

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Speaker 2: I think they're going to carry on as they are,

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Speaker 2: to be perfectly honest, okay, I mean I think the

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Speaker 2: government might have a role here. I mean if they

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Speaker 2: think and I'm not saying this because I'm not saying

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Speaker 2: it's completely because I hate them, I think that there's

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Speaker 2: a good reason why individual universities wouldn't do that, because

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Speaker 2: if one university solves the great inflation problem, then they

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Speaker 2: have harsher grading than the other universities, and then they

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Speaker 2: risk having fewer students because the students are going to

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Speaker 2: go to the universities where the grading is easier. So

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Speaker 2: really there's a role for government here. I think that

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Speaker 2: we have to fix it at the systemic level. And

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Speaker 2: so one of the things you can do is make

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Speaker 2: the student numbers less important for funding allocations, right, because

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Speaker 2: that was one of the things that drives and the

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Speaker 2: other thing is about student feedback. So make student feedback

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Speaker 2: less important how you assess academics, because those are the

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Speaker 2: two big pressures on academics to give up better and

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Speaker 2: better grades.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, brilliant, James. It's good to talk to you. M'd appreciate it,

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Speaker 1: Doctor James Kysted, New Zealand Initiative Research Fellow. For more

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Speaker 1: from Hither Duplass Allen Drive, listen live to news talks

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