A return to pre-pandemic grading norms is not a punishment

“Mom, I got an A!” An achievement that used to signal academic excellence now feels more like a participation trophy.

Grade inflation was already a growing issue in the last two decades, gradually lowering the signalling power of grades. An A used to be a mark of distinction that reflected top academic performance, but it has now become the most common grade given at many universities, raising concerns about what a grade really means. Is an A something to be proud of if half the class got one?

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and grade inflation skyrocketed. Universities quickly pivoted to remote learning, but while both students and instructors widely reported learning losses during the adjustment period, grade point averages or GPAs only increased.

Canadian universities saw a substantial GPA increase across faculties during remote semesters, in some cases reaching the difference of going from a B to a B+.

Canada is not alone. Similar trends were reported at colleges and universities worldwide, including in the United States, Italy and Turkey, though Canadian schools saw some of the highest grade inflation rates.

Necessary leniency

Why did this happen? As students dealt with the physical, mental and financial stress related to the pandemic, universities were more lenient with grading practices.

Policies were introduced to accommodate exceptional circumstances: for example, the introduction of pass/fail grading, where students were given the option of converting bad grades to a ‘pass’ that still counted towards degree requirements.

Other policies included relaxed deadlines, deferred or cancelled exams and mark adjustments for cohorts with lower grades than previous years.

These measures were essential at the peak of the pandemic to make sure students were not penalised by the global disruption.

However, while pandemic measures have ended and students have returned to campus, not all faculties have returned to previous grading norms. This was the finding of our recent study that examined GPA trends before, during and after the pandemic, focusing on post-pandemic recovery from grade inflation.

At two Canadian universities, faculties like engineering, business and health science returned to pre-pandemic GPAs within a year, but others are still struggling to bring GPAs back down. Three years later, humanities and social sciences have still not fully recovered from the inflated GPAs that were reported during remote learning.

Why did some faculties return to normal, while others struggled?

Differences in assessment

One explanation could be differences in the way students are assessed. In faculties like engineering and business, grading tends to be more objective through standardised assessments that have defined ‘right or wrong’ answers.

Programmes within humanities and social sciences faculties, however, often have more subjective assessments that focus on critical thinking and debate rather than right or wrong answers – giving way to more inflated grading even before the pandemic. Without objective grading, it may be easier for inflated grades to continue in these programmes.

Another explanation is external accountability. In faculties like engineering and business, both students and academic programmes are held to strict standards.

To be able to practise their profession, engineering students in Canada, for example, need to pass the Professional Practice Examination, an assessment that is set by an external provincial regulatory body. The engineering programme itself must first be accredited by a Canadian engineering accreditation board to meet educational standards and is regularly evaluated to maintain the accreditation.

In business faculties, students pursuing accounting need to pass the common final examination administered by Chartered Professional Accountants (CPA) Canada. The undergraduate programme is structured around this examination, needs to be accredited by CPA Canada, and is regularly evaluated. These processes ensure that students are meeting high professional standards before entering their fields.

The same type of accreditation requirements for professional certifications are rare in humanities and social sciences programmes.

While Canada does have systems in place to hold all programmes accountable to provincial educational standards, as well as institutional quality assurance checks, programmes in the humanities and social sciences often don’t have the same guard rail for grade inflation as other faculties.

Grade inflation has real world consequences. When grades are not a reliable measure of student achievement and skill, the credibility of some undergraduate programmes is lost to employers who struggle to differentiate between high-achieving students and those who benefitted from lenient grading policies. This hurts students’ ability to enter the workforce in an increasingly competitive job market.

Possible solutions

What solutions are there for courses with little or no objective assessments?

First, where possible, courses could implement clear grading rubrics, creating more consistency and objectivity even when a new instructor comes along.

Second, universities can deal with grade inflation the same way that economists deal with financial inflation. Just like salaries from past decades are adjusted for a meaningful comparison across time to reflect 2025 dollars instead of the actual sums paid, GPAs today can be adjusted to match grade distributions from previous years.

For example, if a student in the top 15% pre-pandemic had a GPA of 8/10, students in the top 15% after pandemic grade inflation would have GPAs lowered to match this GPA.

The temporary accommodation given to students struggling during the pandemic was necessary, but as universities return to campus, all faculties need to prioritise grading that accurately reflects student achievement.

The goal isn’t to punish students for receiving higher grades during pandemic measures, but to restore the validity of university grading and prepare students for their next career step.

Nadia Lana is a PhD student in the Cognitive Science of Language graduate programme at McMaster University in Canada. Her research is on language learning in the first and second language, and cognitive and linguistic factors affecting vocabulary acquisition. Lana’s passion is science communication and scientific journalism. Victor Kuperman is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Psycholinguistics in the department of linguistics and languages at McMaster University. His research focuses on psycholinguistics and quantitative linguistics, and statistical and experimental methods in language research. Kuperman’s recent focus is on socio-economic and cognitive predictors of literacy.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.