We consider a game in which schools compete to place graduates in two distinct ways: by investing in the quality of education, and by strategically designing grading policies. In equilib- rium, schools issue grades that do not perfectly reveal graduate abilities. This leads evaluators to have...

A growing number of today’s college students attend local 2-year community colleges. Many of these students will ultimately transfer to major universities in pursuit of the traditional Bachelors degree. The question of whether such transfer credits adequately prepare students for future...

This paper documents a startling difference in the grading standards between education departments and other academic departments at universities – undergraduate students in education classes receive significantly higher grades than students in all other classes. This phenomenon cannot be...

German universities are regarded as being under-financed, inefficient, and performing below average if compared to universities in other European countries and the US. Starting in the 1990s, several German federal states implemented reforms to improve this situation. An important part of these...

German universities are regarded as being under-financed, inefficient, and performing below average if compared to universities in other European countries and the US. Starting in the 1990s, several German federal states implemented reforms to improve this situation. An important part of these...

Grades are used to evaluate students as well as to compare their scholastic achievements. They are used by graduate schools as well as business firms to discriminate between students. But when grades are inflated, they cease to be an objective measure. We therefore wish to examine the trend in...

Real grade inflation is the upward shift in grades without a similar rise in achievement (Kohn [2002]; Rosovsky and Hartley [2002]). It implies a decline in standards and obscures the role of grades as a signal of academic ability. Guskey [2003] believes that resolving the debate on grade...

In this study, we adopt the Probit model and employ data on nine new freshmen cohorts at a public regional university to examine predictive factors for students' retention and measure projected probability of retention for an average college student. Results suggest four main findings: 1) high...

At the private university we analyze, the gap between white and black grade point averages falls by half between the students' freshmen and senior year. This outcome could suggest that affirmative action policies are playing a key role to reduce racial differences. However, this convergence...