ADAPTATION‐LEVEL AS AN EXPLANATION FOR DIFFERENTIAL STANDARDS IN COLLEGE GRADING

Abstract

College grading is a deeper topic than it at first appears. It can be investigated and described on several levels. On one level, studying college grading is equivalent to studying the behavior of college instructors. Such an investigation would focus on the input factors or antecedents (e.g., student ability levels, work habits, etc.) that influence grading as well as the characteristics of the persons assigning grades. Another level at which college grading can be investigated concerns the consequences of grading practices. These consequences can be studied for their effects on individuals or on aggregates. The latter approach would assess the systemwide effects of grading practices upon the whole institution, including student enrollments, major field choice, and faculty hiring. The authors believe that the antecedents and consequences of college grading are inextricably tied together by a personal characteristic of college instructors. This characteristic is so pervasive among college instructors (and perhaps people in general) as to be considered an almost inevitable factor in college grading process. The characteristic to which we refer is the phenomenon of adaptation level (Helson, 1947, 1948). Adaptation level, briefly, concerns the anchoring effects of background stimuli upon the perception of focal stimuli. This concept, originally developed to account for psychophysical data, can be translated into the language of college grading. When the performance of the individual student is considered as a focal stimulus, the performances of all other students in the class can be considered as background stimuli against which the individual's performance is judged. Thus, grading standards would be partly determined by the ability level of the student population. If, for example, the ability level declines without an accompanying decline in average grades, then grading standards have fallen (or become less stringent).