Working Paper: NBER ID: w28710
Authors: jeffrey t denning; eric r eide; kevin mumford; richard w patterson; merrill warnick
Abstract: College completion rates declined from the 1970s to the 1990s. We document that this trend has reversed--since the 1990s, college completion rates have increased. We investigate the reasons for the increase in college graduation rates. Collectively, student characteristics, institutional resources, and institution attended do not explain much of the change. However, we show that grade inflation can explain much of the change in graduation rates. We show that GPA is a strong predictor of graduation rates and that GPAs have been rising since the 1990s. We also find that in national survey data and rich administrative data from 9 large public universities increases in college GPAs cannot be explained by student demographics, preparation, and school factors. Further, we find that at a public liberal arts college, grades have increased over time conditional on final exam performance.
Keywords: college completion rates; grade inflation; GPA; higher education
JEL Codes: I20; I21; I23
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| GPA (C00) | graduation rates (I23) |
| grade inflation (A23) | GPA (C00) |
| relaxed grading standards (I28) | GPA (C00) |
| relaxed grading standards (I28) | graduation rates (I23) |