Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/203208 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
IES Working Paper No. 29/2018
Publisher: 
Charles University in Prague, Institute of Economic Studies (IES), Prague
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes grading competition between instructors of elective courses when students shop for high course scores, the instructors maximize class size, and the school imposes a ceiling on mean course scores to limit grade inflation. Under this grading norm, we demonstrate that curriculum flexibility (more listed courses or less required courses) intensifies the competition: in particular, both top and mean realized scores increase. To tame incentives to provide excessively large scores, we suppose that the school additionally introduces a top-score grading norm. We consider three scenarios. First, the school caps top scores directly. Then, grading competition divides students into a concentrated group of achievers and a dispersed group of laggards. Second, the school normalizes the range of scores by changing the mean-score ceiling. Upon normalization, scores of a less flexible curriculum first-order stochastically dominate scores of a more flexible curriculum. Hence, all students will prefer rigid curricula. Third, the school requires that the mean-score ceiling is evaluated for enrolled students instead of all students. Then, the instructors stop competing for students which introduces sorting inefficiencies. Overall, we show that addressing grade inflation through grading norms may generate inequalities, rigidities, and inefficiencies.
Subjects: 
grading competition
grades compression
grading norms
Continuous Lotto games
Captain Lotto games
higher education
JEL: 
C72
D02
D21
I21
I23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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