Welcome to the report card with Nat Malchus, the Education Policy podcast from the American Enterprise Institute.

Recently, there's been a lot of hand-rating over grade inflation, both at the higher

education and K-12 levels. But how big of a problem actually is grade inflation? What sort of

effect does grade inflation have on student learning? Does grade inflation help or hurt college

enrollment? And what impact, if any, does great inflation

have on lifetime earnings? To discuss these questions and more, I invited Jeff Denning on the podcast.

Jeff Denning is an associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the

University of Texas at Austin.

And along with Rachel Nesbit, Nolan Pope, and Merrill Warnock is the author of a new paper.

Easy A's Less Pay, the Long-Term Effects of Great Inflation.

Jeff Denning, welcome to the report card.

Thanks for having me.

All right, Jeff, many folks are concerned about grade inflation, both at the high school and college levels. Basic question to start with, has there actually been grade inflation in

recent decades? And if so, do we know how much grade inflation there's

been? That's a great question to start with. It's actually a little bit harder to answer than I

wish it was. I think the answer is yes, there has been great inflation. Certainly grades have gone up.

Average grades have gone up. But it depends a up, but, you know, it depends a little bit

what you mean by inflation. If average grades have gone up, but so has performance, you know,

student performance, then you might not want to call that grade inflation. I think there's some

evidence that grade inflation, that is, grades have gone up without an accompanying increase in performance.

That has happened.

I have a paper that looks at this in college, and I think does a good job establishing

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