Recovery from university grade inflation after the COVID-19 pandemic varies by faculty

Recovery from university grade inflation after the COVID-19 pandemic varies by faculty Higher education institutions worldwide report a drastic increase in grades during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since it was not paralleled by an increase in student achievements, the consensus is that the pandemic came with grade inflation, which exceeded the systematic multiannual trends of grade inflation. The present paper adds two novel aspects to this body of research. First, unlike most existing reports, this study covers the post-pandemic timespan and quantifies the degree of return to pre-pandemic grading patterns. We examine changes in grade point average (GPA) values in undergraduate students from two Canadian universities (N = 32,753 and N = 15,101) in the circum-pandemic period from 2018–2019 through 2022–2023. Second, we consider changes in grading by university faculty. The central finding in both universities is that post-pandemic GPAs returned fully to pre-pandemic levels only in some faculties (e.g. Business, Engineering, Health Sciences) but are still inflated in others (e.g. Humanities, Social Sciences) compared to pre-pandemic levels. Thus, post-pandemic grades stemming from some faculties are more trustworthy, i.e. exhibit less inflation and are more closely aligned with student achievement, than in other faculties. We provide correlational evidence that the faculties that have curbed grade inflation more successfully are the more selective ones and arguably have more incentives to maintain higher educational standards.