Decomposing university grades: a longitudinal study of students and their instructors

Michael Beenstock*, Dan Feldman

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

First-degree course grades for a cohort of social science students are matched to their instructors, and are statistically decomposed into departmental, course, instructor, and student components. Student ability is measured alternatively by university acceptance scores, or by fixed effects estimated using panel data methods. After controlling for student ability, course characteristics, and instructor fixed effects, departmental grade differentials range over 7 points out of 100. Instructors who teach in more than one department grade more generously in departments that award higher grades, suggesting that differential grading policy is set by departments and does not result from unobserved differences in instructor quality and teaching material. Finally, student fixed effects, which measure ability at university, are correlated to 0.41 with their university entrance scores, which measure ability prior to university. This suggests that university entrance scores are poor predictors of student performance in higher education.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)114-133
Number of pages20
JournalStudies in Higher Education
Volume43
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2 Jan 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Society for Research into Higher Education.

Keywords

  • differential grading
  • instructor grading
  • measuring academic ability

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Decomposing university grades: a longitudinal study of students and their instructors'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this