TY - JOUR
T1 - Decomposing university grades
T2 - a longitudinal study of students and their instructors
AU - Beenstock, Michael
AU - Feldman, Dan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Society for Research into Higher Education.
PY - 2018/1/2
Y1 - 2018/1/2
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - differential grading
KW - instructor grading
KW - measuring academic ability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84961392854&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/03075079.2016.1157858
DO - 10.1080/03075079.2016.1157858
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:84961392854
SN - 0307-5079
VL - 43
SP - 114
EP - 133
JO - Studies in Higher Education
JF - Studies in Higher Education
IS - 1
ER -