Photo by Erin Crider

Grade inflation potentially undermines students' study efforts.

Administrators claim no knowledge of mean student GPA
by Aaron Wright
UHCLIDIAN Staff

Despite the amount of statistical data contained in the university Web site, university administrators claim not to know the mean student grade point average.

"From a student's perspective, this may be an important issue, [but] this data is not routinely used by the schools or other offices across campus," said Dr. Katherine Friedrich, director of institutional research.

Information about the average GPA of students at UH-Clear Lake appears completely nonexistent, and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness claims to have no information on the topic.

The Office of Institutional Effectiveness computes data about students in university schools, by race, gender and enrollment hours.

Representatives from the Office of Enrollment Services, the office responsible for recording and maintaining institutional and demographic information on students, said the information is not readily available; therefore, retrieval will be difficult and time consuming.

"The GPA information is in the database; however, it will take about a month to make a report," said Marion Devore, a senior programmer in the Office of Enrollment Services.

"It's not that anyone is hiding the data; it's just that it isn't easily available, and finding it is way beyond anyone's current interests," said Dr. Frank Matthews, president of the Faculty Senate and math professor. "At this point, we are having problems printing current semester rosters, so trying to make the student information system work is more pressing."

Administration blames the PeopleSoft conversion for the apparent sluggish retrieval of information from the Office of Enrollment Services' database.

"Although we are now managing student enrollments on PeopleSoft, there is still a lot of work to be completed before we have [been] fully converted," Friedrich said. "This has a direct impact on the availability of resources with some offices... Office of Enrollment Services has strived to continue to produce our standard reports and meet all ad hoc requests... Some things that are not currently available take a little longer to complete."

The UHCLIDIAN editor from last semester attempted to acquire the GPA statistics, but retrieved little information from university administration.

"After hearing about the inflated GPA at Harvard, I was curious how our university ranked in that area, because there are rumors about high GPAs at UH-Clear Lake," said Don Asdel, former editor of the UHCLIDIAN. "I was surprised no one had the information and that a mean and median GPA was such a oreign concept to university administration."

Some people on campus claim the information does exist and has existed.

"Let me assure you that the information does exist, at least in some form," said Dr. Dale Cloninger, professor of economics and Beta Gamma Sigma (the national business honorary society) faculty adviser. "Each semester, the deans receive a grade distribution report that shows the GPA (that semester) by class, instructor, discipline, school and university."

The dean's office for each of the four schools in the university denied possessing any information about an average GPA of their students to the UHCLIDIAN.

Previously, a committee in the Council of Professors, chaired by now retired professor Dr. John Coppett, wrote a report warning about the inflated GPA in the university.

"Some of us on the Council of Professors tried to get that data made public, but the Council of Professors (as a whole) voted that down," Cloninger said. "It appears that at least some professors do not want anyone to know who gives what grades. So far the provost has not taken it upon himself to make that report public."

"As the faculty sponsor of Beta Gamma Sigma, I see how the GPAs (in business) are skewed. The top 10 percent of undergraduates is somewhere around a 3.8+. If honors were given by GPA (using the suggested cutoffs) more than a third of some schools would graduate with honors ­ not very distinctive, is it?" Cloninger said.

"If there is a perception the GPA is high, you would think the university would address the situation," Asdel said. "All of the conspiracy could be cleared up if the university would just release the information; but without the information, we are just speculating."