Median Grades at Cornell by Department

Cornell -- "In 1996 the Cornell University Registrar began publishing online median grade reports — an indication of the grades awarded in all undergraduate courses at Cornell. The move came in preparation for a much larger transition: the publishing of median course grades on Cornell transcripts. This year's seniors, the Class of 2012, will be the first class where all students will receive transcripts with these grades listed.

This interactive infographic transforms the Fall 2009 Median Grade Report into a visual form you can explore and manipulate."

MP: The graphic above shows median grades for courses in three departments at Cornell: Economics, Education and Math. Specifically, it shows the percentage of courses in each department with a median grade of A: Economics (13.6%), Education (77.8%) and Math (12.9%). Note also that 100% of Education courses have a median grade of either A (77.8%) or A- (22.2%), whereas for Economics there's a wider distribution of median grades: A (13.6%), A- (18.2%), B+ (50%) and B- (18.2%). For math the breakdown is: A+ (3.2%), A (12.9%), A- (16.1%), B+ (41.9%), B (22.6%) and B- (3.2%).

As Walter Williams reminds us "Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university." And yet education majors frequently graduate with some of the highest GPAs in the university, as these data confirm. Maybe that's why grade inflation is now also a problem in high schools (see chart below)?