New Zealand academics mark their students’ work so generously that A grades will soon be the norm rather than a sign of distinction, new research suggests.

A of records from the country’s eight universities has found that a steep rise in the proportion of A grades over almost two decades coincided with declines in all other bands.

This contrasted with grade inflation in the UK, where a surge in the awarding of first-class honours occurred alongside a moderate rise in upper second-class honours.

In New Zealand, by contrast, the share of A grades rose by 10 percentage points while Bs – the most commonly awarded mark – declined by seven percentage points, reducing a yawning 25 percentage-point gap between the two bands in 2006 to just two percentage points by 2024.

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Author James Kierstead said As would hit the lead in the next few years. “This will put our universities in the same position as universities in the US, where rampant grade inflation has long undermined public trust in higher education,” warned Kierstead, a senior fellow at the New Zealand Initiative thinktank.

The share of A grades at America’s four-year colleges tripled between 1940 and 2012, according to the website. A grades leapfrogged both Bs and Cs to become the most commonly awarded marks in the 1990s.

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Kierstead said that although the American “crisis in higher education” mainly reflected controversies over free speech and administrative “bloat”, grade inflation had been a contributor. “It’s just too easy nowadays [to say] kids aren’t working hard enough,” he told ����Vlog.

“I sense [a] similar discourse around universities in New Zealand. We’re kind of moving into the same territory. It looks like the universities can’t even get the grading system under control.”

The latest findings are based on a reanalysis of data underpinning the thinktank’s August report, which found steady rises in the share of A grades at all eight universities, and less pronounced increases in the share of pass grades.

Kierstead said the new study, which examined the “full spectrum of grades”, should serve as a “wake-up call” for policymakers to implement the corrective measures recommended in his earlier report.

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They included introducing statistical moderation approaches, setting up national disciplinary exams, asking international committees to grade samples of exams each year, or – at the very least – supplementing student transcripts with details such as class average and students’ rank in the class.

Kierstead said it was hard to believe that Kiwi students’ academic performance had improved to the extent indicated by their grades. The “most reliable measures” for secondary school performance showed that New Zealand adolescents’ numeracy and literacy had been “getting worse for a long time”.

He said grade inflation most likely reflected academics awarding steadily higher marks, partly to protect their livelihoods. “If you’re in a humanities field, especially, you’re worried that your programme is going to get cut. If your programme gets cut, your job might be cut.

“The reason they use to justify cuts to programmes is always low student numbers, so you want to keep your student numbers up, and…you kind of get a sense from the students that if you get a reputation as a harsh grader, they’re not going to take your class.”

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com