Word.ws English Dictionary

grade inflation

grade inflation noun: a gradual upward trend in grades awarded to students during the decades since the mid-20th century, reported in a number of countries and at a number of levels of schooling and sometimes offered as evidence of a decline in academic standards.

Noun

grade inflation (uncountable)

  1. A gradual upward trend in grades awarded to students during the decades since the mid-20th century, reported in a number of countries and at a number of levels of schooling and sometimes offered as evidence of a decline in academic standards.
    • Grade inflation refers to an increase in grade point average without a concomitant increase in achievement.1981, I. Bejar, E. Blew, “Grade Inflation and the Validity of the Scholastic Aptitude Test”, in American Educational Research Journal, volume 18, number 2, page 143

Questions about grade inflation

What does grade inflation mean?
Grade inflation means a gradual upward trend in grades awarded to students during the decades since the mid-20th century, reported in a number of countries and at a number of levels of schooling and sometimes offered as evidence of a decline in academic standards.
What part of speech is grade inflation?
Grade inflation is a noun.

Words near grade inflation in the dictionary

  1. grade grubbed
  2. grade grubber
  3. grade grubbers
  4. grade grubbing
  5. grade grubs
  6. grade inflation
  7. grade line
  8. grade lines
  9. grade nine
  10. grade on a curve
  11. grade one

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grade inflation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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