I've had this short 2019 article by William Walstad (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and William Bosshardt (Florida Atlantic University), published in the journal American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings (sorry, I don't see an ungated version online), sitting in my 'to-be-read' pile for far too long (especially given how short it is!). Walstad and Bosshardt (incidentally, two of the top researchers in economics education) look at how GPAs differ across undergraduate majors, using data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) project of the National Center for Education Statistics in the US. Their sample covers nearly 16,000 students who graduated in the 2007-08 academic year.
The results make for fascinating reading (albeit, as a snapshot of GPAs that is now over 15 years old). For starters:
The overall undergraduate GPA for all majors is 3.24, or between a B and B+ letter grade. The GPA for economics majors is only slightly below the average at 3.16.
...we also calculated an economics GPA for college graduates who completed a course or courses in economics. This economics GPA average is 2.9, or a B to B− grade.
It's not too surprising to learn that economics has a slightly lower GPA than other subjects, or that students who take an economics course (or more than one), but don't major in economics have a lower GPA in economics than students taking an economics major. I'm sure that the results would be similar for other subjects (with students taking a few courses in a subject having a lower GPA in that subject than students majoring in that subject).
Walstad and Bosshardt then look at the factors associated with GPA:
The most striking finding is that prior achievement or measured ability in high school is highly associated with success in the undergraduate coursework...
The only other variable that appears to be a fairly consistent predictor of GPAs is age. The age effect is nonlinear, with the youngest college graduates having the highest GPA, but it declines with age and then eventually increases.
The correlation of GPA with prior academic achievement is not surprising. Students who do well at high school tend to do better in university as well, on average. The better performing students tend to be highly engaged and motivated, both at high school and university. However, the effect of age is more interesting. The youngest students (those aged under 22 years at graduation) have the highest GPA (of 3.36), and GPA declines with age (to 3.19 for those aged 22 or 23, and 3.02 for those aged 24 or 25), until the oldest group (those aged 26 years or older at graduation), where GPA jumps back up (to 3.29). It is likely that this reflects that students who take longer to get to graduation have lower grades, having failed one or more courses along the way. However, the oldest group will include many 'mature' students, who tend to be more focused on their studies and do better on average. The other variable that stands out as associated with GPAs is gender, with female students receiving a GPA that is 0.14 points higher, on average.
Next, Walstad and Bosshardt look at the factors associated with GPA by subject. Focusing on economics, the factors that are statistically significantly associated with GPA in economics are being aged 24 or 25 at graduation (which is associated with a GPA that is 0.22 points lower, on average), having a high school GPA of 3.5 or more (which is associated with a GPA that is 0.24 points higher, on average), verbal and math SAT scores (which are both associated with higher GPAs), and graduating from a baccalaureate or Masters granting institution, rather than a doctoral degree granting institution. The latter is consistent across all subjects, which suggests that grades are simpler lower on average at doctoral degree granting institutions.
Walstad and Bosshardt, though, focus on the differences by gender, noting that:
Females earned significantly higher overall GPAs than males and in four subjects (biology, calculus, foreign languages, and psychology), but no significant difference is evident in three subjects (economics, business, engineering).
However, female students are less likely than male students to earn an A grade in their first economics course (and their first engineering course), which is not the case for any of the other subjects. Male students in economics get an A grade 3.1 percentage points more often than female students, so the effect is not large.
Given the known issues with grade inflation over time (see here and here), it would be interesting to know how things have changed since 2007-08, and especially whether the gender gap in economics achievement is still apparent. The B&B project does apparently have data for a cohort that graduated in 2015-16, so perhaps a follow-up project is forthcoming?
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