GPA easily condenses four years of college into one number. But what does that number mean? Intelligence? Work ethic? Potential for success? As an undergraduate, I worry about maintaining a good GPA, partly because of my impression that I need a good GPA to succeed professionally, and partly because I feel pride over good grades and shame over poor grades. However, I have never believed that grades alone disclose students’ aptitudes or foretell their future successes. A number of recent events have motivated me to investigate what college GPA really means.

1. My Microbiology 201 Honors professor gives an A or A-minus to every student in the top half of my 23-person class; my friend’s Microbiology 201 professor grades on a standard “A = 93 to 100, A-minus = 90 to 93” scale. How can you compare the grades of students from these two microbiology classes?
2. The moderators of a seminar about scholarships that I attended said outright that if you are a senior with a 4.0, you have probably never dared to challenge yourself, or else you have spent all of your time studying and missed everything else about college. How does a GPA indicate experience and critical thinking?
3. At the annual student awards ceremony, Penn State seniors in the top 0.5% of their class (3.99 GPA and above) were honored. Additionally, senior Chris Rae was honored for winning a Gates-Cambridge scholarship, and senior Ryan Henrici was honored for winning a Goldwater Scholarship, a Marshall Scholarship, and an Astronaut Scholarship. Neither student was in the top 0.5%. Is a student with a 4.0 and no scholarships more successful than a student who won a Gates-Cambridge scholarship with a slightly lower GPA?

Why is GPA important?

According to Roth and Bobko, there are two main reasons to use GPA: it is easy and cheap to obtain and interpret, and it is generally believed to reflect student aptitude and work ethic. Thus Caulkins, Larkey, and Wei say that colleges consider GPA in awarding financial aid, ranking students, and determining whether students have performed well enough to earn a degree. Employers use GPA to screen interviewees; indeed, students may associate GPA with their self-worth. Certain majors at Penn State, such as Mechanical Engineering, also mandate that entrants have a 3.0 cumulative GPA. GPA thus has a potentially lifelong impact on career, income, and satisfaction.

What are the flaws of GPA?

            The rationale of using GPA is that it indicates student aptitude and efficacy, according to Roth and Bobko. This is partly rational, as GPA is weakly correlated with general intelligence. However, the correlation constant (r) is somewhere between 0.3 and 0.7, which means that r², which tells how much of the variance in GPA is due to variance in intelligence, could be between 0.09 and 0.49; that is, at most, only half of the difference in GPA between two students can be attributed to difference in intelligence. At the least: only 9%. The authors said that student conscientiousness also affects GPA (r = 0.34, r² = 0.12), but that external factors, such as differences in grading scales, course difficulty, biased professors, and other time commitments like part-time employment, impact GPA.

Caulkins et al. illustrate that external factors in grading invalidate student-to-student GPA comparisons, especially across majors. For example, in a study of seven colleges, the average math class GPA in 1991 was 2.53, while the average English class GPA was 3.12—a difference of 0.59. Are English students that much smarter? No, say Caulkins et al.: the math classes drew higher achieving students but had more stringent grading standards, making it impossible, without adjustment, to compare the GPAs of students with substantially different course work. That GPA contains numerous factors besides intelligence and conscientiousness, such as the difficulty of classes taken, argues against using it alone to rate students.

Then what, if not GPA?

Caulkins et al. argue that no single number can accurately describe student performance. However, though GPA can never truly be accurate, it can be much more so than it is now. They evaluate five ways to adjust grades class by class to make GPAs more accurate:

1. Calculate the difference between a student’s raw grade and the average grade in each course, and then average those differences to calculate GPA. GPA = average(student grade – course average). This method, however, does not consider that grades in some courses are clustered, while grades in other courses are widely spread.
2. Calculate the z score of the raw grade a student received in each class, then average the z scores to find the GPA. GPA = average((student grade – course average) / course standard deviation). While this method corrects the clustered/spread problem, it does not consider that an average student will earn a lower GPA by taking classes with high-achieving students than by taking classes with low-achieving students.
3. Instead of comparing students to the average scores of their classmates, compare students to the average historic grade of every student who has taken the class, by subtracting the average historic grade from each student’s grade. GPA = average(student grade – average historic grade).
4. Instead of subtracting, divide each student’s grade by the average historic grade. GPA = average(student grade / average historic grade). This method and method 3, however, do not consider that in some classes, the lowest- and highest-performing students receive grades within a narrow range, while in other classes, grades are spread widely.
5. Combine methods 3 and 4: first divide by an average historic grade, then subtract another value to adjust the grade, then average these adjusted grades to calculate GPA. GPA = average((student grade / average historic grade) – adjusting value). This method corrects for the variability in grade distribution.
6. The Item Response Theory (IRT) method is an already-developed method that has successfully adjusted GPA to better match student aptitude.

Which method is best? Caulkey et al. studied whether these GPA-adjusting methods were better correlated with three pre-college-admission variables—high school GPA, math SAT, and verbal SAT—among Carnegie Mellon undergraduates. They found that for natural science courses, method 3 GPA correlated best with high school GPA and math SAT, and IRT GPA correlated best with verbal SAT, although not statistically significantly so. Thus the authors argue that since GPA correcting formulae are simple and more effective than raw GPA, colleges should all employ them. However, they concede that phasing in adjusted GPAs should be gradual, as a sudden change would upset colleges and employers, who use GPA so widely.

GPA inevitably has limitations

Still, a single number, even an adjusted GPA, cannot encode all that a student is or can become. Importantly, we must recognize what GPAs mean. Not only are they affected by intelligence and motivation, but also by professors, classes, classmates, extracurriculars, and dumb luck. Students should not inextricably associate these inherently flawed statistics with their self-worth, potential, or any parameter mentioned already.

Ernest William Goodpasture got a D in Latin at Johns Hopkins. Later, he pioneered growing flu vaccines in chicken eggs, a method that has saved millions of lives up to this day.

Jack Crean killed himself the day before his first semester at Penn State began. Introducing the deliberation “‘Blue’ & White: Addressing Depression at Penn State Common Place,” the moderators said Jack was consistently upbeat and could lighten the moods of those in his proximity. Why did he commit suicide? We may never know with certainty, but we do know that depression is a covert illness. The moderators first addressed the issue that depressed students often feel too ashamed to admit depression, as if depression is a personal failing, or a crime for which they are “guilty,” not a treatable ailment. Surveys show, they said, that about 30% of all students are depressed during some of their time at Penn State, yet few report it. Teaching students that they may become depressed at college is the first step towards preparing them to identify the signs of depression, should they develop them.

The moderators thus asked, “How can we teach students that depression is prevalent at Penn State?” We first proposed developing an online depression education module like SAFE or AWARE; however, we agreed that students would likely gloss over it, as they do SAFE and AWARE, if they completed it during the summer. Thus, we discussed having students complete it midway through their first semester, which we thought would be more effective. Integrating a lesson on depression into the first year seminar, we thought, could be effective, until someone pointed out that not all students take a first year seminar, and that first year seminars are not standardized. Therefore, we proposed that all students should take a first year seminar and that at least one class must be devoted to depression.

Once students would be wary that they or their friends could become depressed, the moderators asked, “How can we make depressed students more willing to seek help or identify students who do not willingly admit?” We brought up but quickly abandoned the possibilities of having professors or RAs take on those responsibilities. It would be entirely unreasonable for professors of large classes to identify who among their hundreds of students were depressed. Even RAs would likely not form strong enough friendships with the students on their floor to identify depressed students; Jack Crane’s own family and friends did not suspect, we said, so why would his RA? Having roommates identify depressed students is more feasible, but requires that every student know how to identify symptoms of depression. The most effective option, we agreed, would be to have friends identify depressed friends, which highlights why it is important for Penn State to teach students what the signs of depression are.

Most of the discussion focused on the next step, treating depression, through Counseling And Psychological Services (CAPS). CAPS is underfunded, the moderators lamented, and must turn down all but the most severely depressed or suicidal students (although one of my friends with moderate depression was able to get help through CAPS, so the moderators may have overstated the underfunding). Nevertheless, CAPS is underfunded, and the moderators asked, “How can we increase funding?” We proposed a small tuition increase to cover the costs, which seemed to be the most viable option. Rerouting money from highly paid organizations, such as Penn State football, seemed like it would vex the supporters of such organizations and put CAPS in a bad light. Still, CAPS provides counseling for only a limited time; then, students must seek professional help elsewhere.

Finally, then, the moderators asked “How, besides CAPS, can we help depressed students?” We proposed encouraging depressed students to seek their friends’ support and to join clubs that they would find fulfilling. However, these are broad solutions, and since depression is highly specific to each student, these solutions would likewise need to be individually tailored. The best way to help, we agreed, is to teach students that “Happy Valley” is a misnomer for 30% of students: that it is not being depressed that is shameful, but rather, it is being silent about it. Only when Penn State students accept depression will they be willing to help and seek help that they need. Depression, if treated, has an excellent prognosis.

The problem was evident before my class was in kindergarten, but it affects us today as college freshmen—and today, it is worse. College students were stressed fifteen years ago, according to this 2000 article on the website of the American Institute of Stress, and though a 2008 addendum stated that the problem had worsened in the intervening years, the article’s opening sounds eerily relevant today: “No time for sleep, no time for playing games, no time for going to parties. You must get that six-figure job, you have to get an “A” in this class, and you must succeed.”

I imagine that most of you have thought this, as I have for a little over three years. While I had participated in marching band and quiz bowl in ninth grade, I added on pit orchestra, traveling jazz band, a local music competition, County Band, and my first AP class—World History—in tenth grade. By the middle of March, I had burned out: I couldn’t devote enough time to any one thing to do it very well. But did I learn? While conceding pit orchestra, I took five AP classes in eleventh grade and four in twelfth, and became more involved in quiz bowl and PMEA bands. After all, there was so much to do, and colleges would be scrutinizing my accomplishments.

Somehow, I imagined without reading into the issue that once the college admissions process was over, college would be much less stressful than twelfth grade. But application essays have not ceased. Now there are scholarships, internships, and research opportunities, ways to earn money, gain skills, and prepare my resume for me to secure a career that will yield even more money later on, if I pass the interviews. Combine this with my hazy and labile conception of my career, and you can see some of the roots of stress and insecurity for me and many other college students.

Indeed, this is a national trend. This NY Times article from last month cited a recent survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2014,” that reported that significantly more freshmen feel depressed or overwhelmed than they did in 2009. Likely, many changes are driving down students’ mental health. That article posited that increased college student pressure to “compete in a global economy, and think they have to be on top of their game all the time” is one cause, as is the anxiety they may have developed by being overworked in high school. It also implicated students spending less time socializing and more time studying as a probable cause of stress and argued there is an optimal balance between work and play, and that universities should encourage students to find that balance rather than incessantly work harder. While the article said that drinking and smoking rates are declining nationally, signs that students are not resorting to unhealthy ways to cope with stress, students are increasingly socializing more with media and less in person, which can contribute to feelings of isolation.

Seventeen more causes for declines in students’ mental health appeared in this Psychology Today article. These causes range from students not developing personal life philosophies anymore, to students becoming narcissistic, to poor mental health care. Putting all of the causes together, I think that a large part, though certainly not the only part, of declines in mental health is increasing materialism, which dove-tails with an “I want it NOW because I DESERVE it” attitude. The aforementioned article mentions high school grade inflation fostering a sense of superiority, praising of assertiveness fostering a sense of entitlement, development of pills fostering underestimates of how difficult it can be to recover from diseases, and increased financial pressure fostering a sense that students must succeed, or else! To this, I would add that faster communication between students and ubiquity of Internet access has made us think that we deserve instant rewards for minor accomplishments, instant replies to our messages, and, even worse, that we must always be on our guard to make sure we don’t do anything stupid, or else our stupidity will be spread across social media in five seconds. Also, that our peers at Penn State are earning internships and scholarships pressures those of us who are not now to seek out these opportunities. Since many of us students come into college with (perhaps unrealistically) high expectations, we may feel like failures if we don’t get accepted into the programs that admitted our peers. Others’ success stories motivate us to succeed but don’t prepare us to fail.

All of this centralizes on materialism. Wanting lucrative careers, prestigious resumes, and flawless facades, we overlook why we really want them, why we need them as soon as possible, and what they really mean to us. Answering those subjective questions is certainly much harder than answering the questions of how much money your scholarship was worth or how many weeks your internship was. How to find fulfillment is a question many people ask, and beyond the scope of this blog—even if I did have the answers, which, as a 19-year-old freshman, I do not. I encourage all of you, though, to ask yourselves why you really want the things that you do and to do things that mean something to you, not to everyone else looking upon you. It will take some courage and discomfort, but is it worth the trouble if the alternative is more and more stressed and depressed college students across the country?

            Since 2001, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has ranked Finland’s educational system as the best or among the best in the world, according to “What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success,” a 2011 article in The Atlantic. Americans usually regard a private school as superior to its nearby public schools, a judgement that is usually true, in America. As budgets and teachers vary between public schools, poorer communities tend to have poorer public schools, and private schools are the best option for affluent students; thus, while elementary and secondary education is virtually a right in America, a good education is a wealthy privilege. In Finland, however, even a good education seems to be a right.

Paradoxically, Finnish students have performed on par with, but experienced less stress than students in China (Shanghai), Japan, and other countries renowned for education. To begin, education is not compulsory until Finnish children turn seven, according to an article in The Smithsonian, “Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?” The rationale? “Children learn better when they are ready. Why stress them out?” said Finnish principal Kari Louhivuori. Similarly, Finnish students and teachers both spend fewer hours in class. Students spend much time at recess, which students and teachers value alongside studying; teachers use their extra time to create engaging lessons, and they assign little homework, too. How, then, do Finnish students perform as well as or better than students who study more rigorously?

Perhaps the answer is in part that Finnish teachers are highly qualified, dedicated mentors. Becoming a teacher is competitive; many prospective teachers graduate in the top ten percent of their college classes, according to The Smithsonian again. Americans with a bachelor’s degree in education can teach, while Finnish teachers have been required to earn a master’s degree since 1979; the added credential has made being a teacher nearly as prestigious as being a doctor or lawyer. Teachers, well qualified, respected, and trusted, enjoy a great deal of autonomy in designing their lessons and satisfaction from their work. According to the Center on International Educational Benchmarking, teachers in 2014 were paid between $34,720 (for their first year) and $45,157 (for experienced teachers). If these salaries seem slight compared to the education that Finnish teachers must receive and compared to American teachers’ salaries, which averaged $56,383 in the 2012-13 year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, note that the ratio of the teachers’ salaries to GDP ranges from 0.89 to 1.17 in Finland but only 0.74 to 1.11 in the United States, again according to the Center on International Educational Benchmarking.

It is remarkable that Finnish schools, from primary education through even graduate schools, are free to attend, with the exception of a small number of private schools. School lunches from primary to the end of secondary school are not only free, but also nutritious, according to the Finnish National Board of Education, which states, “A good school meal is seen as an investment in the future.” Funding for Finnish schools comes from the National government (about 57%) and local governments (about 43%), and even private institutions receive government funding. All schools receive about the same amount of funding per person; schools with large populations of disadvantaged or immigrant students receive extra resources, according to “How the Finnish school system outshines U.S. education,” an article in Stanford News. By contrast, U.S. schools receive about 93% of their funds through state taxes and local property taxes, creating enormous disparities among public schools in affluent, average, and destitute communities, according to the PBS article, “How Do We Fund Our Schools?”

Finnish School Lunch, by Vkem on Wikimedia Commons.

It seems that the two roots of Finnish student success are school quality and equality. Quality means that the teachers must be well educated and adept at instruction to become teachers in the first place, that students incorporate both quality class time and play time, and that Finnish schools provide students with nutritious lunches. Equality means that no matter their socioeconomic background, Finnish students all have free access to the same teachers, curricula, and standards because the Finnish national government provides 57% of the funds that public schools receive and because all of the schools draw from the same pool of qualified teachers.

Though these measures have dramatically improved Finnish education over the past 50 years, it does not mean replicating Finland’s educational system in the United States would solve all of our educational woes. Finland, despite its successes, still does not have a perfect educational system, of course; no country ever will. Moreover, it is a smaller country, for starters, and has a different culture and a more homogenous population. However, just as most students learn from their teachers without becoming teachers themselves, the United States can implement and modify policies that have worked in Finland without needing to replicate Finland to improve its educational system.

Does two free years of college sound too good to be true? President Obama plans to make community college free to all half- and full-time students who maintain GPAs of at least 2.5, which he announced on January 9, according to the Washington Post article, “Obama announces free community college plan.” Obama supported his plan by saying that “America thrived in the 20th century in large part because we made high school the norm,” and that these days, “A college degree is the surest ticket to the middle class” and “ensures you are always employable.”

Using unemployment data released in January 2015 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I calculated that from August to December 2014, the average unemployment rate among high school graduates without college education was 5.6%, but was 5.1% among those with some college or an associate’s degree (the type of two-year degree awarded by community colleges), and, by performing a t test, I found that the difference was not due to chance (p = 0.039). However, during the same time period, average unemployment among those with bachelor’s degrees was only 3.0%, significantly (p = 0.0001) lower than unemployment among those with an associate’s degree or partial college education. Thus, it is incorrect to say that an associate’s degree ensures employability, but the data show that people with even an associate’s degree are less likely to be unemployed than those without college experience, though more likely to be unemployed than people with a bachelor’s degree.

Unemployment statistics alone do not consider incomes. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the median 2012 income of those with a bachelor’s degree was $46,000, but only $36,000 for those with an associate’s degree. However, for high school graduates with no degree, it was $30,000. The immediate cost of not being employed while attending community college for two years would thus be around $60,000, but the average community college graduate would recuperate the difference in about ten years, and so the data show that for an individual, earning an associate’s degree for free would be worth the time.

What about the effects of Obama’s plan on broader society? While free community college has not been tested in all of the United States, some states have such programs. In California, according to the January 28 Washington Post article, “Obama’s free college plan is no panacea; just ask California,” about two thirds of full-time community college students have their tuition waived. However, the article cautions, by offering free education, community colleges must accommodate more students and spread their resources more thinly to serve them all. Currently, only about 50% of those who enroll actually finish their degrees, but if future students can use fewer resources, that percentage could drop.

Education that is free for students naturally raises the question, “Who pays?” The aforementioned “free community college plan” article estimates that 9 million students will participate and cost a total of $6 billion per year for the next ten years. Obama has outlined, but not detailed, plans that would increase taxes for the wealthy, according to this New York Times article. These plans include eliminating the trust-fund loophole (whereby wealthy people can buy assets that accumulate value over their lifetimes, and then bequeath them to relatives without being taxed on the amount of accumulated value), increasing the capital-gains tax rate from 23.8% to 28% for families earning over $500,000, and imposing new taxes on large banks and financial firms. Meanwhile, Obama wants to cut middle-class taxes, instituting a $500 tax credit for families with two working parents and up to a $3,000 credit for each child under 5. It is estimated that tax cuts will amount to $175 billion and tax revenue will be $320 billion over the next decade, which would help fund Obama’s free community colleges.

If the plan goes through and works, that is. Many people, especially Republicans, oppose the plan, and given that Republicans constitute the majority of Congress, passing it may prove difficult. Utah’s Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, for example, said that increasing taxes on businesses and investors would undermine the successes of previous tax policies.

If Obama’s plans do pass, they beg the question, “What will happen to United States education in coming decades?” The average number of years spent in school has been increasing over the past century, and if ever-higher levels of education become ever more accessible, the percentage of people with advanced degrees will continue to rise, so jobs will become more exclusive for people with lower degrees. It will be ever harder for people with associate’s degrees to find jobs, harder for people with bachelor’s degrees, and harder for people with master’s degrees. Most jobs do not require a Ph.D-level of education, and if we got to the point where one needed a Ph.D. to become an electrician when an associate’s degree or simply an apprenticeship would be perfectly fine, then the government would be wasting many resources on education, and people would be wasting many years on it. Determining the “right level” of education is beyond the scope of this post, but I plan to address it in future posts. Hopefully, Obama’s plan for free community college education will allow at least half of Americans who should have a degree but cannot afford tuition to attend college and learn the skills they need for their careers.