An analysis of education departments at three universities across the United States shows that their students studying to become teachers routinely received significantly higher grades than students in a majority of other academic departments. Grade inflation, the report says, is the likely cause of the disparity.
The report rules out differences in student quality and structural discrepancies, such as varied class sizes, as possible reasons for the higher marks.
Author Cory Koedel, a University of Missouri economics professor, based his findings on data from Indiana University Bloomington; Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio; and the University of Missouri, in Columbia, from the 2007-08 academic year.
