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Most grade inflation is the result of a lack of challenge and not pushing students to meet higher challenges. This has to begin at the start, in the 101 courses. For college students they should be expected and told that they are expected to far exceed the high school level many college courses are at.

This is the situation because honestly most faculty are lazy when it comes to creating challenging courses and putting in the time it takes to teach those courses.

My students are given requirements that must be met. Miss requirements and you lose points, sometimes all of the points. If you don’t know how to accomplish the task then can you do the research to formulate an answer or solution; can you think through the problem and synthesize a solution. My courses expect the student to hit the ground running and know that the pace won’t let up.

Too many students have come to expect that college-level is an extension of high school and unfortunately many faculty and deans are too afraid to challenge or to possibly “scare” away the students because it is challenging.

Concur, and, as well, there is a good deal of pressure placed on professors not to give anything but A's to students who intend to apply to Medical, Veterinarian, or other demanding postgraduate schools, whose selection process is heavily GPA-dependent. One might think they wouldn't care, but if an institution's reputation for toughness frightens these students away the faculty will hear about it - that's their salaries going down the drain as well as the rest of the university's funding. Vicious circle.

You'd think that the selection committees could normalize for the average GPA in onee institution compared to that of other institutions, but that turns out to be exceedingly difficult to do. This shouldn't be an issue, but it is.