Teachers may be more inclined to give higher grades to students, hoping to gain favor with the university administrators who grant tenure, a new study has found.”I am concerned with the [Student Evaluations of Instruction], because instruction has become a popularity contest for some teachers,” said J. Huston McCulloch, professor of economics and finance.McCulloch recently completed a study investigating the effects of grade inflation on evaluations at Ohio State. Results showed higher average grades directly corresponded to a more positive evaluation, he said. The study compared the 1997 average evaluation scores and grade point averages by department and course level, using information provided by the Office of the University Registrar. Students evaluate instructors according to a five-point scale, five being the most favorable and one being the least favorable. The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Office of Academic Affairs use these evaluations to measure teaching quality, McCulloch said.In one example in the study, students in a education course got an average grade of 3.92, while students in a biochemistry course got an average grade of 2.13. The GPAs were calculated on a scale where a 4.00 equaled an “A”.Factors not included in the study that may affect evaluation results include class size, class time and whether the class is an elective or required course, McCulloch said. Professor Robert Tierney, director of the School of Teaching and Learning, disagrees with the results of McCulloch’s study.”It’s provocative,” Tierney said. “You need to peel beneath the numbers and look at the nature of the course before you draw too many conclusions.”McCulloch’s study has been brought to the attention of the American Association of University Professors, an organization that handles concerns regarding academic freedom and tenure of professors. Committee A of the association tries to help teachers who are not granted tenure, said E.J. Behrman, local committee chairman and professor of biochemistry.”Using the raw score of the SEIs is foolish,” Behrman said. “Professor McCulloch’s study is an exceedingly important report for teachers who have been denied tenure because of SEIs.”OSU teaching faculty are initially hired as assistant professors. For six years, assistant professors work with no guarantee of future employment. At the beginning of the seventh year, assistant professors can be permanently hired, a process known as tenure.”They are essentially on trial for six years,” Behrman said. The principles that determine whether teachers are granted tenure include their quality and quantity of research, service to OSU and teaching ability, Behrman said. Some departments rely entirely on the results from evaluations.The Office of Academic Affairs has followed the most recent tenure process, which began in 1988. In that year, 1,035 teachers were hired as untenured faculty, said Nancy Rudd, vice-provost. At the beginning of this year, 452 teachers of that original group were granted tenure, and 106 teachers were either denied tenure or left OSU for other reasons.”The reason for the leave may be because of recruitment to other schools,” she said. “There’s no table tracking the reasons why teachers were denied tenure or departed, because it varies from case to case.”McCulloch suggests adjusting the evaluations for grade inflation by separating the grades students receive in a course from the teacher evaluation. Emphasis would move away from the grade a student receives and would focus solely on the instructor’s performance, he said.The trend towards grade inflation seems to be catching on nationally. According to a story printed in The Indiana Daily Student, the average undergraduate GPA at the University of California at Berkeley rose from 2.91 in 1986 to 3.08 in 1996. At Duke University, between 1986 and 1994, the average GPA rose from 3.0 to 3.3. In addition, Indiana University officials report the average GPA rose from 2.83 to 2.96 between 1976 and 1996. More than half of undergraduate students at Stanford University in 1992 held GPAs of at least an A minus. Some OSU students disagree with relying on evaluations to judge instructor performance.”When the content in a class is more difficult than another class, it may be tough for the instructor to break down the material into more understandable terms,” said Tiffany Moore, a senior majoring in psychology. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are a poor professor.”Liz Krall, an undecided sophomore, questions the validity of evaluations.”A majority of students in my classes don’t take the teacher evaluations seriously,” Krall said. “They are in a hurry to leave the class once it’s over.”McCulloch said he hopes his research will prevent denial of tenure for assistant professors.”I hope it stirs up some attention to the problem and steers (the) administration to do some adjusting,” he said.