{"id":32637,"date":"2011-01-24T10:46:13","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T15:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=32637"},"modified":"2013-11-19T04:02:01","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T09:02:01","slug":"what-grade-did-jfk-get-in-government-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/01\/24\/what-grade-did-jfk-get-in-government-28\/","title":{"rendered":"What Grade Did JFK Get in Government 28?"},"content":{"rendered":"

He got a B-minus. Which wasn’t so bad! He was only out-performed by 15% of his class: 5 B-pluses, 2 A-minuses, and exactly zero As.\u00a0 In contrast, a whopping 33% got a C or worse.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It turns out, JFK was already benefitting from grade inflation — the slow shift in the average grade point average in higher education — even in 1940. The chart below, borrowed from gradeinflation.com<\/a>, shows that the average grade had gone up by 0.1 on\u00a0 a 4.0 scale between 1935 and Kennedy’s not-so-fateful grade report.\u00a0 Since then, however, has gone up another 0.7 points.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m well-known ’round campus for being a hard grader, but I’m no Professor Emerson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Matthew Beckmann<\/a> for helping Kennedy’s paltry performance (I kid) see the light of day.\u00a0 And to Jay Livingston<\/a> for bringing it to my attention.\u00a0 See also our post on pants inflation<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He got a B-minus. Which wasn’t so bad! He was only out-performed by 15% of his class: 5 B-pluses, 2 A-minuses, and exactly zero As.\u00a0 In contrast, a whopping 33% got a C or worse. It turns out, JFK was already benefitting from grade inflation — the slow shift in the average grade point average […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,34,253,85],"class_list":["post-32637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-education","tag-history","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32637"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59220,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32637\/revisions\/59220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}