Grade Inflation and Human Capital Accumulation among Pakistani University Students

Abstract

The central objective of current study was exploring the level of school acquired human capital. To understand the human capital and grade inflation, 2 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted. To measure school based human capital students were asked to write an essay on a given topic. These essays, FGDs and a brief questionnaire about background constituted the data for this study. This data was analyzed using mixed-methods content analysis. Data analysis generated four important themes related to human capital that are Grade inflation and quality of learning, General Knowledge abilities, Presentation and coherence and Writing skills. It was found that performance of students with CGPA more than group mean perform like those below the group mean. The mean values of group CGPA were also high as 3.46 for Punjab University and 3.77 for Government college University Faisalabad.  The content analysis disclosed that similar mistakes are made by students in both categories. This raised serious reservations on the human capital of the students. This also shows the problem of grade inflation. In order to overcome these problems assessment systems, need reforms where actual capabilities of the students can be measured.