
Equilibrium Grade Inflation with Implications for Female Interest in STEM Majors - Bostonian
https://www.nber.org/papers/w26556
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Bostonian
Overall there has been grade inflation at U.S. colleges, as documented at
[http://www.gradeinflation.com/](http://www.gradeinflation.com/) . I can
believe that less grade inflation in STEM discourages more women than men, but
I fear that the "solution" will be to make STEM grades as inflated as non-STEM
grades rather than to reduce the inflation in non-STEM courses.

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Gunax
This makes me a bit cynical. Are we to believe women are too delicate to
receive a 85% or less?

I can't seem to read the paper, so I don't know.

I find the gender debates on HN mostly pointless... so trying to avoid that
here.

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Bostonian
The paper is at
[https://economics.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9386/f/aa...](https://economics.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9386/f/aahtmasterdoc042718a.pdf)
. The paper "Choice of Majors: Are Women Really Different from Men?" did find
that "Women are, however, more likely to switch out of male-dominated STEM
majors in response to poor performance compared to men." The paper is at
[http://ftp.iza.org/dp10947.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp10947.pdf) .

