Reconsideration of grade point average

Abstract

Grade Point Average is widely used as a numerical value that can express a student’s overall performance in a university program. According to a 2017 survey, 100% of national universities, 80% of public universities, and 93% of private universities have introduced GPA. GPA is obtained by giving grade points such as 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, to a student’s grades in a certain subject, multiplying the number of credits in that subject, and dividing the sum by the total number of credits taken. It is used as a criterion for selecting students eligible for scholarships and tuition fee exemptions and grasping the course registration status and advice for learning. Still, there are serious problems with the current GPA. One is that the original score numbers are rounded at the time of the transformation to the grade point, which causes a reversal phenomenon of grades among students. Second, it is challenging to grasp student performance from the GPA values because it replaces the 100-point test scores widely used in Japan with Grade Points. Therefore, in this paper, we proposed dGPA, in which the original scores are divided by ten without rounding, and the sum multiplied by the number of credits is divided by the total number of credits taken. Since dGPA does not cause a reversal phenomenon in grades, it can be used confidently as a criterion for selecting students eligible for scholarships and tuition fee exemption. Since it is easy to judge overall performance based on the numerical value, it can be expected to be used as a familiar presence for students and parents. Furthermore, since the dGPA accurately reflects the performance of a student, it is also suitable for institutional research use by university management.