Grade inflation: nearly 3 in 5 Imperial students awarded Firsts in 2021/22
The share of degrees awarded the top grade at Imperial has soared over the past decade, with nearly three in five undergraduate students receiving a FirstClass Honours in 2021/22.
The share of degrees awarded the top grade at Imperial has soared over the past decade, with nearly three in five undergraduate students receiving a FirstClass Honours in 2021/22.
Imperial awards the greatest proportion of First-Class degrees of any higher education institution in the country, exceeding the average for the Russell-Group, a consortium of top UK universities, by 20 percentage points.
The proportion of men awarded top grades has exceeded that of women for every year on record except for 2019/20, the first year of the pandemic. The trend opposes that seen across the UK university sector, where in recent years, a greater share of women have achieved Firsts than men.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw a six point increase in the proportion of students awarded a First, in line with national trends. But the Faculty of Medicine shot up far in excess of its peers, awarding Firsts to 85% of its Medical Biosciences graduates and intercalating medical students.
During the pandemic, Imperial implemented policies to help students whose productivity had been impacted.
In March 2021, the College introduced a university-wide ‘safety net’: every department guaranteed that the proportion of Firsts awarded to a given cohort would match or exceed the share awarded in the three years immediately preceding the pandemic.
The phenomenon of grade inflation pre-dates Covid: the proportion of FirstClass degrees awarded at Imperial nearly doubled in the decade to 2018/19.
It is only in 2021/22, the most recent year for which data is available, that grade inflation has faltered, with the share of top degrees awarded falling four points from an all-time high the year before.
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