Undergraduates who analyzed Indiana University grade records found the COVID rise was uneven
Twenty-three Indiana University undergraduates co-wrote a peer-reviewed paper tying the largest pandemic grade gains to courses that started lower. Courses already near the 4.0 ceiling had little room to climb, as the students predicted.
The Scientist · Science desk
Four groups. Introductory and STEM classes: grades rose most, in courses that started lower. Advanced seminars: rose only modestly. High-average courses: little room below the 4.0 ceiling, the students hypothesized. Colleges nationwide: similar changes reported, the paper notes.
- Who's exposed exposure Introductory and STEM classes Grades rose the most, in courses that started lower, claim 8
- Who's exposed exposure Advanced seminars Grades rose only modestly, claim 8
- What it limits constraint High-average courses Students hypothesized high pre-COVID averages left little room to climb before the 4.0 ceiling, claim 5
- What it sets up precedent Colleges nationwide The paper notes grading changes at IU are similar to those reported nationwide, claim 9
| Who | How | Kind | Claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introductory and STEM classes | Grades rose the most, in courses that started lower | exposure | 8 |
| Advanced seminars | Grades rose only modestly | exposure | 8 |
| High-average courses | Students hypothesized high pre-COVID averages left little room to climb before the 4.0 ceiling | constraint | 5 |
| Colleges nationwide | The paper notes grading changes at IU are similar to those reported nationwide | precedent | 9 |
What happened
- The team used public grade records for more than 82,000 College of Arts and Sciences classes from 2004 to 2025, then focused on roughly 4,300 courses per year around the pandemic.
- Small groups built a model that matched the same courses, and often the same instructors, across years to separate the pandemic's effect from the longer national rise in grades.
- Introductory and STEM courses saw the biggest increases, while advanced seminars rose only modestly.
- The paper appeared in Social Science Quarterly after a December 2025 submission and a July 2026 acceptance following revisions requested by outside reviewers.
Why it matters
- Who has to decide decision If the Indiana pattern holds elsewhere, a GPA cutoff set on pre-2020 cohorts may now be easier to clear in introductory and STEM courses than in seminars.
- What's now possible capability The design runs on public grade records, so a department that publishes grade distributions could in principle repeat it on its own courses.
- What it limits constraint The evidence is one college's records, so any wider claim leans on the paper's own note that national reports look similar.
The matching is what gives the result its footing. Grades were already drifting upward nationally before the pandemic, so a jump at one college proves little unless that drift is subtracted [7]. The students' model held the course fixed across years, and in many cases the instructor too [7]. That rules out the plainest alternative: that a different mix of classes or teachers produced the rise.
"Stayed" is the paper's word. The title is "The Shock That Stayed: The COVID Pandemic and Its Impact on Assessment" [2]. The records run to 2025, but the analysis focuses on courses taught just before and after the pandemic [6]. A before-and-after contrast shows a step, and persistence needs the later years as well. The phys.org account does not give the size of the rise in grade points or how it moved after the first years back. The thing this doesn't tell you is whether anything about assessment itself changed. The title says assessment, and the evidence described is grade averages.
The rise itself is not news to higher education. According to the write-up, the paper notes that the changes at IU are similar to those reported at colleges and universities nationwide [9]. William Bianco, the political science professor who leads the Indiana Political Analytics Workshop where the work was done [3], still said: "It is an important and new finding about the impact of COVID on undergraduate education." [10] With the overall rise matching national reports, we think the novelty lies in the pattern by course level, where introductory and STEM courses gained most [8].
On process, the write-up says the paper was submitted in December 2025 and accepted in July 2026 after revisions based on outside reviewers' feedback, the same review any professional researcher would face [4]. The work came out of a semester-long seminar [1].
What to watch
- Whether the full paper reports the size of the rise in grade points and how it moved through 2025.
- Whether other campuses with public grade records run the same matched-course design and find the same gap between introductory courses and seminars.
- Whether any evidence on assessment methods, such as exam formats or grading policies, is paired with the grade averages.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives60
- Confidence50
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Twenty-three Indiana University undergraduates are co-authors on a study of how the pandemic reshaped college grading, the result of a semester-long research seminar.
- [2]
The paper is titled "The Shock That Stayed: The COVID Pandemic and Its Impact on Assessment".
- [3]
The students did the research as part of the Indiana Political Analytics Workshop (IPAW), an undergraduate training program led by William Bianco, professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington.
- [4]
The paper, published in Social Science Quarterly, was first submitted in December 2025 and accepted in July 2026 after revisions based on feedback from outside reviewers, the same review process any professional researcher submitting to the journal would face.
- [5]
The students' asymmetry hypothesis held that the pandemic's effect on grades would not be the same in every class: courses with high average grades before COVID had little room to climb before the 4.0 ceiling, while courses with lower averages had much more room to rise.
- [6]
The study drew on publicly available grade records for more than 82,000 undergraduate classes in the College of Arts and Sciences between 2004 and 2025, then focused on roughly 4,300 courses per year taught just before and after the pandemic.
- [7]
Working in small groups, the students built a statistical model that matched the same courses, and in many cases the same instructors, across different years, isolating how much of the increase was tied to the pandemic itself against the backdrop of a longer-running national trend toward higher grades.
- [8]
The students found their hypothesis held: grades rose the most in courses that started lower, particularly introductory and STEM classes, and rose only modestly in classes like advanced seminars.
- [9]
The paper notes that the changes in grading patterns observed at IU are similar to those reported at colleges and universities nationwide.
- [10]
Bianco said: "It is an important and new finding about the impact of COVID on undergraduate education."
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Sources
1 independent publisher whose own reporting we read for this story.
- phys.orgHow COVID reshaped college grading
1 article · October 15, 2026
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