Although rising average grades appear to be common at post-secondary institutions in the U.S., there is still little work examining mechanisms driving this increase in grades. This paper uses data from a public research university to examine one mechanism in particular: instructor level incentives that are linked to gender and contract status. We hypothesize that instructors with more job uncertainty due to their rank will be most incentivized to award higher grades, as this may lead to better evaluations of teaching and an increase in retention probability. Our results indicate that students receive higher grades when their class is taught by a female instructor with more job uncertainty than if the class were taught by a tenured female faculty member. These higher grades appear to reflect more lenient grading rather than better preparation for follow-on courses. However, for students taking classes with male instructors, there is no significant difference across instructor rank in grades received. Our results have important implications for thinking about the role faculty contracts may play in affecting grading distributions.

尽管在美国的专上院校中，平均成绩的提高似乎很普遍，但是，仍然没有什么工作检查机制可以推动这种成绩的提高。本文使用来自一所公立研究型大学的数据来特别研究一种机制：与性别和合同状况相关的教师级激励措施。我们假设，由于职称而具有更多工作不确定性的讲师将被鼓励授予更高的等级，因为这可能导致更好的教学评估和保留率的增加。我们的结果表明，与由终身任职的女教员授课相比，由女教员授课的学生在工作不确定性更大的情况下获得更高的成绩。这些较高的分数似乎反映出较宽大的分数，而不是为后续课程的准备做得更好。但是，对于与男讲师一起上课的学生，所获得的成绩在讲师等级上没有显着差异。我们的研究结果对于思考教职合同在影响成绩分配中可能扮演的角色具有重要意义。