This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Twenty-three Indiana University undergraduates are co-authors on a new study examining how the pandemic reshaped college grading, the result of a semester-long research seminar that took them from a classroom question to a published paper in a national academic journal. The students conducted the research, "The Shock That Stayed: The COVID Pandemic and Its Impact on Assessment," published in the journal Social Science Quarterly, as part of the Indiana Political Analytics Workshop (IPAW), an undergraduate training program led by William Bianco, professor of political science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington and a recipient of a 2026 Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award in American Studies.
"These students built the entire research design themselves, argued through the statistics and worked to generate a publishable result," Bianco said. "That's the kind of experience that usually happens in graduate school, and every one of them earned their place on this paper. It is an important and new finding about the impact of COVID on undergraduate education." The undergraduate co-authors are Zoe Bogan, Juntao Chi, Olivia Cutka, Gabe Codada, Janani Eswaran, Nathan Fang, Ralph David Fernando, Nick Foxworthy, Avalin Hess, Ranit Kar, Jennifer Karakash, Warren Kim, Violet Lamptey, Adam Longstreth, Sydney Machado, Riley Odier, Thomas Pigott, David Rasmussen, Sophia Richason, Faith Shands, David Tashjian, Ariana Wagner and Jianhan Yin.
The paper 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. At the center of the students' analysis was what they called the asymmetry hypothesis, the idea that the pandemic's effect on grades wouldn't be the same in every class. The students reasoned that courses that already had high average grades before COVID had little room left to climb before hitting the 4.0 ceiling, while courses that started with lower average grades had much more room to rise.
The study drew on publicly available grade records for more than 82,000 undergraduate classes taught 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. To measure the pandemic's specific effects, the students worked in small groups to build 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. The students found that 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. Different groups wrote sections of the paper and edited each other's work. The findings are consistent with trends documented across higher education during and after the pandemic.
The paper notes that changes in grading patterns observed at IU are similar to those reported at colleges and universities nationwide. For many of the students, the seminar offered a rare undergraduate opportunity to see a research question from a classroom discussion to a finished, peer-reviewed publication, the kind of full research arc that shapes how students think about pursuing further research, teaching or other work after graduation. "They did a great job, and I am very proud of what they accomplished.
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