COLORADO SPRINGS - The overall grade point average at the University of Colorado has fallen in three years because the school is cracking down on grade inflation, officials said Wednesday.

Student GPAs fell from 2.99 in 2004 to 2.94 last year, Provost Phil DiStefano told the CU Board of Regents at a meeting here.

"I think that's a fairly significant change," DiStefano said. "It's going in the right direction."

The drop represents the first decline in grades at CU in more than a decade. From 1993 to 2004, GPAs rose 4.5 percent.

The drop in GPA isn't because kids are dumber; students today are as bright as those in the past, officials said. CU knows this because it looks at an index of incoming freshmen's high school GPA and ACT and SAT scores, and these students' scores are as high as their predecessors'.

So officials feel confident they're making a dent in grade inflation.

Grade inflation has been an issue for public and private institutions for decades. At Harvard University, 91 percent of the seniors who graduated in June 2001 received honors, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

To combat the problem, CU President Hank Brown and the regents asked officials at the various campuses to present information demonstrating that they're offering students an academically challenging environment.

In addition to grades, DiStefano pointed to the National Survey of Student Engagement, which asks freshmen and seniors about their perceptions of academic rigor at the university.

In a multiple-choice survey, students said they thought the university focused on academic work and studying "quite a bit."

The students also reported spending 11 to 15 hours each week preparing for class, slightly more than their peers at other public institutions.

Regent Tom Lucero was a bit skeptical about the survey results, given that DiStefano acknowledged a student is expected to spend about two to three hours studying for every one hour of coursework.

"If someone has 15 credit hours, than the average each week should be 40 to 50 hours," Lucero said.

But Lucero also lauded the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, which completely overhauled the way it assesses whether students are learning.

To determine how well students are learning general subjects, the school employs a variety of surveys and requires students to complete writing portfolios.

Individual departments also evaluate students through thesis projects, testing and other specific measures. Each year, officials identify an area of concern and then address that issue by changing curriculum.

But students at the Colorado Springs campus still seem to have time for leisure activities. When surveyed by the NSSE, students at the campus said they spent about six hours a week partying - something that doesn't trouble Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak.

"Six hours a week doesn't concern me as long as they're making academic progress," she said.

gonzaleze@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5350