"midwestern" wrote in message
...
They are entered as 42/50..like a grade, the student got 42 out of 50 on
an
assignment.

The problem is that you need to evaluate 42/50 as as 0.84 before you can
calculate the average. Here's how you do that.

1) Select Tools|Macro|Visual Basic Editor
2) Insert a new module
3) Copy and paste this code into the module

Public Function Eval(ByVal s As String) As Variant
Eval = Application.Evaluate(s)
End Function

Now, if cell A1 holds the string 42/50, you can enter =Eval(A1) in a
different cell and it will return 0.84
Insert this newly created function in a different column and apply the
Average function
http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/formulas/average.htm

/Fredrik