<p>As someone who graduated from UCSD with a degree in math, I beg to disagree with you, AceAites, that average GPA is unrelated to inflation/deflation. If we make a simple assumption that these GPAs are normally distributed and make a secondary assumption that we have equal standard errors across large groups, then shifts in the median => inflation/deflation. If school average A has X GPA and school B has Y GPA, and X > Y, X has relative inflation over Y.</p>
<p>It isn’t until you make further assumptions (or better, have actual datasets) about skewed distributions in GPA. </p>
<p>You’re also making some pretty bold (and erroneous) assumptions about administration only from elite schools wanting to increase endowments and only faculty from public schools putting teaching as a secondary priority behind research–but I’ll get into that later.</p>