The Perverse Consequences of the Easy A (re: Grade Inflation at Harvard and Beyond)

[Data10]

@gardenstategal

You probably need to back up a step and ask what an A is supposed to signify. If it is pure mastery of the material, and the test-takers are bright and diligent students, and if the prof did a good job of teaching the material and designing an assessment that tests masters, it seems reasonable that many students will indeed show mastery of the material and earn an A.

I agree in principle and have made posts with similar comments in other threads. However, I doubt that the primary reason why grades have been increasing is the current students are better mastering the material than previous years.

For example, a comparison between senior survey in class of 2025 and class of 2017 is below. I chose class of 2017 because it’s the oldest class for which the full distribution is displayed. Are recent classes really far less likely to have students who do not master the material than the class of 2017?

2017: 18% had below A/A- GPA, 21% had >= 3.9 GPA
2025: 7% had below A/A- GPA, 53% had >= 3.9 GPA (median GPA = 3.9)