I don’t know enough to contradict this assertion..but the original article in this thread is about grade inflation at colleges too and does seem to contradict it, at least at the colleges it refers to.
I recall an exam where a 60 was an A, and an 85 was an A+ (there were only 5 students with grades over 60 in a class of more than 100 students at Stanford). I do not recall whether a 50 would have been an A or a B. My daughters have both mentioned classes with exams that were just as tough. The toughest I can recall was an exam where any positive score at all was a passing grade. Some students did fail this exam.
I think that to some extent Harvard is already suffering a bit from a small amount of “reputation decay” based on this. This may be more of an issue in high tech, which is where I worked for my entire career.
I think that it will take a very, very long time, probably multiple generations, before this reputation decay adds up to being enough for the university to care, and at that point it could be too late to do anything about it. Of course this reputation decay might be reversed before it is obvious enough for the vast majority of the population to have even noticed.
Where does the article contradict the assertion? Grade inflation does not require any particular relationship between what % correct on exams corresponds to an A grade. It instead generally corresponds to a larger % of students receiving A grades than in the past.
For example, a particular professor might give a challenging exam where the median exam grade is 50%, then curve that exam such that anything above a 40% on the exam is an A, such that the vast majority of students receive A grades. The percent of students receiving A grades might be the same as a different class in which the professor gave easier exams where the median exam grade was 90%. Either one of these 2 classes could have grade inflation, with the vast majority of students receiving A’s.
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A Caltech, Reed, MIT, Williams, or Princeton education?
[quote=“ChoatieMom, post:5, topic:3697134”]
Why bother to attend if the easily-earned diploma no longer signals a serious depth of intellectual achievement?
[/quote]
Because the hard-fought admission letter signals a serious depth of… something. The Harvard name has always been valuable over and above the Harvard education. After all, it’s not as if “show me your transcript so I can see your course rigor and GPA” is a typical response to “I went to college in Boston".
Agree. Pretty much what I said above:
Presumably, Harvard students come from the following types of admits:
- Actual top-end academic achievers and potential.
- Those admitted with LDC-type hooks but not top-end (beyond “typical excellent” HS record) academics.
- Those admitted for some non-academic achievement and potential but not top-end academics.
Likely group 1 focuses on academics, choosing high rigor course options and striving for achievement in them, as well as academic achievement beyond that. But groups 2 and 3 may be more likely to get by with “gentlemen A-” grades in ordinary courses, since their post-graduation paths depend more on their connections (group 2) or non-academic achievement and potential (group 3), with the Harvard name on their diploma giving some boost through the aura of group 1.
But this probably isn’t new for Harvard. Decades ago, it was probably similar, except that the academic standards for admission of group 2 were lower, and they were satisfied with “gentlemen C” grades in college.
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 mastery, it seems reasonable that many students will indeed show mastery of the material and earn an A.
If, otoh, the A signifies that they received one of the top 7% grades in the class – the “grading on a curve” that was so familiar to most people my age – then there will likely be no grade inflation. It may also require an assessment that includes application of the subject matter in a way that is very challenging and perhaps novel to what has been covered in class. It may also mean that mastery of the material is a given, not what is being tested.
Personally, I have no problem with the first model. But I do have an issue with any model that allows for grade revision through re-takes, extra credit/work, etc. While this may help a student master the material - the objective! -, it doesn’t change the fact that at the point of taking the exam, that mastery wasn’t there.
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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)
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The question though is whether the nature of assessments have changed in that time. I have no idea!
But if previously, they were used as differentiators and now they are used as markers of mastery, it’s about changing what’s measured. To be, grade inflation suggests measuring the same thing but scoring it more leniently.