As @rosehorowitch notes, the average GPA at Harvard is 3.8/4. Harvard administrators, laughably, call this “grade compression” (not “inflation”), & one said, with a straight face, that perhaps our students are performing better & better. I knew this was codswallop, so went to the objective, multiple-choice final exam scores over the 20+ years I’ve taught at Harvard. With the help of Dr Nicole Noll (preceptor) I found that performance sank by 10 percentage points (quoted in the article).
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One common response to reports of grade inflation at Harvard is that the students are elite so of course they get A’s. But Harvard’s own data show this was not always the case, and Professor Pinker provides evidence below that performance has in fact declined over time.